Welcome
The site is divided as follows:
1. A Home Page on which appears the most recent five or six essays.
2. An Archival section where the interested reader can find all past essays divided by topic.
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4. A Cartoon section with political cartoons I find both humorous and meaningful.
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6. A Biography section in case anyone is interested in who I am and where I came from.
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Not all readers will find these essays congenial, but then the Web is a vast arena that accommodates just about all views. And here you will find mine.
Part I – The Death Knell of the Two State Solution
Over the past month Palestinian leaders have begun to publicly acknowledge that continuing actions by the Israeli government, and corresponding inaction by the “international community,” have destroyed any reasonable hope of a viable and independent Palestinian state.
Listen to Ahmed Qurei, who held high office in the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat: “It is probably no longer possible to create the kind of state that we want. Now we must choose between two stark choices: either we settle for a worthless state made of hapless ghettoes and miserable slums…or struggle for one unitary and democratic state where Jews and Arabs can live equally in all of Mandate Palestine…”
Among many Palestinian Islamic leaders, hope for the future now exists only in the form of a Quranic prophecy, which tells of Islam’s divinely inspired victory over the Jews in Palestine as punishment for the unholy behavior of the Israeli state. This might be compared to the Christian Zionist’s prophecy of the triumph of Israel presaging the second coming of Christ.
Either way it goes, a unitary secular and democratic state or God’s intervention, Israel as a “Jewish State” is seen as terminal. Of course, that is not how the politically minded Zionists, led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, see it. Netanyahu has recently formed a “unity” government with the major opposition party, Kadima, and by doing so appears to have secured his political leadership for some time to come. So, what sort of scenario do these Zionists seek to realize now and in the future?
Part II – The Zionist Scenario:
How do Zionist leaders see the future? As far as I understand the situation, here is their projected scenario:
1. The Zionist leadership sees victory (Israel’s sovereign possession of all the land of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River – some even covet Jordan) as inevitable. It is just a matter of time. This assessment is based on power relations. On the one hand, the Israelis have vast military superiority over the Palestinians and have defeated all the Arab forces sent against them. On the other, they have the United States and a good portion of Europe in their political pockets. So how can they lose?
2. Victory means ethnically cleansing the land of most of the Palestinians–a process that is on-going. Every effort is being made to force as many as possible into exile. This is being done by an on-going policy of making life as miserable as possible for all non-Jewish natives of Israeli controlled territory. For instance, it is public knowledge in Israel (if not the U.S.) that “police brutality against Palestinians has been routine for decades.” Those who, despite all, refuse to leave, are being territorially restricted and economically marginalized. It is often speculated that the model for the latter situation is the Indian reservations in the U.S. as they existed circa 1870. And indeed, for Zionists this model can be more easily rationalized than the ghettos of old Europe.
2a. In the process of this ethnic cleansing, the number of Palestinians who die is irrelevant to the Zionist leadership. The Palestinians, like the American Indians, are seen as hardly human. If the Zionists could make them all disappear without serious international repercussions they would do so.
3. All this having been accomplished, Zionist leaders plan to simply maintain the status quo and wait. They believe that, just as was the case of the American Indians, the world will eventually forget the fate of the Palestinians, and this forgetting will seal Israel’s dominion over the land. At least from the Zionist point of view, that is the end of the story.
By the way, Zionists are not the only ones betting on this sort of scenario. The Chinese in Tibet, and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, are also counting on the world forgetting their victims. And, in each case they might be right. However, it is the Zionists who are running the greatest risks pursuing this strategy of conquest. Why is that the case?
Part III – Problems For The Zionist Scenario
1. Israel is not a great power like China, and does not occupy a half-forgotten spot on the globe like Sri Lanka. It is very much on the map as far as vast numbers of people are concerned, both supporters and opponents. Of course, Israel continues to enjoy the patronage and protection of a great power, the U.S. But, as unlikely as it might seem at present, this can change.
2. It is not the 18th and 19th centuries anymore and outright colonial domination is no longer in favor. The only way Israel can commit crimes with impunity is by: (a) playing the holocaust card and (b) sustaining the political clout of its lobbies. The first practice is rapidly wearing thin almost everywhere one looks. The second, on the other hand, is the key to their patronage and protection. Yet counter lobbies are even now evolving, and an increasingly vocal international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is on-going. The past 95 years of solid Western backing of Zionist political goals (counting from the Balfour Declaration) does not make the future a sure thing for the Israelis and their ideological supporters.
3. As they conquer Palestine they destroy Judaism. Here is the greatest irony: ultimate success of the Zionist strategy marks the ultimate corruption of official, organized Judaism. This is so because such success seals the devil’s bargain that ties the organized aspect of this religion to the racist and anti-human goals of Zionist ideology. With the death knell of the Palestinian state comes the death knell of official Judaism.
3a. Do you want to know why anti-Semitism appears to be on the rise? Because the Zionists have changed the definition of the term. The traditional definition tells us that anti-Semitism is hatred for Jews as Jews. The new, Zionist inspired definition, includes opposition to anything the “Jewish state” of Israel does. Oppose the political goals of Zionism and you allegedly oppose Jews and Judaism. Ergo, you’re an anti-Semite.
3b. This assertion on the part of Zionists is, of course, a modern innovation. Yet it gains popularity based on the premise laid down by Joseph Goebbels that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Nonetheless, the truth is that Zionism and Israel have never been synonymous with Judaism. All Jews are not and never have been Zionists and all Zionists have never been just Jews. That being the case, the claim by Zionists that Israel and its government represent Jewry en masse is false. Yet the lie is stated over and again. The Jews who object to this false claim are now labeled “self-hating Jews.” This too is nonsense.
Part IV – What of Palestinian Resistance?
The most striking thing about the list of obstacles given above is that Palestinian resistance in places like the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper, is not on it. Why? Again, it has to do with power relations. When, during the Second World War, resistance manifested itself against Nazi occupation, the cost was remarkably high. Partisans might shoot a German soldier, but then the German Army would shoot 50 civilians as punishment. Nonetheless, the Germans lost the war and most of the Nazis from that time have been hunted down and given their own punishment.
The Israelis have employed the Nazi strategy of disproportionate revenge and collective punishment from the very inception of the Israeli state. If anything, the kill ratio they exact from the Palestinians is even higher than the Nazi average. But the same powers that once brought low the Nazis now either support or turn a blind eye to the savagery of the Israelis.
Under these circumstances the Palestinians have indeed been worn down. In Gaza they are confined to the world’s largest open air prison and in the West Bank most of their leaders are either in prison or have been turned into collaborators. It has gotten to the point where the most effective act of resistance they can muster is the threat that over a thousand of them, locked away in Israeli prisons without charge or trial, will starve themselves to death.
Part V – Conclusion
The death knell of the two state solution and its corresponding corruption of official Judaism is not the end of the story. But, the final chapter can no longer be written by the Palestinians alone. The West began the present horror in the “Holy Land” when it sought to pay for the sin of European anti-Semitism by allowing the destruction of the Palestinian people. Ultimately, it is only with help from the West that the situation can be put right. However, as long as they are under the corrupting influence of Zionism, most governments will not seek to do so. So this corrective effort has to be undertaken by a movement of civil society – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. And the Jews of the world better hope and pray for its success. For it is not just the fate of the Palestinians that rides on the outcome. It is the fate of the Jews as well.
Part I – Health Care in the USA
On 7 May 2012 a new study came out on healthcare in the United States. Based on research carried out by the Urban Institute, the report is published in the journal Health Affairs. Here are some of its findings:
– There is a prevailing “trend toward private insurance policies with larger deductibles and higher co-payments…”
– “Employers [are] shifting more [heath care] costs onto workers.”
– “Poor and uninsured adults [there are presently 41 million such people in the U.S.] had greater difficulties not just with health care costs, but finding doctors who would see them.” In addition, “too few providers are taking Medicaid” patients.
– One consequence of this trend is that “one in five American adults under 65 had an ‘unmet medical need’ because of costs in 2010, compared with one in eight in 2000.”
What all this means is that health care in the U.S. has deteriorated in the first decade of the 21st century. That was also reflected in a 2005 study by the World Health Organization that ranked the United States (supposedly the richest of nations) as 141st in government spending on health. Perhaps not unrelated, the U.S. ranks number 1 in the world when it comes to anxiety disorders.
Part II – The Philosophy Behind the Decline
This situation reflects a culture-shaping philosophy that has persisted in this country, with but brief interludes, since its founding. That philosophy teaches that we all are, or should be, rugged individuals. We should take care of ourselves and not rely on others. That is our responsibility in life and if someone can not measure up its their problem, not society’s.
Where does this attitude come from? There are no doubt multiple roots, but one source is an historically deep-seated national dislike of taxation. From the first moment of revolution against Great Britain, freedom meant escaping imperial taxes. Americans of that day claimed that only elected local legislatures could rightly lay down taxes. The claim was made, in part, because within such a localized system taxes could be kept to an absolute minimum.
This attitude toward taxation is, in turn, at the heart of the original capitalist outlook as it evolved in the 18th century. According to this perspective there are only three things for which the government can rightly tax its citizens: national defense, internal security (including the court system) and the enforcement of contracts. Beyond that the government must leave people alone and that includes not “over taxing” them and not regulating any of their business affairs.
This philosophy has caused untold misery since its inception. For the first century of the industrial revolution when the government of Great Britain (the original industrializing nation) was controlled by people who wanted minimal taxation and no business regulation, working class people lived in dire poverty, environmental pollution was rampant, industrial safety was non-existent, and health care for the poor was the concern of private charity only. Why? Because for the government to address any of these concerns would cost money and that would mean raising the taxes of the folks who had money.
It took over one hundred years of labor organizing, strikes, riots, outbreaks of preventable diseases, and the incessant pestering of elected officials by that small minority of the population who thought all this was a scandal (mostly women and religious folks), to force politicians (kicking and screaming) to address social needs and enforce health and safety related regulations. The Great Depression beginning in 1929 forced the issue with a vengeance and led to larger government and the “welfare state.” In other words, it led to a sense of social responsibility on the part of Western governments–most reluctantly the U.S. government. In America, that lasted through the 1970s and then the situation reversed.
One would think that memory would serve us for more than a mere forty odd years. That after suffering all the misery brought on by 19th and early 20th century capitalism we would have learned that to achieve social peace and a modicum of general prosperity, the government must perform important community functions including supplying all its citizens with decent and affordable health care.
But no it hasn’t worked that way. In 1981 Ronald Reagan became president. He started the process of deregulation and shifting taxation away from the rich. Others, including Democrats like Bill Clinton, followed along. When recently Barack Obama proposed health care reform he was labeled a socialist. Now, just listen to Mitt Romney and his Republican cohorts. Just listen to the Tea Party cabal. Just listen to Fox News. All of them want to go back to the “good old days” of minimalist government and minimum taxes. By the way, in the midst of those good old days, about the year 1843, the median age of death in the industrial city of Manchester England was 17.
Part III – What Kind of Society Do Americans Want?
This leads us to the question, just what sort of society do Americans want? Indeed, do they want a meaningful society at all?. Why not just stick to family units or small tribes drifting about in a state of nature? Well, in a sense that is what we chose to do. The tribes have become larger and today we call them nation states. But in the American version, localism makes for myriad sub-tribes. In the state of Pennsylvania, where I live, the people in the relatively rural center of the state as well as those in the urban suburbs, not only care little for those living in cities such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, they actively dislike them. They don’t feel like they live in the same society. And they certainly don’t want to be taxed to help an urban population with a lot of poor folks. In others words, whatever sense of social solidarity rural and suburban Pennsylvanians feel, it does not go much beyond their own local community (or “tribe”). And Pennsylvanians are by no means unique in this country
The fact is that, in terms of social conscience, the U.S. is still quite a primitive place. And this primitiveness is sustained by a philosophy of selfishness. Among other things, that prevailing philosophy is making an ever greater number of us unhealthy. Is this acceptable to most Americans? Is this the kind of society they want? The political practice since 1981 seems to answer, yes.
Part I – Slander
On 24 April 2012 the New York Times (NYT) lent its editorial page to the propaganda of right-wing Zionist David Horowitz, thereby taking the “newspaper of record” down into the gutter for only the price of a quarter-page advertisement. The ad , which was placed “as a public service” by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, told the following libelous story:
“The Holocaust began with boycotts of Jewish stores and ended with death camps. The calls for a new Holocaust can be heard throughout the Middle East and Europe as well. In the wake of the murders of a rabbi and three children in Toulouse, it is time for the supporters of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel movement (BDS) to ask themselves what they did to contribute to the atmosphere of hate that spawned these and other murders of Jews.”
What is wrong with this story?
1. The analogy of BDS with “boycotts of Jewish stores” is (no doubt purposely) misleading. The Boycott movement is directed against Israel as a racist state and the economic and social agents (Jewish and non-Jewish) who support it. If you want a proper analogy to BDS, it is the effort by Jewish and other groups before and during World War II to organize boycotts of Nazi Germany. The notion that the BDS boycotts lead to death camps is fantasy. Whatever the crazy logic of the Nazis on the one hand and David Horowitz on the other, the BDS movement is an effort to prevent persecution and not to promote it.
2. The notion that the BDS movement either “calls for a new Holocaust” or is associated with those supposedly doing so, is nonsense. In reality it is the right-wing Israeli fanatics who are not only calling for, but actually carrying out their own version of a holocaust against the Palestinians. In the place of concentration camps they have created ghettos and Bantustans. In place of gas chambers they have promoted homelessness, cultural genocide and periodic pogroms. Indeed, the same week Mr. Horowitz placed his ad, Israel launched 57 military raids into Palestinian territory resulting in multiple injuries and death, destroyed at least 13 Palestinian shelters while beginning construction on 20 illegal settler houses. Yet the perpetrators of these crimes persist in portraying themselves as victims because once, under completely different historical circumstances, their ancestors were victims. But that was in the past. In the present the Zionists are the culprits and BDS seeks to bring out this tragic and ironic fact.
3. It is a gross misrepresentation to accuse those supporting BDS of contributing to “the atmosphere of hate that spawned…murder of Jews.” The BDS campaign has nothing to do with this atmosphere, but the actions of the Israeli leadership has everything to do with it. With the Zionist persecution of the Palestinians on-going one needs no boycott movement to explain the upswing of anger. Some may unfortunately fail to make the proper distinction between political Zionists and Jews in general, just like Horowitz and his ilk fail to make the distinction between terrorists and Palestinians in general. Yet, if the Israeli leaders and their supporters want to know where this anger is coming from, they need look no further than their own behavior.
However, they refuse to look. Instead they attempt to confuse matters and shift the blame from fanatic Zionist settlers and racist Israeli politicians onto those who would publicly expose the viciousness of Israeli policies. That is the aim of the Horowitz ad in the New York Times and it pursues it in very specific ad hominem fashion. When in November 1938 the Nazis launched the pogroms which became known as Kristallnacht, they painted Jewish stars on the sites to be attacked. In a similar way Horowitz seeks to identify and label those he wishes to be “publically shamed and condemned.” What does that mean? Should they lose their jobs just like the Jews who were forced from their occupations by the Nazis? Should they be segregated out and impoverished like Palestinians? Perhaps Mr Horowitz would applaud physical attacks? Just how Nazi-like does he wish the situation to get?
Part II – The New York Times
William Thomson of the University of Michigan, one of fourteen academics slandered by the Horowitz advertisement, notes that “groups and individuals will resort to unfounded character assassination and ad hominem attacks when reasoned discussion is beyond their abilities.” However, the country’s major national newspaper is not suppose to be an accomplice in such attacks. Yet, that is the case.
Ali Abunimah has pointed out that the New York Times has “advertising acceptability guidelines” which require advertisements to “comply with its (the NYT’s) standards of decency and dignity” and not be “misleading, inaccurate or fraudulent.” Horowitz’s offering is blatantly all of this. Yet there it was, in the April 24th edition of the “paper of record.” Of course Horowitz’s propaganda was placed on the editorial page and not identified as an ad. What are we to make of this? It seems clear that the editors actually believe that the piece passes the their standards of acceptability. But is the NYT also telling us that this libel is an acceptable editorial? The entire affair calls into question (not for the first time) the judgment of the people who run this famous newspaper.
Paper IV – Conclusion
David Horowitz probably wrote this propaganda piece not only to shift blame, but also to scare people. To frighten those named and scare off others from getting involved in the BDS movement. Yet he may well have overstepped and made himself the subject of critical attention rather than those he rails against. That is what happens when your message reflects a viewpoint that is ideologically driven and fanatical. Cast this viewpoint in a more normal light and it looks weird and distorted.
The 19th century English essayist William Hazlitt once remarked that “prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.” That is also what David Horowitz tries to do here. He displays the prejudice of a fanatic and tries to pass it off as reason. Hopefully, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, it is too late for that sort of gambit to work.
Part I – Liberal Games
On 10 April 2012 the journalist Charles Davis did a guest posting on Glenn Greenwald’s website, Salon. The title of the piece is “The Liberal Betrayal of Bradley Manning.” Davis’s argument is that President Obama acts much like George Bush Jr. when it comes to “security” issues. He has, for instance, “institutionalized the practice of indefinite imprisonment” and in several other ways undermined the nation’s civil liberties. The difference is that, unlike Bush, Obama has not experienced vocal opposition from most liberals to this process of despoilment. Chase Madar, a New York civil rights attorney puts it this way, “Obama and the Democrats being in power in Washington defangs a lot of liberal criticism.”
Davis’s case in point is that of Bradley Manning, the Iraq war veteran accused of leaking a large number of Pentagon and State Department files to Wikileaks. Some of these leaked files clearly document actions that can be deemed war crimes. Manning made the mistake of confiding in a stateside blogger. He asked this person: “If you…saw incredible things, awful things…things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC…what would you do?” Manning’s answer was to make those facts public which, in my opinion, was the action of a hero. His erstwhile confidant’s answer was to turn the hero in to authorities.
Manning is now in a military prison awaiting a trial that, almost certainly, will keep him “in a dark room” for the rest of his life. Our “liberal” President seems to find this prospect fitting for someone “who broke the law” (a public judgment that Obama made before Manning was given over for trial). Most of the liberal establishment has joined in by demeaning Manning as a “troubled young man” who, as the New York Times put it, had both a “desperate need for acceptance” and “delusions of grandeur.” Alyssa Rosenberg, who represents the Center for American Progress, has declared that Manning “has pretty serious emotional problems” and the “Democratic [Party] pundit Joy Reid claimed that Manning is “a gay guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal psychological torment.” That he exposed blatant murder, among other dubious behaviors, seems not to resonate at all with these liberals.
Both Davis and Chase Madar conclude that liberals really do not oppose the violation of civil or human rights, be they those of Americans, Iraqis or anybody else. What they do consider unacceptable are violations carried out in an “uncouth” and “vulgar” manner that, they believe, characterizes conservative practice. Liberals are, allegedly, more sophisticated in their practice of double standards and that is why they can and do support Barack Obama when he does, in a more “professional” way, the same things that George Bush Jr. did. Manning’s exposure of the crimes of the U.S. military is, of course, anathema to both liberals and conservatives. In this regard both groups are equally unethical. They just express their lack of ethics differently.
Part II – Situational Ethics
Davis and Madar might be on to something here, but it needs to be understood against a broader background and its real implications brought out. Here are some thoughts that might help us move in that direction:
1. For the vast majority of people ethics are not “universal,” but rather are situational. In theory the majority might profess to follow a definitive code of behavior. In practice, however, they will adjust those convictions to the demands of their community. In other words, people normally act as their neighbors act, as the local law tells them to act and in ways that are approved by their group leaders. The number of people who consistently practice an ethical code even when it goes against the point of view of their local community are very few. Maybe Bradley Manning is one of this rare breed.
2. Ethical behavior is also relative to institutional affiliation. The military (and not just the U.S. version) has values and principles all its own and they often not only condone, but also encourage, extreme violence. If you don’t believe me just ask your typical Drill Sargent. As far as I know almost all of the 1,430,895 people in the U.S. military have conformed to the parochial behavioral codes of their institution. Almost, but not quite all. Bradley Manning did not conform.
3. Given that there are a small number of people whose ethical behavior defies local and institutional demands, the claim that Bradley Manning acted as he did because of “emotional problems” can be seen as a gambit to deflect attention away from the real criminals. If, like Manning, you discovered definitive evidence of the outright murder of a dozen unarmed people in an American neighborhood and then ran off to the authorities to report the incident, no one would say you did so because you were mentally unstable. However, move the incident to Baghdad and put on a uniform, and things change. Now you know that, given “military ethics,” those in charge are likely to just suppress any evidence. Also, as far as your affiliated institution is concerned, it is going public with your evidence that “breaks the law.” What does one do when you can’t shake your more principled ethical view and adapt to the corrupt situational one of your group? In Manning’s case, you muster the courage to do what you think is right. As a consequence both liberals and conservatives now say you are not only a criminal, you’re also crazy. But Bradley Manning is not crazy. He is sane. However, he is a sane man in a crazy community.
Part III – Conclusion
It seems clear that liberals have no more sense of “universal” ethics than do conservatives. All they have is their self-serving situational values and an allegedly slick way of expressing them. And, in the long run, it seems to make little difference to the public at large if human rights are compromised by “vulgar” conservative opportunists or “sophisticated” liberal ones. Maybe this indifference has something to do with the fact that almost everyone else on the planet also lives by ethical standards that are situational. That is why the struggle to make the world a better place in terms of “universal” ethics never seems to be quite realized.
Regardless, we can take heart from those few truly principled people, like Bradley Manning, whose actions teach us that hypocrisy, even if commonplace, is not inevitable. Such people seem never to give up and their struggle to make things better is, in fact, a tiny peek at what a better world might look like. In each society there are a relatively small number of such people and they keep hope alive. They are the real heroes.
Why should the devout Mr. Hagee and his one million followers be so enamored of Israel? Actually, they have no rational reasons to offer. However, they do have a number of non-rational ones. For example, “We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of man, but Israel was created by an act of God.”
Hagee and his followers do not know that this is so. They just ardently believe it is so. Yet there is a difference between demonstrable fact and belief. As to subject, ardent belief, or what might be called faith, is widely variable and changes over time. Thus, for a considerably longer period of time than the life of Hagee’s particular brand of Christianity (in fact for thousands of years) vast numbers of people ardently believed in the reality of the Olympian Gods. For almost 1200 years, countless individuals, every bit as assured of their faith as Pastor Hagee, came to the shrine at Delphi to prey to Apollo and, through his oracle, the Sibyl, petition for the God’s advice and favor.
There is no more hard evidence for Hagee’s faith than that of the Sibyl. Think of the lottery. Despite people’s belief in their “lucky number,” every number has an equal probability of turning up. In the same way, when John Hagee dies he has an equal chance of finding himself on the shore of the River Styx as he does at the gates of heaven or hell. Of course, this comparison is not completely accurate. Here there is also the equal chance that no number turns up at all, and Mr Hagee simply dissolves into worm food.
Just so there is no hard evidence for the claim that Israel was created “by an act of God.” (As to modern Israel there is no historical doubt that the deed was done by a combination of Zionist militias, the British Empire, and the General Assembly of the United Nations.) The Bible stories are just that, stories, and quoting them as if they constituted evidence beyond the realm of faith just won’t do.
No one credits the stories told in Hesiod’s Theogony (the story of the origin of the Olympian Gods) as proof positive of the existence of Zeus and Apollo. Pastor Hagee would counter that the Theogony was “created by an act of man”while the Bible is, allegedly, the divinely inspired words of God. And, indeed, it appears that up to one-third of the adults in the United States agree with him. Unfortunately, it is quite possible that as many people now believe in the literal, divine truth of the Bible (and therefore the divine origin of Israel) as once believed in the reality of Zeus and his Olympian clan.
However, it is worth repeating that belief no matter how ardently held, does not make something true. And, it does not matter if it is the belief of one person or a million. The situation is the same. Faith is not the same as fact.
Unfortunately, this does not put an end to our subject. Faith may not move mountains but it can move the masses. It can move Hagee’s million and many others as well to actions that are very real indeed. It can move people to empty their wallets in an effort to financially support their alleged certainties. Worse yet, it can move them to take up arms and slaughter their neighbors–or at least cheer on others who do so.
I have a strong suspicion that if the Israelis some day evict every last Palestinian from Pastor Hagee’s “Holy Land,” killing thousands in the process, the pastor will shout Hallelujah and salivate in anticipation of the second coming of Christ. It is just a personal opinion, mind you, but if you believe so strongly that you are willing to underwrite murder and mayhem you constitute a real danger to world peace. As such you should be preaching your defense before the International Criminal Court rather than preaching to the multitude.
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Contact at ldavidson@wcupa.edu |
