X-ing Out Crosses
I don’t know how Christians can manage to be so tolerant of people attacking their religion. Maybe their religion has something to do with it.
I don’t know how Christians can manage to be so tolerant of people attacking their religion. Maybe their religion has something to do with it.
I’m not even a Christian, but the attack on crosses has me really, well, to put it mildly, cross.
The fact that a country can be Christian without being a theocracy is apparently too complex for simple-minded Liberals. The First Amendment is very straightforward. It precludes the government from establishing a state religion. They had no desire to create an American version of the Church of England. If the Founders, nearly all of whom were Christians, had wanted to include the words “separation of church and state,” they would have included them.
I know that atheists and agnostics like to deny the fact that the Founders were Christians. Get them in a headlock or a half-Nelson and they’ll go so far as to call them Deists. But they believed in Christ and the Ten Commandments.
The miracle of their creation is that in spite of their own religious convictions, they created a nation that was welcoming to followers of every faith and even to the faithless.
I believe they would have been embarrassed to see a president, Barack Obama, insist that the cross in the auditorium at Notre Dame be covered before he’d agree to deliver a speech. I suspect they would have been equally embarrassed that a college would capitulate to such an outrageous demand.
For my part, I am grateful that a Christian nation was so welcoming to my two sets of Russian Jewish grandparents. It speaks well of the religion.
But, today, when there are so many attacks on Christianity and those, like Vice President Pence, who make no secret of their faith, I find it extremely disturbing that we have a word for anti-Muslims, Islamophobe, but no corresponding word, such as Christophobe or Judaphobe, for those who are far more often under attack.
In a recent issue of The New American, John Eidsmoe, wrote about the ongoing controversy surrounding crosses on public lands.
He mentions that not only our nation but other nations employ the cross in military honors. Among them are the American Distinguished Service Cross, Britain’s Victoria Cross, Germany’s Bundeswehr Cross of Honor, Russia’s St. Catherine, France’s Croix de Guerre, Sweden’s Grand Cross of the Sword, Norway’s Freedom Cross and Poland’s Order of the Military Cross.
The reason it is so prevalent is because, as General Douglas MacArthur put it, “The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training—sacrifice.”
As Eidsmoe writes: “The military cross appropriately recognizes that the sacrifice of the soldier for others on the battlefield is in some sense a reflection of the sacrifice of Jesus for others on the cross.”
Eidsmoe concludes: “The war on the cross must be viewed in light of the war on historical monuments in general. Remember Winston Smith of The Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s classic novel "1984,” who observed: ‘If the Party thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened, that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death….And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed, and if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past, ran the Party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’“
It is the barbarians of the present who, in seeking to remove the past by tearing down statues and removing crosses, are seeking to control the future. And what a revolting future that would be. For a glimpse of it, just take a look at Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela.
Or pay a visit to a typical classroom.
What Liberals fail to notice when they pile on Donald Trump for losing billions of dollars in the 80s and 90s is, one, it wasn’t their money; and two, that he picked himself up, dusted himself off and proceeded to make more billions over the next couple of decades.
Because those on the Left live in a toxic bubble, they don’t get it that Americans love comeback stories and happy endings. Which is, essentially, why Donald Trump will be re-elected next year. He, more than Bill Clinton, is the real comeback kid.
It’s not his fault, after all, that tax laws made it possible for Trump to avoid paying income taxes while he was bleeding money. Oddly, these same whack-a-doodles don’t seem to have a problem with companies like Amazon, Delta and Netflix, that made billions of dollars in 2018 paying not a single nickel to Uncle Sam in 2019.
I was surprised to hear Prince Harry and his wife introduce their baby as a boy named Archie after hearing that the two nincompoops intended to raise their offspring as a gender-neutral freak. I expect that great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth, who probably holds the purse strings, had something to say about that bit of faddish nonsense.
The manager of the Boston Red Sox, along with 10 of his players, declined to attend the White House tribute to the winners of the 2018 World Series. It seems they wanted to send the message that they consider the President a racist.
Message received. In response, all I can say is: "Go Yankees!”
Pollster Frank Luntz reports that 52% of Hillary Clinton’s voters would prefer to live under Socialism, whereas 19% would opt for Capitalism.
When it comes to Trump’s voters, it’s 16% Socialism, 63% Capitalism.
Frankly, I was shocked that Trump’s people only favor Capitalism by a four-to-one margin.
Luntz may have come up with a reason for that. He believes that Conservatives should learn to speak about “economic freedom” rather than “Capitalism” because the Left has so successfully demonized that word.
Most people, he insists, now associate “Capitalism” with the worst excesses of corporations and Wall Street, whereas “economic freedom” conjures up images of small businesses thriving on Main Street.
He makes a lot of sense. Even in my mind, when I hear a reference to Capitalism, I think of George Soros spreading cancer around the world, of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos denying free speech to Conservatives on their social media platforms and of outfits like Amazon and Netflix not having to paying income taxes in spite of record profits.
Someone sent me a sign posted at a church fund-raising event: “Holy Water Car Wash: Will Wash the Hell Out of Your Car.”
Bob Hunt sent me a photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wearing those eyeglasses she assumes makes her look smart with the caption: “Politics is more stressful than the time I got my finger caught in that cheese tray.”
Beneath it was a picture of President Trump holding his hand to his forehead, looking like he was suffering from a migraine. His caption read: “That’s called a mouse trap.”
