Don’t Dispatch Diplomacy In a Place With No Diplomats

I am sick with the sugary taste of the  sycophants’ words sweeping over the airwaves today  about President Obama’s speech to Muslims in Egypt. In typical non-relevant journalism style their stories mainly repeat what Obama said, point out meaningless phrases that somehow they believe signals something else and pontificate on what it will mean to the Muslim world.

While I’m no xenophobe,  I could care less what the Muslim world thinks of me in my home in Oklahoma. It’s the terrorists who seek to kill me, my way of life and my allegiance to whatever God I choose that I’m worried about. The fact is that the Arab world has hated the Christian world since basically the Crusades. But it wasn’t always this way.

Before Muhammad began expanding Islam with the tip of his sword, Christianity’s birth place was in the Arab-Judeo world. One of the first true churches of Christ was in Iran – then called Persia – for Christ’s sake.

And yes Christians – especially evangelical Christians – took a stance that spreading God’s word and asking people to come to Christ was its purpose and this evanglizing led many Arabs to Christ. But like with anything Christianity had a human element and some very bad things happened. I’m oversimplifying to get to the point but you get my drift.

Since the 11th and 13th centuries when the violent rift between Christianity and Islam hit its stride with the Crusades the two faiths have been battling constantly. As it probably always did, faith began to inform political, economical and historical context. Nation states were born and some separated their policies from their gods while others didn’t.

So you have today where a battle that started in 1095 is played out in Internet cafes and building tenements in Gaza and the West Bank. So with that backdrop Obama rides on his brown horse to the Middle East to “rectify,” the bloodlust of the eight years before him with a speech to placate those whose hatred of us is literally embedded in their DNA.

As he admitted “no one speech,” could erase the historical hatred that spews from the Middle East or heal the wounds of the frustrated masses who live there. So why try, I ask.

Then people inevitably yell out the D-word. Diplomacy. You can’t achieve peace by the gun. Heads of state must talk. They must negotiate. They must trade in treaties and parse speeches and shake hands. Yes this is all well and good if the disagreement is over tea or coffee. But when the very vein of humanity is at stake – the ideals of freedom, democracy and free expression are under attack, I’m sorry diplomacy is not the way to go.

Though I’m a state’s right advocate Lincoln was right to do what he did. Diplomacy was not an option. Not when the South convened a convention to succeed from the union. Not when they elected their own president and formed their own army. No, to settle that disagreement it took a man who believed in absolutes. And Lincoln absolutely believed that if he did not act the union of the United Staes would be no more.

But in America we do not believe in absolutes any more. Crusades for diversity, tolerance and acceptance have eroded the strong lines that historically we have drawn in our moral sandlots. So instead of condemning terrorism we applaud it simply as the only legitimate expression of the oppressed. Instead of calling out the extremism embedded and demonstrated in the name of Islam we give way to faith reconciliation committees and inter-faith tolerance.

As a Christian I want every one to hear about Jesus Christ. But I don’t want to do that with the barrel of a gun. Jesus doesn’t need an armed army. So why does Allah?

Obama and all his minions miss the point. We are not fighting against a religion, a people or an ethnic group. We are murderously opposed to the dilution of the free will of human beings under regimes who are fueled by their own sense of power or allegiance to an unmovable god. This respect for individual rights and free will is so beautifully espoused in our country’s constitution but are basic tenets of any construct that seeks to honor the dignity of all human beings. Any attempt to erode this is ground for fighting words. We cannot placate those who would seek to erode the freedom of humanity be them outsiders or people within our own family. America believes that. In fact we killed more of our than any enemy to preserve such freedom. Why do we need to abate that fervor now?

In response to Obama’s speech, David Dell commented on the New York Times online article, ” Is it possible for an informed person to rejoice in this speech without cynicism?”

To Mr. Dell, I point you to this photograph recently unearthed by  Life.com. It shows a relatively sane looking German honor guard saluting British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain walking regally along with SS guards on his way to meet Hitler in 1938. After the meeting the Prime Minister was convinced he had brokered a “peace during our time.” A year later the word peace was removed from the world’s lexicon as the world battled a totalitarian hell-bent on world domination and destruction. There are those who would argue that this “peace agreement,” put a halt on Hitler’s plans and was the reason he lost the war. But to those I say when a duck quacks it shows you its a duck. Why in the world would you wait for it to show you it’s an alligator?

Totalitarians do not engage in diplomacy. They want everything and do not want to give up anything. To deal with them you have to be total in your demands. But it’s tough to be total when you have no moral center or abhor absolutes as Obama clearly does.

The only thing he’s absolutely certain of is that he wants everyone to like America again. Excuse me Mr. Prez., I’d rather people like freedom more.

Eating the Apple and Walking Into the Wild

Movie Poster c/o rottentomatoes.com

I’m probably the last Democrat to see “Into the Wild,” the film based upon priceless adventurer writer Jon Krakauer’s book of the same name. I had read excerpts from Jon’s book in “Outside,” magazine. So I knew what to expect.  Which is why I had avoided the story treating it like an Insync song – I knew it was popular but it wasn’t supposed to be popular to me.

This coming-of-age story about the fragile soul that is Chris McCandless seems like the quintessential liberal anti-suburbia, pro-Jack Kerouac, road-journey. Set up is progressive archetype all the way: the socialist protagonist eschews the trappings of American success to bond with those he deems less fortunate and an earth he feels isn’t as appreciated as it should be. As depicted in the film and in Jon’s writings, it seems Chris wasn’t at all that way. He was a more 3-D character than most gave him credit for and as a journalist and prolific profile writer,  I should have known that he wasn’t the cliche I expected.

For those who haven’t heard of the story, days after graduating from an elite private university in Atlanta, Chris, an affectionate, compassionate young man with a penchant for wanderlust, sends his remaining college fund money – $20,000 – to the progressive help group OxFam and takes off to go find himself and a future he can stomach. He says nothing to the parents, who presumably outfitted him with all that cash, footed the bill for his college years and paid for this room and board for the last 19 years and simply disappears in his Datsun. Along the way he burns his money – literally and sets off on a wild adventure.

After months of frolicking around America the beautiful, living with beatniks, hippies, good folks and good ole’ boys, Chris finally decides to test his carnal nature against God’s creation in Alaska. It seems nature was too formidable a foe.

I waited so long to see this movie because I couldn’t take another depiction of some self-indulgent white kid with more than I could ever dream of throwing it away for some soul-searching journey. Only the rich, I believe, have the luxury of escape.

Only the rich and the criminal – which to some is redundant – can throw off the cares of this world and be so wholly involved in self that they could disappear without a trace and have no one depending upon them enough that they had to be found. When I was 15 years old I told my mother I wanted to take a year after graduating high school to travel and “find myself.” She grabbed my shoulders and pushed me into the bathroom. “Here,” she said pointing to the mirror. “There you are.” And that was all the self-discovery space I received.

So it was with contempt and a drop of envy that I sat down to watch Chris’ story fictionalized but highly matched in Sean Penn’s film “Into the Wild.”  I was pleasantly surprised.

I was charmed by Chris’ film character. Yes he was totally against commerce but he also wasn’t afraid of hard work. He earned what he needed and he created everything else. I admired his self-reliance as much as questioned his cowardice. I thought it was cowardly to run away from his family and not confront them for the hurt they caused him. But hey to each his own.

I found his innocence radiant and  ridiculous and, as it turns, out fatally dangerous. He was an idealist but we all know that life is filled with reality. And Chris – noted in his journals – learned too late that you can’t run away from life in order to find true happiness. And so I started thinking that this film I so abhorred was really reaffirming for those who choose to stay in life, who choose not to check-out. And it seems Chris, through his posthumous diary, agreed.

Jon says Chris’ untimely death was really a series of naive mistakes. Blinded by his search for truth through ideal-colored glasses Chris failed to bring a little reality to his picture.  But I say Chris’ demise came because he forgot one fundamental thing – to know means death because only in death can we truly know.

In all of us there is a little of Chris – a knowledge-seeking being desperately trying to make sense of an uncaring and unkind world. We search for that truth in literature, in people, in church and in the land. We are all Adam and Eve wondering why we’re here and taking bites out of apples that we think hold the key. People like to say it was God’s limitation that did the first couple in. I like to think it was their hubris. Their quest to not just know God but to be equal to God. This hubris is the fuel driving that human quest for purpose.

For Einstein it was theoretical physics.  And for Chris, it was nature. But in our quest to know we encounter things that are simply inexplicable. And in our journey to touch what I believe is God we fall short sometimes, more than not, with disastrous consequences.  Atom bombs, mental illness, suicide and unintended deaths can arise.

As a God-believer I accept my limitation. As a Christ believer I marvel in my salvation despite them. But as a plain ole’ human I remember, as we all should, that I am but a blink in a world of stares and sometimes we don’t really matter. Even though at others times we do.

So I’m glad I saw this movie. It confirmed my mom’s assertions. That you are where you’re at and no earthly realm can give you more self-discovery than that. Oh and it’s just reckless to go to stay in the Alaskan bush, climb a mountain, swim in an ocean by yourself. Duh.