Constantine's Sword Page #9

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trying to spin this, saying that...

"Ok, we have a little issue but the

good news is it is not systemic."

The place is not out of control.

The evangelists have not

taken over here.

This is a very normal campus,

other then it's a military school.

Rather than admit their mistakes...

the air force academy decided...

to attempt a smear campaign

on the Yale team...

ask me to also say that the things

that were in the report were not true.

And then they proceeded to tell me

that I too was a traitor...

and my career was over.

I tried working for months

with an assistant.

I love the academy.

I sued the Air Force fifteen days ago.

It was a very hard decision.

Some of you, most of you I hope

are old enough to remember...

a Walt Disney movie called "Old Yeller."

In the last scene is when the guy

has to shoot his own dog.

That is how I felt when I had

to fight my school,

my alma mater and the air force.

Now Mikey has been very clear...

but what he really wants...

is no religious expression

in the military.

And he does it

under the banner of saying...

"We want total equality between

the various religions and non-religion."

Which, you see, that's code for...

no religion.

See now that is anti-American.

We are not an atheistic country.

I think the message

that it is sending around the world,

particularly in Islamic world,

is that the American military

comes hand in hand...

with this Christian evangelical package...

that we don't separate the two...

that the force behind the United States

is this missionary zeal.

We are currently fighting a religious war.

At least our enemie

are the remnants of the Taliban...

Al-Qaeda, the jihadists,

the insurrectionists.

They already see us as invading American

Christian imperialist crusaders.

You have yourself

an evangelical background.

You were raised in the evangelical tradition.

What's different here...

is the insertion of these

fundamentalist beliefs...

by key religious figures...

into partisan politics.

And I think it is very dangerous...

this is bordering on theocracy...

and of course theocracy is...

why our founders were so insistent

on the First Amendment.

Within weeks of his suit...

Weinstein, who had served

in the Reagan White House,

found himself in open conflict

over the separation of church and state...

with the US government

and the evangelical religious right.

We are in the midst

of an ideological conflict...

and we don't like people

using the power of the state...

to keep Christians from giving

their best arguments.

So Ted Haggard filed a counter suit...

on behalf of the 30 million strong

National Association of Evangelicals...

insisting that they be allowed

to proselytize...

whenever, wherever and to whomever

they want in the US military.

My father was buried here

as the first Iraq war began.

The thing I remembered

of my Dad most I think...

was this sense I got from him

about war, which is...

why this place is always

so overwhelming to me.

Low and behold here,

we are with a terrible war unfolding.

I was foolish enough to think that

war would recede

as a threat in my lifetime.

We had learn our lesson, hadn't we?

I thought as an ex-priest,

as a writer,

I would take up other things.

But look what happen now.

The world is back on the edge

of that precipice.

Only now it has been put there

in part by religion...

by this terrible civilizational conflict

that has religion at the centre of it

I am back where I started.

Only now religion isn't the opposite of war.

Religion is involved in it,

maybe even responsible for it.

No war is holy.

# Oh the history books tell it

# They tell it so well

# The cavalries charged

# And the Indians fell

# The cavalries charged

# And the Indians died

# Oh the country was young then

# With God on its side

# For you don't count the dead when

# God's on your side

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