Posted on 09/14/2013 9:05:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Back in 2004, when a NYFD chief reminded the 9/11 Commission that it was never in "anyone's consciousness" that the Twin Towers would fall, he underscored a terrible truth. After 9/11, we entered the Age of the Unthinkable. Seared into our collective consciousness is that the Twin Towers could and did fall. So could the U.S. Capitol, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Superdome. Our children know that which we as children never before imagined -- passenger planes may become guided missiles, and skyscrapers may turn into smoking, twisted rubble. This age of Islamic jihad against the West has indeed expanded our consciousness.
Or has it? Did these previously unthinkable acts of violence and mass murder sharpen our thinking, make us vigilant and more protective of our constitutional liberties under attack?
There was a time when I actually thought this was so. Re-reading my first column written after 9/11 today, one dozen 9/11s later, I find that it forecasts a new era of black and white, good and evil -- a new relationship with countries that were "with us or against us." I guess I have always been a lousy prognosticator. Still, that was the message coming out of the Bush White House early on.
My old column continues: "When an honest-to-goodness battle is joined, there can be no more middle ground. We simply have to know where our friends are -- as well as our enemies. Not that their whereabouts are secret. Long before the smoke had thinned to reveal the scope of the carnage in the United States, there was revelry in the Middle East, from Beirut to East Jerusalem, from Cairo to Baghdad."
I was, of course, talking about the Islamic world - the font of jihad to spread sharia to create a global caliphate. That simple catechism I would learn in the months ahead. Two weeks later, however, while I was still working my way through a copy of the Koran and, luckily found, a copy of Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim," both of which I bought on 9/12/01, it was clear the mood in Washington was already different. The American flags that had instantly spread, flew and bristled in those early days were still everywhere, but "with us or against us" was gone. What was taking shape was something more like: "Who is 'us'?" Whatever that means.
In another column, one written on 9/28/01, I still pondered the need to impose mental order on the recent, unthinkable events, and the need to brace for another.
"As weeks pass, we may yet have to steel ourselves against another kind of blow to the collective brain: this one, only theoretical to date, but no less surreal for being self-inflicted. What Americans may have to come to grips with is the logic-defying notion of fighting terrorism with -- not against -- what might well be called terrorist-friendly nations."
It was happening already -- the blurring of lines that meant the blurring of identity. Our own leaders didn't prize the liberty-based civilization of the West as different from -- and better for liberty lovers than -- the world based in and dictated by Islam. On such denial an "international coalition" would arise. To our leaders, this coalition was always more important than our liberty.
This coalition, I wrote, "identifies the enemy as generic 'terrorists' who commit generic 'terrorism.' By opening the doors of alliance to an array of Arab nations whose embrace of such 'terrorists' ranges from tight, to secret, to (at best) arm's-length, the United States could very well create a broad-based coalition -- but one marked by a grievous moral vacuum that would surely undermine any American-led war effort to save the civilized world from the forces of violence, fear and instability."
A dozen years later, with the Middle East in near-chaos and Europe increasingly under sharia, it seems fair to say it has. Just as FDR pretended 80 years ago that Communism posed no ideological threat to our liberties, so, too, did George W. Bush pretend the same thing about Islam. Similarly, "Islam has nothing to do with Islamic jihad" -- a point of ideological purity enforced inside both the Bush and the Obama administrations.
Which leaves us where? With another grim anniversary behind us, the second president of the post-9/11 era, Barack Obama, has the nation supporting al-Qaida in Syria and contemplating military action on al-Qaida's behalf.
The unthinkable enters our consciousness again. But this time, few seem to notice.
And incidentally I would want a forgiveness program called just that... forgiveness. Amnesty (a- the privative prefix and “mnesty” meaning memory) does not carry the same moral import. It easily sounds more like sloppy forgetfulness.
I’m not sure I just followed your post re: the battle tilting, but amnesty was the one policy disagreement I had with Palin from the time she took McCain’s position (rightly, for serving as his VP) in 2008 until she clearly broke with him and came out against amnesty and the bill being rammed through Congress.
Really, I don’t know if she holds a single position now that either I or the majority of Americans don’t agree with her on.
“Forgiveness” of the tens of millions of primarily low-skill Latin American illegal immigrants, the majority of which are on some sort of the dole even while they’re here illegally, would be the end of the US as we know it. By chain migration, there numbers would bulge to 60 to 90 million in no time, and they will so tilt the voting in this country that we will never recover and the American experiment, for all practical purposes, will be over.
Well I’m glad to hear that she isn’t espousing a McCain style program any more. I’ve pinged a certain dough boy here for comments.
What I mean by circumscribed WOULD be circumscribed. Not the sloppy thing that Democrats want to give us, which would indeed sod down the system with people having no reason to lift their lives above slobhood. Someone who paid Federal and, as applicable, state and local taxes, and otherwise kept his or her nose clean, would be an ideal candidate for forgiveness of the sin of having entered uninvited.
No, they wouldn’t.
We could forgive them if we want, but we’d better send them home if we want a country and government any better than those they came from.
We don’t have the jobs or the welfare for them, and there is no reason on earth to bring in more affirmative-action beneficiaries to go to the head of the line in front of our own people.
I disagree; I dig in to the max for a God who is not at all a respecter of persons.
And anyhow you mischaracterize and you would realize it if you read your own comments. What does paid taxes and kept nose clean mean to you? Welfare slob? That wasn’t what I was getting at.
Now if you just see a Hispanic and think automatic welfare slob, you are engaging in a fallacy.
The majority of Hispanic immigrants—illegal and legal, including up to third generation (I don’t know if they’ve tracked any farther)—are on the dole and they support big government, the Democrat party, and further amnesty.
Most of “paying taxes” for them means filing for EITC.
I’m for legal, merit-based immigration, which puts them out of the line completely.
(And I’ve had it with phony compassion for “dreamers” and other illegals who should go home and improve their own countries.)
And I call foul on any claim that God wants us to disregard our immigration laws and give legal residence and citizenship to those who have broken into the country and overwhelmingly committed felonies if they have been working here while they are at it.
Well this is a merit based forgiveness (or amnesty if you really want to put it that way).
Yeah, most of the interlopers are come to be welfare slobs. But don’t mischaracterize what I said. Most is not all. You ever heard of discretion? Dig that one back out of the dictionary and put it into your vocabulary again.
You have just called foul on the Cross, my friend. Tremble!
And on top of calling foul on the Cross you keep on lying about what I’m talking about too!
Look at yourself in the mirror. I will not affirm your conduct in the least.
They all repeatedly broke the law. There is no reason for discretion.
No, I called foul on anyone using the Lord’s name in vain political argument.
You’re sure full of yourself to claim that someone disagreeing with you is crossing Christ.
I look at the overall picture, sir. Not just at the fact of a disagreement.
The cross brought a ministry of grace. It could boldly offer grace because the system would be overseen by an omnipotent God. Grace by the cross would never go haywire.
The law is only a ministry of death. I don’t think I need to remind you of biblical books about this topic, like Hebrews and Galatians, but you can review them if you are foggy.
Human law can’t negate the cross’s grace if divine law can’t.
Ideally one would get a close reading on someone’s spirit via the Holy Spirit before trusting the person has accepted the grace of the Cross. This not being practical in the system we have in America today, we can look for a proxy indicating willingness to use the grace for the right thing. Which is exactly what I spoke of. We can haggle what the proxy ought to be, but to claim brazenly that there categorically can be none, DOES diss the cross.
Look in the mirror for where the vanity is. Maybe it’s in you. You certainly appear rage-filled. I am angry, but only angry for the cross. The cross cannot be defied.
You have completely conflated Christian grace with the earthly enforcement of the law and integrity of national borders.
Your arrogance in wrapping your political opinions in the righteous will of God is, to me, appalling.
Well I have been discoursing as though we were actually going to consider this. If your talk was mere gas then well, it is vain. But the vanity was injected by you, not by I who took it as earnest.
Human law can’t negate what divine law can’t. Put that in your law pipe and smoke it.
So be appalled all you want, that does not change the fact that I am resting squarely upon God’s love here. Now if you insist on calling your side vain I will gladly accept that!
Please also — don’t take it personally. I am angry, through God, at the spirits upon which you are, for the moment, resting. I am not angry at you personally. I am warning you away from spirits of folly, however. Embrace them, get their reward. Let them go by embracing God more firmly, get that reward.
If grasping the glories of God makes me “proud” in your eyes then so be it. In America we worship democracy so much, as I perceive it. That’s why even patently foolish ideas like Obamacare, which block the grace of God very badly, get so much deference. We could stand to grasp the glories of God again in this country!
I appreciate the ping, but in all fairness, I haven’t reviewed the latest from her on the fate of illegal immigrants by her design.
I’m willing to give it a look-see, but my weasle-word detector will be set on elevated detection mode. LOL
I have no reason to dump on Palin when she gets things right. It just bothers me why it may have taken her this long to finally get with the program, if she indeed has.
Later...
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