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 Schadenfreude  |
This is the first time I have heard a liberal come out and say this so bluntly, though it has definitely been the subtext to a whole lot of liberal rhetoric for ages.
No wonder they fight against their own country, even in time of war. They believe our defeats make us better.
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Hedges: My father, who had fought in World War II, essentially became a pacifist after the war. He was a very early opponent of the Vietnam War and took us as children to antiwar demonstrations. He told me when I was about 12 that, if the war was still going when I was 18 and I was drafted, he would go to prison with me. If we visited museums, he would never allow us to see the displays of weapons and guns. He couldn't stand the VFW hall, partly because they drank so much there. And, of course, I grew up in a manse, where there was no alcohol. I remember one July Fourth parade when I was about ten, and these guys were going by in their caps. And he said, "Never forget. Most of those guys were in the back, fixing the trucks." So I grew up in a home where war was seen for the abomination that it was.On the other hand, I also grew up in a home with parents who were social activists, so my entire childhood was colored by the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement. When my father died in 1995, he was very involved in the gay rights movement. And I learned, because we lived in a small town in upstate New York, the cost of taking a moral stand -- that it was unpopular. I mean, Martin Luther King, in the early days of the civil rights movement, was one of the hated men in America. I felt the sting of what it meant to stand up for what you believe in or to support a cause that was just and, certainly at its inception, how difficult that was.
That developed, I think, a lot of anger in me -- anger at seeing my father, whom I admired, belittled by people in our town. I also read a lot as a teenager about the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War, and I very much wanted that epic battle to define my own life. I used to regret as a teenager that I had not been of age in the thirties, that I couldn't go fight fascism like my hero George Orwell. By the time I was a divinity student, the military dictatorships in Latin America were carrying out horrendous crimes -- the "dirty war" in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, the civil war in El Salvador. When I got to El Salvador, the death squads were killing 800 to 1,000 people a month, and I felt that, as a young man, this was as close as my generation was going to come to fighting fascism. And that is what propelled me toward war -- not because I was any kind of a gun nut, not because I came as a voyeur -- which some people do -- but out of a sense of justice, out of a sense of idealism.
Belittle my father will you? Take my sneers then --- from my exalted commencement speaker's podium.
Also I saw Hedges on The PBS Newshour last December, and on Charlie Rose at about the same time. Rarely have I seen so bitter and tortured a man, or a man with more of a distorted idea about the worthiness of his own parochial and banal observations about the human condition. In a letter I wrote at the time I said, "Yesterday [Terrence Smith] groveled before a sniveling coward, Chris Hedges, allowing the audience to go away with the impression that Hedges's pathological case of self-hatred and anti-Americanism was somehow useful in illustrating the real moral questions that arise when grave issues of war and peace are discussed."
Hedges is a psychological case; a guy with severe psychologcal problems who, it so happens, can also write fairly well. That The New York Times has him on its payroll along with, until just a few days ago, psychological basketcase Jayson Blair, tells us something about the "paper of record" which I'm sure Howell Raines never intended.
Lebanon has many religious groups, including large numbers of Christians and Druges (?SP). Israel invaded lebanon to protect Israeli citizens in Gallilee from being killed from terrorists based in south lebanon. And the "Shiites" who "hated" Israel are Iranian funded islamofascists, and the Syrians essentially run the country (which is why so may Christian lebanese are now European or American citizens.
this is "blame the Jews" anti semitism...
What I want to discuss is his last statement, which is –
Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be re-created. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship -- or, let me say, love -- is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.
Now, contrast his belief with this –
12"This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14You are My friends if you do what I command you.” – John 15:12-14.
His last statement turns the word of Jesus on its head. For a divinity student, he seems not to understand Gods word. Perhaps he spent too much time reading Communist propaganda and not enough time learning the word of God.
To the poster stating we should politely listen to people we disagree with. Let me see – this guy Hedges trashed America, the current administration, the Jewish people of Israel, the American military, the military personnel, and concludes by contradicting God. I should stand quietly by and listen to all of this?! I agree with the other poster who said no more! What is it that posters on FR always say – never bring a knife to a gunfight! When you attempt to argue or fight with two sets of rules, if you continue to stick to your rules and expect your opponent to do the same, you will always lose. If someone is in the gutter throwing muck at you, you cannot stop that person unless you get in the gutter. You can always come back up from the gutter but those types of people never can rise above their allotted station in life.
These are precisely the words Osama could use when he finally capitulates.