There is no Greater Love than to Lay Down Your Life for a Friend . . .
Pfc. Ross McGinnis (assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment “Blue Spaders”) from Knox, PA, died from a grenade blast in Iraq on December 4. It is being reported that he threw himself on a live grenade in his humvee, saving the lives of four other soldiers. How can America refuse to honor such heroic selflessness? Shouldn’t we do everything possible to ensure that extraordinary young men like McGinnis and the other fallen heroes will not have died in vain?
Conservatives More Generous. Should We be Surprised?
A new book by a Syracuse prof demonstrates that conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, give more to charity than liberals. This might fly in the face of conventional wisdom, which holds that liberals “care” more about the poor and victims of injustice than do conservatives. But to conservatives, this revelation is no surprise. I have often believed that most liberals advocate big government programs–and the requisite high taxes necessary to carry them out–because such programs relieve the individual of the burden of taking responsibility for our neighbors in need. It’s easy to say, “let the government take care of it,” and feel good about yourself, while never having to get personally involved in the lives of the less fortunate. It’s much harder to devote the time and energy to evaluating the innumerable charities that compete for our dollars, to determine which ones are not going to rip you off and are most effective at getting results, and to then decide how much to contribute and whether to volunteer.
Furthermore, big government programs are funded coercively via taxation. And a key element of private charity is totally absent: the benefit that giving brings to the giver, not just to the recipient. Conservatives, especially those religiously inclined, realize that giving to worthwhile causes elevates and ennobles the giver. By such giving, we live out Christ’s command to provide for the “least” of His brothers and sisters. The personal fulfillment that one derives from voluntarily giving one’s own treasure, time, and talent to another is not possible through taxation, where one has no choice but to “give.”
New Citizenship Test
Though modest, this seems like a step in the right direction. There ought to be a way to define at some level what it means to be an American. If we could share a common understanding of certain fundamental principles of American citizenship that the left and right and middle could roughly agree on, we might be able to preserve what it means to be a nation. This is, I know, hopelessly idealistic and yet absolutely essential to our national survival.
This is not WWII. It’s a different war, different enemy.
Sen. John Warner said War in Iraq longer than WWII. You would think a WWII veteran and US Senator would know the difference between Iraq and World War II. As brutal as the Nazis were, have we ever faced an enemy before that routinely and randomly attacked its own civilian population as a military tactic? In the larger sense, especially in conventional terms, the military objectives in Iraq have been achieved. Saddam was deposed, hunted down and captured, tried and convicted, and executed. And a new government was instituted. The phase we are in now–occupation or “nation building”–is not going as well, but how can it when the Islamofascists are using the tactic of wanton, random killing of the country’s civilian population? Analogies to Japan and Germnay post WWII don’t really apply. But if you want to make the comparison, how long did we occupy Japan after WWII? We didn’t turn over Japan to the Japanese government officially until 1952, although Okinawa remained under U.S. control until 1972. And we had military forces stationed in Japan until . . . Oh, WE ARE STILL THERE. Same for Germany.
If we can’t sell modest, partial Social Security privatization, we’re in trouble
When President Bush gave up on his very modest attempt to privatize a small percentage of social security, on a voluntary basis, we should have know we were in deep trouble. When the electorate apparently voted against this modest proposal in the recent Congressional elections, we know we have our work cut out for us. How conservative is a country when the majority of voters seem to be saying that they don’t want the choice of controlling a small part of their retirement fund, a fund that came from their own money that they earned through their own labor? It’s kind of scary when you think about it. The same people that supposedly distrust big government (obviously this is debatable) have no problem with big government having sole power to determine how well–or poorly (more likely)–they will live after age 65.
Is America really that conservative?
Conservative talk show hosts typically say that America is mostly a conservative country, and they have even pointed to the 2006 Congressional elections as proof, saying that even though the Democrats took over, most of the Democrats who defeated incumbent Republicans ran and won as “conservatives.” This theme was touted by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others. Yet as much as we would like to believe this, is it really true? By what measurement are the newly elected Democrats evaluated as “conservative.” One liberal website (http://mediamatters.org/items/200611090003) went right to each of the winning Democratic candidate’s websites and other written records and found that almost to a man–and woman–they are not conservative on five major issues: the war, Social Security privatization, abortion, raising the minimum wage, and embryonic stem cell research. I hate to throw cold water on the conservative establishment’s attempt to find a “silver lining” in this election result, but we need to face reality, or we’re going to be in for more such “thumpings” in the future.
