Karma Chameleon

Senator Kerry, like Boy George in Karma Chameleon (Don't ask me how I remember that one), is a man without conviction. Nor can he tell a contradiction, he just comes and goes. Here's a piece which reveals, in his own words, Kerry's stance on Iraq in 2002, before he realized that he would have to be vigorously anti-war to go anywhere as a Democratic presidential candidate, and his position today when he has to distinguish himself as the un-Bush. Kerry seems as confused about his ideology as Boy George was about his gender.

Paul Johnson

Matt Drudge has the awful pictures. We won't see them on the mainstream media, of course, because they still can't get over the ghastly photos of Iraqi men with hoods over their heads and leashes around their necks. One writer to our local paper last evening called the Abu Ghraib photos "horrific". If the media wants to show something "horrific" then they should show the Nicholas Berg or Paul Johnson videotapes, but they won't because that would strengthen the determination of the American people to fight the war on terror with even greater resolve which would mean four more years of George Bush, and that, for many of the port-siders in the media, is itself a horrific prospect. So we'll continue to see only photos that make the U.S. look bad.

If one does go to the Drudge site he/she should do two things: First, one should repeat over and over that this savagery doesn't represent true Islam because it's important that we convince ourselves of this while wondering why, in the wake of this unspeakable horror in the name of Allah, there is such a mystifying silence emanating from our mosques here in the states. And secondly, we need to keep securely in mind that this is pretty much what these people have planned for us and our children if we let up for just a moment in the war on terror.

The barbarians who perpetrate the evils we've witnessed in recent weeks in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are characters right out of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. Anyone who could do these things to another human being is less than human, he is a morally hideous Orc-like savage that knows nothing of the human virtues. He lives in a bleak, dark Mordor-like land blindly following the toxic behest of Imams, more Sauerman than holy men, who preach a message of hate, blood and death. They live in Sauron's world and are firmly in his thrall. They talk of God, but the love and beauty of God are not part of their world. They despise and disdain them.

I read recently (I can't remember the source) that to use God's name to justify evil is precisely what the commandment forbids when it enjoins us not to take God's name in vain. This, however, is exactly what those who shout "God is great" while sawing off a man's head are doing. They praise God as if they are doing what He wants them to do. What can be a greater offense against the holiness and goodness of God than to make Him an accomplice, indeed a motivating cause, of such evil? These men are not righteous, they are not pious, they are not pleasing God, they are, if anything is, satanic.

All We Need To Know

Some time ago I wrote that all we needed to know about John Kerry is that if Osama bin Laden could vote in our election Kerry would be his choice in November. Most commentators, Democrat and Republican, tacitly acknowledge this when they discuss the possibility of a terrorist strike on American homeland this summer or autumn to pull the electorate to the left, as they succeeded in doing in Spain.

Now there is a runner-up for the honorific "All We Need to Know About John Kerry" An article in the Washington Times sums it up for us in a single sentence. In a piece discussing how Kerry is being advised to keep quiet about religious matters, the Times explains how Kerry's new religion advisor, a twenty nine year old Unitarian socialist named Mara Vanderslice, who majored in Peace and Global Studies at a Quaker college and who somewhat paradoxically participated in the violent rallies against the IMF in Seattle in 2000 and 2002, is now being marginalized by the Kerry campaign. The article then quotes the fateful sentence:

At first, Miss Vanderslice was given wide latitude to define Mr. Kerry's positions on spiritual issues and to hire assistants who would reach out to Muslims and black churches, the Kerry campaign source said.

Think about that for a moment. Someone who probably doesn't know Kerry personally, at least not well, is permitted to define his positions on spiritual issues. This certainly gives a new twist to the concept of "deep convictions". A man's spiritual beliefs, if they are genuine, are surely the most important, most personal, most profound beliefs he holds. How can someone else, someone who doesn't even know the candidate, be allowed to define those positions for him unless, in fact, they're not all that important to Senator Kerry in the first place? Perhaps for Kerry the only purpose religious beliefs serve is to endear him to whichever segment of the electorate he can bamboozle with them. Can you imagine George Bush having his spiritual beliefs defined by someone other than himself?