Category Archives: Faith and Politics

Iran in Perspective

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ayatullah khamenei

ayatullah khamenei (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The Most Dangerous Man in the World”
Patrick J. Buchanan
The American Conservative
August 17, 2012

Pat Buchanan and I have not always agreed, but I was impressed by his rebuttal to The Weekly Standard‘s scare-tactic essay on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that named him “the most dangerous man in the world.” Pat puts Iran’s leaders into perspective, noting that they are no where near as dangerous as the frightening combination of Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedong, and Curtis LeMay. As for modern times:

And if we should fear this most dangerous man in the world, why do not the Iraqis, Turks, Azerbaijanis and Pakistanis, his neighbors, seem to fear him? The Paks, with scores of nukes, seem less nervous about Iran than democratic India, with whom they have fought
several wars.

As an American and a Jew, I’m not about to invite Khamenei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or any of their closest friends to a dinner party at my place anytime soon. But there are threats aplenty in the world today, and by focusing on one we are blinding ourselves to what might be the real threat, and in the meantime creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The way to deal with Iran is realpolitik, not ideology. That is the only approach that will keep the region at peace, Israel safe from a new threat, and America out of a new war.

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We Want Fighter Pilots, not Sky Pilots

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AF Religion Memo up on Billboard Near Academy | Military.com.

As if the US Air Force didn’t have enough problems, the service continues to face challenges related to the overzealous evangelicals on the campus of the Air Force Academy.

The protestant chapel in the Air Force Academy...

The protestant chapel in the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel. This occupies most of the top floor. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are all for faith in the cockpit, in the foxhole, and on the deckplates. We just don’t think anyone should have faith foisted on them, especially in an environment where they could be under the mistaken (or correct) impression that their religious views could affect their career. That’s harassment.

The leadership of the Air Force needs to make it clear to everyone, especially at the Academy: America is a nation of many creeds, and the Air Force must reflect that.

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The Slide to Perdition

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Despite assertions to the contrary, America is not a “Christian Nation.” It is, rather, a Nation of Christians…and of Agnostics, Jews, Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, and a lot of people who declare themselves to be unaffiliated. And this is as it should be.

The nation’s founding fathers, nearly all of whom were Christian, were nonetheless moved to base America’s religious life on tolerance, and its public affairs on a studied non-sectarianism. This was neither an accident nor a spasm of fashionable enlightenment realism: it was pragmatism informed by history. The nation’s founders were all-too aware that sectarian violence – or political violence in the opportunistic guise of sectarian fervor – had torn many European countries asunder, and they wanted no part of it. And, of course, many of the colonies had been founded or nurtured by refugees from religious persecution.

These patricians understood that any society that clung to a single faith set the stage either for communal violence or the wholesale expulsion of faith. They understood that it was (and is) impossible to sustain a free nation where are are viewed as equal while placing one faith above all others. Declaring America a Christian Nation would have made all citizens not professing the same faith to become less-equal, second-class citizens, lacking the same rights as their Christian bretheren.

Whatever the intent behind declaring America a Christian Nation, doing so puts the country on a path that undermines the Constitution, flies in the face of the principles on which the nation was established, and marks the first step down an icy slope that leads to persecution, inquisition, and, conceivably, the end of the Republic as we know it.

It is for these reasons that every true conservative, regardless of his faith or fervor, must reject the effort to install any faith as a national religion, even symbolically or rhetorically, no matter how good or “right” it may feel to do so. It may satisfy one’s religious yearnings, but it places in jeopardy the very system that allows us to express them.

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