Did you receive a letter that looks like this from your health insurance provider?
Dear Susan Lapin (obviously, it would be your name here, not mine),
It has come to our attention that you did not vote for Barack Obama either in 2008 or in 2012. For this reason, you are not responsible for the Affordable Care Act commonly known as Obamacare. Since you are an innocent victim of this law, we will be reducing your premium to its previous rate and not limiting your coverage as we are forced to do to most of our subscribers.
Sincerely,
Your health insurance
You didn’t get such a letter? Neither did I. When we are citizens of a nation and its leaders institute faulty policies, everyone suffers. I am not really an innocent victim; I am part of a group and affected by those group dynamics. If I realized the ramifications of the last vote, perhaps I would have worked harder, spent more time and money and been more vocal in the last election cycle. Even had I done more, the candidate whom (although I was deeply disappointed in him) I thought was hands-down the better choice might still have lost. That is reality.
The liberal press and government seems to understand this when it comes to Obamacare and other policies of this administration. Otherwise, letters like the one above would be standard and anyone who didn’t vote for the winner of an election would be exempt from that person’s policies. Why then, are the liberal press as well as America’s president and his officials so focused on the ‘innocent victims of Gaza’? The Palestinians elected into leadership a terrorist party openly obsessed more with the destruction of Israel than with the welfare of its citizens. Yes, it is tragic when a newborn Gazan baby is killed whether or not his father chose to store missiles in his nursery. However, his death isn’t due to the Israeli Defense Force, but a consequence of his parents’ ideology. What if his parents are among the few, extraordinarily brave ones who oppose Hamas? (Brave because such people are usually executed by Hamas.) Sadly, the baby is still part of a group that elected to go the wrong way. That is reality.
The lowest projection of how many residents of Dresden, Germany lost their lives in the Allied bombing during W.W.II. is 25,000. Estimates range up to over 100,000. It is reasonable to assume that not every one of those killed or injured voted Hitler into power and that some citizens might have actively belonged to resistance organizations. Certainly, there were infants and babies among the dead. They were part of a group that opted for evil and so they suffered.
In World War II, American fighters had to adjust to the reality of kamikaze pilots who dive-bombed American ships, aiming to kill everyone aboard. Instead of assuming that the enemy wanted to stay alive as much as American soldiers did, the Japanese were eager to embrace death as long as they took Allied forces with then. America did its best to shoot down kamikaze pilots. Had each kamikaze pilot taken along an infant on his suicide flight, would American sailors have held their fire? Not if the country wanted to survive. It would have been tragic, but only fools, terribly naïve people, or enemies of America would have laid responsibility for the infant’s death at the feet of the U.S.A.
In a world where we are inter-related, being an innocent victim isn’t so simple. That is reality. Or, if you prefer, innocent victim are often the victims of foolish and/or evil rulers, not of whoever pulls the trigger.
The phrase “innocent victim” implies both a degree of randomness as well as a moral high ground vs. the one causing the damage. We can be truly horrified at the death of children without making the mistake of assuming that those who control them automatically hold the moral high ground. We often prosper and suffer based on the actions of those around us. That is reality and why it is so important to vote and speak up, standing firmly and unequivocally for what is right.
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Reality through the lens of Scripture
In truth all turnout is locally based. Actually I was being generous. In the last primary held a few days ago here the estimated turnout was a paltry 9-10%. I am greatly concerned that in taking our freedom and prosperity for granted, we have entered that appalling phase of APATHY prophesied by prominent historians, which leads further down the primrose path to ENSLAVEMENT. As for the privilege to vote, the rule is draconian and very simple: USE it or LOSE it.
Congratulations to the Rabbi for his ‘Ask the Rabbi’ reply: one of the finest characterizations (if kindly worded) of the Liberal mind that I have read in print. The most radical of these adherents are just like a page out of J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit: how Communism is not a political view or a mere philosophy of life, but a religion that they commit any outrage, indeed some would sacrifice their very lives to serve. Hoover would understand these left-wingers very well.
In a word, Political Correctness.
Rule 12: Pick a target, personalize it, polarize it.
– Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (1971)
Americans in general and American Christian leadership in particular have been cowed into silence and effectively neutralized by the constant cries from the Left of “Racist! Bigot!” and more recently “Islamophobe!”.
The same stategy, by the way, is used by the Narco-trafficantes south of the U.S. border. They offer “plumo or plata”. Silver or lead. Either you cooperate with them and take the bribe, or you resist them and take a bullet. American Christian leadership either keeps their mouth shut about jihad and continues to enjoy their tax-exempt revenue stream bribe, or they risk getting fired for violating the PC speech code.
The difference is not in kind, but only in degree.
Peter, I wrote a few weeks ago about how I don’t understand why Christian America isn’t out in the streets protesting. I very much appreciate many churches and individuals joining pro-Israel rallies but cannot understand why there haven’t been rallies about the Mosul expulsion. It’s straight from the early days of Islam: You have three choices 1) convert 2)live as our servants 3)leave your homeland of over a thousand years. Why the silence from American churches?
Is that 18% verified? I knew we were far from 100% but not that it was so low.
Hi Susan:
The anti-God secular fundamentalist Main Stream Media and our government propagandize about “innocent victims of Gaza” because they have one shared “value” in common: hatred for faithful Jewish people, a.k.a. anti-Semitism. This hatred is not reserved only for Jewish people. They have just as much of a visceral hatred for Christians.
How can I be so sure? Well, let me ask this question: where is the handwringing, outrage, and outpouring of sympathy for the innocent Christian victims of the city of Mosul in Iraq? These totally innocent Christians who have roots in Mosul dating back 1800 years are at this very moment being converted either in refugees (mostly in Syria), viciously enslaved or, if they resist “dhimmitude”, brutally murdered. What do we hear from the Main Stream Media and our government about this?
… crickets …
Do you expect that one day soon there will be a UN organization formed for the repatriation of these refugee Christians to their homeland in Mosul Iraq? Of course not, certainly not while the largest voting bloc in the UN is the 56 nations comprising the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation).
At the same age that American children are introduced to Sesame Street, Israel’s enemy in Gaza indoctrinates their children into the central tenet of their political ideology, which is to say, their faith. This central ideology is conveyed in one word – jihad. Kill the infidel. Annihilate the infidel’s culture. As a people, this is the entire raison d’etre of Israel’s enemy in Gaza.
Here’s the reality: just as it was with the Axis powers vs. America and her allies in World War II, the West is today engaged in a war and it a war to the death.
So what should Israel (or we Americans, for that matter) do about it? Shall we acquiesce to their brutality? Bury our heads in the sand and deny the true nature of the enemy’s culture of death? Certainly not; let us instead adhere to our own political ideology which has at its core the Judeo-Christian values that we glean from the Bible, our sacred and comprehensive blueprint of reality.
To that end, let us ever call to mind what God has said:
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” – Deuteronomy 30:19 (KJV)
May God bless you and your family.
Your Musing accurately recalls the teaching of your husband the Rabbi, about the realities of life on Planet Earth: that dire Old Testament punishments so very often are not directed at individuals, but at groups or entire societies that subscribe to ill-advised policies or rationales, or who choose poor leadership. Thus, you may be the neatest and most orderly person on your street, yet if you live in a neighborhood transitioning to a slum, the surrounding neglect and disorder will ultimately drag you down, as well.
It is clear that Hamas is (1) using innocent civilians as deterrents, and (2) cruelly and cynically using resulting civilian deaths to tarnish the Israelis in world public opinion. Would that the innocent Gazans had a way to ‘get out of Dodge!’ But as you aptly point out, they are paying the price for their leadership, just as we are for ours. Still the sordid fact remains: given all our local yokels bellyaching about Washington being on the wrong road, a mere 18% of the populace actually turns out to vote in elections. I ask you, what is wrong with this picture? Maybe popular ignorance or apathy is operative in Gaza as well, or even targeted arm-twisting (e.g.,‘Vote against Hamas, you DIE!’)??