Winter brings with it road salt around here. And so, Rochester, it seems, has something more than it’s share of car washes. There are four of them within a short drive of Casa De Bit, two of those within sight of the house if you stand on the roof, as I did last summer while tending an antenna issue. The salt that collects on the cars tends to boost carwash sales as people attempt to prolong the life of their cars. The harsher the winter, the more business they do. Of late, these people have been doing a bang-up business indeed.
I’m guilty of it myself; I run Bit’sBox though one pretty frequently as well.
While running through an automated car wash recently, I made a discovery; Not everyone prepares their car for being washed. Specifically, there were a number of those magnetic ribbons… You know the kind…. that had collected on the floor of the carwash… apparenly having been sprayed off. And of course the people never knew.
The Ribbons themselves? Oh, you’ve seen them; They’re everywhere of late, Yellow, Red, White and Blue. Supporting the troops, urging us to pray for our troops, God Bless America, and so on. And the occasional pink one for Breast Cancer. You’ll see them on about every car that goes by in about every City. Oh, I nearly forgot…and there are Black ones, too…. The magnets are black on the magnetic side, of course, and when face down in the carwash… well, you get the idea.
Thinking it might be interesting to have a small collection of these ribbons of all colors… and on nothing more than a whim, I arranged to go through and collect those magnets from where they had fallen. On my first trip, I got eight of them. It instantly struck me that there are several different makers of these things because ones I’d thought from the same source, were upon A/B comparisons, obviously not made with the same tooling, or even by the same artist. There’s a lot of people making these things, it seems.
No, I didn’t put them all on Bit’sBox, or give them to family and friends, yet.. Remember, it’s winter around here. Rather, for safekeeping, I stuck them on the inside of the back door to the house… the one that leads out to the garage. At the moment, there are nineteen of these things on that door, waiting for a change of the weather.
On a recent evening, I was coming home from work, and happened to stop by to pick up the latest crop of ribbons, and made a discovery… not all of the ribbons that were black, were face down. One was black on both sides… and said on one of them… “No war… Work for peace and justice” It was the only one of it’s like I’d ever seen. Idiots tend not to do well around here.
Once I got past my initial annoyance that such idiots actually exist, I started breaking down the message into its component parts.
“No war” seems clear enough; they don’t support the war effort. Nor, apparently, those fighting it. How they managed to get from that to ‘work for peace and justice” is a stretch, since it seems to me that’s exactly what we’re doing over there. I say this with a clear mind and heart and no hint of irony at all. That is, after all, the purpose of a military. To illustrate this, I’d like you to please consider a historical perspective;
Were the people fighting against the Nazis working for Justice? I daresay they were; There was no way to bring about justice without fighting the Nazis; and alas, without many giving up their lives in that effort.
Were they working for peace? Indeed, were they fighting for peace? Again, I daresay they were; since peace would not have been attainable without the forcible removal of Hitler’s gang of thugs from the world stage. (So much for the Abbie Hoffman argument that fighting for peace is like humping for virginity”.) Neville Chamberlain’s efforts to make peace with Hitler proved ineffective because there are some people that simply cannot be negotiated with. His efforts to make peace with the Nazis failed not because Chamberlain was not a good man, making a good effort, but rather because Hitler was not. There are people like that in the world today, as well, and I suspect always will be. And so will the need to make war in the effort to extend peace be always needful.
That is exactly what’s going on in the middle east today, people; bringing the war that was pushed onto us, to the Middle East, we are in fact working for peace by removing those who would wage war on us. We have brought the down the Taliban, we ahve brough Saddam Husein and those of his cronies that are still alive to the bench of justice. And so, we are as the black ribbon exhorts us to… working for peace and justice.
Now as to their not supporting the war, I think it worthy of note that the left in this country has turned it’s backs so solidly on their former icon… John F. Kennedy, who told us we should pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. It amazes me that the Democrats hold JFK to be Iconic when they’ve turned their back on his call in the matter of freedom. And yes, war and it’s costs are included in the list of what Kennedy was talking about. Because, as I’ve shown here, working for those things Kennedy held us to, often means breaking out the firepower.
Another idea that fits here, is the image of the policeman. Occasionally, the police are forced to use violence to pursue justice. It stikes me that so many of those calling for ‘peace and justice’ are the same who call for the disarming, and generally tying the hands of those charged with the task of working for justice…. the Police. At the very least, one must needs assume that such people are operating under a different version of what is ‘just’.
With that idea in mind, let’s put a face on this attitude of the left and it’s motivations in objecting to our Iraq freedom eforts… a face in the news recently… Lynne Stewart, who was recently convicted of helping Arab Terrorists. On it’s face, such a convinction does not make the person, or the movement they’re attached to, sound overly peaceful. No more do the words she uses to defend herself, in open court:
“To rid ourselves of the entrenched, voracious type of capitalism that is in this country that perpetuates sexism and racism, I don’t think that can come nonviolently.”
Even if we accept that Stewart is, as she claims, trying tow work for justice, clearly it’s not our concept of the word she’s fighting for. And should I also point out that advocating violence as she’s done here, would seem to be by her stated standards, counter–productive to the stated goal of ‘peace’. As one reader to her blog site
“It will be comforting to many american’s, myself included, to see this enemy of the people incarcerated for the remainder of her natural life.
Why an enemy of the people you ask?
Simply because she has represented the worst of all possible humans in her capacity as a lawyer…NO. Let me state for the record again: No. All people, of course have a right to receive adequate representation. Is it the zeal she brings to that representation? Again, I say, No.
What bothers me about her and her fellows on the left is their undying and downright sinister hatred for all things American And I think we need look no further to confimr this than to look at the contempt that she displays for the prosecution, her government, during this trial – the contempt that she has for America. And certainly we need look no further than her refusal to denouce violence in pursuit of her goal to overthow the United States.
Stewart is, of course, merely an example of this “bring down America” business, under the guise of ‘peace and justice’ , albeit the one glowing most brightly as this is being written because of recent events. There are, of course more… far more. John Kerry served as a rather fine example, as well. So too, Teddy “Hang a left off the bridge” Kennedy. The list is nearly endless with such anti-american people working in concert to bring America to it’s knees, under the guise of ‘justice’, and “Peace”. Kerry, for his part, publicly stated “I am dedicated to the overthrow of your system of government and your society”.
And the Left wanted him as President.
Can there be any other conclusion but that those working against the war (and the result) in Iraq are turning their back on Kennedy’s call, and are in fact also working against America?
And they all seem to be screaming at the top of their lungs about “Peace and Jutice”.
There is a major difference between wanting merely an end to all war… something every many woman and child on the planet wants… and wanting the other side to win, and working toward that goal. Carrying banners, say, like this one, taken within days of when we invaded Iraq:
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