‘Commentary’ Archives
KEEP THE DOOR OPEN
By Peter Molenaar In consequence to May”'s column “Mind and Body Unite”, I did catch some flak from the comrades. Hey, can”'t a lonely atheist do a little outreach? Well you, Peter, by opening the door to agnosticism have, at the very least, looked upon a “slippery slope”. Decide, please. All right then, I shall open the door even further. Yes, my motive here is part political inasmuch as I work with a coalition which includes ISAIAH. ISAIAH is itself a coalition of more than 100 Christian congregations, including from this neighborhood, and throughout Minnesota. Their mission is pro-labor, pro-peace, and anti-racist. In one instance I was actually the only non-Christian in a room full of ISAIAH folks. Trust me, they were rational and collaborative, and in many ways strikingly normal people. Some time later, while serving as a bus captain en route to a downtown protest rally, I noted the collared pastor among [...]
The “Laws of War” are the worst idea ever
Just like the “Iraq War”, Obama is now putting a projected “deadline” to end the “Afghan War”, is this even possible? How can he say that the 2014 deadline will mean that “the Afghan War as we understand it is over” --it appears he doesn”'t understand “war”. If he is in a real “war”, then the “war” decides when it is over. If he can “end” the “war” whenever he wants to, and just walk away””what he is partaking in is equal to a video game. And if he does have the power to “end the war” whenever he wants, why not just “end it” now and save a lot of lives and money? They give themselves way too much freedom once they have defined their actions as a “war”. Let”'s say bin Laden attacked New York City and Washington with a military and Bush attacked Baghdad with commercial passenger jets slamming into [...]
