These are the stakes:

[Munro Williams]

This map from the World Islamic Mission tells us, like Mein Kampf did, what the goals of the opposition are:


http://www.diocesereport.com/images/usi.gif


The events of the last week were our Pearl Harbor. We're going to find out who exactly our friends and foes are. We'll have disasters and setbacks, horrendous loss of life and dismay unlike anything we can imagine. The next few years will separate the wheat from the chaff. It will separate the men from the boys.

About all I can say is what Churchill said back at the beginning of WW II, before the US got involved and Britain stood alone against Hitler and Nazi Europe:

"We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

Unless someone of his caliber can tell the US people essentially the same thing, without all the popular patriotic euphoria and infantile optimism that accompanies the first few weeks of a military campaign, I'm afraid to say that America stands a better than good chance of being depressed into torpor by the first major setbacks we shall undoubtedly have when we put troops on the ground in South West Asia.

Get ready for a bloodbath.

 

[Jorah Lavin]

May be true, but considering the source...

http://www.diocesereport.com/

It doesn't look like the people running that site have the slightest bias or anything...

Would have been more powerful if it was from some Islamic site! I've heard plenty of Christian rhetoric indicating that they want to have control over the whole world with a religion-based government in place... no thanks.

I'll take separation of church and state, thanks very much. I can look at the Taliban any time I want to see what it can look like when one religion runs the show...

-Jorah

 

[Munro Williams]

Ask, and ye shall receive...

Here's the original link:

http://unitedstatesofislam.freeyellow.com/

As for your other comments, I find them much in tune with the line of reasoning which has prevailed for the past forty years, and was particularly virulent during the Clinton years. Any patriotic religious source is immediately assumed to have a sinister ulterior motive, usually an American version of the Spanish Inquisition. This is particularly true when the culture war is pertinent. Biblical references are especially treated as some sort of Taliban-like dictate.

But the fact remains that in the USA, until quite recently, the only common culture we shared was the Bible. Rich and old, young and poor, ignorant and sophisticated, had access, through the Bible, to the seriousness of books, and had a key to the glories of Western art, which are mostly in some way responsive to the Bible. The idea that there was a unified field of knowledge, an idea that there was indeed order to things, was first accessed through the Bible and ineluctably led serious thinkers to futher pursue deep questions of ethics, metaphysics, and physics, many of whom became serious atheists.

Simply stated, living based on a serious book like the Bible, read with the gravity of a serious student, epics, great revelations, perceptions, and philosophies come into our field of vision. But these days there are no books, and so there is very little to see outside, because there is little inside to see it with. No one can convince me that a person whose regular reading consists of Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, New Scientist, and Playboy is more perceptive and has more character than a kid of 120 years ago who had McGuffey's Reader. When folks wanted to educate themselves, they turned to the Bible, Shakespeare, Euclid, and Archimedes.

"There are people who believe rejection of God or rejection of religion confers unlimited license for them to do whatever it is they want to do that religion prohibits or makes inconvenient. Hence, atheism has come to have a dishonest appeal. It is believed that if we do away with God, we can do away with responsibility or morality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Religion is not the sole reason or method for conducting a sane existence. Those who follow the road of serious agnosticism or atheism (that means serious, not just some rebellious jackass trying to synthesize personality for himself as a professional provocateur or trying to pursue irresponsibility) are required to carry a heavy intellectual load and a level of serious introspection regarding personal responsibility.

For the above reasons, along with others—including lives of personal bitterness—there has been an obvious attempt to repress or disassemble religious institutions in this country.


At those times when I become involved in discussion of American law, I am prepared to argue implicit ratification of Constitutional meaning was established by uncontested or authoritative private or public behavior and practice at the time the Constitution was written, and since it was written. The closer the prevalence of the social and governmental practice to the time of the founding, the more probable the review by the founders, or those closer to the founders, and the more one can argue that public or governmental practice was authoritative Constitutional ratification. In specific instance, reference to the Creator in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution established a acceptability level of reference to God. If the phrase, "In God We Trust" has appeared on our coinage or paper currency for one hundred or two hundred years, it is unreasonable to believe such appearance seriously conflicted with the Constitutionally-intended meaning of separation of church and state."

http://www.zolatimes.com/v3.19/religion.htm

 

[Jorah Lavin]

At least one fragment we can agree on;

Religion is not the sole reason or method for conducting a sane existence. Those who follow the road of serious agnosticism or atheism (that means serious, not just some rebellious jackass trying to synthesize personality for himself as a professional provocateur or trying to pursue irresponsibility) are required to carry a heavy intellectual load and a level of serious introspection regarding personal responsibility.

This I agree with.

 

[Jorah Lavin]

For whatever it is worth

I am not interested in "attempt(s) to repress or disassemble religious institutions in this country. "

I am, however, very wary of anyone who seems to want to turn this into a Christian vs. Islam war.

Calling me names by implying that I side with Clinton on anything is just insulting.

Okay, I'm obviously getting riled up here. End of my part of the conversation; I keep telling myself not to read the Legal and Political forum... I only get angry.

 

[bronco61]

munroe,
What's this "us", "we" thing? You live in Japan. US and WE live in the United States of America.

 

[Don Gwinn]

With that, I think this one has run its course. For my part, I disagree with Munro more often than I agree, but find it silly to suggest that he can't speak as an American if he lives elsewhere.