Mover Mike

Do you remember the movie The Patriot starring Mel Gibson?

Peaceful farmer Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) is driven to lead the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution when a sadistic British officer murders his son.

I was reminded of the movie when I read the weekly column by J. R. Nyquist, this week titled EVIL IN POLITICS. Nyquist writes:

The sad truth is, we refuse to recognize evil because we don’t want the responsibility and the risk involved in fighting evil. To see a great evil makes one responsible for doing something. The moral choice is clear. If you see a baby crawling towards a cliff, you have a responsibility to pull the baby from danger.

From the actions of Sadaam, we knew he was evil. He killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; he gassed them, executed them. He invaded two countries. He committed acts of military aggression against two neighboring countries.

His people suffered decades under a regime of arbitrary arrest, torture and murder.

From the mouth of Ahmajinedad comes evil. He threatens a holocaust with his new nuclear weapons and he threatens the U.S. with destruction and he appears to be aligned with a resurgent Russia, who crows that its ICBMs named Satan are still aimed at America.

Do we sense the danger? No. We are busy clinging to a high lifestyle. We want to enjoy the good things. We spend money we do not have. We borrow and encourage an entitlement mentality in our young people. We’ve lost our thrift. We no longer believe in duty. And now we haven’t the time or the energy to recognize enemies (foreign and domestic). For those who think the U.S. is playing the “great” international game, I have news. The U.S. isn’t playing at all. The U.S. doesn’t have a coherent strategy and doesn’t possess institutions capable of coming up with one. We are fighting a war “against terror” while the big enemies with the big battalions set us up for the kill. America is not as powerful as people generally think. Military power is often misunderstood because of its complexity. You see, even if Russia and China are weaker than the United States (and that is debatable), their ruthlessness grants them a kind of power that we cannot master. It is the power that every dictator builds upon.

And what do we do in this country in the face of evil. We see evil in President Bush who had the courage to stand up for the UN and take out Sadaam. We see our military as evil for making prisoners wear dresses or strip naked in front of women at Abu Ghraib. Do you know what Sadaam did to his prisoners? We nanner-nanner at the "wicked oil companies", while we drive SUVs that get 12 to 15 miles a gallon; a gallon which costs us less than $2.50, when it should be $5.00 to $7.00 per gallon to encourage us to utilize new technologies.

We tolerate fools in this country who would wad our Constitution, destroy our currency, spend us into the poor house, make us beholden to foreigners, export the production of critical systems to China, count Putin as our friend and attempt to force our one friend in the Middle East, Israel, into stupid "land for peace" schemes. We worry more about the hoax of global warming and the death of Anna Nicole-Smith than about the evil that gloats at our ineptitude.

There are voices today, just as there were in 1936. There are environmental fascists, socialists, minority racists and America-haters. Do we remember what such voices signify? Promising freedom they will deliver the exact opposite.

Benjamin Martin reconized the dangers ahead and still he was reluctant to get involved until his son was murdered. Maybe, he was reluctant because remembered how dirty he had to get to counter evil. What will it take for us to get involved?

The Patriot J. R. Nyquist Iraq Iran Putin Mover Mike