[Twotone]

Mark Steyn's comments about this interview: "Mr Bloom conducts interviews the old-fashioned way, with a reporter's notebook, and I have to say some of "my" quotes sounded a little odd to my ears as I read down. There's a Michael Ignatieff line from a few years back that I found so hilariously club-footed I put it in After America: Canada, wrote Ignatieff, is "the place on Earth that, if I needed one, I would call home". Gee, thanks a bunch. I quoted this line mockingly to Mr Bloom only to have him mis-attribute it to me - which is sure to come back to haunt me when I slip through to win the final round of this interminable Tory leadership election."

[Sans-Culotte]

Bump for later.

[Chickensoup]

Bumpity-bump

[xzins]

Thinking about that article and it's focus on freedom versus the silencing that Islam will bring, and I keep going back to the idea that we don't fight back.

As a retired military chaplain, I've spent time thinking about the need for warriors. In liberal circles, it's not polite to discuss all the warriors in the bible, at least not the warfaring part of their lives, but we would be changing the book irrevocably if we took the nature of the warriors out of the bible.

The question in my mind is about when the Judeo-Christian world has been empowered to fight back and when they have not.

I'm still puzzled by how quickly and completely a movement like Islam, while still growing, overpowered the Christian world of the Mediterranean middle east in such a short period of time. What about their religion didn't fit the other eras when believer-warriors fought back?

What was different about those other times when Christians arose and fought. The article mentions the tough Balkans, but what about Tours, Vienna, Vlad the Impaler...the Crusades

Were they just brutes, or did their brand of Christianity lend itself to protecting Christianity while a different brand of it was remembered best for having disappeared? I assume they just died.

I've always been impressed with Cornelius, centurion in the Book of Acts. God chose Cornelius to be the first, unarguably 100% gentile to receive the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. What's important was that a centurion was pure warrior. They weren't soft. They earned their position by being the baddest of the bad.

Peter was not given the message: “Tell Cornelius to give up the evil military, and I'll be clear to accept Gentiles into Christianity.”

Nope, the message was not to call anything unclean that God had declared just fine.

A warrior was just fine.

[Glad2bnuts]

I read the entire article, OUTSTANDING. I seriously doubt many will take the time. It takes longer than 30 seconds.

[marron]

Excellent article. Steyn is my favorite commentator. He is one of the very best anywhere.