Two topics present themselves today. The first is the article referenced in This Ain't Hell, But You Can See It From Here where a NYT writer referred to military retirement benefits as a "welfare program," as though military retirees were like Social Security recipients, or, worse, welfare recipients. This is truly odd, almost like the liberals I've heard who act like people in the Army are no different from people in some make-work program like Americorps. It is a characteristic of modern liberals to pretend that those who are police, firefighters, or military are somehow nothing more than those so stupid that the only way they will have anything is if liberals deign to pay them for putting up with all the crap involved in keeping the rest of us safe. See also Michael Bloomberg's decision to keep first responders away from the 9/11 Commemoration.
The second is Mel Gibson, who apparently is involved in making a film about the Maccabean uprising. ADL made a strongly worded statement about Mr. Gibson that reiterated the false claim that Passion of the Christ was anti-semetic. I am not defending Mel Gibson, because he has since proven himself to be something quite unlike what you would expect from someone who makes a religious film. I saw Passion of the Christ. The villain was me. The point of the film isn't who called for His execution (Saducees), or who killed him (the Romans), but how He died because of human evil, which lurks in every one of us. No one ever said that the film inspired us to hate Italians, though some of the most sadistic cruelty was done by Roman soldiers. But the saw is out! Anti-semetic! Anti-semetic! The people in this world who hate Jews either live in places like Saudi Arabia, or are the denizens of certain faculty break rooms at major universities.
What these stories have in common is the common thread of finding enemies where there are none, while the real problems go unaddressed.
The second is Mel Gibson, who apparently is involved in making a film about the Maccabean uprising. ADL made a strongly worded statement about Mr. Gibson that reiterated the false claim that Passion of the Christ was anti-semetic. I am not defending Mel Gibson, because he has since proven himself to be something quite unlike what you would expect from someone who makes a religious film. I saw Passion of the Christ. The villain was me. The point of the film isn't who called for His execution (Saducees), or who killed him (the Romans), but how He died because of human evil, which lurks in every one of us. No one ever said that the film inspired us to hate Italians, though some of the most sadistic cruelty was done by Roman soldiers. But the saw is out! Anti-semetic! Anti-semetic! The people in this world who hate Jews either live in places like Saudi Arabia, or are the denizens of certain faculty break rooms at major universities.
What these stories have in common is the common thread of finding enemies where there are none, while the real problems go unaddressed.
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