This and That

Interesting piece by Victor Davis Hanson last week:

So we have forgotten that most of us after 9/11 would never have imagined that the United States would remain untouched for over four years after that awful cloud of ash settled over the crater at the World Trade Center.

Now the horror of 9/11 and the sight of the doomed diving into the street fade.

This guy has some good points to make in his article (even though the bash-the-Democrats-and-the-media theme does become wearisome after awhile).

Could those same basic points be applied (somehow) to the state of the American church?

Maybe.

Whatever the case, here are a few more tidbits from his article:

Few Americans remember that nearly 750 Americans were killed in a single day in a training exercise for D-Day, or that during the bloody American retreat back from the Yalu River in late 1950 thousands of our frozen dead were sent back stacked in trucks like firewood. Our grandparents in the recent past endured things that would make the present ordeal in Iraq seem almost pedestrian….

Instead, we of the present think that we have reinvented the rules of war and peace anew. After Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the three-week war to remove Saddam, we decreed from on high that there simply were to be no fatalities in the American way of war.

…our affluent society is at a complete disconnect with hard physical work and appreciation of how tenuous life was for 2,500 years of civilization.

So rather than stopping to praise and commemorate those who gave us our success, we can only rush ahead to destroy those who do not give us even more.

You’re welcome.

This happened recently to a family in our church. That’s pretty close to home.

It happened at a doctor’s office in Silverton, Oregon. That’s close to home also.

A mother took her toddler in for a routine check-up. In the course of the visit, the doctor asked the little girl, “What does your mommy do when you are bad?”

What?!

When the little girl matter-of-factly answered, “Spank me,” the doctor reacted by berating the mother. In front of the child.

What?!

In my estimation, that doctor committed two extremely serious wrongs here.

First, unless there is evidence (and there was none) that the child is being abused, she has absolutely and positively no business asking a little one such a question. None. Period. To me, she is guilty of a monumental ethical violation.

Secondly, to lambaste the mother in front of her daughter is a tremendous lapse in judgment, protocol, and professionalism. And manners, too.

Would the mainstream media please make an issue of doctors who thus spy on and invade the privacy of innocent families? Maybe even make this at least as big a story as the monitoring of terror suspects’ international communications?

(I’d tell you the doctor’s name but I don’t have it.)

So you tell me — Am I over-reacting? Is this normal for doctors to do? Is it morally right? Is it legally acceptable?

OK, folks. Study the bookcase contents.

Do you recognize any titles?

Alternate question: What’s the President signing?

This morning I read tale of woe:

Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that…the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months.

In a letter to Senate leaders Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of 8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February and the government would then lose its borrowing power.

“At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations,” said the letter, seen by AFP.

Snow warned that even if the Treasury took “all available prudent and legal actions” to avoid breaching the ceiling, “we anticipate that we can finance government operations no longer than mid-March”.

So the federal government is running out of “cash.”

So am I.

Now which should I be more concerned about?!

Back to the original story for just a bit:

“Accordingly, I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible.”

What a solution!

Maybe I should write to my bank and credit card companies . . . .

USA Today (via Yahoo! News) put it very interestingly:

“Be not afraid,” Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the brilliant Polish theologian, said on the October 1978 day when he became Pope John Paul II.

And it seemed he never was – spiritually, morally, politically or physically – until his death April 2 from heart and kidney failure while thousands prayed in St. Peter’s Square.

It seemed he never was [afraid] until his death.

I know what the writer means. But I wonder if the writer revealed more truth than even she knows.

What would JPII fear at his death? And did he have cause to fear after his death?

But never mind him. He lived his life, died, and received his judgment from the only just Judge.

What about me? And you?

That’s too personal? Fine. Let’s move on to something else in the news story:

Since St. Peter established the papacy….

Now there is something else that, like the theory of evolution, is presented as established fact.

And also this from the story:

He also changed the map of personal faith, with his deep devotion to the Virgin Mary….

Ah, perhaps this clarifies a potential for fear at his death.

Well, anyway, I acknowledge that JPII did accomplish some positive things.

So, let God be the Judge (as though my “letting” Him somehow affects anything). And let Mark Roth believe and live as he ought.

As a Christian, I reject this approach and this spirit:

I read this story with great dismay and disgust:

A U. S. Army soldier killed in Iraq was laid to rest Friday morning, but the Wildwood soldier’s funeral was the target of a protest group with a hateful message.

Some of their signs are too graphic to be shown on television, but their point is simple. They say U. S. soldiers are being killed in Iraq because the government is tolerant of homosexuals.

Even if you agree with the assertion attributed to them in the last sentence above, you could surely agree with me when I say protesting a funeral is tacky. (I know, that’s a mild term.)

I would also say it is not Christ-like.

(To learn a little more about this church, click here.)

Is this a neat news story or is it something for PETA to get uptight about?

Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.

The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.

I vote for it’s being a neat news story.

But what’s with the headline I chose?

Well, you surely know about the Predator used by the the US military. At first it was just a remotely-controlled, air-borne, real-time, surveillance platform. Then someone got the bright idea of adding “rocket-shooting” to that description.

These wasps are presently non-stinging, right? How soon till someone gets zapped with the bright idea of taking out the “non-” part of that description?

Just a thought. A real zinger, in fact.