Today, Mr. Day, a very active 83, still vividly recalls Mr. McCain's sermons. "He remembered the Episcopal liturgy," Mr. Day says, "and sounded like a bona fide preacher." One of Mr. McCain's first sermons took as its text Luke 20:25 and Matthew 22:21, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." Mr. McCain said he and his fellow prisoners shouldn't ask God to free them, but to help them become the best people they could be while serving as POWs. It was Caesar who put them in prison and Caesar who would get them out. Their task was to act with honor.
“I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling.”
That actually sums up McCain for me in a nutshell.
Not that I have a whole lot of choice this election.
Then, on the other hand, there are those conservatives still mad about McCain-Feingold. I guess they believe there isn't enough money in politics.
The American Conservative Union gives him a lifetime rating of 83/100 and last year 80/100. Still the xenophobes claim he is not a conservative.
Let’s keep up a good fight against McCain at least until he is selected to make an acceptance speech at the convention. He has a lot of problems, including national security and integrity.
Politics is the art of compromise and leadership is the art of principle. Lincoln used superb political skills to implement some of the most cogent and insightful principles to guide this nation. McCain has used political skills to implement compromises consistent with increasing personal acclaim among liberal media and politicians.
The former is dead and the latter is alive, but dead to principles unrelated to his immediate personal advancement. Since leadership is absent from the Democrat and Republican Parties, each individual must make a way to manage commitment to principle and political party affiliation. Each individual must answer questions as to what extent, under what circumstances and when, if ever, do you forsake conservative principles to align with an enemy of your beliefs against a greater enemy of your beliefs?
John McCain lacks leadership for the War on Terror. His leadership codified the Army interrogation manual making terrorists legal combatants. His leadership granted terrorists American citizenship rights under Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. He thereby ensures information vital to defeat terrorists remains sacred and unobtainable. Terrorists are unresponsive to direct questioning and psychological gambits. Therefore, interrogators need all stress and coercion techniques our military encounters in survival schools. McCain embraces liberal orthodoxy considering those methods torture, but his searing experiences call forth contrary insights he must suppress.
McCain especially understands terrorists are not insurgents or freedom fighters; when captured, certainly not prisoners of war. They are not armed forces, militias, or volunteer corps of any country or authority. These killers are not members of organized resistance movements carrying arms openly. They have no distinctive identifier. Terrorists cannot even qualify as spies or saboteurs destroying infrastructure required to support military operations. McCain understands Geneva Conventions intended to isolate such forces, provide them no protections, and allow destruction with any overwhelming furies needed to crush their abominations.
McCain especially appreciates that laws guaranteeing civil liberties presuppose operation within an invincible society. The Federal government’s primary responsibility is to pursue Alexander Hamilton’s admonition that powers exist without limitation; providing capabilities thwarting dangers as well as repelling attacks. McCain understands powerful warfare capabilities require potent intelligence acquisition and exploitation before and during campaigns.
The framers of our constitution and the Geneva Conventions held powerful positions throughout the darkest times of our country and the world. They were our Founding Fathers, and parents and grandparents of the Greatest Generation. Their words expressed durable morality earned in our fight for freedom, and against the ultimate bloody deluge of the 20th century. These first generations expressed principles derived from confronting shattering tragedies, and earning peace through victory. John McCain’s actions are particularly reprehensible because he turns a blind eye to the council of these people.
McCain continually seeks popular advancement by placating those coveting luxurious morality requiring shelter from hard choices and danger awareness. His crime is repudiating military and intelligence professionals facing hard choices when confronting shrewd, ruthless enemies obscured behind frightening uncertainties.
John McCain succumbed to the terrible addiction of political power. The same addiction expressed itself differently in fellow Navy officer Randy Cunningham, who was the Navy’s first Vietnam ace. Over the decades the honor and moral authority of both were gradually traded away for influence in the political arena. To me McCain is like a cadaver prepared for viewing. The removal of blood and organs equates to the trading away of honor and moral authority. The reputation that remains is like the cosmetics applied for viewing the corpse at the funeral. It is easy for anyone to get onto the same sort of gently downward sloping path. The final result is tragic, but we do not need a modern day Macbeth or Hamlet as President.
Thanks for the excellent post, shrinkermd.
And never mind the haters on the site.
They mew, “...but, I respect his military service.”
Like hell, they do. LIKE HELL, THEY DO.
(It wasn’t just mere “service” by McCain, Bud O’Day and the others through all those years in the torture chambers of the Hanoi Hilton.)
Keyboard warrior purists and priests-of-the-ideology (self-anointed): a flock of strutting-chattering hens...they flutter on and on and on...
Ping-—