The Battle of Algiers / Black Friday koan
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
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There are things to be said for being on the winning side of a conflict: you get to write history. There may be things to be said for being on the losing side: you gain the sympathy that accrues to the underdog. There are things to be said for supporting neither side, for being on the sidelines to pick up the pieces.
Then again, as Buddha observed in the Dhammapada, there are disadvantages to being on either side —
Victory breeds hatred. The defeated live in pain. Happily the peaceful live giving up victory and defeat.
while Christ muddies the simplicity of the whole business with a further contrarian note:
love your enemies.
Peace is not a bad side to be on, but perhaps love is more nuanced.
**
To bring us full circle, here’s another statement of the Elie Weisel position, this time in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler and executed in one of the concentration camps — together with a response to the question I’ve been posing for myself here which may perhaps providinge some measure of reconciliation, this one from a contemporary Zen Buddhist, someone for whom the appreciation of koans is a way of life:
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Mr. X:
November 18th, 2012 at 9:29 am
Charles,
I found more verification of the quote from Cardinal George of Chicago here:
http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2012/11/i-expect-to-die-in-bed-my-successor-will-die-in-prison-what-cardinal-francis-george-actually-said-2525306.html
The actual quote closed on a more hopeful note than the truncated version, in the sense that George was telling priests the blood of matyrs (in the Christian sense, not the jihadi sense) waters the tree of faith, as Jefferson said of patriots and the tree of liberty:
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”
As for the Lincoln quote you used, no doubt you’re aware of the Steven Spielberg film coming out this week and how it was screened at the White House. The Small Wars Journal article, coming half of it as it did from a Civil War historian, certainly stirred the pot of those at Sipsey Street Irregulars and other patriot sites who fear that Obama sees himself as a modern day Lincoln ready to fight a Second Civil War. They see requirements that Catholics, for example violate their consciences by funding contraceptives and drugs that could be used as abortificents. Hey, why don’t we just require kosher and halal butchers to sell pork products while we’re at it? They don’t have to eat the ham after all just sell it to the rest of us with clean consciences. Thank God at least one federal judge in D.C. introduced a temporary injunction against the law. No doubt the Obamanistas will make sure the case winds its way as slowly as possible until Obama can appoint two more justices who will insist that the churches and synagogues violate their consciences or shut down. No doubt too they will have the same bizarre zombified look Justice Roberts had after reportedly reversing himself and upholding Obamacare.
But whereas Lincoln correctly stated that provocations came from the Southern side during the 1850s in the fugitive slave acts and schemes to extend slavery across the Continent and even to Latin America, if there is to be another destructive conflict on American soil it can only come from those seeking a final revolution AGAINST the Constitution and not for it. All this ‘secession’ talk is just that, talk. The real thing the increasingly imperious centre fears is nullification and the states actually affirming that it is they, and not the imperious center, that are the true heirs to the Constitution and the folks sitting in D.C. are imposters.
Mr. X:
November 18th, 2012 at 9:32 am
In other words, not all the provocations are coming from the ‘sore losers’ side. You don’t go up to people already ornery, wag a fist in their face, and then yell ‘psych!’ like a 7th grader. Such 7th graders get punched in the nose. It seems that’s what certain very dark elements within the D.C. establishment are doing. I certainly think the majority of the bureaucrats are simply clueless and have no idea what paths of destruction they’re wreaking, what with Twinkies companies going broke and needing bailouts from Mexican billionaires friendly to Leo Gerard and the other North American Unionist transnationlist unions. But there is a small group of people who do know precisely what they’re doing, at least in terms of destruction without the creative part.
Mr. X:
November 18th, 2012 at 9:33 am
Love the Boenhoffer quote BTW. End of thread for me.
larrydunbar:
November 18th, 2012 at 11:46 pm
“You don’t go up to people already ornery, wag a fist in their face, and then yell ‘psych!’ like a 7th grader.”
*
Why not? I mean, sore losers, even ornery ones, can also be cowards, and coward don’t deserve the respect of even a 7th grader. Being punched in the nose is not something a person should worry much about when confronting a coward. It happens and may not feel good, but I believe a person can derive some satisfaction in the effort.
*
Mitt showed himself a coward by not owning his 47% comments and much of the Right ended up being cowards for not finding a deep hole to bury him in.
*
So punch away Mr. X, punch away. The planet earth is suffering and much of America has become a land of false prophets who believe it will End in their lifetime.
Stanislav Mishin warns Americans against signing secession petitions and falling for Hegelian “New Civil War” dialect | The Tweeps of War:
November 19th, 2012 at 3:24 am
[…] @ReginaldQuill has been pushing this BigSis aster Narrative since at least March 2012. This time it is sinister elements in D.C. and NOT the ‘Confederates’ who WANT to provoke…. It’s the ‘federals’ or more accurately the ‘globals’ or ‘Gobal […]