Posted on 01/30/2005 12:46:07 PM PST by wagglebee
What was it about the World Trade Center that attracted Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida killers – not once but twice? And why attack the Pentagon? And why was one of the skyjacked planes headed toward another Washington target, possibly the White House or the Capitol Building?
Why? Because they're more than inviting targets; they're highly visible symbols of American life. They represent free enterprise and our successful commerce throughout the world; they represent our supreme military might; and they represent our free democratic government, the envy – and fear – of the rest of the world.
Some of our own top leaders have referred to Osama bin Laden as a "worthy adversary," a "brilliant strategist" and "the most dangerous enemy in the world." From his dank cave in Northern Afghanistan (or more likely a sumptuous air-conditioned apartment in Pakistan, provided by Saudi Arabian friends) he orchestrated a fiendishly effective campaign to hit America where we live – not just to attack our people, but our precious symbols.
Enter his twin in attacking America's symbols, one Michael Newdow, the atheist lawyer from San Francisco. While Osama and al-Qaida attack our physical symbols, Michael Newdow is busy attacking with all his ferocious bile the precious symbols of our religious freedoms and our freedom of expression.
Although these freedoms are guaranteed in the First Amendment, Newdow cleverly quotes only the first part, "Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion," and attacks the two words "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance"; in God we trust" in our currency; our national motto, "One Nation Under God" – and most recently walked the streets of Washington, importuning at least two Supreme Court justices, trying to suborn them into preventing the prayer of a minister in the inauguration or any mention by the President of God in the inaugural proceedings!
And of course he never mentions the next phrase in the First Amendment: "nor restricting the free exercise thereof." As a trained lawyer, he selects only passages that he feels support his assault, and conveniently leaves out those that refute him.
And what Osama is still conniving to do from without, Newdow is energetically campaigning to do from within. It's not enough for him that neither he nor any other nonbeliever is constrained to say the Pledge as we have been saying it since 1954, and which President Eisenhower and both houses of Congress approved at the will of the American people in 1954.
That's not enough for him. He is so blinded by his evil rage that he says, in effect, that he is offended by any mention of God in public life, so you 260 million Americans shut up!
I so wish I could obtain H. G. Wells' time machine and transport Newdow back to Thomas Jefferson's second inauguration, and let him hear the man who coined the phrase "separation of church and state" not just refer to God in his acceptance speech, but actually write and publish a national prayer in 1804, as president, imploring the blessings of God and expressing his dependence on the Son of God, Jesus.
And let him also be reminded that, for years after the ink was dry on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself, the oath of office in a number of our states still required newly elected officials to express their belief and dependence on "God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit." And while that was eventually declared unconstitutional, and rightly so, it was only because some new office holders didn't believe those things, and objected to having to profess them.
Nobody is requiring Newdow or anyone else to say things they don't believe. So his vicious and unrelenting attacks have another motive. And it's the same as Osama bin Laden's. It is the tearing down and destruction of the very symbols of America's greatness, her DNA, those distinctive traits and practices that have lent us our strength and national identity.
He keeps claiming that he "loves this country" and the Constitution and only wants to defend "equality." What's equal about silencing 260 million Americans who want to retain these symbols because he and a pitiful few others don't like them?
He has been spouting his atheistic beliefs (and I confronted him with the fact that his atheism is a faith system, built on the premise that there is no God, which can't be proved, versus faith in God, for which evidence exists everywhere) on all the cable and news programs, but doesn't want the rest of us to express our faith even in hallowed institutions like the inauguration!
Newdow doesn't like what America has been for over 200 years and wants to deface and erase all open expressions of faith in God. Osama hates us and calls us "infidels" and worse because we acknowledge a different God than he does.
I try to read Edward Everett Hale's classic, "A Man Without a Country," every year. I wish every American would do the same. In this wonderful short novella, a young lieutenant has been convicted of treason against his country and when asked to make his final statement, he exclaims loudly in the court: "Damn the United States! I wish I might never hear of her again!"
In the stunned silence that follows his outburst, the judge quietly sentences him to that very thing. He is remanded to a ship at sea, and strict orders are given that he never be able to hear the name America or discuss with anyone the United States for the rest of his life. And that sentence is carried out.
I and most Americans would urge Michael Newdow to join his brother Osama, wherever he is, and we will happily buy his first-class ticket. He needs to be with others who think like he does. I think we would far rather contend with people like these two and their vicious attacks on America and her symbols and not have them coming at us from our more vulnerable underside, from within.
Not a bad idea, we should consider doing this to all of the leftists.
I think this elevates Michael Newdow to a level far higher then his self proclaimed importance deserves.
Newdow is an intelligent individual, who is obviously mentally troubled, one that is willing to damage his family for his cause. He should be regarded as a nut, and not elevated to that of being compared to a large, dedicated, but misguided force of people who have interpreted religious edicts to the point that they believe that death, destruction and the subjugation of all people, especially women, is the correct order of life.
He's a lefty liberal; that automatically makes him a nutcase.
I would prefer Dr. Emmett Brown's time machine. Imagine the hilarity of a flying DeLorean back in the 18th Century!
Personally, I'd send Newdow back to the Soviet extermination camps of Stalin's time. At least he could meet a suitably miserable death in the sort of atheistic regime he admires...
What really got to me about Newdow was his claim that the President taking the oath and mentioning God was effectively excluding him (Newdow) and other atheists from the democratic process. From where does he pull out that horse hockey?
"Skyjacked"? Is that a word?
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