Sadness

While watching the Olympics opening ceremony, I've been struck by a sense of sadness and emotion.  There is so much acrimony, bitterness, and denigration of each other.  Political pundits that preach the need for unity and solidarity (as long as you are backing their causes) try to outdo each other in their ability to mock and scorn the other nations.  I was overwhelmed by a sense of how we are all children of our Father in Heaven.  Should this not be a special opportunity to celebrate the joy of the diverse expressions of being brothers and sisters?  How is it that we cannot find it with in ourselves to love and cherish each other?  Why is it that even those who should hold fast to the truth so often are found mocking and scorning the principles that would create the world that they so avidly preach for?  How have we as a world become so lost and deceived?

False Heros

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ~ Voltaire

Here is the famed Seneca, writing in the first century:

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples? There are no limits to our greed, none to our cruelty. And as long as such crimes are committed by stealth and by individuals, they are less harmful and less portentous; but cruelties are practised in accordance with acts of senate and popular assembly, and the public is bidden to do that which is forbidden to the individual. Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in secret, are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out.

The early Christian author Lactantius said of the Romans:

They despise indeed the excellence of the athlete, because there is no harm in it; but royal excellence, because it is wont to do harm extensively, they so admire that they think that brave and warlike generals are placed in the assembly of the gods, and that there is no other way to immortality than by leading armies, devastating foreign (countries), destroying cities, overthrowing towns, (and) either slaughtering or enslaving free peoples. Truly, the more men they have afflicted, despoiled, (and) slain, the more noble and renowned do they think themselves; and, captured by the appearance of empty glory, they give the name of excellence to their crimes. Now I would rather that they should make gods for themselves from the slaughter of wild beasts than that they should approve of an immortality so bloody. If any one has slain a single man, he is regarded as contaminated and wicked, nor do they think it right that he should be admitted to this earthly dwelling of the gods. But he who has slaughtered endless thousands of men, deluged the fields with blood, (and) infected rivers (with it), is admitted not only to a temple, but even to heaven.

Just as you can’t have a war on drugs without DEA agents, just as you can’t have invasive airline security procedures without TSA agents, and just as you can have a police state without police, so you can’t have a war without soldiers.

This mindset that exalts and excuses soldiers for doing things that ordinary Americans would be put in prison for must be destroyed.   

See: You Can't Have a War Without Soldiers-Laurence M. Vance