Stick with what you know

Why are the Southern Baptist concerned about global warming? Because it's a political football and they want to be involved in politics in the worst way. I don't know of a single other denomination that gets involved as much as they do. They would like nothing better than to be the National Church if the Church and State ammendment was ever abolished. This goes hand in hand with their "We know what's best for everyone "and "Everyone else except us is going to Hell" attitude. Over the last few weeks, I've been giving some thought to what defines different Christian denominations and I've come to the conclusion that the Evangelical Protestants (Baptists included) tend to be all about the individual ("You're going to to hell if you don't convert) where as the mainstream Protestants (Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodists, et al) and Catholics are more about "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers....". If you think about it, they're (Evangelicals) really like Liberals in the sense that if they didn't have people to constanly remind about being sinners and constantly in need of being "saved" they wouldn't exist. Liberals can't exist without a constituency of victims and without telling everyone else that they're doing it all wrong without really giving any alternatives (sound familiar?). Mainstream Christianity is a way of living much like Conservatism is. My advice to them is to stick to matters of religion and leave politics to the politicians.

Come On, People!

I was sort of surprised to see this in the NY Times but it illustrates the mindset of the Islamic Jihadists. They don't think like we do and we can't communicate with them in the same way we would each other. The sooner people accept what we are dealing with, the sooner we can unite to put them out of our misery. As long as our culture and society is fragmented, they will feel they can accomplish their goals. On the other hand, if we can convince them that we are all united in exterminating them, they'll back off and find someone else to pick on. Just like the schoolyard bully, if they don't have anyone to pick on, they end up just blending into the woodwork. You'll notice that Al-Qaeda doesn't pick on Israel. It's because Israel doesn't take any crap from anyone. Hamas and the Palestinians just haven't figured that out yet because they're doing Iran's dirty work and don't realize they're being used. I know a lot of people feel betrayed by the administration's actions in Iraq but I still feel like it's better to take the battle to them rather than sit back and let them try something again on US soil.