Breaking Silence, Refusing To Adjust: The US Army Attempts To Censor The Baptists

 It's not unexpected, really.

The Army has decided that evangelical Christians are a potential terrorist threat, and has focused its efforts on keeping us safe from the likes of the folks who go to Sunday School at First Baptist Church of anywhere-south-of-the-Ohio-River. Hotbeds of hatred and insurrection like Abingdon, Virginia, or Paducah Kentucky, or Enid, Oklahoma.

Damn, OS feels safer already!!

Now, a self-proclaimed Muslim Jihadi Army officer can walk into a crowded room of unarmed servicemen and women at Fort Hood, cry the 'God Is Great' warcry and begin murdering those innocent people, and that is not a terrorist act! This man has never been sent to court-martial, and likely never will be during the Obama administration.

But, those Baptist! They, by golly are a threat!! Just ask Homeland Security!

('But, but, but...weren't those Boston Bombers wannabe jihadis?' Hush-yo-mouf!! They just poor misguided souls, dat's all, let's not go dissin' nooooobodies Muslim faith, now!)

Of course, it was not long before the Army's attempt to block the site was discovered, and the word spread. Rapidly. Loudly.

Then the serious backtracking began:

The Dept. of Defense confirmed to Fox News late Wednesday that the SBC website had been blocked — but not intentionally. “The Department of Defense is not intentionally blocking access to this site, said Lt. Col. Damien Pickart. “We are working diligently to investigate what might be causing access issues for some of our service members and to correct the situation as quickly as possible.”

Translation being: Damn!! We got caught!! Of course it was deliberate, since it's impossible to 'unintentionally' block a website, but we'll just lie about that bit, and hope people don't pick up on it.
Back to the drawing board--we'll have to find more subtle ways to pressure the Evangelicals. Them and their inconvenient consciences and beliefs that there is a moral Almighty to whom they have to give account.

What puzzles OS is: So much of the military is drawn from small towns, from church-going families, many of whom have a long tradition of military service stretching back generations. From what portions of society do they now intend to recruit for military service? Will blind obedience and physical prowess be the qualities most prized? Does this not sound troubling, and familiar, this military untied from a moral tradition, and trained to swear fealty to a charismatic leader? This is the direction that we seem to be going, and it always takes a nation over the cliff.

It is disturbing, but symptomatic of a more pervasive attitude found in the upper reaches of leadership in government and academia.

Mr. Obama's remark about rural Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion is the coin of the realm in his crowd. But let's put their shared consensus another way: Somehow it became a conventional view in contemporary American politics that it is non-urban conservatives who in every case have to accommodate their beliefs to a national culture created by people who live somewhere else. "They" must adjust on abortion, guns, school prayer, sexual mores and all the rest of it. Liberals, meanwhile, not only feel no need to concede anything but use the commanding heights of the press and academia to define anyone who dissents from their ever-evolving national culture as a political fringe obsessed with people, one might say, who aren't like them.

OS does not have much to say, except: The horrors of twentieth-century Europe, the millions upon millions slaughtered, the other millions who perished of disease and starvation, the millions more displaced by war, the wholesale leveling of beautiful cities; all this was made possible by compliant populations who were persuaded to 'adjust' to a New Order, a 'modern' view of life, unshackled by outmoded religion and ethics.

We cannot afford to, and dare not 'adjust'. To simply withdraw from society, as OS sees some do, into one's own angry and heavily armed enclave, is a form of capitulation. To respond with violence instead of words and votes invites massive blood-letting--recall The War Between The States, and imagine it re-fought with modern arms. This is not an option.

We have to remain engaged, and firmly, quietly, as kindly as we can, one home at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one church at a time, one town or county at a time, one vote at a time, one state at a time--inform one and all that we will not be 'adjusting'.