By Jay D. Homnick on 8.23.07 @ 12:07AM
CNN's warrior princess Christiane Amanpour hosts a modern crusade.
Sam keeps going to the doctor with a persistent cold which he
cannot seem to shake. The doctor examines him and sees one
solution: "Go home right now, take a hot shower, and then open all
the windows to let the freezing winter air come in."
"But, Doctor, if I do that I'll catch pneumonia!"
"Yes, Sam. You will. And pneumonia I can cure."
The liberals of the world, the cognoscenti seculari, the
intelligentsia irreligiosa, the academia irreverentia, have
examined the wars of the world and they have diagnosed the problem:
religion. Because religion is one ailment the baccalauriat
bacchanaliat think they can cure. Good wine, bad women and mediocre
song may be all it takes. And then we will live happily ever after,
fighting only acid indigestion, gonorrhea and premature deafness.
As my grandmother and John Lennon would say: "Imagine!"
The network of defenders against these crusades is thankfully
already in place. It is known as Conglomerated Nattering Nabobs, or
CNN. They have a program ready: it is called God's Warriors. This is a documentary purporting
to catalogue the proliferation of conflicts around the globe which
are founded in faith. And all of this is presented by Ms. Amanpour,
who is getting back with a vengeance at the parents who dared to
saddle her with the freighted handle of Christiane.
Just when you thought moral equivalency had reached its apex, or
perhaps its nadir, this monstrosity comes along to up the ante down
the hatch. It divides the bellicose classes into three helpful
subgroups: Jewish Warriors, Muslim Warriors, Christian Warriors.
These three pillaging hordes are out to sack you with their
sacraments, and they are no takin' no prisoners. The next time you
see an observant Jew brandishing a ram's horn, or a Catholic priest
handing out wafers, make sure your weapons are loaded. The Moslems
are less worrisome, I should think, what with those bulky garments
impeding their mobility.
When I encountered this unholy trinity, I saw red and stars. (I
may give up my dogma, but never my zeugma.) Yes, the Hebrew Hammer,
Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers, broke into baseball with a
bang this year and, yes, Christian Dior is slashing prices across
the globe, but only one congregation is slamming commandeered
aircraft into office buildings.
I did take the time to read their report (the CNN website offers print versions of
the documentary's features) on one of these Jewish firebrands
roiling the waters of our otherwise peaceable planet. She is a
homey woman of middling age, wearing a demure hat, and speaking on
behalf of West Bank settlers. She gave up a sizable salary as a
Wall Street attorney, hearing the call to resettle the Holy Land.
Now she lectures at fundamentalist churches, soliciting funds to
assist those Israeli communities. If that's not scary I don't know
what is: no one should have to wear a hat like that.
These are real gut-check moments in our society. The
objectionable purveyors of this tripe pose as surveyors of an
objective stripe, but they merely deliver repackaged
preconceptions. This is not a hopeful sign in the direction of a
self-preserving culture. The courage to distinguish between good
guy and bad guy, friend and foe, is a desperate necessity in the
battle for survival. If I might quote a religious guy, the prophet
Jeremiah (41:9) was unsparing in blaming the victim of
assassination (Gedaliahu, governor of Israel after the monarchy had
been routed by Babylon) for downplaying the warnings of his
intelligence officers about the impending coup. And eying
evangelists askance for helping Israel is not the eternal vigilance
that Jefferson identified as the price of liberty.
It is true, incidentally, that an occasional spell of strife is
caused by religious differences. This phenomenon represents a small
fraction of the mischief done in the name of national aspirations,
territorial expansion and economic interests. And even some of the
nominally religious division is just the same old tribal
disaffection masquerading as a higher cause.
The teachings of religion have substantially improved the lot of
humanity. The whole idea of peace as a virtue traces back to that
source. In Judaism, Peace (Shalom) is actually one of the names of
God, as Itzhak Shamir pointed out in his address to the Madrid
Peace Conference. To see martial stirrings in the Bible's message
to mankind is to perpetrate a stark perversion of truth, a
corruption of history. When will we CNN to this sort of
rhetoric?
All of this is getting me mad enough to go pick up my ram's
horn. In fact, I am about ready to man all the ram parts.
topics:
Religion, Israel, Oil
