The Tale of the Three Trees

Once upon a mountaintop, three little trees stood and dreamed of what they wanted to become when they grew up. The first little tree looked up at the stars and said, " I want to hold treasure. I want to be covered with gold and filled with precious stones. I'll be the most beautiful treasure chest in the world!" The second little tree looked out at the small stream trickling by on its way to the ocean. " I want to be traveling mighty waters and carrying powerful kings. I'll be the strongest ship in the world! The third little tree looked down into the valley below where busy men and women worked in a busy town. I don't want to leave the mountain top at all. I want to grow so tall that when people stop to look at me they'll raise their eyes to heaven and think of God. I will be the tallest tree in the world.

Years passed. The rain came, the sun shone and the little trees grew tall. One day three woodcutters climbed the mountain. The first woodcutter looked at the first tree and said, "This tree is beautiful. It is perfect for me." With a swoop of his shining ax, the first tree fell. "Now I shall make a beautiful chest, I shall hold wonderful treasure!" the first tree said.

The second woodcutter looked at the second tree and said, "This tree is strong. It's perfect for me." With a swoop of his shining ax, the second tree fell. "Now I shall sail mighty waters!" thought the second tree." I shall be a strong ship for mighty kings!"

The third tree felt her heart sink when the last woodcutter looked her way. She stood straight and tall and pointed bravely to heaven, but the woodcutter never even looked up. "Any kind of tree will do for me," he muttered. With a swoop of his shining ax, the third tree fell.

The first tree rejoiced when the woodcutter brought her to a carpenter's shop. But the carpenter fashioned the tree into a feed box for animals. The once beautiful tree was not covered with gold, or treasure. She was coated with sawdust and filled with hay for hungry farm animals. The second tree smiled when the woodcutter took her to a shipyard, but no mighty sailing ship was made that day. Instead the one strong tree was hammered and sawed into a simple fishing boat. She was too small and too weak to sail to an ocean, or even a river. Instead she was taken to a little lake. The third tree was confused when the woodcutter cut her into strong beams and left her in a lumberyard. "What happened?" the once tall tree wondered. "All I ever wanted was to stay on the mountain top and point to God..."

Many days and nights passed. The three trees nearly forgot their dreams. But one night, golden starlight poured over the first tree as a young woman placed her newborn baby in the feed box. "I wish I cold make a cradle for him," her husband whispered. The mother squeezed his hand and smiled as the starlight shone on the smooth and sturdy wood. " This manger is beautiful," she said. And suddenly the first tree knew he was holding the greatest treasure in the world.

One evening, a tired traveler and his friends crowded into the old fishing boat. The traveler fell asleep as the second tree quietly sailed out into the lake. Soon a thundering and a thrashing storm arose. The little tree shuddered. She knew she did not have the strength to carry so many passengers safely through the wind and the rain. The tired man awoke. He stood up, stretched out his hand, and said, "Peace." The storm stopped as quickly as it had begun. And suddenly the second tree knew he was carrying the King of heaven and earth.

One Friday morning, the third tree was startled when her beams were yanked from the forgotten woodpile. She flinched as she was carried through an angry, jeering crowd. She shuddered when soldiers nailed a man's hand to her. She felt ugly and harsh and cruel. But on Sunday morning, when the sun rose and the earth trembled with joy beneath her, the third tree knew that God's love had changed everything. It had made the third tree strong. And every time people thought of the third tree, they would think of God. That was better than being the tallest tree in the world.
--Author Unknown

The Glory of Justice (The Glory of Killing Revisited)

It seems that many of my acquaintences didn't take all that well with my previous entry titled "The Glory of Killing," and so in hopes of winning them over to my position I thought that I would speak a bit more on this very difficult topic.

I suppose I could try and be more "sensitive" as to how others might process what it is I'm attempting to address. Afterall, they haven't spent hour upon hour, upon the throne or in the shower, wrestling over a hard topic such as the killing of enemies. That's probably where I should start to offer some clarification, and possibly some nuance to my previous post.

When I spoke of the "killing of a human being," I hoped that one could extrapolate out from within the context of my writing to realize that I wasn't speaking of just any old human, but truly evil men or those that serve them. Hitler would be one. Pol Pot would be another human in whose death we could glory. Pol Pot alone murdered 1/5 of the Cambodian population. Many were killed for being students, for wearing glasses, or just because somebody felt like ending their existence. They weren't all adults either--women and children first took on a whole new meaning under the Pol Pot regime. When you think about it, he and his minions exterminated what would be the equivalent of 50 million Americans. So, when I speak of "human being" this type of person is who I'm addressing.

That still leaves us with the question, "Ok, so why should I even glory in the killing of this type of person?" The answer would be that we shouldn't if somehow the actions of the person could somehow be separated from the person. As if the person were somehow not comprised of his actions. As if justice could be brought to bear upon the actions and not the individual--a "Love the sinner, but hate the sin" kind of fallacy. And here lies the rub of the matter. Justice is not an abstract principle that exists in the nether regions only to be admired while disassociated from humanity or this worldly existence. It is foolish to believe that justice can be celebrated, or gloried in, without having a face attached to it and, on the contrary, to embrace the idea that evil could somehow reside apart from the creature--apart from flesh and blood. On second thought, why don't we just put murder on trial and glory in the justice of declaring it evil and heinous? Wouldn't that be awesome! That way we could, much like Pilate, wash our hands of doing the dirty business of justice, and detach ourselves because in those moments we realize that we can't detach justice from its recipient.

To conclude, when I say we should glory in the killing of men such as I mentioned, I am simply saying in another way that we should glory in justice incarnate. Justice come in flesh and blood to exact a penalty on evil incarnate. We are not, of course, to glory in killing for the sake of killing. That would make us like the very cancer our justice systems and armies seek to destroy. But we are bound to glory in the killing of those who demand that their own blood be spilt by their monstrous acts against humanity. We can glory in their demise in light of the many who will be spared the grief of their company.

I do hope this has shed some light upon what I was saying, and in the end moves some of you at least to believe that "maybe he hasn't gone off the deep end afterall." I can only hope and pray. Lock and load.

A Proposal for a Booth Monument

I was born and raised in Upstate New York--a burgeoning bastion of liberal thought and historical revisionism. It was there that my young mind was filled with the romantic notions of our nations history, and my hungry eyes filled with the pagentry of patriotic parades on the Fourth of July and Veteran's Day--the visuals always make it easier to swallow the lie (a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down). Hitler understood this well and utilized the methodology of pagentry in conjunction with patriotic pride to steer the German nation toward the gates of destruction. And so my mushy brain was hardened with the lies of the beast (Public School System), and the more I suckled the at her breast the sweeter the putrid milk tasted.

I recall standing every morning from Kindegarten onward to say the Pledge of Allegiance in unison with the rest of the school body--our principal guiding us through it over the loudspeaker intercom. As I look back now I realize that I wasn't pledging allegiance to the nation our great founders rose from the soil, but to the lie of historical revision. You may be thinking to yourself that this is an empty accusation. "What revisionism?" you might ask. I could hardly provide you with a more glaring example of truth turned lie than in the treatment Abraham Lincoln has received from many historians. I have come to believe that this country would be better off today had the South won the war, and that in fact a memorial to Lincoln should be razed to the ground. Let me show you the mythical nature of revisionistic truth about Lincoln's role in history, and the lie demolishing truths that have moved me to pray for the demise of Lincoln's currently favorable legacy.

An aquaintence of mine has taken the time to put this list together, and he posted it at a forum we both frequent. Time to set 'em up and knock 'em down.

Myth #1: "Lincoln invaded the South to free the slaves." Ending slavery and racial injustice is not why the North invaded. As Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley on Aug. 22, 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it." Abraham Lincoln

Congress announced to the world on July 22, 1861, that the purpose of the war was not "interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states" (i.e., slavery), but to preserve the Union "with the rights of the several states unimpaired." At the time of Fort Sumter (April, 12, 1861) only the seven states of the deep South had seceded. There were more slaves in the Union than out of it, and Lincoln had no plans to free any of them.

The North invaded to regain lost federal tax revenue by keeping the Union intact by force of arms. In his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect "duties and imposts," and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that "the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed" in the states that had seceded.

Myth #2: "Lincoln's war saved the Union." The war may have saved the Union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically by destroying its voluntary nature. In the Articles of the Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, the states described themselves as "free and independent." They delegated certain powers to the federal government they had created as their agent but retained sovereignty for themselves.

This was widely understood in the North as well as the South in 1861. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorialized on Nov. 13, 1860, the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." The New York Journal of Commerce concurred, writing on Jan. 12, 1861, that a coerced Union changes the nature of the government from "a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves." The majority of Northern newspapers agreed.

Myth #3: "Lincoln championed equality and natural rights." His words and, more importantly, his actions, repudiate this myth. "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he announced in his Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. "I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." And, "Free them [slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot then, make them equals."

In Springfield, Ill., on July 17, 1858, Lincoln said, "What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races." On Sept. 18, 1858, in Charleston, Ill., he said: "I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes."

The Glory of Killing

Our society seems to have this notion that killing humans is bad no matter who does it or for whatever reason it is accomplished. For instance, I recently heard a medal recipient proclaim that he didn't like killing the twenty terrorists he dispatched with his rifle, their rifles, and an RPG, but rather did so to defend his nation. Now, I'm not saying that this man is a proponent of the view that all killing of humans is bad, but I was disappointed with his response.

What I'd like to hear coming from the mouths of our soldiers is, "Man, it was great to see the terrorist bastards disintegrate into bite-size dogfood pieces as we unleashed our mounted .50 cal" or "As the worthless piece of s*** was about to fire his RPG, my sniper wounded him in the upper chest. We let him writhe around for a minute for his buddies to see before we blew his brains out, and man it felt great!" Such honesty would be refreshing instead of the constant banter of the hypnopaedally sheepish minds our society is producing.

I remember hearing the report on the radio as I was driving home from school that Sadam Hussein's sons were dead. I vividly recall the tears of joy running down my cheeks as I prayed a prayer of thanks to God for ending the temporal existence of these two murdering rapists. I was even more pleased when I arrived home, and pulled up the pictures of their corpses. What a glorious vision indeed. It was one of those moments where you see with extreme clarity. A time when you feel the electricity of living. It was a moment where I was experientially realizing that there is great glory in killing another human being.