The Earth's Beauty

A few weeks ago my family and I were fortunate to spend a week in Maui. Looking over the pictures of that trip I'm reminded at how stunning the place is....the mountains, the forests, the ocean and the way water meets sky. I have often pondered the nature of beauty. Why does it illicit such strong and sanguine emotions? Why is sitting in a beautiful garden or looking out over a stunning vista such a balm for the soul? My own conclusion? Beauty is a pointer to God, a reflection of his nature.

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Just one question for opponents of the war

To go on record, I was against launching a pre-emptive war in Iraq, but not because it was not a moral or noble thing to do. My concerns had to do with the people in that region, the Iraqis, and their ability and willingness to commit to the long struggle to see democracy and freedom blossom. The test is yet to be determined; yet the courage and sacrifice of those freedom loving Iraqis is a daily thing to behold. Moreover, since launching Operation Enduring Freedom I am of the firm mind that we must endure ourselves. It is our solemn duty.

Regardless of where you stand on the wisdom of this war at least be clear of what's at stake. With his customary brilliance, Dennis Prager helps clarify the issue has few can....

by Dennis Prager

All those who support the American war in Iraq should make a deal with anyone opposed to the war. Offer to answer any 20 questions the opponents wish to ask if they will answer just one:

Do you believe we are fighting evil people in Iraq?

That is how supporters of the war regard the Baathists and the Islamic suicide terrorists, the people we are fighting in Iraq.

Because if you cannot answer it, or avoid answering it, or answer "no," we know enough about your moral compass to know that further dialogue is unnecessary. In fact, dialogue is impossible. Our understanding of good and evil is so different from yours, there is simply nothing to discuss. Someone who was asked a hundred years ago "Do you believe that whites who lynch blacks are evil?" and refused to answer in the affirmative was not someone one could dialogue with. Link to Article here

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The Face of Radical Islam

In Tal Afar itself yesterday, where some 10,000 US and Iraqi troops have been engaged in a massive offensive to recapture the ethnically divided town from Sunni insurgents, commanders spoke of the “horrible” abuses they had uncovered. The details were prophetic reminder of what al-Qaeda’s supremacy may bode.

“The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child’s body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents,” said Colonel H R McMaster, a senior American commander in the town. Link to Article here

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The Doctrine of Preemption

This piece by George Will, actually a speech given at Hillsdale College, is long. So be warned. But it is so full of substance that I heartily recommend you set aside the fifteen or twenty minutes you will need to get through it. MS



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by George Will

What I will say tonight about the war on terror draws heavily on my earlier life as a professor and student of political philosophy. A long life in journalism and around Washington, D.C., has taught me not just that ideas have consequences, but that only ideas have large and lasting consequences. We are in a war of terror being waged by people who take ideas with lethal seriousness, and we had better take our own ideas seriously as well.

I think the beginning of understanding the war is to understand what happened on 9/11. What happened was that we as a people were summoned back from a holiday from history that we had understandably taken at the end of the Cold War. History is served up to the American people with uncanny arithmetic precision. Almost exactly sixty years passed from the October 1929 collapse of the stock market to the November 1989 crumbling of the Berlin Wall-sixty years of depression, hot war, and cold war, at the end of which the American people said: "Enough, we are not interested in war anymore." The trouble is, as Trotsky once said, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." And this was a war with a new kind of enemy-suicidal, and hence impossible to deter, melding modern science with a kind of religious primitivism. Furthermore, our enemy today has no return address in the way that previous adversaries, be it Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, had return addresses. When attacks emanated from Germany or Russia, we could respond militarily or we could put in place a structure of deterrence and containment. Not true with this new lot. Link to rest of Speech here

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Unless You Repent You Will All Likewise Perish

by John Piper

June 5, 1988

Luke 13:1-5

If this text were taking place today we would come to Jesus and say, "Did you hear about the miners last week who were buried 300 feet underground by an explosion north of Frankfurt, Germany?" And Jesus would look into our eyes like nobody has ever looked before, and he would say, "Do you think this happened to these miners because they were worse sinners than the other Germans? Or that bus load of church young people that were killed in Kentucky do you think that they were worse sinners than the other Americans who escape every day? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish." Link to rest of Articel here

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Faith does breed charity

Roy Hattersley
Monday September 12, 2005
Guardian

We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings

Hurricane Katrina did not stay on the front pages for long. Yesterday's Red Cross appeal for an extra 40,000 volunteer workers was virtually ignored.
The disaster will return to the headlines when one sort of newspaper reports a particularly gruesome discovery or another finds additional evidence of President Bush's negligence. But month after month of unremitting suffering is not news. Nor is the monotonous performance of the unpleasant tasks that relieve the pain and anguish of the old, the sick and the homeless - the tasks in which the Salvation Army specialise.

The Salvation Army has been given a special status as provider-in-chief of American disaster relief. But its work is being augmented by all sorts of other groups. Almost all of them have a religious origin and character.

Notable by their absence are teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers' clubs and atheists' associations - the sort of people who not only scoff at religion's intellectual absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil. Link to rest of Article here

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Help for Hurricane Victims

For those far removed from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina but that want to help, the Salvation Army is on the front lines of providing emergency care, food, medical aid, clothing, and shelter. Click here to make a donation.

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