TWO FROM SHATTERED SOAPBOX

I haven't mentioned him at all here, but Adam of Shattered Soapbox is a young blogger who, unfortunately, attends the school where I used to teach. He's been a part of the blogosphere for some months now, but lately it's looking like he's really found his voice. So without any further ado, let's get on to his thoughts.

First, his reaction to the creepy excommunication of "sinners" from a Southern Baptist Church:

Dems booted from N.C. church over politics

I'm fortunate enough to actually have a liberal pastor at my church...He doesn't talk politics in church, as he shouldn't, but I've sensed some liberal messages in his sermons (which should be expected from any Christian sermon because Jesus was the biggest liberal of all time). The most political I've heard him speak was in a youth meeting where we were discussing war (in the Bible, not Iraq). He said, "No one wins a war."

Click here for the rest.

Really, this is not so surprising to me. Out of the several major Christian denominations around the world, only the Southern Baptists supported the US invasion of Iraq. It is not Christianity that is a menace to freedom and tolerance: it is fundamentalism. Sadly, the fundamentalists are the loudest, fastest growing, and most politically powerful and connected kind of Christianity in America right now. I'm probably just being paranoid, but these people scare me. Adam's lucky; it sounds like he worships the loving and forgiving God represented in the Gospels, instead of the fundamentalists' preferred wrathful, hateful, and genocidal God of the Old Testament.

Next, Adam speaks out on high school history-as-propaganda:

History Class: Protesting is bad

So today in history we watched this video about the late 60's early 70's. It showed the main protest/demonstrations/riots of the time. At the end of the video it showed part of an interview with a man who fought for the North Vietnamese Army. He said they used to watch footage of the anti-war protestors demonstrating against the war, he said, "...they gave us strength."

So now a class of about 30 has been told that anti-war protests help our enemies stay strong.

Click here for the rest.

Adam goes on to refute the point by asserting that this was the opinion of only one North Vietnamese soldier. However, I must disagree with him. Their entire strategy was based on an understanding that they couldn't defeat the mighty US on the battlefield: their only hope was to avoid losing long enough such that the US would eventually tire of the war. That's exactly what happened. Does that make the 60s anti-war movement wrong? Hell no! As with Iraq, we illegally invaded Vietnam, and supported a murderous, corrupt regime in the south that could have never lasted as long as it did without help. The point is that, in matters of war, it's a mistake to think in terms of us-versus-them. The United States was dead wrong, and the protesters were absolutely right to demand that our government behave in a just and moral way. So what if the protests bolstered the confidence of the North Vietnamese? So what if the current anti-war movement bolsters the confidence of the Iraqi insurgency? Opposing these wars is about justice and morality. It is every citizen's duty to insist that the government do the right thing.

And I think that, deep down, Adam knows that. It's pretty hard to articulate what one knows to be correct in the face of the kind of authoritarian misinformation campaign to which students in public schools are subjected. As he says later in the post:

The intent of that interview was to argue the point of view that protesting against what your government does is treason.

At least Adam knows he's being lied to.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$