To quote Mike Myers, "If it's not Scottish, it's crap."
Who else on FR could cross-pollinate this thread with the Jedi religion one? Booyah!
Posted on 06/09/2006 6:06:53 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob
This column was inspired by Michelle Malkin, whose work I much admire. Her latest article is, “It’s the Jihad, stupid.” I’ll explain home-grown terrorism in the US, Canada, England, France, and a few hundred other nations around the world, in terms even the dumbest Member of Congress should understand. I won’t name names, just initials: There’s RD in the Senate (Ohio) and CMcK in the House (Georgia), for example.
Imagine that Presbyterians were running amok all over the world. Bombing restaurants, kidnaping people, cutting off heads, and making videos of all that for the Presbyterians who weren’t there and missed all the fun.
I have a right to pick on Presbyterians because I am one. We are the plain vanilla of Christians. When I was on staff to the Commission on the Bicentennial of the US Constitution, I spoke before a Presbyterian group, and told them the only relevant joke I knew. Mark Twain remarked, “When I got to Virginia City, it had eleven saloons, five jails, and some talk of building a church. It was no place for a Presbyterian, and I did not remain one long.”
It’s hard to imagine that Presbyterians could be murderous barbarians who have no compunctions about slaughtering people with different religious beliefs. But follow me, here.
Let’s say that Presbyterians were not only doing such things, but there were hotbeds of would-be murderers in certain churches. Use my church, First Presbyterian, in Highlands, North Carolina, as an example. It’s a plain but lovely wooden structure built in the 1880s and now on the National Historic Register. Its parishioners are, like the church itself, plain and good.
But let’s say that our minister has been preaching fire-breathing sermons that it’s the duty of all Presbyterians to go out and attack non-Presbyterians. That their goal is a worldwide Presbyter in which all must follow – or at least be subjugated to -- Presbyterians.
Furthermore, in these sermons, which anyone can attend if appropriately dressed and behaved, he tells the believers that Heaven awaits them and God will be pleased with them, if they do whatever they can to bring about the worldwide Presbyter.
Now, add one more assumption. Some believers, fired up by these words, travel to distant lands, perhaps Scotland, to get training from radical Presbyterian ministers. That consists of bomb-making, surveillance, weapons handling, and logistics. After that, this army of God returns home to apply those skills to their fellow Americans.
If that were true, would leading politicians in the US repeat the mantra, “Presbyterianism is the Religion of Peace?” Should the National Security Agency be intercepting international telephone calls between Presbyterians here and abroad? Should the Department of Homeland Defense be asking phone companies to provide the patterns of calls to and from Presbyterians in the US, to see whether they are connected to radical Presbyterians?
While we’re on that subject, there’s a Supreme Court case ruling squarely that identifying numbers called, with a “pen register” without intercepting the contents, is not a Fourth Amendment search. It doesn’t violate the Constitution. Pen registers were the old way of identifying the number called. Today it’s all electronic, and still constitutional. But I digress.
If such methods of investigation were used to identify radical Presbyterians, and arrest them before they could blow up buildings and murder people, would sensible people in or outside the US government be condemning this as “religious profiling”? Would they be saying that the US “has no right” to conduct such investigations?
Even after arrests were made, and a gaggle of radical, clean-shaven Presbyterians in their white shirts and ties, were brought into court, would authorities still be making excuses? Michelle Malkin points out that after the Toronto arrests this week, the police said the defendants “represent a broad spectrum of society.”
Broad spectrum? To quote Mike Myers, “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.”
The simple fact is, if Presbyterians acted like this, the authorities would be all over us like a cheap suit. Rightly so. Decent Presbyterians would be turning in the Presbyterians gone bad. If I thought the guy in my pew was planning to blow up the Piggly Wiggly at lunch hour, I’d be on the phone to the F.B.I. as soon as I could flip open my cell and find a signal.
Okay, you dummies in Washington, you’ve got a grip on my hypothetical. Now, substitute Muslim for Presbyterian and you have a handle on the problem. Is that so difficult?
Here’s a link to the Malkin column. http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/michellemalkin/2006/06/07/200180.html
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About the Author: John Armor is a lawyer specializing in constitutional law, who may again be a candidate for Congress in the 11th District of North Carolina.
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John / Billybob
No. Looks like nobody wants to be the next victim, though. Whatever happened to courage in this country?
I'm not so sure about Presbyterians, but watch out for those Lutherans ... they might have a plan to turn the whole world into Sunday morning coffee drinkers. Remember the Vikings ...they became militant Lutherans. (Proud graduate of a Lutheran college)
Of course there's the joke about the Baptist preacher demanding that all demon rum be poured into the river. Down at the Presbyterian church, they were singing that old hymn, "Shall we gather at the river."
That is very good
I thought that was the Episcopalians!!!
(ex-pat Presbyterian)
Yeah, you stinkin' militant Lutherans!!! Sneaking around peoples homes and nailing the 95 Theses on unsuspecting doors!!! Your no better then those dang mooooslims!!!
;-)
Screw the Vikings. They always lose in the playoffs!
Full Disclosure: Fram! Fram! St. Olaf! Fram! Fram! Free!
Now, substitute Muslim for Presbyterian and you have a handle on the problem. Is that so difficult?
I have a pretty large chunk of Presbyterians in my family and it makes me laugh to think of them running loose in America. Grandpa would be the leader. lol. Both sides of grandparents had mixed religious faiths. My parents took the Catholic side of their family and haven't looked back and of course we were raised Catholic.
No, not possible. We don't water down our alcohol.
Great post, thanks for sharing…
Now my turn to tell a Presbyterian joke. I grew up going in a Pentecostal church, but my wife is not comfortable with their over-jubilation in their services, so we settled on a nice conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church in our area. Much more subdued than I am use to, but it is a nice family church with good conservative values. (EPC broke off from the mainstream Pres because they did not like the liberalization evolution of the church)
Yes the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is very subdued, even our pastor makes fun of this fact from time to time, once telling this joke one Sunday morning………..
Three Pastors were sitting together talking, one a Pentecost, one a Baptist, and one a Evangelical Presbyterian. The question came up, who among them will rise and go to heaven first?
The Pentecost spoke up and said I for sure will be the first, because we are overflowing with jubilation, are filled with the Holy Spirit, and rock our churches with loud praise music. The Baptist, spoke up and said, you are wrong, I will be the first because Baptist hold dear the commandments of God, and have gone out and evangelized all over the world spreading the gospel. Then the Evangelical Presbyterian spoke up and said you are both wrong and the Bible proves it so, because it says, “the dead in Christ will rise first”.
AMEN there BillyBob!!!
Furthermore, if the Bible said in plain words, ...:
[2.193] And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for [God]
[4.144] O you who believe! do not take the unbelievers for friends rather than the believers; do you desire that you should give to [God] a manifest proof against yourselves?
[5.51] O you who believe! do not take the [Muslims or other religious people] for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely [God] does not guide the unjust people.
[8.39] And fight with them until there is no more persecution and [only Christianity exists]; but if they desist, then surely [God] sees what they do.
[9.5] So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely [God] is Forgiving, Merciful.
[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in [God], nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what [God] and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.
...what would be the reaction?
lol
And I'll pick on the Baptists, because I am one. Here is the story:
The Jewish people don't recognize the deity of Christ.
The Protestant people don't recognize the infallability of the Pope.
Us Baptist people don't recognize each other at the liquor store.
To quote Mike Myers, "If it's not Scottish, it's crap."
Who else on FR could cross-pollinate this thread with the Jedi religion one? Booyah!
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