House of Eratosthenes

I haven’t been reading Lydia Cornell lately. I should, because she has claimed to be a former Republican and I have all-but conclusively judged this statement to be full of crap, without really having too much foundational information. But of course I do have some…since it’s such a frequent occurrence gorgeous Lydia says a bunch of stupid bullcrap only a dedicated donk would say…

Democrats are stronger on terror because we know the value of human life. We will win the war on terror by gathering our forces and fortifying our homeland. By first bringing our troops home and strengthening our own borders, ports, airports and train stations and using our resources wisely. We can’t afford to lose a single human life. We’ve lost over 2,600 troops, and another 16,000 missing arms and legs, and we’ve spent over 300 billion dollars on a war that has DEFINITELY CREATED MORE HATRED AND TERRORISM throughout the whole world against us.

Democrats will go out and communicate with our enemies: we will bridge the gap and open diplomatic channels. Syria, who was helping us right after 911 will be helping us again. Everyone wants to be on the side of the Peacemaker who brings a higher vision to conflict. In the time that George Bush and the Three Stooges have been in power, they have created more enemies than ever before in America’s history. This is the most shameful time in our country. We must get these primitive self-serving oil barons and Neanderthals out of power before they destroy the world.

Sometime back when the war was a newer thing, Lydia had put up a post describing how she had once been a Republican but couldn’t abide the wild contradiction between the Republican platform and her interpretation of The Gospels, so she switched to the donks because they were the more biblically-pure party. She is, therefore, perhaps the most physically-appealing specimen of a large and growing sect tens of millions strong: The “Sermon on the Mount” liberals.

These are the kookburgers who insist the Lamb of God, voting today, would punch a straight-donk ticket because those Republicans have strayed from His word. The title of the post excerpted above shows you the depths to which this lunatic thinking ultimately drags an innocent mind: “We Will Win War on Terror by Getting Out of Iraq.”

Well I’ll have to agree that at times, George W. Bush has been a dangerous man. But he’s never been this dangerous.

This is “run with scissors in your hand and marbles all over the floor,” electric-fence-pissing dangerous. The “Sermon on the Mount” liberals are named for a passage from the Book of Matthew, Chapter 5, they themselves like to cite frequently; in some cases, the person so speaking is familiar with this passage of the Bible, and none other.

³⁸Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

³⁹But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

⁴⁰And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

⁴¹And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

⁴²Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

⁴³Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

⁴⁴But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…

According to our “Sermon on the Mount” liberals, therefore, all violence is contrary to the will of God. There are no exceptions to this. If such an interpretation were sincere, of course, there would be ample occasion and motivation to translate this snotty lecturing into Arabic, since the Islamofascists that attacked us are also supposed to believe in a god who champions peace, and they also are supposed to have “hijacked” a “peaceful religion.”

I know of no such translation effort that has ever taken place.

Perhaps the prospective translator-lecturers are terrified of getting their empty little heads lopped off.

But uh…getting back to the “Sermon on the Mount” liberals. They are quite an interesting bunch. There is this book out there, millenia old, arguably the most influential book on the affairs of men out of any other book ever compiled, no close-seconds. It is a dauntingly thick book, chock full of instructions about how to achieve everlasting life. These “Sermon on Mount” liberals have picked up on the one passage that might, with sufficient effort, be interpreted as endorsing self-destruction, and this is the one passage that they parrot endlessly, avoiding and ignoring all others.

Well, I shouldn’t say that. Some of our peaceniks are pretty enthusiastic Bible-study people, who I’m sure could quote circles around me. But it is interesting — they get this frenzied frothy notion that The Lord wants us out of Iraq, and He is greviously offended at us for going in there in the first place. If you were to take the Bible, and drop from it Matthew 5:38-44, leaving all other passages intact, their argument would dissolve completely.

Is Matthew 5:38-44 subject to a singular interpretation? No! It may very well be the most ethereal and nebulous chronicling in those pages, since Noah built the ark.

It doesn’t pass the “If I were God” test. If I were God, would I build a species of people in my image and give them instructions to…embrace those among their brothers who wish to do them harm. Coddle venomous serpents close to their own bosoms. Expose their soft fleshy bellies to their snarling, slobbering countrymen, who are brandishing knives and swords and sharp farm implements, looking for a place to stick ’em. Why? Why would I want this people I had built, to do such a thing?

It crumbles under the weight of it’s inherent silliness when we consider third parties. Do we interpret the Sermon on the Mount literally when we come across two men, one bad and the other innocent, when the bad man wants to do harm to the innocent? “Sermon on the Mount” liberals can always be counted on to change the subject when confronted by this, because that innocent man could just as well be a woman. Or a child. Or a handicapped person. They, therefore, are forced by their own reasoning to endorce acts of violence on the innocent and weak, who cannot defend themselves — to condemn any efforts by stronger people to come to the aid of those who are innocent and weak. Not supposed to do it. It’s gotta make some sense down the road, after all it’s what Jesus said.

Well, it isn’t what Jesus said. And it gets much worse than that, when you start to consider a lot of our “Sermon on the Mount” liberals don’t even believe in God. Consider that for a second. You’ve got this passage from the Bible, subject to a variety of interpretations but, okay, one of those interpretations says you’re supposed to treat enemies as friends, even in situations where logic and reason tell you this is self-destructive. Somewhere down the line, possibly after your demise, this all makes sense. But the guy interpreting this for you doesn’t believe it himself.

Just think on that. You’re getting this snotty, condescending lecture about how you shouldn’t allow violence to take place, even if it is defensive violence…because Jesus said no…but you’re getting the lecture from someone who doesn’t practice this himself, and can’t practice it, because he doesn’t believe in Jesus. Which in all likelihood means, the guy doesn’t even believe what he is telling you — and what he’s telling you is there’s something virtuous in self-destruction.

Ergo — your snotty condescending lecturer wants you to destroy yourself. Through non-violence. Allow others to rape and pillage and burn you, even though he himself would never dream of doing the same thing.

It’s insulting on so many levels. It’s like going fishing by rowing out in the middle of the lake and expecting the fish to jump into your boat. And it presumes an inimicable relationship, which may or may not be justified by preceding events. And probably isn’t. But most of all, it is so intellectually insulting. It presumes that by babbling the correct gibberish at you, he can motivate you to do something both he, and you, logically understand makes no sense at all.

These people haven’t been reading the Bible. They’ve been watching old Star Trek episodes in which Kirk and Spock destroy ancient alien computers using that all-powerful Kirk-and-Spock secular humanist logic. They’ve seen the old trope played out so many times, they figure it’s easy and want to try it out themselves.

Now, these true-believer Bible-studier types, I’m gathering their minds have been wrapped into little pretzels by these Star Trek watching secular humanist types. Wherever violence takes place, they figure, the will of God has been thwarted and they must dispense their insulting lecturing…only to the side of the conflict that speaks English, though, so their heads won’t get lopped off. Their flaw is in presuming that peace is easy, that it’s simply an absence of war. They think peace is available when the right people are asked…like ordering a pizza.

Blogger friend Rick ran into a few of those types over at some place called Waving or Drowning. Usually I avoid these scraps in which Rick immerses himself, dealing with interpretations of scripture I find somewhat meandering and arcane. That gets into my own interpretation of the Bible, which is a little too complicated to go into here…but it’s also pretty thin. To bottom-line it, I think we got put here. At significant cost. We weren’t put here to play video games, guzzle Starbuck’s, and bitch about bad weather; we’re supposed to find something meaningful to do with our lives, get ‘er done, and encourage those around us to do the same. Once you proceed from that assumption, it’s been my general experience that all these squabbles about Sodom and Gomorrah and the Levitical Priesthood pretty much sort themselves out.

So for a few days of visiting his blog, I skimmed past this one post of his and jumped to his next post. I ended up sorry I ignored this for so long, because when I finally clicked my way into this skirmish I saw something pretty amazing…posted by Rick’s declared antagonist “Sonja”:

Ahhh … Rick, now you’re being disingenuous. You and I both know that if it were not for the fact of our troops being in Iraq and and the Commander In Chief having given direct orders which caused this war, those pictures would not have been taken. Whether or not our troops were directly responsible for them or not is hardly the point, now is it?

The “disingenuous” question Rick posed, had to do with some gruesome pictures posted by Sonja of injuries received by children local to the conflict in Iraq. Sonja had directly implied that the pictures were representative of “good” things “that the US military is doing.” Rick was inquiring — disingenuously, I suppose — as to whether or not Sonja knew, for an absolute fact, that it was the United States that had done these things.

Here’s Sonja declaring it to be a non-issue. The United States started the conflict, ergo, all ensuing violence was to be laid at the feet of the “US military,” and anyone with the temerity to suggest otherwise or even question it is being “disingenuous.”

So this started a big back-and-forth during which time, the “Sermon on the Mount” liberals threw in all kinds of red herrings about Rick’s involvement in Republican politics, and his employment status with a DoD contractor. Rick, meanwhile, persevered as best he could trying to get an answer to his question.

So after I waded in and picked out just three of the questions I was inspired to ask, Mike, the owner of the blog, shut off commenting. I honestly don’t know if I did that or not. I would have to assume so, since the back-and-forth continued for quite awhile before I showed up, I only said one thing and right after that the Jenga tower collapsed. I thought I was pretty polite and cordial. Maybe not cordial enough.

Our “turn the other cheek” people, it turns out, have some pretty thin skins; it’s not what you’d expect at all, is it?

So I think we have some lessons to learn from this. One, we’ve got a lot of people walking around thinking violence is an elective thing, ALL the time — there can be no exceptions. I would have to imagine most of those folks are virginal where violence is concerned. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a place where you have the right to own a gun, and you exercise this right — and then in the middle of the night someone breaks into your house, he’s got a knife, you’ve got a gun, he’s a lot more concerned about getting away un-caught than about your personal safety…you don’t have a lot of choices, do you? Or if a man attacks your wife right in front of you and you have the means to stop him. There’s only two speeds in that scenario, go and stop. So I guess these are people inflicting their impractical and untested fanciful notions of “peace” on all the rest of us. They can’t possibly know too much about what they’re talking about, if they honestly think that’s how it works…one guy wants to fight, the other one doesn’t, so the pacifist just drones on about a bunch of stuff until the bully doesn’t want to bully anymore.

It don’t work that way in real life. Sorry.

Two. Isn’t it interesting…Iraq is supposed to be the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. It is supposed to be an “illegal and unjust war.” But it seems everyone who is opposed to the violence we have supposedly caused over there, is opposed to any & all violence as well. This isn’t true of everyone who’s opposed to our operations in Iraq, of course. But very nearly everyone. Ninety-nine percent or more, I’d say, are “Sermon on the Mount” liberals who labor under this irrational, slobbering delusion that war can be brought to an end for all time, if enough people will it to be so. That says unflattering things about the remaining one percent.

Three. It occurs to me that if you hate people and want to destroy them, but you don’t believe in fighting, this is just a natural tactic to take isn’t it? Like I said above, just demand the fish hop into your rowboat. Or like I said over at Rick’s place, go hunting and simply talk the deer into committing suicide.

I think that’s what “Sermon on the Mount” liberals are really all about. They like fighting and destroying people who disagree with them, every bit as much as anybody else. Except they’re afraid to admit it, and the people and aparatus they have made a lifetime-dedication to hating, has a lot to do with fighting itself. So they’re using words as weapons, because that’s the only option they’ve left to themselves.

They say to their enemies, hug venomous vipers to your chests, because it’s what Jesus wants you to do. Expose your jugular to the nearest tarantula, it’s what you need to do for your salvation. Most of them don’t even believe in Jesus. Like Kirk facing off against an ancient alien computer, they figure if they say the right stuff their enemies will destroy themselves.

It’s the dream of a sissy.

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On Sermon-on-Mount LiberalsTuesday, October 30th, 2007

On Sermon-on-Mount Liberals
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007