Well, I must admit, I have fallen oh so far behind in my blogging. Too much snot to wipe, too much refilling of humidifiers, too much cleaning up wet 3-foot long pieces of toilet paper. Really, does it have to take 3 feet of toilet paper to blow your nose once? It must for a 5 year old, specifically one named Anna. Oh, the sickness hasn't been that bad. We haven't had the flu here in almost 3 years. Now, some of you will be SHOCKED, but I did resort to the use of a drug during Caleb's bout with this flu. Anna managed to make it though with the herbs, but Caleb needed a little more help. Robitussin (is that even how you spell the thing?) is great for a little kid who's up gagging and coughing his brains out all night. Hum, it's great for the mom too. One night he woke up choking with his chest closed and wheezing, emitting that all too familiar bark a sea-lion would make. All you can do there is wrap them up and take them into the freezing night air. Does a croup wonders! We used to do this with my brother when he was little. By the time you get them to the hospital, the cold air in the car helped get the inflammation down a bit. Assuring Josh of my cold-air method was a little difficult in the middle of the night, but we all made it through. Sitting on the front porch in the pitch black, holding the little, wheezing, fever ball in my arms at three in the morning made me think. Now, the thinking wasn't all that deep, I had just gone through several days of this with Anna, so I only thought one thing. Is this worth it? I could be in bed right now, snuggled and warm, sleeping the night away, in a nice quiet house. Instead I was sitting outside holding a little kid in the freezing night air as he slept on my shoulder. The differences aren't all that striking on paper, but while I was sitting there the former seemed like heaven. I began thinking: who is raising future husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, statesmen, inventors, artists, preachers, mentors? The reality is, mothers are. Mothers who sit up with these people when they are little and can't even tend for themselves. Sometimes parenthood seems very ideological, very noble, very fulfilling, but I, for one, really forget sometimes about all the grunt work that is involved. Doesn't every noble accomplishment come only after years of grace, work, tears, persistence? I guessed it did. So I took my little preacher (that's what I call him) back into the house and we sat the night out. Of course I'm exaggerating, and I know people with 5 or 10 kids have it way worse. And, the worse is probably yet to come for me. Having said that, these nights were still difficult to my comparative easy life and it was nice to rejoice in the "heritage from the Lord", even when the heritage is 2 years old and keeps you up all night.
One other quick note. I have been looking into the Horton/Kline "two kingdom" view. It is a view that I'm afraid just utterly cripples the impact Christians could have on a culture/society. Andrew Sandlin has written a great article on it you can find here: http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/01/retreat.html I guess the next question is how prevalent is this view in the reformed church? Mr. Sandlin suggests it's increasing in popularity. Hummm... any thoughts? As if anyone still reads my forgotten blog. hehe
Lastly, this is a very well written article by Pat Buchanan, one of my favorites. Conservatives seem to forget about him when Republicans are in power. And on a side note, what's up with Bush not pardoning these 2 border patrol agents? (http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2007/jan07/07-01-03.html) For all the conservatives who looooove Bush, there must be some reason for this madness!!!
Read on for Buchanan's article:
The Ideologue
by Patrick Buchanan
January 24, 2007 Churchillian it was not. Yet the State of the Union seemed a success if Bush's purpose was to buy time from Congress to wait and see if his surge of U.S. forces into Iraq might yet succeed.
But when Bush started to describe the ideological war we are in, one began to understand why we are in the mess we are in.
"This war," said Bush, "is an ideological struggle. ... To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come to kill us."
But the "conditions" that drove those 19 men "to come to kill us" is our dominance of their world, our authoritarian allies and Israel.
They were over here because we are over there.
If Bush is going to remove those "conditions," he is going to have to get us out of the Middle East. Is he prepared to do that? Of course not. Because Bush, believing the problem is not our pervasive presence but the lack of freedom in the Middle East, is waging his own ideological war to bring freedom in by force of arms, if necessary.
"What every terrorist fears most is human freedom -- societies where men and women make their own choices."
Very American. But the truth is terrorists do not fear free societies, they flourish in them. The suicide bombers of 9-11, Madrid and London all plotted their atrocities in free societies. From the Red Brigades, who murdered Italy's Aldo Mori, to the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, who tried to kill Al Haig, to the Basque ETA, the IRA and the Puerto Rican terrorists who tried to assassinate Harry Truman, free societies are where they do their most effective work.
Stalin's Russia and Nazi Germany had no trouble with terrorists.
"Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies," declared Bush. Oh? Explain, then, why 70 million Germans, under the most democratic government in their history, gave more than half their votes to Nazis and Communists in 1933? In every plebiscite he held, Hitler won a landslide. In the year of Anschluss and Munich, 1938, Hitler was Time's Man of the Year and far more popular than FDR, who lost 71 seats in the House.
During 2006, free Latin peoples brought to power anti-American Leftists Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and came close to electing their comrades Ollanta Humala in Peru and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico.
In the free elections Bush demanded in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, the winners were the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and Shia militants with ties to Iran.
If a referendum were held in the Middle East on the proposition of the U.S. military out and Israel gone, how does Bush think it would come out?
"So we advance our security interests by helping moderates, reformers and brave voices for democracy," said Bush. But how many of those "moderates" -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, the Gulf States -- are ruled "by brave voices for democracy"?
Our Islamist enemies would likely endorse unanimously a Bush call for free elections in all those countries, as elections could not but help advance to greater power, at the expense of our friends, those same Islamist enemies.
What is Bush doing? The America that won the Cold War said ideology be damned, we stand by our friends.
"The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies," said Bush.
But if we bleed our country to give the men and women of the Middle East the freedom to choose the society they wish to live in, are we sure they will not choose a society where Sharia is law? In liberated Afghanistan, popular sentiment was behind beheading that Muslim who converted to Christianity.
What leads Bush to believe everyone wants to be like us? Is it not ideology?
To characterize "the totalitarian ideology" we confront, Bush quoted Osama bin Laden: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."
This is the true mark of the true believer. But did not the Spain of Isabella want the "unbelievers" removed from "among us"? Did not Elizabeth I feel the same about Catholics?
"Give me liberty or give me death!" said Patrick Henry of the Brits remaining in this country that Brits had founded. "Live free or die!" is the motto of the great state of New Hampshire.
This is the heart of the war we are in. Americans believe in freedom first. Millions of Muslims believe in Islam first -- submission to Allah. We decide for us. Do we also decide for them?
Perhaps the best advice we can give our Muslim friends in the Middle East is the hard advice Lord Byron gave the Greeks under the Islamic rule of Ottoman Turks:
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
