The Peacenik Satanists

^.^

Alrighty.

I went to lunch today at the local food bank. While there, I met this guy, who is a naturalist, and also a peacenik.

Now, I can understand not liking war. I don't like war either, and I hope that wars happen as infrequently as possible. I can even understand the anti-war types who believe that war is wrong, and we should not be engaged in it, and I can even understand those who think that the current war in Iraq is bad and that we should not be involved in it...I may disagree with these people...but I understand them, and why they think the way they do.

Then there are the peaceniks.

These are people who think that war...ANY WAR...is at least wrong. The guy I met at the food bank thought that people engaged in war were doing "demonic work" through the killing of other people.

Tell that to the US soliders who landed on the beaches of Normandy.

Of course, God doesn't like wanton killing. It's important enough to be one of the Ten Commandments, and Jesus himself asked people to "turn the other cheek". However, to say that God is totally against war ignores half of the Bible...you know, the half where God used war as a tool through the Hebrew Israelites to conquer the peoples living in the lands of Canaan. You didn't see God having any second thoughts about killing people who didn't worship him.

When I mentioned this to this peacenik, he scoffed at it. When I repeated it, he insisted that that's not how God works now, and when I told him that he was missing the point...that God himself has used war as a means to an end, that was when this peacenik said he was a "New Testament Christian".

That is to say, "I don't believe half of the Holy Book".

I told him he could not do that, theologically. There is a verse in the Bible that condemns a person from subtracting from the Bible, and similarly for anyone adding to it. This did not phase our peacenik, who said that the verse was probably in the book of Revelations, and that Revelations was propagandist, and probably was not written by John the Baptist at all...

I then practically laughed at him. Not only did he not take the Old Testament at value at all, he was quite willing to pick apart the New Testament as well. Now, this is America, and you can say and believe what you wish, but that does not necesarily make it true. In a debate, or argument, you have to be able to convince the other person that YOU are right in order to change their minds.

However, not only did I find that this person only took the parts of the Bible that backed his philosophy up, and discarded the rest, but he told me that on the issue of men killing men, he was not going to change his mind at all. I accused him of being closed-minded, and he admitted that on that issue, he is.

The problem with peaceniks, and Laramie has more than its share of them, because we are a college town...the problem with peaceniks is that they do not recognize that the world is full of evil people...and sometimes, the only way that evil people will listen to reason is if that reason is backed up by a heavily-armed man with a big gun, and the will to use it...and he is accompanied by about 500,000 of his friends.

Saddam Hussein had his chance. He was given 12 years, and 17 UN Security Council resolutions, as I told this peacenik. We tried our best to say: "Come on Saddam, be a nice boy. Give us your weapons of mass destruction, quit threatening your neighbors, and be nice." It didn't work. The last resolution said that there would be dire consequences if Saddam didn't heed it.

When Saddan didn't heed that last resolution, it came down to this: either we put some brute force behind the resolution, or we fold up the UN and never EVER put ourselves out to influence anything in the world ever again...because the world would have seen the UN and the US by extension as what the Vietcong used to refer to as a "paper tiger".

If the peaceniks had their way, any evil guy with a rock bigger than the next guy would be able to rule the roost by the force of the gun. They see the use of force to stop evil as evil itself, and they generally don't listen to arguments that are opposite.

Peaceniks are generally not able to be reasoned with, as my encounter with one of the ones here in town proved...and he was one of the more peaceful ones. Others I have encountered are all too willing to buy into almost any conspiracy theory that suggests that the United States is nearly the source of much of the evil in the world, or the center of oppression, or some other such nonsense. In their world, the US knew about what was going to happen on Sept. 11, and did nothing, that George Bush wanted Sept. 11 to happen so that John Ashcroft could institute the homeland security program and the Patriot Act, that George Bush and the oil men, and Haliburton started the Iraq war over oil, and on and on...

When you try to say that perhaps we are fighting a just war against a regime of evil that is linked to Osama bin Laden, they simply get louder and louder and insist that THEY are right.

Quite a shock coming from a bunch of people who presumably want to continue to excercise their rights of free speech, but apparently I am not entitled to the same thing...nor am I entitled to have a single opinion that differs from theirs.

Oh well.

From the Great Rocky Mountains, on this December day, I wish the men in uniform the best of everything! Keep fighting the good fight, you guys! Please know that most of the people back home here support you, and await the day when you can come back to us...and the sooner that day comes, the better!

John B.