The US Navy unveiled a new ship, called the USS Freedom. It is full of high tech equipment that helps us be more effective in killing the enemy at longer ranges, while being harder to detect by the enemy.
It is being billed as the new, big, bad threat to the pirates in Somalia (muslim pirates…. that’s not a new development… you have heard of the United States Marine Corps, right?), and boy it’ll do the job.
Except that it is totally useless.
You see, it has big guns and cool tech, probably goes really fast to get anywhere in a hurry and dish out justice against agents of evil. There’s a problem though: President Obama calls the shots.
President Obama, on his worldwide “bash-America” tour, made it pretty clear that he wants to avoid an image of a strong United States. He won’t let us rout the enemy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or any other nation, nor will he allow us to bring the (centuries old) fight against the (muslim) pirates.
Obama having military at his disposal is about as useful as TurboTax was to Geithner. I see Obama using police and military might against Conservatives obstructing his Socialist agenda LONG before I see Obama taking the fight to the islamic terrorists and pirates.
The new ship is a waste. Best to mothball it until we have an administration with a backbone, courage, and a desire to do Right.
(All that said, it does look pretty sweet)
I’m afraid, now, it is time to go down the road of where my mind goes at midnight.
Character. Why does a person do what is right? What makes a good person…. good? Some would argue that ‘right’ and ‘good’ are social constructs that are shaped by each society, morphing and changing with time. To some, perhaps superficial, level… they may be right. I do accept that different cultures have a different idea on good or bad. Some countries sell little kids into sexual slavery to make a buck, others send such people to jail long enough that they forget their name. However, there is more to good and evil than just social norms. There is Good and there is Evil. The question is, where do we draw the line? How do we know what is Good or Evil? Some say perspective. Perspective, some would argue, is reality.
That’s always been a bit if a sticking point with me. Reality is reality. Perception is perception. Each person feels they have a good bead on reality. Their perception is just a little more accurate than anyone else’s. And, there is logic in that, for what kind of person would purposely believe something they know to be untrue (except one lying to themselves)?
Plato wrote in his work Republic of a story that has many names. It tells of a man chained to a cave, never having seen anyone or anything outside, or even seeing outside. Instead, all he sees are shadows cast on a wall opposite him of the outside world. It was suggested, by this story, that we cannot see reality but instead can only see a shadow of what is. That shadow is perspective.
I read that work when I was in middle school (yes yes… nerd) and it kind of stuck with me. It is true, to some extent, that our perspective can shape what we find as reality, but Reality is and all we can do is try to shape our perspective to more closely parallel it.
What is…. is. What is not…. is not.
Back to Good and Evil. There’s a movement, rather old, in Christianity called Dualism. It is often distorted into many things, but at a pure level, the idea is that a person is saved and a sinner. We have Grace, but we still sin. Our allegiance is to God, but also to Man. etc. etc. etc. If we still sin, how is it that we can do good? For that matter, DO we do good?
Can our acts be considered Good? To one another, perhaps. But we are then basing Goodness upon our perception of the reality of Good rather than the actual Reality of good. What if there was something so pure that our best work was corrupted by comparison?
I want to do something nice for you, so I decide to make you cookies. You like cookies, so I decide to make you a batch. Problem is, though, that I’m a leper. I do my best, but bits of flesh and puss and blood ooze into the batter. I do my best, but bits of puss and blood get onto the serving tray and onto the cookies when I put them on the tray.
So, I’m heading to your place, ooze-covered cookies in hand, not thinking anything of it (I, after all, am a leper and over the years have become desensitized to some of those things, having dealt with it all day every day for years), glad to bring you these good cookies. I think I’m doing good. Someone hearing “Hey, they made cookies for that person” would think I’m doing good. But what I bring you is wholly unacceptable. They are corrupted by disease and are unfit.
If this absolute statement of Good exists, and we are nowhere near it, what then can be done? As a Christian, my faith is in Christ to come in, just as I’m ringing the doorbell, and exchange my plate of puss-and-blood cookies with fresh-baked award winning cookies. He cleans me, white as snow.
As a Conservative, my hope is in freedom and responsibility, for we cannot have one without the other. All freedoms to do come with responsibilities to take. Freedom tempered by prudence (and NOT by Government Intervention) allows each person to look inward for support and outward for opportunity.
When things are tough, times are dark, hope seems lost and the selfish, lazy, apathetic and easy way of giving in to socialism is so tempting…. we must hold strong. Character.
Tags: US Navy
