Lonely Voices…..

By: J Robert Giles

“Education: The path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” - Mark Twain

What happened to tragedy? What happened to the ability to see things as they truly are as opposed to viewing the world through the smudged lenses of our own misconceptions? This weekend provided yet another example of just such an absence of objectivity.

This morning, the people of Oak Creek, Wisconsin don’t really care what your particular political views may be. They don’t really care if you support Obama or Romney. They don’t care what union you surrender your monthly dues to, and they certainly don’t care what your opinion is of their community. What they do care about is the genuine outpouring of emotion that has come their way since the tragic shooting that left six people and one scumbag dead on Sunday.

We are so quick to assign blame in these instances. The mainstream media almost instinctively labels any kind of shooting or ideological based violence as “right wing.” They do so even in the face of zero evidence or credible examples to support such a claim.

A few weeks ago, when tragedy befell the Denver metroplex, connections to the Tea Party were almost instantaneous. Absolutely no evidence had been given to support such a wild accusation, but as long as it gets out there and gets imbedded in the brain of an unsuspecting public, then success can be claimed according to uninformed liberal sources.

Same thing in Wisconsin. Yes, the shooter who has been identified but will remain unnamed on this site because he doesn’t deserve the notoriety, was “heavily tattooed” and “unable to apply for further military service in any branch.” Even if the man was the most racist, vile, hate-spewing bigot on the face of the earth, does that necessarily mean he speaks for all of any group? Does the fact that I loathe everything about Obama’s failed presidency mean that I have anything at all in common with the man who gunned down six innocent people yesterday? No, it does not.

To associate this fool with any political party, ideology, or candidate is simply deceitful. There is no other way to put it. To use this tragedy for political gain is disgraceful. Fortunately, it appears that both presidential candidates have handled the event with measured, but sincere condolences. Sometimes, people just snap. Something in their brains goes haywire and it makes them do things that fall well outside the scope of acceptable behavior.

It simply doesn’t matter what the cause for such action may be. The idiots that carried out 9/11 did so in the name of religious zealotry. Think about the insanity of that statement for a second. Is that an excuse? Is it a reason? What exactly does that weak, absurdly generalized explanation cover? They killed 3,000 people. What God condones such actions? What God would explicitly call for such lunacy? Such a god can only be found in the hearts of truly lost men.

The media rushes to blame because blame gets viewers. People love to feel as though their opinions are shared. Liberals love this more than any other group of people in the universe. They love to feel as though their voice is the only voice that matters. They love to insure that you obey their beliefs and abandon your own. They conspire among the vast network of outlets they have worked so hard to create. They unite with one common goal and that is to blast their opinion and ideas into YOUR head.

All guns are bad in the mind of a liberal. Responsibility and care can’t exist because in the mind of the left and all those in the media who obediently serve the left, anyone who casts a vote contradictory to liberal orthodoxy is a mass murderer just waiting to open fire. We’re all just dangerous, uninformed rednecks who haven’t “progressed” beyond our primitive need for violence. The left believes we are too narrow in our view to accept the fact that killing Americans in the name of a non-Christian god is an act of progressive, enlightened thought. Ironically, their “progress” has also led them to the belief that anyone carrying out an act of violence against a person of non-Christian faith is a small-minded, right-wing, Christian-extremist.

Like the vast majority of liberal thought, this too crumbles in the face of logical inspection. The man who shot those people in Wisconsin yesterday may have felt called upon to do so by his own demons, but those demons were certainly not speaking with a Christian tongue. The voices in his head were speaking in the dangerously consuming tones of hatred, bigotry, and insanity. Too often, those voices yell louder than the voices of reason, logic, and understanding.

Assuming his reasoning was somehow related to 9/11, this idiot didn’t even get his misguided attempts at revenge right. He attacked a Sikhi Temple which is vastly different from his assumed Islamic enemy. The man hated everyone. He sang in bands that mumble their desire to see Jews murdered. In his deranged mind, Hitler was a hero. In his views, genocide was the answer. To what end….your guess is as good as mine. Just as long as the world looked like him, thought like him, and had sex like him…..then all was okay. When the world around him refused to conform to such maniacal directives, he opened fire on a perceived enemy.

While I do not share the religious views of the people who were gunned down yesterday, I certainly share their desire to live in a country where religion is a right afforded to every citizen. I choose to follow the same God that the founding fathers of America followed. I choose to follow Him and publicly praise Him for all that He has given my life. I choose to take my family to a Church where many other people who believe as I do gather and share our unified voice on Sunday mornings. In absolutely no way does that mean that I feel anyone who doesn’t believe in God Almighty should be served up with earthly justice.

Our job on Earth is to influence those willing to listen. We are commanded to reach out to those who could benefit from the word of God but we are not to do so in a manner that impedes the life of another human being. My God teaches me tolerance and acceptance of all living things. That’s what He teaches. I’m human and I don’t always act in a manner that would please God, but that’s because sin is a critical component of the Christian journey. Bullets are not mentioned in the bible. Hatred has no place in a Godly world. Those who carry out acts of violence in the name of any god are doing so for selfish reasons, not Holy ones.

As always, thanks for playing.

J Robert Giles

The War on Christmas and Christianity Continues in 2009!

The War on Christmas and Christianity Continues in 2009!

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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OK, let me make it as clear as I am able right up front! I am not interested in “multiculturalism” and I am even less interested in “inclusivity.” I am an Isolationist at heart, but a realist… out of practicality.

Having cleared the air, I can get on with these few comments.

It is time for America to celebrate Christmas. For those of the Christian community it is a grand time of celebrating the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ, from whose name the word Christmas, or “Christ Mass,” is derived. I am of this community.

I care nothing for the celebration of anything else. I care that you have the right to celebrate Hanukkah, or that newly invented secular holiday for Afro-centric African Americans, Kwanzaa. You are guaranteed that right by the Constitution, which was, itself, guaranteed by Christians.

I know, I know! I can see the “comments box” filling up even as I write this. That’s OK. Just keep it clean.

In the year 2009 one would have to be a disconnected, isolated, idiot to believe that Christmas is not under attack in the western world, especially in the United States.

If you are a regular reader of my scribbling then you already know that I believe that Christians founded America as a Christian country. As a Christian country we are tolerant of other religions. That does not mean that individual American citizens must approve of any particular religion or practice thereof. In a Christian country a citizen is not compelled to be a Christian or a subscriber to any religion, for that matter. That right was guaranteed all Americans in that aforementioned Constitution. And that, Dear Reader, in my humble opinion, is where we mis-stepped. That “right” we celebrate, and hold so dear, has come back to bite us on our collective “Christian butts.”

Any antagonist, worth his salt, uses his opponent’s weakness against him. The opponents of Christianity, no slackers they, have learned to use our weakness of tolerance for other religions, or no religion, against the Christians of America, indeed, in much of the world.

Christian symbols are being relegated to the closets, and basements, of public buildings not to be displayed on the walls of, or grounds of, such public buildings such as, for instance, courthouses.

Put up a Crèche scene, in honor of Christmas, in the town square, and you’d better have a Menorah, a Christmas tree, A Santa Claus, a Kwanzaa something or other, and on and on. The idea is simply to dilute Christmas in a mass of other religious, and secular, celebrations and lessen its influence on the average American. The more timid among us are even afraid to utter that time honored “Merry Christmas.”

No more Christmas break for our public schools. It’s now the “Winter Break” a phrase reminiscent of the pagans of Western Europe. Gone is the Christmas tree in many of those same schools.

Now, I could go on, and on, citing example after example of the battles being waged all across America against Christmas and, collectively, Christians.

Currently, we are in a worldwide war with Islam. Oh, you may argue, we are at war with only the fundamentalist Islamic! I beg to differ. Again, in my opinion -- this is a war between Islam and Christianity. The Muslims know this. Only those of us of the Western Christian countries have deluded ourselves into believing we are in a war with some splinter group of Islam. Hopefully, we will awaken to this fact before it is to late to recover from our mistake and take the battle, for our very existence, to the enemies of Christianity.

Meanwhile, in America, we have our hands full dealing with our own internal enemies. “The War on Christmas” is just a symptom of the greater war on Christianity. Until we recognize that fact, and begin to fight back, we will continue to lose our Christian symbols, our Christian holidays, and eventually our practice of the Christian faith.

I was thinking, as I wrote these words, that there must have been some squinty-eyed old scribe hidden away in a semi-darkened “scriptorium”, somewhere beneath the streets of ancient Rome, scratching out similar words as these while Christians were being gored, and mauled, and torn limb from limb, in the amphitheatres such as The Coliseum above his lowly hovel.

Somehow, every attack against Christians has served to strengthen The Christian Church and insure her survival. One doesn’t have to be a believer to acknowledge the work of a Supreme Being in the dissemination of what we Christians call “The Good News” or “The Gospel.” And yet, down through the ages, many Christians, liked this scribe, feel driven to denounce, in our writings, the evil forces at work against the Christian church.

As one who has studied the scriptures, I know the church will be whittled down until there will be only a remnant of the followers of Christ left upon his return. We witness the “whittling down” process everyday in reports of attacks upon the Christian faith in the news media of the world. And yet – I feel a force, deep within me, urging me to proclaim to all who read these words that no matter the size of the remaining remnant, the Christian Church WILL survive. No matter the odds, the ultimate force for good in this world will continue to feed the hungry, heal the sick, lift up the fallen, and spread the good news of the birth of a savior in a little Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, some 2,000 years ago. Since that remarkable night, men and women have been unceasingly spreading the news of His arrival and the message He brought of “Peace, Good Will Toward Men.”

Men and women of the Christian faith, in the modern world, may again be relegated to “the catacombs” to practice their Christian faith. But just as their ancient counterparts, they WILL keep the faith. In the face of all odds they will not falter and they will not fail.

And so, from my own little scriptorium, as I write in the wee hours of the morning, please allow me to be among the first to wish you, and your family, a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

J. D. Longstreet