“There’s only 100% pure beef in our beef?”

Shouldn’t this go without saying?

Is this a Discordian joke, like changing “No Smoking” signs to “No Smoking or Spitting” to subtly undermine public confidence? Is there some group out there that’s been accusing McDonald’s of putting poultry in its beef? Are the marketers at McDonald’s trying to imply other burger places use something besides cow between their buns?

Whatever the company’s intent, they have planted a seed of doubt in my mind where one never before existed.

This is the memorial movie I made for my cousin’s service. It was and remains an emotional moab.

The video contained within it was nearly entirely shot by him, or using his digital camera. As I said at the memorial, it reflects Rudy as he lived his life: his thoughts and actions, his humor, his bravado, and, yeah, even his tenderness and his love.

He’d probably punch me for that last part. He was always trying to toughen us up; make the rest of us cousins as strong as he was.

The song is called Wake Up, by the Arcade Fire, off their beautiful and too aptly titled Funeral album.

It’s a little over 4 months since my cousin, Rudy, was killed in Iraq. A little more than a third of a year.

His convoy was hit by a remotely detonated IED; Rudy took the brunt of the explosion.

Today the Senate voted to withdraw our troops from that country. The House did so last week. It is the culmination of the Democratic Party’s campaign position; the crown of their first hundred days.

People have asked me if I blame President Bush for my cousin’s death. I tell them no, and they ask me why not.

Partially it’s because SFC Rudy Salcido was a volunteer. He wanted to serve; he wanted to give to his country and his family. And, with his characteristic bravado, he was looking for a little action. He found it. He gave everything he had to us.

But mainly I can’t blame the president because the Enemy, the ones who killed him, were also volunteers. Willing participants. My cousin was killed the day after the November elections. The insurgents who murdered him saw the results; saw the Democrats won; saw that we would be pulling out of Iraq. They saw these things, and went to bed, and had a good night’s sleep, and got up in the morning and decided to kill him anyway.

What’s going on, there, in Iraq, has nothing to do with our political process. The people there who terrorize, murder, and destroy aren’t doing it in the name of our president. It may be that when we withdraw, peace will come to Iraq. But let us not be deluded. When we withdraw, retail slaughter will turn to wholesale. Peace will come, eventually; the peace of the grave.

Saddam Hussein was executed. Hung. Before it happened, I spoke big, confident words, saying that it was his due.

The video shown on the news, though, terrified me. I need not see the camera phone footage of his death itself. Seeing the noose tightened around his neck was enough. Here was a human man, afraid, about to be strangled, and I almost regretted my belief. But this was weakness. We are not as strong as our fathers. I remembered my Dante:

Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak
Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said
To me: Art thou, too, of the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;
Who is a greater reprobate than he
Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

We spare the lives of murderers out of compassion; it is mercy, not justice, to keep them alive. We do so in the hope that they may come to regret their sins, sincerely repent in this life and thereby share joyfully in the next one. The arguments to suspend Hussein’s sentence were all of a pragmatic nature; justice and mercy came into the debate not at all. Practicality is a poor substitute for morality. It is doubtful whether we need give clemency towards those who never ask for it. As for Hussein’s soul, it is outside human power to save. In the spirit of charity, may God have mercy on the condemned. But let His will be done, and not our weakness.

Muslims riot, murder, burn churches in protest.

Is there a better synopsis of the last two weeks than that?

I have nothing to contribute to this discussion except my disgust. The subject became a Rorschach test for world leaders and media outlets. Journalists and academics, who should particularly value freedom of expression, almost uniformly came down against the Pope—or their idea of him—without apparently reading a single word he said. Then they nonsensically misinterpreted every single following statement.

Newsweek, in particular, earns my ire, for apparently arrogating themselves the task of berating the Pope. Their three pages are devoid of any mention of violence; you’d think only some hurt feelings were the result of the Regensburg lecture. Reading the article nearly made me vomit.

As for those directly responsible for the arson and murder, my gut reaction is that they should fucking burn. But, as a Christian, my gut reaction is not the end of the story. Christ calls on us to love our enemies, and to pray for them. As he says in chapter 5 of Matthew:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

And so I say, in all sincerity, to those who committed these crimes: I pray for you. I pray that Christ will enter your hearts. I pray that you repent your actions. I pray that you find the forgiveness that God offers all men and women, who need merely ask it. St. Paul, one of the greatest saints, persecuted and killed Christians before he was confronted by Christ on the road to Damascus. I pray that, like him, your hearts will change. And I pray that one day, by the grace of God, many years from now, I will see you in our Father’s heavenly kingdom, where we may embrace as brothers and sisters, together there with St. Paul, Benedict, and with the Martyr Sister Leonella.

Woefully few of the pictures I took at this last Monday’s immigration reform march came out. I seriously underexposed one roll of film, and the other was marred by a lot of blur.

The march itself was amazing.

Wow, you know, this entry isn’t topical at all. I can’t believe I didn’t post it earlier. I was waiting to make a good entry—thoughtful, considered—it never happened.

John Reilly, who I read regularly, is an opponent of open immigration, and thinks our current policy (and the future one, supported by the Administration) is to the detriment of American society. He made an offhanded comment about the Republican party, and small business owners across the country, being okay with a permanent caste of alien workers taking over most of the low level jobs in this country. I have two problems with this idea: the first is that it doesn’t seem, to me, that this is a permanent caste we’re talking about. Pew Center research shows that Hispanics adopt English at the same rate those old, nostalgic, Ellis-island era immigrants did. The second problem I have is, these people are not aliens. They look, to my admittedly Southern Californian eyes, just like—just like normal people. And this was what was so amazing and inspiring about the Grand March last May: it was filled by normal people. People and families that you see on the street every single day. Not professional protesters, or the wackjobs that show up every time the WTO meets in an urban area. No. Normal, everyday, good, working people. People that just want to have better lives for themselves and their families—and that want those lives, very consciously, as Americans.

D.C. prayer rally to seek lower gas prices

A U.S. Christian group has grown tired of escalating gasoline prices and is set to stage a national prayer rally to lower the numbers at the pumps.

…

In a release, the Pray Live group said many people are “overlooking the power of prayer when it comes to resolving this energy crisis.”

This was so funny, I’m almost tempted to leave the article without comment. But really: these are Christians giving Christianity a bad name. It goes beyond the simple idiocy of those involved; their actions trivialize the concept of prayer, destroy Christian credibility, and fuel the arguments of those who would disparage our faith. It is the worst kind of publicity-mongering pseudo-ministry. If you are hard hit, really truly hurt, by the rising cost of gas, please do pray. Pray for strength and fortitude, pray for His help in finding your way through the difficult times that are ahead. But don’t just pray for lower pump prices. A car-centric culture is not the same as a Christ-centered one. SUVs have nothing to do with virtue. God’s Kingdom is not made of oil.

I thought I’d missed the boat as far as commenting on the recent cartoon riots, here at Angst Dei, but this weekend’s events in Nigeria have shown the intoonfada to have an unfortunately long set of legs.

It was hard to take these demonstrations seriously, at first; their very appellation, “cartoon riots,” makes referring to them with a straight face difficult. Nothing kills a joke faster than having to explain it; but the escalating violence and increasing body count demands a deadly serious explication of the origin of the comics and the original controversy—Time does this well in its most recent issue.

This cartoon gets better with every riot.

The most absurd thing is that the reaction of these Muslim mobs—the scores of dead—have turned what could, and should, have been dismissed as a petulant, reactionary, parodical line-drawing—Mohammed with a bomb as his turban—into an increasingly trenchant, incisive, and perceptive piece of agitprop. At least it feels that way.

The riots, the burnings, the deaths, have thrown into sharp relief once again the massive cultural divide between our free nations and the illiberal states infected with Islamicist ideology. The Danish government is absolutely correct in its assertion that it will not, and cannot, apologize for items printed in a privately owned newspaper. But this position is impossible to convey to human beings who have no concept of freedom of the press.

The important lesson to draw from these events is one many of us in the West have been loathe to learn. Our beliefs here in the United States, as enshrined in our great Constitution, have always had a universalist dimension to them; now, more than ever, we must realize that dimension explicitly. We have shied away from proselytization in the past, but we cannot do so any longer. In the era of instantaneous and common global communication, there are no local beliefs. When cartoons published in Denmark precipitate deaths in Nigeria we can no longer affect the fiction of cultural relativism; Nor can we pretend to isolation. Immanuel Kant’s maxim—that we should act the way we’d want the whole world to act—isn’t just a moral imperative anymore. It’s become a simple fact of life.

This is one of those unexpressed chips that landed on my shoulder while Angst Dei was down.

Over the holidays it seemed every article I read that even made mention of the pope implied that he was going to kick the bucket any minute. The media has become a flock of vultures circling the Vatican. You get the feeling that they’re disappointed every time he appears in public and doesn’t just keel over.

And you know the people writing these articles aren’t Catholic. I remember listening to NPR while driving to New York in the week after 9/11. They were broadcasting the memorial service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They had an ex-priest doing commentary, and the hosts of the show were asking questions. They were absolutely clueless. What’s communion, again?

The story has no meaning to them. The Pope is just an old guy in a position of power, to them, or maybe a comedian who inexplicably refuses to give up the mic.

They certainly have no sense of the apocalypse. I know, it might be a forgery, we should follow the Augustinian tradition, blah blah blah, but anyone who’s read St. Malachy’s list can’t help but wonder why anyone’s in a hurry to burn through this pontificate.

It would be rude—maybe rude isn’t the right word—it would be insensitive even if the Pope weren’t a famous figure, to have this death watch going on. At this point he must feel like Snake Pliskin or Mark Twain.

It was quite refreshing to see the spate of stories surrounding John Paul’s comments on Mel Gibson’s movie. Finally comments on what he thought or felt, rather than the palsy in his hands. Keep this up people, and please, stop just waiting for the Pope to die.

Situations up north have changed, and despite what the news says about Weapons of Mass Destruction, I say this they weren’t there and didn’t see what the regime did. They weren’t there when a one legged old man walked up to us showed us his stump and in broken english said Saddam did this. Or when a family came up to us asking us for help because they wanted help in looking for their missing son who disappeared after Saddam’s men took him away one night. Did we do some good here? Yes we did. Are there people pissed we did what we did yes there are. And now they come out, using what they know to beat us…our kindness. They know our rules, and what we won’t do. And they use what they have available the media. But enough of my commentary. Now am I going north or staying or coming home. I don’t know. For now I am a soldier and will execute my mission to its my fullest ability whatever it is.

I wanted to quote Captain K for a few reasons:

1. This short excerpt from his email perfectly encapsulates both the humanitarian good that has come from this war and the danger our troops are now facing because of it; and
2. Captain K’s dedication to his duty is a tribute to him and the others like him in the armed forces. It is a testament to their professionalism and their willingness to sacrifice. And, equally, it should be a reminder to us in the civilian world of the great reponsibility we have in deciding the deployment of these brave men and women. They are ready to do what we think they must. On our word they will fight, and, sadly, some of them will die.

Some, or all, of you may never have noticed, but I’ve never taken a strong position on this war, for or against. My principles have been conflicted. On the one hand, real and regular tyranny in any regime cannot be ignored. On the other, we cannot use our military as Knights Errant, wandering the world to correct every wrong.

This conflict of moral principles is, I believe, why the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction has been pushed so much. The national defense is always a clearly justified call to arms. Regardless of whether such weapons are ever found—or programs, as so many have pointed out, the production being much more important than the produced—even if it be definitively stated that our invasion was based on false premises—my feeling has always been that we will do more good than bad by this action. This could be arrogance, or the result of a mind clouded by sin, but I don’t think so. In every tale of Hussein’s atrocity that surfaces from Iraq, I am confirmed in my belief. In Captain K’s letter, I see the hand of God, who orders all things that we may come to Him; I see the work of He who brings good even out of grievous evil.