Oh, for those looking for the information about the Hemmingway Cats - read yesterday's post. 

 

There is something wrong with the fan on my laptop.  It sounds like a chain-saw.  The dimwits (I need to find a new word) at HP don’t comprehend the problem and it will be at least a week before I can get down to John at Oasis Computers in Roswell.  The real problem is the fact that you just can’t trust laptop repair to just anyone.  There are to many crackpots out there who think the solution to anything is to remove Norton and install AVG and no matter what the problem everything is going to be just peachy keen.

 

I know it sounds pathetically ‘liberal’ but I find that I cannot rejoice in the execution of anyone, no matter how evil, who dies without Salvation.  Sorry, but that’s how I believe.  I truly oppose the death penalty for everything but treason.  My thinking is if a person is truly, really and truly pro-life, they cannot be anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. 

 

To me this television countdown to Saddam’s death is macabre, like public hangings here during the day of the Wild West.  There is no reason for levity.  An evil brutal man is going to die, and get off easy.  He’s done.  Is this true punishment?  Somehow I don’t think so.  I like a little appropriate creativity in punishment, making them fit the crime.  What good is it?  To his followers he becomes a martyr.  To those he terrorized, nothing is ever going to make things right.  I just don’t know how I feel except the way I feel about anyone who dies without knowing the Salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  To me it isn’t the execution that is the ultimate punishment, it is to die without Christ. 

 

Life is so fragile and precious, and so very precarious.  As each day passes (probably because I keep getting older – which beats the alternative) I am more and more aware of the privilege of life,  liberty, and the Salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  To bring home the point, a few minutes after writing these words, FOX began televising the arrival of President Ford’s body at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, the honor guard, the playing of Hail to the Chief and Oh God Our Help in Ages Past.  Under the scene, the ever-present news crawler brought constant comments about the impending execution of Saddam. 

 

Was there ever such a contrast?

 

I watched as this believer, this man of God who truly did try to practice the teachings of Christ was given the majestically dignified trappings of office.  I thought of Saddam, who murdered so man, who terrorized millions, hiding in that spider hole (the nephew of a very good friend is one of the heroes who pulled him out!), spending what appears to be his last moments of life.  All I could think of was the story of Ahab and Jezebel and her demise.  Upon her death, having been cast out of the windows of her palace, her body was consumed by dogs then vomited back up again.  And then contrast the opulent evil of Jezebel and the holiness of Elisha and the appropriateness of the contrast of the two stories.

 

According to Robert I. Bradshaw,

 “…Elisha received his call to the Lord’s service out of the blue, but his response was immediate and dramatic. He severed his links with his past life, burning his plough and slaughtering his pair of oxen. During his early ministry Jesus Christ seems to have alluded Elisha’s call (Luke 9:61-62), stressing that to be one of his disciples required even greater commitment. Nevertheless Elisha remains an outstanding example of humility (3:11), who faithfully served his new master until he departed. He showed his determination to receive what he had been promised by the Lord and would let no one distract his from it (2 Kings 2:1-10). When he came into his own ministry he refused the riches that were offered to him by Naaman the Syrian (5:15-16; 2 Tim. 6:6-10) and he was able to see with spiritual insight that the he was not alone in his struggle (6:18). The writer to the Hebrews alludes to his ministry as one of the Old Testament heroes that should inspire us to greater devotion, because the promises that we have received are greater than theirs (Heb. 11:35,39-40).”

I finally ended up calling a friend who is an Episcopalian priest.  I told her about what I saw and what I felt.  She too feels the Lord is showing me something.  I do know if a person does not find Christ they become as vomit from dogs when they are dead.  What a horrible fate.  I also began praying for Saddam’s soul.  Is anyone praying that somehow in these last few hours he might somehow accept Christ as his Lord and Savior?  Or, are we so busy thinking about revenge and the passing of a monster that we forget as Christians our primary mission is to win souls, to facilitate the non-believer’s evolutionary path to salvation through Christ via John 3:16.  Remember, in those last hours of life, Timothy McVey found Christ. 

I also know this is a horrid thing to say, but there is an analogy between the Jezebel story and Islam and indeed all non-believers.  No matter how rich and powerful a person is, if they do not have Christ, they are going to meet the same eternal fate as Ahab and Jezebel.  Now, as Christians what is our responsibility?  Scary, isn’t it?  In order to carry out the instructions of Christ, to bring the love of Christ to the unbeliever, we’re literally putting our heads on the chopping block with these people.  I guess if it was good enough for the Apostle Paul….  It reminds me of one of Fr. Ron’s (also Episcopalian) favorite hymns.

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

Text: Lesbia Scott
Music: John H. Hopkins

1.             I sing a song of the saints of God,

                patient and brave and true,

                who toiled and fought and lived and died

                for the Lord they loved and knew.

                And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,

                and one was a shepherdess on the green;

                they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,

                God helping, to be one too.

 

2.             They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,

                and his love made them strong;

                and they followed the right for Jesus' sake

                the whole of their good lives long.

                And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,

                and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;

                and there's not any reason, no, not the least,

                why I shouldn't be one too.

 

3.             They lived not only in ages past;

                there are hundreds of thousands still.

                The world is bright with the joyous saints

                who love to do Jesus' will.

                You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store,

                in church, by the sea, in the house next door;

                they are saints of God, whether rich or poor,

                and I mean to be one too.

 

Thank you Michael Medved – you are literally an answer to my prayers, that our conservative pundits and talk show hosts will see and respond to reason.  Medved has been hitting the many nails right on the heads of our out of control RIGHT conservatives.  Today is his very best salvo, yet.  Please keep it up.

 

Lately Michael Medved has been coming down hard as the conservative voice of reason in a world gone wild.  Today his Townhall entry is no exception.  With both barrels blazing he takes out the lunatic fringe right using this much harped upon paranoia about a North American Union as his platform. 

 

The much feared, very imaginary North American Union is the darling of the paranoid right, and one of the finest examples of the extreme fringe that has begun taking over the GOP and reasoned Conservativism.  I don’t know how closely you have been following the hysteria, but it has become World Net Daily’s own personal version of “I am pregnant with Martian Elvis impersonator’s love child.”  It is constantly used as a fund-raising tactic by many of the same organizations and individuals who are extremely anti-immigration.  People who should be reasonable, rational thinkers have adopted the clarion call, thus providing an even greater opportunity to make the conservative end of the GOP sound like snake-oil tele-evangelists.

 

Medved writes, “Yes, we need immigration reform, but if substantial elements of the right become fixated on secret plans for “North American Union,” then they will make themselves irrelevant to the national debate framing and shaping that reform. Paranoia is paralyzing, and leads to powerlessness and marginalization.

 

In the 26 years I’ve been a conservative Republican I’ve never seen our party and our principles facing greater danger of pushing our ideas and our leaders out of the mainstream, out of the sunlight of sanity and rational discourse and into the fever swamps of sickness and delusion and dementia.

 

Please – take careful note of anyone in politics (even some “reputable” US Congressmen) or media who gives even a moment’s credence to the “dangers” of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or the North American Union, or the Monster Highway. Write down the names of such people, and remember the names. And then when the fraudulent stories have been discredited or simply disappeared (like the brain-dead, laughableY2K scare, or the U.N. National Parks conspiracy, or the concentration camps and black helicopters that were supposed to menace opponents of globalization), or when the tall tales have morphed into some other attempt to paralyze the unsuspecting public with paranoia, please refer once again to the names on your list of fatuous fear-mongers AND TREAT THEM WITH THE DERISION AND CONTEMPT AND DISREGARD THEY SO RICHLY DESERVE….”

 

Amen.  I couldn’t have said it better.

 

William Safire, prophet?  The Opinion Journal on McCain-Finegold redux.   Read Strata-Sphere.  AJ Strata says Bush and Lieberman are the most powerful people in DC. 

 

OUR GUYS:  Malkin has a piece about Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, an injured hero.   For a soldier’s take on the impending execution of Saddam, read Ben of Mesopotamia.  He is one of the first bloggers I’ve found today who isn’t just giddy with happiness over the death of a monster.   

 

Rightwing Nuthouse is looking at the impending execution through much the same eye.  There is nothing funny about it.  I see no reason to rejoice.   Contrast it with the giddy thread from Red State.

   

PRIMARIES 2008:  The RCP Blog on Hil’s problems in NH. Ah, there are a few skeleton’s in Obama’s closet, maybe? Eye on 2008 says Romney is in deep do in Michigan. And Paul Weyrich’s view of Romney.  (I agree, he – Romney – is a fake) Is Edwards the one to beat?