Saint Bill or Accessory to Mass Murder? The Dilemma of the Morally Relativistic Media

In the light of my last post and the very acute comments of Truepeers, lgude, Nancy Coppock and others, I have been compelled to take another look at the question of anti-Semitism in Bill Moyers’ remarks about The Bible and the genetics of violence. There was a lot of anguish and recrimination in the wake of that incident and I am just beginning to make sense of it. Mr. Moyers was obviously horrified and felt injured by the whole thing. It seemed, though, that the more he twisted and squirmed, the deeper he got. Just look at his wounded and frantic reply to Abe Foxman (Leader of the ADL). even while he is denying moral equivalency, he says “And although I specifically referred to “the rockets from Hamas” falling on Israel and said that “every nation has the right to defend itself, and Israel is no exception,” Note that he uses a venerable trick of rhetoric, the passive voice, to minimize the impact of the “rockets falling on Israel” (oh dear, another one “fell” just now), while he characterizes the Israelis as “shelling” the Palestinians. So he minimizes the violence of Hamas as they initiate their avowed plan to annihilate Israel and he demonizes Israel’s defensive response. A masterful wordsmith, Moyers is good but the more he talks the deeper he gets.

Neither does he mention that Hamas deliberately uses their own civilians as human shields or that the alleged Israeli atrocities he refers to have both had serious doubt cast on them. It appears likely that they were staged or otherwise faked, as has turned out to be the case with every other allegation of intentional Israeli atrocity in the past- Jenin, al Dura, Kfar Qana- you name it. Yet Mr. Moyers repeats the reports as fact, as justification for calling the Israeli action an onslaught. The characterization of the restrained and careful Israeli actions with terms like “onslaught” and “slaughter” juxtaposed with his blithe gloss of the “falling missiles” is not merely an argumentative pose, it betrays an inner contradiction in Moyers heart.

On one hand he considers Israel to be entitled to defend herself (as if she needed his permission) on the other hand, he wants, from the vantage point of his snug PBS studio to be able to pass judgment on what a fitting (proportional?) defense would be.

Proportionality? Israel’s armed forces always has done and continues to do their best at separating Hamas from their human shields and killing only the combatants. But that is not enough for Bill Moyers. He uses two examples, examples which all media professionals by the time he used them knew to be suspect, to imply that the Israelis are no better than those who want only to murder them. He pointedly ignores the obvious difference in the morality of the two sides. He pretends, as it were, that he has just walked into the room and sees Israel beating up the Palestinians without knowing any of the background. According to him, it is an onslaught and a slaughter and he hurls those epithets at Israel, not the hate-filled murderers who have caused the problem and intentionally placed their own people between them and the tiger they had taunted once too often.

He crowns his assault on morality with the remark that first caught our attention- the one he has already backed away from as “obviously not sufficiently precise”. (Ah, suddenly the man who has traded in words all his professional life has “misspoken? More likely he spoke too quickly and revealed to much) Not only did he state that it was the bible that “genetically encoded” violence in the Jewish people, even if he goes on to say, “A radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth,” he compounds his betrayal of common sense and moral decency by adding “Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians with checkpoints, concrete walls, routine insults” as if he agrees with the Islamist honor/shame formula that their humiliation must be avenged in blood.

Not content with tacitly supporting the blood-revenge paradigm, he willfully misinterprets the purpose of the IDF’s YouTube channel. The IDF posts video on YouTube to try to prove to Mr. Moyer and his ilk that the strikes in Gaza are done with greater precision and care than has ever been shown before by any military in the history of warefare- to show the world that even against a foe that is sworn to murder every Jew and destroy their state the IDF is performing with surgical precision and Talmudic respect for innocent life.

All Mr. Moyers sees is a further insult to Arab honor. He says, “As if boasting of their might, Israel defense forces even put up video of the explosions on YouTube for all the world to see.” This is quintessential honor/shame drama! “For all the world to see!” To him this is a bad thing!?!?

Nor does his attempt to dismiss his “genetic” remark as “insufficiently precise” address the sense in which the remark still stands as a blood libel. Casting the two sides as equally at fault and implying that Israel “humiliates” the Palestinians by having checkpoints and walls, none of which existed until they were reluctantly employed to protect Israelis from suicide bombers! Laying the blame for these things equally on Israel is a deep, immoral wrong.

Deny it though he may, this is moral relativism, leveling the moral difference between two sides of a dispute and then applying spurious “evenhandedness” that injures and impugns the party that is morally superior.
And that is the first key to understanding Moyers’ dilemma. In Moyers’ world, the only morally superior stance is his. He rejects violence without reservation and blames all who employ it equally. He looks down on Israelis fighting for existence against Hamas, fostered and supported by Iran and the Arab world all of whom want nothing less than the annihilation of Israel, and he rolls his eyes in pious disapproval at the violence. As Truepeers has characterized it in a comment to my original post about Moyers, “this is one of the most well-worn of moral failings: admitting the eliminationist nightmare while at the same time giving the blame, or at least some of it, to the Jews. It's a smug righteous way of saying I'm above all that, a pox on both their houses.”

The ultimate insult he offers, though, is the suggestion that he is actually “a friend” of Israel. “From my days in President Johnson’s White House forward,” he writes, drawing himself up in the bogus dignity of a wordsmith who has crossed the line back and forth from “journalist” to “spin-master” enough times that he clearly has lost sight of any difference between the two, “I have defended Israel’s right to defend itself, and still do. But sometimes an honest critic is a government’s best friend, and I am appalled by Israel’s devastation of innocent civilians in this battle, all the more so because, as I said in my column, it is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen. To be so indifferent to that suffering is, sadly, to be as blind in Gaza as Samson.”

The reason they call it “spin” is that is designed to make you so dizzy that you forget which end it “up”. If you were to take him at his word and grant that he is a “friend of Israel”, you would be tempted to believe that he was really an “honest critic” and that Israel was indulging in the “devastation of innocent civilians”. He says he is “appalled “ by it and so you would see it through his eyes as appalling devastation- even as those eyes of his studiously ignore the evidence of Israel’s humanitarian intent. He says the IDF web site is a humiliation for the Palestinians but isn’t it just as humiliating to him? He resents the fact that there is proof that his assertions are false and that his moral compass is not true.

Then, finally, trusting that his double talk has rendered us so woozy and nauseated that we will be powerless to resist its authority, he flashes us the gold plated, jewel encrusted, richly engraved, plain-as-day badge of the hypocrite. He taunts Israel, saying that the slaughter of innocents he so deplores, “is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen.”

But, Mr. Moyers, a truly honest critic would have to ask why Hamas “wanted it” to happen. A real friend of reality, let alone Israel, would have to admit that a political/religious movement that intentionally incites violence against its own women and children for its own gain is an abomination- that is guilty of what amounts to human sacrifice. An honest man whether a critic or not would be compelled to admit that such a movement no more deserves equal respect with a modern, western, liberal democracy like Israel than Hannibal Lechter deserves to be compared with Julia Child.

The real hole in Mr. Moyers’ soul is that the moral relativism he denies so passionately does not only endanger Israel (who can take care of herself), it is that he must avoid knowing that it is he himself who is endangering the defenseless women and children of Gaza. The facts and reality push him to that awareness and he uses all his intellectual power to avoid it.

He is on a slippery slope. He has already acknowledged that Hamas (like Arafat before them) know that, what ever calamity they bring down on their own people, moralistic idealists with a grudge against Israel like Moyers will be unable to resist the temptation to blame Israel. It is he, not Israel who is giving Hamas what they want in reward for endangering their own people.

In spreading the blame for the plight of Palestinian children to the Israelis (who routinely risk the lives of their soldiers to avoid harming Palestinian women and children) and minimizing the responsibility of Hamas (the cowards who hide behind the children and by doing so put them in peril) he is succoring terror. He plays into their cynical game. He becomes a supporter and a participant in the slaughter. In legal parlance he is more than a bystander; he is an accessory.

It is the ultimate irony of Honor/Shame, that it so often results in unavoidable dishonor. In Moyers we see a man who has made the fatal error of staking his honor on a explaination of events that is fundamentally flawed and now cannot face the shame of admitting to his complicity in horrors beyond his intention. Now he'd rather see missiles "falling" on Israel forever rather than have to admit where the real responsibility lies for what he cynically calls the Israeli "onslaught" to stop them.

The Lessons of Mumbai- Too Long for a Bumper Sticker

The rage and frustration I feel as the full dimensions of the Mumbai attacks become clear is dangerous. I was walking through a supermarket parking lot when I saw this bumper sticker.

This was even worse than those imbecilic "coexist" stickers with all of the religious symbols. It took me a while to figure out why. There are so many levels on which this message is ignorant and dangerous that I had to sort them all out. First and most obvious is the fact that it is an obvious slap at “God Bless America”. But, no, that wasn’t the cause for the rage- I’m used to seeing that kind of fuzzy ignorance that passes for political thinking.
I live, after all, in Newton, MA- a very liberal community- so fatuous drivel like this generally just irritates but doesn’t enrage me. So why, suddenly, did I find it difficult to contain my revulsion? The tide of rage I felt was all but overwhelming.

Well, for one thing, I had just read a report on the Rediff India Abroad web site about the particularly cruel and deliberate attention with which the Mumbai terrorists tortured and disfigured the Israeli and Jewish victims of the massacre. An extended quote is instructive:

Doctors…, said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatized. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Now, listen, I am married to an operating room nurse. I am all too familiar with the ability of medical professionals to compartmentalize, neutralize and discuss in a cool and detached way, things that make mere writers like myself flinch and even retch. The very idea that this hardened physician could not bring himself to contemplate what he had seen struck me to my very core. I found myself, temporarily, without a way forward.
Seeing that bumper sticker put me on a knife-edge between despair and rage. I stood there and stared at the car with my heart pounding. I don’t know what I would have done had the owner of the car walked up at that point.
“No Exceptions”?

What does that mean? Does it mean they would call down God’s blessing on the stinking swine who apparently did their reconnaissance in the Chabad House by posing as travelers and accepting the food, hospitality and blessings of the Rabbi and his family while they plotted their torture and death?

Does it mean that they can see no moral or spiritual difference between the Rabbi who welcomed and served them with an open heart and the filthy, lying murderers who rewarded his kindness by killing his wife before him and letting him suffer her death, tenderly wrapping her body in his prayer shawl, before murdering him?

Don’t get me wrong; I will admit that I knew, even in my turmoil and anguish at that moment, that the owner of that car would not be in favor of any of those things and would, probably think me very unkind to associate him with them.

I know very well that most of the people who have those bumper stickers have put them there because they were moved only by an urge to get in the face of people with “God Bless America” bumper stickers. I’ll admit, too, that I am very much in the God Bless America camp myself. I believe that America is a blessed country. I count among my friends and family a number of people who gave up everything they had and the lives that they had lived for many decades in order to come here and be free.

There is the lovely seventy-year-old lady and her husband who came here ten years ago from Russia along with their daughter and her husband. They still don’t speak much English but recently she proudly showed me around her neat little apartment and paused for a long moment at the end of the tour with a wistful smile on her face, clasped her hands together, looked at me and said with a gusty sigh, “God Bless America”! Having seen the former Soviet Union in depth and first hand, I know exactly what she means.

The reason we have a political battle about immigration in the first place is that anyone in their right mind would rather be here than in any other country on earth. And what country on earth is more free and open? I don’t understand the people who live here and are so alienated, embarrassed by our power and sulky that they feel they can’t let “God Bless America” stand as a sentiment without making a public display of distancing themselves from it.

Is it just moral blindness, and spiteful disenfranchisement that moves them to miss the important point that America, while not perfect, is by far the finest, most democratic, most humane and least Imperial “greatest power in the world” that has ever existed?

America, after all, has come forward over the last one hundred years and, with the help and support of the rest of the western powers, saved civilization from two militarized totalitarian movements that threatened to immerse the world in their respective fascist nightmares.
Now, even as we engage yet another murderous totalitarian threat with our traditional allies severely compromised by infiltration and the degenerate influence of moral relativism and multiculturalism, here is a person who thinks it more important to express their petty snit with America than to consider the implications of their stance. I have to wonder how can anyone think it possible that the ideal of multiculturalism that is (even if accidentally) conveyed by this bumper sticker is not deeply immoral- and self-destructive to the point of being suicidal?

There have been a number of times when I have not even known how to start thinking and writing about the utter horror of the actual events and conditions of our world. At those times, I will turn to the blogs of those I admire most. Robert Avrech who blogs at Seraphic Secret is one of my great comforts at those times. He has a huge range of moods and subjects but, whether he is writing about horror or Hollywood, Robert brings a wisdom and sensibility that has the power to help restore strength and faith.

So after wandering home from the parking lot I fired up my computer and found Robert quoting that same article that had stopped me in my tracks. Then at the end he added this- quoting from the brilliant Melanie Phillips:

Phillips comments:
The atrocities demonstrated with crystal clarity what the Islamist war is all about — and the western commentaries didn't understand because it simply refuses to acknowledge, even now, what that war actually is. It does not arise from particular grievances. It is not rooted in "despair" over Palestine. It is not a reaction to the war in Iraq. It is a war waged in the name of Islam against America, Britain, Hindus, Jews and all who refuse to submit to Islamic conquest.
What of the terrorists' treatment of their Jewish targets? Phillips writes:
They went to some lengths in addition to single out a centre for observant Jews. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were murdered not because of Palestine but simply because they were Jews. That is because hatred of Jews as Jews is fundamental to the Islamists' hatred of the west — and of Israel.

Oh, how exactly!
I would like to presume to add some detail to Phillip’s “things Mumbai makes obvious”:
1. Islamist rage is not our fault. It is endemic to their culture. It has no regard for humanity, sex, age or innocence.

2. If you are not one of them it will seek you out and get you no matter how nice you are to it.

3. Even if you are one of them, once they kill all those who are not, they will find a reason that you are not quite one of them.

4. If you are not the strongest and the quickest and the most ruthless, you are eventually doomed.

The lessons we must learn and make sure we teach to the morally weak like the guy with that bumper sticker are:
1. If you have power over them today, use it now – tomorrow it may be too late.

2. Even if you kill someone who is innocent, as much as that disturbs you, you may take comfort in the certainty that they will die a less painful death than you and your family will if they get their hands on you.

3. The “hostages” of Mumbai had not absorbed the lesson of 9/11. The captives that were taken, tortured disfigured and murdered in Mumbai were no less doomed than the passengers on the airliners on 9/11. They allowed themselves to be taken and abused by captors who did not want anything from them but to use them as instruments of terror. Only the brave passengers of flight 93 understood and acted on this. Let no westerner ever rationalize ignorance of this from this day forward. If the Munich slaughter seemed to you acceptable, if flight 103 did not convince you, if you were able to harden your heart to the fates of Robert Dean Stethem and Leon Klinghoffer, and 9/11 failed to impress you and Madrid and Beslan and all of the theatrical, internet promoted, beheadings could not reach you, surely this atrocity cannot be denied.

4. We have seen in the Western Mass Media’s unwillingness to widely distribute the telling and ghastly details of the torture and murder in Mumbai, their dehumanization of Jews, Israeli, Americans and all other victims of the attack. and their studied avoidance of connecting the violence to Islam or Muslims that the blindness of our friend with the bumper sticker is reinforced by the very cultural institution that should be providing us with warnings and dependable information about the threat.
The Mainstream Media will not inform you, you cannot rely on them for full information; so you need to inform yourself. Do not allow yourself to be soothed and co-opted.

There is but this warning to add:
When (and unless we wake up and do something, it is not a question of “if”) you are attacked, you are going to have to fight as hard as you can, for as long as you can if you want to have any hope of surviving. We have seen what they do to captives so you must never leave yourself at their mercy- they have none. Remember that they are cowards. Suicide, no matter how many innocent people you take with you is a sign of weakness. They are so afraid of the impotence and ineffectuality of their culture and their pathetic individual enslavement to the honor/shame drama of that culture that they are willing to sacrifice themselves (and you!) to avoid the shame. They will murder you gladly rather than admit that they do not have the moral fiber to see how purile and ineffectual their society is. They are willing to accept their own deaths so you must assume they will gladly give you yours. The only defense is in strength and persistence. As Churchill said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never- in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

I propose a different slogan- even if it’s a little too long for a bumper sticker- “God already blessed the whole world- God gave us America- too bad so many of us make exceptions of ourselves.”

UPDATE:
I have condensed the message of this post- I might have been more direct just writing this:

The Ultimate Lesson of Mumbai- Save the Last Clip for Yourself and Your Family

The “hostages” of Mumbai had not absorbed the lesson of 9/11. The captives that were taken, tortured disfigured and murdered in Mumbai were no less doomed than the passengers on the airliners on 9/11. They allowed themselves to be taken and abused by captors who did not want anything from them but to use them as instruments of terror. Only the brave passengers of flight 93 understood and acted on this. Let no westerner ever rationalize ignorance of this from this day forward...

....When (unless we wake up and do something, it is not a question of “if”) you are attacked, you are going to have to fight as hard as you can, for as long as you can if you want to have any hope of surviving. We have seen what they do to captives so you must never leave yourself at their mercy- they have none....

Young Frankenstein Teaches Leftism 101

I don't know about you but after the last three posts, I am ready to try to find some humor, however macabre, in the situation.

Here is the text book demonstration of how to be a Modern Liberal- no, I mean Socialist- er that is- Communist- oh, ah, now its Progressive- yeah, thats, it Progressive; taught by Dr. Frodrick Frankensteen (or whatever). First, class, let's watch the film:

By the numbers now here's how it breaks down( for each instance the line from the dialog is in red, the rational is in grey and a current example of Progressivethink is in blue):

1. “Frankensteen not Frankenstein” Your grandfather gave your name a bad reputation so change it to disguise who you are. Call it by a different name and no one will know. Liberal is no good, neither is socialist or communist so let’s go with Progressive- Even if the whole world says “You’re putting me on- You have nothing to do with progress.”
   
2. “…the rates have gone up” Just agree, its only money – don’t even ask how much. We wouldn’t want a confrontation… Oh sure we’ll just raise taxes and spend more.
   
3. “I’m a rather brilliant surgeon, perhaps I could help you with that hump.” Don’t even get to know the people or examine the malady, be conceited and arrogant enough to immediately assume that you can cure whatever is “wrong” with other people and minister to their spiritual needs. Obama, President of Europe and the healer of our nation.
   
4. “What hump?" (awkward pause) “Lets go!" There is no denial of the obvious that cannot be answered with an even more blatant denial of the obvious. If CAIR and The Muslim Brotherhood say that there is nothing to fear from political Islam ("What terrorism? We are the religion of peace"), then we all should just ignore the pattern in all terrorism done in its name- “War is not the answer.”
   
5. “Walk this way, this way” accept and adopt any other way of doing things other that the one that is most natural and efficient. As when the Archbishop of Canterbury declaring that the magnificent, fair and just British legal system must adapt to the influence of the misogynist, religiously intolerant, arbitrary and brutal Islamic Shari’a system.
   

Damned if this doesn't shed some light on my posts about the humorlessness of The Left (here and here). It is hard to have a sense of humor when you are so rigid, pompous, self important and dependant on half-truths and fictions that the least snicker in the background makes you wonder if your facade has been broken and everyone is laughing at you. As kundera said, “No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.”

Just go back and look at the great development of expressions on "Frankensteen"s" face between "Eyegore" saying, "What hump?" and Frankensteen's "Lets go!" His looks seem to say "Yikes, he can't deal with the fact that he has a hump! I in danger of humiliating him, not by making fun of the hump but merely by stating that I noticed that he has it. If I insist that he really has a hump, he might humiliate me by insisting that my name is really Frankenstein. That would be intolerable. Oh well, if he is deep enough in denial to say 'What hump?' maybe I can just Move On and we can just pretend nothing happened here and ignore all these lies and misconceptions and proceed."

This is another thing The Left and the Islamists have in common. Vast networks of interdependent fictions and denials that explode in the presence of laughter- just look at the "Mohammed Cartoon Crisis".

But, then, you can always gloss it over if you declare that everything is relative. 

Oh, by the way, on your way out folks, please, sign the petition against moral relativism.

Obama's Campaign and The Real Meaning of The Che Guevara Flag

Some of the things you learn about the people who attach themselves to political campaigns are more revealing and interesting than the candidates, what they say and how the media covers them. Last week's Che Guevara flag eruption was a case in point.

Usually, I don’t have the time and energy but I got involved in a comment trail about it on a post at Solomonia a few days ago. When I do get sucked into these things its always because something grabs my attention about one of the responders and I sense that I might learn something about some larger issue.

For those of you who don't know the background, that post had to do with the backwash from a Fox video report in which a Cuban flag adorned with a picture of Che Guevara was shown hanging prominently in an Obama campaign office in Houston.

Somewhat after the dust settled on the Solomonia post and its comments the Obama campaign posted this on its web site:

"This is a volunteer office that is not in any way controlled by the Obama campaign. We were disappointed to see this picture because it is both offensive to many Cuban-Americans -- and because it does not reflect Senator Obama’s views. Barack Obama has been very clear in putting forward a Cuba policy that is based on one principle: freedom for the Cuban people."

But one of Obama’s supporters (no doubt another volunteer) had already joined in the fray at Solomonia. The very first comment on the thread (how did she find it so quickly?) was from an ardent but only marginally coherent Obama supporter writing under the name of Susan (LAST NAME OMITTED AS A COURTESY). I have no idea who she is but it reads like undergraduate stuff; you can actually read it out loud and hear where “Omygawd”, “like” and “duh” fit in. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were one of the legions of “young people” who have decided that we need change and Obama is the guy to bring it on. She wrote (Parenthesis added by me):

“... (Oh my gawd,) This is because this is an office (that is, like) paid for by supporters. It is (sooo totally) not an official headquarter office Also, Che Guevara is viewed as an icon for (y’know) Socialist ideology that opposes the oppression of colonialism and capitalism (WhatEver!). This flag represents a symbol of change against the oppression these systems create. (Yo,) It does not say Obama is going to (like) turn the USA into a communist country. (duh!).”

A bit of a donnybrook ensued. I couldn’t help joining in. For a while I felt a little ashamed- I mean, this Susan was obviously very easy prey and there was already the beginning of a pack after her when I arrived on the scene. As things devolved, though, it turns out that I discovered another piece of the puzzle about how well meaning people who consider themselves liberal wind up getting themselves and everyone around them into very awkward positions. My last comment on this post was pretty long and although I suggest that you read the whole thread, I know that there is only so much time to read things and I am glad you are here reading here- so, to make things easier, I am reprinting that last comment of mine here with a few minor edits (I never polish comments as much as I should):

Susan, you are clearly out of your depth in trying to think about these things. I’d like to help out but hardly know where to start. You really write as if there is a progressive leftist shouting into one ear and a confused liberal simpering into the other and you, poor Susan, are trying to put both of their thoughts (loose choice of words) into the computer. Only once in a while does the real Susan get a word in edgewise. If you would just stop contradicting yourself from one sentence to the next you might sound as though you actually had a mind of your own.
I mean, look, here’s an excerpt- read it as you would a play and you’ll see what I mean-

LIBERAL:
I am not saying I find Guevara's tactics to be logical or practiceable (sic). Quite the contrary.

PROGRESSIVE:
What I am defending is the reality that Guevara fought for. Oppression is far from dead.

LIBERAL:
His approach is dead wrong. Socialism is dead wrong. Communism is dead wrong.

SUSAN:
I don't know what is right. ? I am obviously not a good candidate to run a country or reform the world.

PROGRESSIVE:
I do believe that there are very real deficiencies to colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, etc.

LIBERAL:
I believe that Castro's dictatorship (not communism) is far worse than the issues here in the US.

PROGRESSIVE:
However, I have a problem with the fact that anyone who doesn't fit into a white, middle class image is profiled and often underprivileged for their skin color or their class or their accent. They lack resources and opportunity that so easily come to anyone that is white.

LIBERAL:
This is why I support Obama because I believe that he pushes for a better, diverse US that "maybe" will unite us as a country and quit segregating us based on our skin color.

PROGRESSIVE
I believe the world hates us because we are racist and ethnocentric (me being a part of the problem with all of you.) I think there is a big possibility of Obama changing this image in the right way (consciousness raising rather than through a violent revolution.)

WHEW, it must be exhausting to be you!

Given your inability to keep from contradicting yourself in successive sentences, this might be asking a lot but I think you need to take a deep breath and think about why you are running from pillar to post about this. I think you are wild with enthusiasm for Obama. Like the confused liberal, leftist, progressive participants in presidential lemming runs of the past (McCarthy, McGovern, Carter, Dean), you are getting hyped up over an almost unknown candidate for purely emotional reasons. You cathect your angst and anomie into the campaign and, if you are ever challenged, you try to justify it with a grab bag of ideas and concepts that pop into your mind. You might want to check with all of the voices in your head, including your own, about why. Let’s look at your only line in the little play above:

“I don't know what is right. ? I am obviously not a good candidate to run a country or reform the world.”

That forlorn little question mark says it all. I’ll say this for you; you are honest up to a point. But then you get back on the flip flop of voices. Here’s the best example:

“I believe the world hates us because we are racist and ethnocentric (me being a part of the problem with all of you.) I think there is a big possibility of Obama changing this image in the right way (consciousness raising rather than through a violent revolution.)”

Earth to Susan! Aside from the fact that this is the least racist, least ethnocentric, most open country on earth, and ignoring the inconvenient fact that a very large number of those people who you say hate us so much (especially those “pobres de la tierra” you referenced in your first comment) want to come here to live, there is another big problem with your premise. Let me ask you, what, precisely, is it about Obama that makes you so sure that electing him president will immediately change our image in the world? He hasn’t really talked much about his ideas and beliefs. He certainly had not been specific until that point, about his policy goals. So, what do you have to base your single minded loyalty and dedication upon?

I am wondering, if you told your other voices to shut up for a moment, whether you would not just find that you just want Obama because you think it would be (totally) cool to have a black president. Well, you see, Susan, I think having a black president would be cool too but I don’t think that using that as our preeminent criterion is a good way to approach selecting the person who will be the most powerful human being on earth. Besides, wanting him to be president because he is black is just as racist as not wanting him to be president because he is black.

So, you see, this is what this discussion is about. What we are doing is evaluating the man, his organization and the kinds of workers and enthusiasm he attracts. It may be that the Che flag is an artifact of a peripheral group of “unsupervised” yahoos, but his response to it matters, as does the flack that “followers” like you throw up. So, when you equivocate on whether is it all right to use a communist thug as an iconic symbol of “change” and opposition (sounds a little like “resistance” to me) while enjoying the protection of this great country, you are giving every appearance of using code words that communists, confused lefty liberals like yourself and socialists will respond to while still trying to maintain “plausible deniability”. It is way too great a stretch. You become a kind of cartoon image of yourself. You complain that we are stereotyping you- but we don’t have to stereotype you- you have done a very good job of that yourself.

Consider, please, that you are not just, as you say, “not a good candidate to run a country or reform the world.”, You may not be a good candidate to vote for someone to run a country; let alone reform the world. You really haven’t done a particularly good job of even writing about it.

Yes, well, looking back on it, I am tempted to feel a little bad about that last paragraph, that I may have put that more unkindly than I needed to. But then I think about the fact that so much of Obama’s momentum is coming from the notion that we need change above all other things, change divorced from discussion of the consequences or means. Not that I think that Obama is anything remotely like the kind of murdering thug that Che was or Castro is, its clear he is not anything of the kind. On the contrary, he seems like a nice, upstanding person. That makes him and his followers all the more dangerous.

Stateist Communism is a monstrosity. But the creeping socialism (and the accompanying moral relativism and multiculturalism) of the liberal left is cruel and disillusioning in its own way. It robs people of their self-esteem and self-reliance, it stultifies enterprise and ambition, and, worst of all, it is the single fastest way to weaken and demoralize our resistance to Caliphate Islamism.

The quixotic, demented, anti-logical dueling contradictions I identified in Susan’s rant, combined with that craving for change is the very kind abandonment of reason brought Che and Castro to power in Cuba, Hitler in Germany and Lenin in Russia. The swelling ranks of impressionable young people and immature older people who, like this hapless Susan, seem capable of believing the most outrageous calumny about their own country while, at the same time, remaining blind to far more egregious short comings on the part of almost any other country (other than Israel, of course) is ominous in its own right.

It is unsettling that the Obama campaign, notably through his wife Michelle Obama, is pandering to and encouraging the ecstatic urge for change in a recent speech (HT Sister Toldjah) Mrs. Obama said in a recent speech at UCLA, “Barack is the only man who can “heal” this nation and “fix our souls””

My reading of history tells me that when a government undertakes to “fix” peoples souls, as nice as that sounds, it will ultimately mean that if you don’t care to have your soul fixed in that particular way, they are going to wind up doing something very unpleasant (maybe even fatal)to your property, your freedoms and, your life.

As Jeff Jacoby wrote in the Boston Globe:

With Che at his side, Castro toppled Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. "As soon as they had seized power," notes "The Black Book of Communism," a magisterial survey of communist crime in the 20th century, "they began to conduct mass executions inside the two main prisons, La Cabana and Santa Clara." As chief prosecutor of the new regime, Che oversaw the bloodbath, ordering hundreds of executions in the first months of 1959. Those he killed, "The Black Book" records, included "former comrades-in-arms who refused to abandon their democratic beliefs."

Like totalitarians of every stripe, Che didn't scruple at the death of innocents. "Quit the dallying!" he ordered Jose Vilasuso, a conscientious government lawyer who was seeking evidence against several prisoners. "Your job is a very simple one. Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute from evolutionary conviction."

Che fixed their souls all right- by setting them free from their bodies. This is the thanks that naïve change-seekers can expect from true revolutionaries like Che to whom they find themselves romantically drawn. Let me be clear, I think that Barack and Michelle Obama are more like Susan than they are like Fidel and Che. They are essentially good people who are either too emotionally involved in their desire to advance their joint career through the false promise of socialism or so convinced that they have "a mission" that they find it possible to ignore the moral and intellectual bankruptcy and cultural danger of their ideology.

And then there are the nameless, faceless campaign functionaries, flaks and Public Relations experts- let’s look in detail at what they published as the Obama campaign’s official statement on the Che flags. It has become axiomatic in political campaigns that it is a big mistake, especially in primary elections, to give too accurate a picture of who you are and what you believe in. This statement is a masterpiece of obfuscation and hypocrisy.

The first thing I notice is that it never actually mentions the name "Che Guevara". This is a sure sign that there is something indirect and manipulative going on. We are in for a "Marketing Momnet".

It begins with a reasonably forthright first sentence: “This is a volunteer office that is not in any way controlled by the Obama campaign” a valid disclaimer. Any organization that is growing and changing as rapidly as the Obama campaign has got to have a few loose cannons. There is no way that the core leadership can keep a watch on everything.

The next sentence is not so direct. It is a loosely joined succession of phrases. These phrases, owing to the looseness of the connections, clack and bump against each other leaving us to wonder wha the real bond is between them. I am going to have to take it one fragment at a time.

The first phrase is “We were disappointed to see this picture” My initial reaction is that I find it shocking that all they can muster is “disappointment”. Knowing who Che Guevara was, what he stood for and the bloody murder he committed, if I were Barack Obama I might have felt something more like outrage or horror- but that is just me. How disappointed are they? What kind of disappointment is it?

The next two phrases are even more shocking. “…because it is both offensive to many Cuban-Americans-- and Americans of all backgrounds” So, we see where the word “disappointment “ comes from, it has nothing to do with being repelled by Che’s bloody record or dismayed by his totalitarian association. No, it is nothing so moral and judgmental. They are disappointed because it offensive to Cuban-Americans and others.

Incredibly, they are far more concerned about the “offence” caused than they are about the meaning of the flag as a symbol. Unspoken here, but clearly identifiable are two senses in which the Obama campaign apparently considers giving offense more notable and worse than the moral implications of his presence in the volunteer office. First, of all it giving offense to identifiable voting blocs (Cuban-Americans vote!) is politically counter-productive. When, as the Obama campaign seems to, you believe (we know Mrs. Obama does) that you have the power to “heal” and “save”, engaging in honest and direct debate that might drive votes away is a sin against your sacred (however mistaken) mission.

The other reason “the offense” is a greater concern for them than the substance of the matter is that in the multicultural, morally relative world of the left and the Democrats it is a greater sin to be “insensitive” to the feelings of revolutionaries and malcontents than it is to ignore and enable injustice and even murder.

They go on to say that it the flag does not reflect Obama's views and that "Barack Obama has been very clear in putting forward a Cuba policy that is based on one principle: freedom for the Cuban people" It's funny how bland and non-committal that “freedom for the Cuban people” sounds. What does that mean exactly? To me, it has the same ring of ominous irony of, say, calling a repressive Communist totalitarian state “The People’s Republic of Whateverstan”.

It doesn’t specify what kind of freedom they’re talking about. Presumably, they are trying to be sufficiently general to avoid offending anyone else. Incredibly, this champion of change for America, this campaign that wishes to sell us on wholesale change for America (the nation that needs change the least of all the countries of the world) comes up short on suggesting any particular change for Cuba (an internationally acknowledged economic and social basket case). Cuba needs more of what we have here – in a hurry. Democracy and free markets would be a huge improvement for that country. Does the Obama campaign suggest any thing like that? No, he certainly would not want to offend the people who put him into this fix with that banner of Che, and they are not so much in favor of democracy or free markets. The whole thing is weasely, multicultural, morally relativistic and marketing oriented- not at all statesmanlike.

Edmund Burke warned us about this three hundred years ago. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” From this one instance, it looks to me that Obama is very much in favor of doing nothing about evil. He can’t bring himself to call it “evil”. As I said above he seems like a very nice and pleasant man. If all the evil in the world were done only by evil people, though, things would be a lot less complicated than they are.

The real danger that the tone and direction of the Obama candidacy brings home to me is that once “Change” becomes the ultimate goal, the strongest, most ruthless candidate of change will often look like the best one and the well-intentioned, emotionally labile dummies of the liberal left (as the example of Susan shows) will be powerless to see what he is up to- let alone stop him. That blood thirsty criminal is not Barack Obama but he might well be hanging a Che Guevara flag up in a "volunteer" office somewhere and waiting for his chance. So, Mr Obama's people have not really addressed the key flag issue at all. They have only given us a flaccid denial of approval- not a categorical condemnation and that makes the Che flag a rather large red flag for me.

I seem to feel that hot breath on the back of my neck again…

Celebrate Diversity! Even if it Kills You

A friend has sent me a link to Andrew Bostom’s Blog with the story on the reinstatement of Major Stephen Coughlin’s reinstatement. Bostom includes a link to Coughlin’s seminal and compendious Thesis on Jihad- all 329 pages of it!

I have to confess, I don’t have the will power, or the spare time to read it all now; but I’ve dipped into it enough to see that this is a very important document. Of course, I flipped directly to the last chapter (this is why I never enjoyed reading mysteries). I was charmed to see that the title of that “pay-off” chapter “Disarmed in the War of Ideas” is very similar to a my phrase “Unilateral Cultural Disarmament”. I’ll be reading and ransacking this one for a very long time.

Colleague Lazar at Augean Stables has a very good initial pass at it here.

I won’t spoil all the fun for you “grinders” who will read it cover to cover and in order but I have to point out this elegant and telling observation from page 230. Coughlin is writing about how the Caliphate threat in continuing to sneak up on us.

“Under the Current Approach, this entire line of inquiry has been effectively shut
down by objections that do not extend beyond surface assertions that “Islam does not
stand for this” or “there are a thousand different interpretations of Islamic law” (so what’s
the point in looking?).”

Has anyone here not read Mark Steyn’s America Alone? (If not, you can just scroll down a little and click on the Amazon book icon for it on the left hand margin of this screen to order) I was immediately taken by how similar the above sentence is to one of the quotes that I remember best from Steyn’s book.

“…contemporary multiculturalism absolves one from knowing anything about other cultures as long as one feels warm and fluffy toward them. After all, if it's grossly judgmental to say one culture's better than another, why bother learning about the differences? "Celebrate diversity" with a uniformity of ignorance.”

And its not just celebrating diversity. It is the imbecilic prejudice against their own culture that come along with it that is more astounding and perilous. Both of these quotes point directly at the Achilles Heel of civilization. This is the very same mechanism by which people who call themselves feminists delude themselves that abstract concepts like “the glass ceiling in Corporate America” should be a greater concern for western women than the savage brutalization of women under Shari’a law. It is embodied too in the morally bankrupt blindness that calls Israel an apartheid pariah and attempts to degrade her ability to survive in the face of regimes that really do practice apartheid and murder.

This is yet another example of how Multiculturalism is actually a very subtle but corrosive form of racism. No liberal or progressive would be caught dead saying that “All those (choose one: Black people, Asians, Indians, etc…) look alike to me. So why is it ok to say that, "It makes no difference what they think or do, we love all those other cultures without discrimination, even though we can't really tell one from another and we will only criticize ours?"

It is a relatively new idea, fostered by historical revisionists, that the ascendance of Western Civilization was a product of colonialism, imperialism and cultural xenophobia. It’s a guilty reaction in which only the coddled, directionless, morally deficient grandchildren of real achievers and visionaries can afford to indulge. Their lives, rendered too safe and too comfortable, spend all of their time and energy finding fault with the system that has given them those comforts and that protection while, at the same time, they remain too lazy, self-absorbed and spiritually flaccid to even notice the faults that doomed the other less-successful cultures that western civilization superceded; much less contemplate the threats posed by the rising challenge of Caliphate Islam.

Liberals Don't Commit Crimes- They Just Make Crimes Out of Everything Not Liberal

Prologue:
Several weeks ago a new friend (a fellow blogger! ) wrote to me to say that she liked my blog and that she had a Beast Story of her own. She gave me a precise of that story and I could see that although there was clearly something of a beastly nature there, it was not clear to me that it really fit in with the kinds of stories I was looking for for Breath of the Beast. I read it several times and finally decided that the smell of the beast was strong on her story that I had to follow up on it. I wrote back to Nancy and asked her to give me more- to flesh-out the story so that I had something more to go on.
I am finding out that it is a peculiarity of Beast Encounters that often we don’t recognize them right away- sometimes its only as we recall them years later, that we see how the impression left by them fits the footprint of the beast. The art of Beast Tracking- something I am learning to do as I go along- requires attention to detail, sensitivity and, above all, memory.

Nancy’s story comes out of our public school system. The educational system is a favorite lair for the beast. As I have already pointed out, there are dimly lit recesses in our schools where in the dim light of “progressive” moral relativism, liberal sentiments intermingle and breed with leftist ideologies. The result is not always as obvious as in the case of “Lego Town” and the dangers are not as transparent as collectivist prejudice and propaganda. There are, to be sure, pestholes where our children are indoctrinated and defiled with cultural poisons that threaten to leave us susceptible to the terror and virulence of the Caliphate. But even more insidious and destructive is the way in which good, moral people like Nancy Coppock are weeded out of the teaching profession to make room for ever more compliant and “progressive” teachers.

Here is Nancy’s story:



My Beast Story
By
Nancy Coppock

My own brush with the Beast came back in the spring semester of 1991. I was a humble middle school remedial reading teacher in a small Texas town outside this major university town. I was a good teacher, an achieving teacher, as the California Achievement Test scores proved. I had taught at this school for 8 years with incredible results, improving reading scores every year. I was friendly with teachers and staff and exhibited a positive work ethic.


I tell you this to let you know that I took my job very seriously because to me, the best thing I could do for mid- to below-average students, many minority and poor, was to make sure they could read to the best of their ability. I believed that a lack of historical context made it difficult for my students to achieve in social studies, state history, and American history classes. I used young adult literature to match these classes with biographies or historical fiction, and filled in with just fun books that were at my student’s intellectual level rather than reading level. My teaching style was to be positive, caring, charitable discipline-wise, and to create an aura of the fantastic world of learning.


During this year, I was given a small special education class. The students' classifications were different from my regular remedial readers. Due to several factors, this class dwindled to only one student. This student was very intelligent but his emotional problems had severely stunted his education. By 8th grade this was becoming extremely apparent, as he was being mainstreamed into regular classes. When a special education student is mainstreamed into a regular classroom, his records are private and the other parents are not made aware of these things.


I was a very empathic person as a child, because at the age of 12, my youngest sister was born with a form of retardation. Therefore, I grew up in a family where "normal" was more a setting on the dishwasher. Having grown up loving and accepting people as they were, I immediately was able to see this young man as an individual. He could be cunning to the point of scariness, but his sense of justice could be pointed in the right direction if done with honesty and fairness. The principal noticed this when I was able to shame the young man into accepting just discipline. He had committed the particular offense, and was trying to blur the situation with extraneous information but he knew that I knew the truth.


The student respected me almost instantly for this quality. The principal was amazed. So, when I informed the principal that my class had dwindled to this one student--which to me was completely cost ineffective--the principal put his arm on my shoulder and told me, "We see you have a way with Duane. Maybe this is a time for him." When I countered that I was not a counselor, he said, “We all have to be counselors sometimes.” These were his exact words.


So, Duane and I began. Besides reading, we also worked on assignments from his English teacher. Soon, he began to ask me questions like "Why don 't you have children, Mrs. C.? You would love one so much." Straightforwardly I answered, "We don't always get everything we want and besides if I did have my own kids, I might be so filled up and preoccupied that I paid no attention to you. Now get back to work." I knew that He harbored deep anger and could hold a grudge for a perceived fault forever, but that if gently prodded in the right direction, he could be a complete lamb. With me he found a safe harbor and answers to the imponderables of life that he could trust.


Once, I used an event from his past to try to point him in the right direction. I said, “I heard something about you from kindergarten. I heard that when Mrs. Duane tried to give you a paddling for being bad, that you took the paddle out of her hand and started hitting her with it! What on earth where you thinking?” He was a great big young man and he just laughed and laughed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. That was sure a dumb thing to do. That was so wrong.”


One day he came into the classroom and pulled down my maps saying he was just looking for an island, somewhere he could go to get away from everybody and just live. It was incredibly sad. I used the situation to teach a lesson on maps and the globe.


Later, such talk was to be used against me, but I thought it important for Duane to be treated like a valid person who had questions about the realities of life, which it seemed like his emotional disturbance was preventing him from learning. Here I was, a teacher committed to creating the aura of learning being the most exciting endeavor in life, and it was like Annie Sullivan banging away at Helen Keller: W-A-T-E-R. I had been told I had a way this young man. I had been told that we all have to be counselors sometimes. I had only one student for this class and I struggled to balance his necessary schoolwork with trying to educate him about life's realities and to give him confidence that he could control his emotions to accept these realities.


It was emotionally draining for me. After that class I still had 2 other classes to teach with the last class being predominately 8th grade boys who had reached their saturation point of listening, learning, and sitting still. It was a grueling schedule but I was not a complainer.


Unbeknownst to me, my student began to tell several other teachers that I was just too nice and somebody was going to hurt me. I was completely unaware of this development.


One Friday a few weeks before Spring Break, I was in the portable classroom next to mine visiting with the other remedial reading teacher. We tried to stay generally in the same chapter of the books we taught and we discussed our lesson plans and such. The student was quiet and puttering around the room, as kids will. Suddenly he plunged a sharp pair of scissors downward toward my face. He stopped himself just short of contact and I could see the sharp point just inches from the point between my eyes. We stood as if locked together; the class bell rang and he lowered the scissors and quietly put them away.


I was taken completely unawares. If he had wanted to hurt me, it would have been over, as I didn't even have time to raise my arm in defense. I closed my eyes and prayed for God to meet me. It was surreal and my mind wasn't blank, but it wasn’t processing this reality. I just went on as if nothing had happened and automatically knew I needed to greet my next class at the door. I finished the day and it was as if the event had been erased from my mind. The other teacher didn’t ask me about the event. As I made my commute home, my mind began to recollect that something happened. Something weird. When I got home I called the other teacher and asked her if it had really happened.


I then called the principal. My first concern was for the student. I wanted to make sure that he understood what he was being punished for. This was so paramount that I made a foolish statement: I said that I didn’t want Duane punished because there was an undercurrent of animosity between he and the principal.


I just wanted Duane to know that he could not ever do such a thing again. That I got his message loud and clear. That I was teaching a rowdy bunch of boys who were all in some sort of juvenile parole program, in a portable building, detached from the world. And, the ultimate reality check was that a student doesn’t have to bring a weapon from home. The danger is in the intent of the mind. A person intent upon doing evil can use, as a weapon, any of the things I thought of only as tools: a pencil or pen, scissors, compass points, a broken piece from a desk… If someone wants to do evil, the intent is first in his mind. As clearly as I had learned my lesson, I wanted him to learn this lesson because otherwise he would be forever lost.


It was then I learned that a taxpayer paid private psychologist, whom I had never seen or heard of, worked with him once a week. The doctor invited me to attend a session with Duane to discuss the event. The session was very stilted and contrived. In fact, Duane just got up and left the room for 15-20 minutes. I don’t know where he went. The doctor just sat there and asked no questions of me and when I asked where Duane went, the doctor said he often left during sessions. Several days later, the doctor brought him by my room and he apologized. It was all stilted and contrived. There was no real honesty, nor were we allowed to talk to each other. We were told to stay away from each other and we did and it just broke my heart to see him buzzing around the hallway when I was on morning duty. It was as if he wanted me to know he was sorry and that he was worried about me, but we couldn’t just talk to each other.


One morning, I had heard through the grapevine that Duane had come into the office and demanded to be punished. What he got was the arm on the shoulder telling him to be a good’ol boy and everything was going to be all right. To me, that demand was a plea for help, for absolution. He needed punishment to get beyond this event. We needed to talk to each other, the way we had been. The fact that we weren't allowed to talk to each other was a sort of stigma that maybe we had been doing something improper and this was the reason –– had done what he had done. This was the undercurrent I was getting from other teachers. That this would have never happened to them, because they knew better than I. Which leads quickly to the notion that I got what I deserved.


I happened to see the doctor in the hall the day of the demand for punishment and asked if I could attend another session. When asked why, I told about the plea for punishment and that I felt like he needed some sort of absolution. Well, that conversation ended abruptly. I was told it would be *inappropriate *for me to attend another session and was sent on my way. Evidently, the doctor went straight to the school counselor, who then typed up a memo listing the reasons why I should be sent home from school because I was dangerous to Duane.


Things like not wanting to punish Duane but now wanting him punished, being fearful of going to the portable building that my class was in, crying, and even not eating in the teacher’s lounge... I was going over to the cafeteria because I didn’t bring a lunch. Everything was listed as reasons that I was the danger not only to Duane, but to the entire campus. Also noted was that they wanted to talk my husband into having me committed to the hospital for which the doctor worked. At the end of the day, I was asked to go over to the superintendent’s office to discuss something. I was informed that I was to not return to work until a psychiatrist had examined me and found me suitable for work. The superintendent either through mistake or on purpose handed me a sheaf of papers with the bottom page being the incriminating memo.


The odd thing is that while everyone knew about the event, no one talked about it openly. No one ever asked me what I thought about the situation. No one asked me how I was doing. The one voice of encouragement was a quickly whispered, “We think you are getting a bad deal” as we passed in a crowded hallway. It was like the elephant in the room that went unmentioned. I could walk into a room and it was like turning on a light in a kitchen full of roaches. I was totally alienated. The event was simply not discussed. I couldn’t bring it up. Duane and I were not to talk to each other. It was a surreal situation. I couldn’t believe I was being treated this way. If people think you are crazy, then everything you do is seen through that prism. I was no longer one of the people I had taught with and worked with for years, I was different. I was a reminder of what could happen to them all. And even more horrifying, Duane, unbalanced as could be, was sitting next to everyday parents'--your--children, and the parents didn’t have a right to know! Unbelievable. And I was the one everyone needed protection from.



I received my walking papers from the superintendent with promises that if I did as they requested, we could all sit down and talk. So, I found myself sitting in front of a computer where some metro-sexual psychologist had set me up to take this “test”. He left me in the little closet and I began. Finally, the questions got into things that were I to have talked about in the class room, I would have been in trouble. Things like, did I believe Jesus walked on water? Did I believe Jesus turned the water to wine? “Oh my God,” I thought and just laid my head on the desk, thinking, “Here I am because they do not want to hear what I think, under the threat of having someone else commit me to a mental hospital and thereby losing my right of autonomy, and now they are asking me the most personal questions about my faith. What if it's all a trick? The doctor overseeing the test gave me the creeps, so I didn't trust him at all. "Oh, God,” I prayed, “Just tell me what to say so I can get out of here a free woman.” So, that’s the way I answered those questions. I just wanted to be able to leave the office, get in my car and drive to my house and lock the door.



That was the event that ended a stellar teaching career. The metro-sexual doctor didn’t stamp me approved or disapproved. Instead I was stamped on the forehead with a big question mark. I was tainted. I cared what people thought. The meeting the superintendent promised never happened. When I told my principal that I didn’t think I was being treated fairly, I received a blistering dressing down in front of the secretary: "Well that’s your opinion." I closed my mouth and finished the year, including having Duane as my student. On the last day of school, Duane cried like a big baby, wondering what he was going to do without me. That I was the only one that understood him. I told him that if his head was spinning and he picked up a weapon he was messing up and to please never forget this lesson. He was in anguish because he knew I had been punished for what he had done. I encouraged him to go, fly, live a good life, be free.



At our last teacher meeting, we heard a “sermon” about how a wayward student had come back to his hometown and had apologized at the church for having been a problem in his earlier years. We were told how we never knew how what we say to our students is going to take root and finally sink in and change a life for the better. I wanted to tell them all that while that may be true, if something strange happens while you are going that extra mile, brothers and sisters, you are on your own. But I said nothing, just laid my throbbing forehead on the cool Formica of my desk. My only victory was that they didn’t make me cry. I was beaten and crushed in every way but in my mind. My trust for my fellow man was zero. My fear of rowdy 8th grade boys was growing exponentially. I had endured a great loss that I could not discuss with anyone because I could see the disbelief in their eyes and know that my story to them was a complete fabrication. I had a life with a dark spot upon it that could never be adequately explained without the hearer's suspended disbelief allowing a kernel of truth to settle in and change their entire perspective of the goodness of humanity and the state of affairs in our public schools. Such are the marks I bear from the beast.


On the last teacher workday, I had a letter to the editor published in the weekly small town paper. I didn't say anything about the event, only alluded to a problem. I told who I was, what I had done for the district, and that promises had been made and not kept. I wrote that this was not out of concern for myself, but for fellow teachers and students. That day, I was extremely weary. I had finished the year and held my head up through every sort of humiliation. A group of teachers came to the door of my classroom and asked me to step outside. This was to be the final humiliation as they berated me for my letter. "We don't appreciate what you have done..." They did not make me cry. I maintained my dignity and said that I was sorry they felt that way. We were all supposed to meet in the school library for a luncheon, a final meeting, and then dismissed for summer. When the teachers left, I told the other remedial reading teacher that was still in her room and not a part of the final lynch mob, that I was going home. And so I left and no one has contacted me since.


Over the years I have learned that the Superintendent, the counselor, and the curriculum director all moved to other districts that summer. I don't know if there is any connection. These are just interesting facts.



A few years ago, there was a robbery involving a victim being shot in the leg, a high-speed chase where the robber pulled over his car and shot at the pursuing police. It was Duane. I went to the sentencing and introduced myself. When I told him I had never stopped caring about what was going to happen to him, this grown up criminal teared up and almost started crying. I urged him to think about Jesus because He could heal all his hurts. Then the officers led him away.



All said, this entire story was just a giant bonfire of humanity. The rest of them upon hearing of his arrest probably shook their heads, saying "We did all we could for that boy, but we knew this was where he was heading." I haven't found my happy ending. I pray for the restoration like the Biblical Job,. Instead, I receive small tender mercies to get me through the day, like daily manna in the wilderness. I'm still a thought-criminal struggling to make a living and just trying to live a normal life after being crushed to point of emotional death and he's a felon who will be contained in a prison cell for every second of his 75 year sentence. The beast always enjoys a good human bonfire.


Epilogue:
So, it's not about Caliphate Islame but when I got to this paragraph, I knew why I had been so drawn to Nancy Coppock and her story- Here is the "Other Head" of The Beast:

“ One morning, I had heard through the grapevine that --- had come into the office and demanded to be punished. What he got was the arm on the shoulder telling him to be a good’ol boy and everything was going to be all right. To me, that demand was a plea for help, for absolution. He needed punishment to get beyond this event. We needed to talk to each other, the way we had been. The fact that we weren't allowed to talk to each other was a sort of stigma that maybe we had been doing something improper and this was the reason –– had done what he had done. This was the undercurrent I was getting from other teachers. That this would have never happened to them, because they knew better than I. Which leads quickly to the notion that I got what I deserved.”

There is was, the same liberal prejudice that mutated into Lego Town was at work denying this young man what he needed most, the knowledge that he would be held responsible for his deeds; Being rewarded with the knowledge that, even though he would suffer for it, some one had better expectations of him.

You can just imagine the mewling, fawning intellectual rationalizations, “We are here to educate – not to punish” or “If we treat this as a serious thing, we will have to call in the police and we will lose control of the situation.” That kind, liberal, conflict averse principal might as well have driven Duane to the state penitentiary that very day- he would, at least, have saved Duane’s victim a bullet in the leg.

He, of course, also condemned Nancy Coppock to losing her profession at the same time.

I finish reading this story with a deep sense of tragedy. There are two tragedies really, there is it the solitary, neglected life of Duane- a result of both his shattered home life that isolated him and the system that “protected” him from the kind of help he needed the most. And there is the tragedy of Nancy Coppock who, because of her innate sense of what is right and moral ran afoul of the liberal, secular humanist, moral relativism that turns what is best and strongest about us into something untouchable.