What is "nothing?" No one knows

What Is The Physics Of Nothing?

When we want to talk about nothing, our conceptions take us outside of space and before the Universe began, yet does that even make sense? How can you talk about “outside” when you don’t have space? How can you talk about “before” anything if you don’t have time?

And yet, whatever “nothingness” truly is, it contains the entire Universe. (Philosophically, this is a longstanding tenet of Buddhism.)

 Many physicists claim that there’s no way to understand anything, fundamentally, until we understand nothing. And although our understanding of it is partial — which is to say, we understand the fundamental, basic laws of nature that govern empty spacetime — we don’t understand from whence those fundamental laws arise, and whether they themselves are a “thing.”

Here's the problem. The universe began with the Big Bang, but this term is misleading. The Big Bang was not an explosion of the universe coming into being as we usually think of explosions. Because of the uniformity of cosmic background radiation across all the observed universe, physicists say that everything that exists started off together. But the origin was only a point and this point was not in space (since space didn't exist yet) and not in time (since time time didn't exist yet). Hence, they call it a "singularity," but all that means is "we don't know." They may as well call it a huffelump or farfsnegoplin.

The problem with this theory is the problem of inflation. No, not what we await happening to our currency, but the unimaginably small time that began the universe. Most people know that the universe is expanding, but not many non-astronomers are familiar with the theory of inflation, which reveals that the term "Big Bang" is misleading, Instead, says NASA's "Universe 101" web site, the universe's creation "is better thought of as the simultaneous appearance" of the universe everywhere there is the universe.

Inflation theory holds that the universe went from nothing at all to more than 99 percent of its present size in less than one-billionth of a billionth of a second – which is to say, instantly. So while empirical data, especially the uniformity of cosmic background radiation, support the conclusion that the universe began from a single point, from any reasonable human perspective there was no explosion. The universe simply appeared everywhere at once, instantaneously.

While no illustration can really represent the very technical theories here, the "nothing" problem can be thought of as, "What is outside the cone?" That is, if you go to the farthest point of the universe, what is one meter beyond that?

The Einsteinian answer is that because matter, the universe, curves space, there is no such thing as the "farthest point" of the universe except in a relative way, and that there is no "one meter" beyond that because there is no beyond at all. But this answer does not satisfy present-day physicists.

A few things are certain: we have not always existed; we will not always exist; we exist right now. Whatever nothingness truly is, we are all something right now. And whatever exists right now, it did, at some level, come from nothing, no matter how you define nothing. And as best as we understand the Universe, it will return to a state approaching an infinite, physical nothingness as well. But as to just what the nature of the ultimate “nothingness” truly is? That’s still, perhaps, the secret we’re all fundamentally searching for.

How we perish in Paradise

From Wrath of Gnon:

Richard Fernandez:

... words and history have surprisingly little force. They convince people headed for the cliff not in the least. People only believe in consequences when it happens to them. Then remorse kicks in piteously and it is "Oh God save me and I will never do it again." ...

That's why the stories in the Bible have a depressing sameness. They always involve idiots who mess up and persecute every prophet sent to warn them until disaster strikes and then it's "help! Help!" We honor the prophets only after we bury them. Before that they're too busy making a getaway from us.

The story of mankind is the tale of someone who wakes up in Paradise and decides to burn it down. Happens every time. It doesn't matter that the survivors wrote it all down for our edification, because we'll just stop reading the Bible and watch some 'reality' TV show. ...

Each time mankind gets up from catastrophe it says "mebbe this time, maybe next time." Maybe never.

George Bernard Shaw once observed, ""We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." This is true, but incomplete. Why do we not learn from history? Perhaps this passage from A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller is a clue:

The closer men came to perfecting themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

We burn down paradise over and over because we cannot tolerate it in fact, only in wishing. But now I am not confident that we even yearn for it. I see the state of the 2016, North American church and I realize that we have not moved a tick on the chart closer to embodying the Kingdom of God than our ancestors of 1916. Or 1816. Or 1416. And the record of the ancient Jews shows that they never did, either.

If civilizations are never murdered but commit suicide, we are well underway. I would call upon the North American Church to re-fulfill its calling, but this assumes that it ever did fulfill it to begin with and that our failures are of recent vintage. Of the former I cannot recite much evidence and of the latter I cite the 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr. in which he lamented,

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent, or often vocal, sanction of things as they are.

But I am trying to discern an historical time when this was not the case and I cannot.

Plato and Moses alike would be stunned (or maybe not) that the human race has learned nothing in the last few thousand years. Neither the ancient Jews nor Christians of the last 2,000 years have been reliably faithful to their Covenants. Our  histories are of occasional faithfulness to our Covenants and then usually-prolonged abandonment of them. The main difference is that the Jews understood themselves better than we Christians have. Over and over we have had to learn what St. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia: "God can't be disregarded. You will harvest what you plant."

Brothers and sisters, the harvest is coming in. It is coming in good and hard. And this is why:

Update: Near the end of his life, John Wesley, principal founder of the Methodist movement, understood that the "people called Methodist" would not disappear after his death, but he nonetheless was filled with some foreboding:

1. I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case, unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.

2. What was their fundamental doctrine? That the Bible is the whole and sole rule both of Christian faith and practice.

But he foretold what would happen only a few paragraphs later:

9. It nearly concerns us to understand how the case stands with us at present. I fear, wherever riches have increased, (exceeding few are the exceptions,) the essence of religion, the mind that was in Christ, has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore do I not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality; and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches.

10. How, then, is it possible that Methodism, that is, the religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay-tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently, they increase in goods. Hence they proportionably increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away.

And what is the UMC today? Only formally the United Methodist Church, for in habit and thinking more and more Upper Middle Class (of whom I include myself, so I throw no darts that do not boomerang back to me).

The ruins of the Meathead Generation

There was a hugely popular TV series in the 1970s called All in the Family, starring Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker, a blue-collar northeasterner of very outspoken traditional values. Rob Reiner played his son-in-law, Michael, very liberal, unemployed (a permanent student), who lived in Archie's house along with his wife, Archie's daughter (of course).

Archie called his son in law "Meathead," and viewing only one episode convinced you why. Reiner's character was a snooty, self-impressed, never-wrong, empty-headed jerk.

Very recently, Reiner, whose intellect and personality show that he was perfectly cast as Michael, disparaged people with political views unlike his as uneducated, ignorant, racist know nothings, etc. What Reiner's smug tirade shows is what has happened with what some commentators have called the "Meathead Generation," which makes sense:

Meathead was a loudmouth know-it-all boomer, who enjoyed lecturing his father-in-law about the terribleness of America and the men that had made the country. The irony was that Meathead lived off the people he ridiculed. Archie, the patriarch, worked and paid the bills while his daughter and son-in-law lived in his house. It was a perfect metaphor for what was happening in the country. The parasites were determined to kill the host, but in the mean time they were perfectly willing to enjoy the fruits the host had accumulated.

Years ago, the great Paul Gottfried remarked that the country had long been taken over by the Meathead generation and their ethics. The Archie Bunkers were all gone. By that he meant traditional working and middle class America had been lost and the country was now run by fashionable liberals, who occupied the first ruling elite in history to be actively working to destroy the foundation on which it rests. Look around the culture and all the high ground is occupied by degenerate boomers, who carry on as if it is still 1968. [HT: American Digest]

Which is pretty interesting because I am a early mid-term Boomer. Having lived a year into my seventh decade now, I want to avoid sounding like one of those old geezers who says, "Back in my day . . ." But I will say, well, that back in my day my peers and I were actually taught Truth existed that was not mere opinion and was still true whether it made you happy, sad, angry or contented. We did believe, and I still do, that there was (and is) such a thing as absolute truth, like it or not.

Yes, the idea of absolute truth was closely linked to religious belief and that just what absolute truth was differed between religions and often between even denominations of a religion. My point here is not what declarations are or are not absolute truth, but that across the great majority of Americans there was conceptual agreement that there was such a thing as absolute truth, even if we did not all agree on the particulars.

That conceptual agreement is gone today.

• In 1997, 50% of Christians and 25% of non-Christians said that there are moral truths which are unchanging, and that truth is absolute, not relative to the circumstances.
• In 2000-JAN, they found that 38% of adult Americans believed that absolute true exists. 
• Later in 2000, 40% of individuals involved in a Christian disciplining process believed that there is no such thing as absolute moral truth. 
• In 2001-NOV, another Barna poll showed that adults believing in absolute truth had dropped almost in half -- to 22%. 

In short order, the idea of absolute truth was replaced by relative truth, that declarations could be true based on their circumstances, or that a statement might be true for Thelma but not for Louise. The problem is not that this idea of truth has no validity; the conceptual affirmation of absolute truth never meant that nothing was true unless it was absolutely true. The problem is that relative truth has come to be affirmed as the only kind of truth there is.

That means that truth is nothing more than opinion. And if there is no Truth, there is no falsehood, either. Yet something must serve as the basis for making decisions, especially moral decisions. Hence the rapid downhill slide to this: "Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth on Feelings."

Truth Is Relative, Say Americans 

In two national surveys conducted by Barna Research, one among adults and one among teenagers, people were asked if they believe that there are moral absolutes that are unchanging or that moral truth is relative to the circumstances. By a 3-to-1 margin (64% vs. 22%) adults said truth is always relative to the person and their situation. The perspective was even more lopsided among teenagers, 83% of whom said moral truth depends on the circumstances, and only 6% of whom said moral truth is absolute.

The gap between teen and adult views was not surprising, however, when the adult views are considered by generation. While six out of ten people 36 and older embraced moral relativism, 75% of the adults 18 to 35 did so. Thus, it appears that relativism is gaining ground, largely because relativism appears to have taken root with the generation that preceded today’s teens. ...

The surveys also asked people to indicate the basis on which they make their moral and ethical decisions. Six different approaches were listed by at least 5% of the teenagers interviewed, and eight approaches were listed by at least 5% of adults. In spite of the variety communicated, there was a clear pattern within both groups. By far the most common basis for moral decision-making was doing whatever feels right or comfortable in a situation. Nearly four out of ten teens (38%) and three out of ten adults (31%) described that as their primary consideration.

That article was published in 2002. Since then, the trend has only intensified. Note that sentence, "... relativism is gaining ground, largely because relativism appears to have taken root with the generation that preceded today’s teens." In the intervening 14 years, we have begun our third generation of truthlessness. I am a Boomer so the move to relativism began in my generation, the Boomers born after me, I am guessing, which would be the majority of them. At the time this article was published, Boomers' kids were barely in their teens at the young end and 50-plus at the old.

From the idea that all truth is relative (which is a self-contradictory statement when you think about it) is a short slide to three highly dysfunctional beliefs and practices, about which more another time:

1. With no idea of transcendent authority, human relationships become merely contests of power.

2. Religion is suppressed but the inherent religious nature of humanity simply finds other outlets.

3. Human life is meaningless and serves no higher purpose because there is no higher purpose to serve. 

When I drove an Indy Race car

I cashed in my gift certificate yesterday to the Mario Andretti Racing Experience. It was at Kentucky Speedway. The weather was perfect, sunny and temps in the high 70s for my slot with the 10 a.m. group. I had eight minutes of driving time. Details after the video; the camera was a GoPro (model unknown) mounted just aft the top of my head:


Okay, here is some information you will want to know before you decide to buy. They will tell you all this in your pre-drive class, but it's good to know ahead of time:

1. This is, just as advertised, a real race car. It had slight mods for use by the non-professionals who will be driving it, but otherwise, it's the same as the cars you see every Memorial Sunday at the Brickyard. 
1. One of the mods is that you do not shift gears. The instructor explained that the transmissions are four-speed but they have fixed them in fourth gear because they got tired of repairing transmissions. So when they start your car they push you from the rear with a large ATV while you push the clutch pedal to the floor. When your driving controller, speaking to you by radio, tells you to let off the clutch and give it some gas, the motor engages and off you go. 
2. There is an RPM limiter that kicks in at 5,000 RPM. I think this is track specific, though. The instructor explained that maximum power and speed will be achieved just below that. I am pretty sure the reason for it is so that the car won't spin out in the curves. The instructor said several times, "Do not back off the throttle when you enter a curve. You cannot drive fast enough on this track to make the car spin on a curve, so maintain speed." I found this to be true.
3. You do not have either a speedometer or a tachometer, although for all I know neither do the racing versions. The controller is always telling you (and race drivers) info about speed anyway, so there really is no need for either.
2. There are three cars on the track at one time plus a dual-cockpit car for people who just want the speed sensation without driving. These are driven by professional drivers and will stay and the outside of the track. Trust me, they will also pass everyone else. 
3. You paid-for time includes all the time your car is in motion, which includes the time you spend on the apron exiting pit row, which takes a half lap, and the time you spend returning there at the end, which is another half lap. Altogether, this will come to 1.5-2.0 minutes so frankly, if you do only the five-minute event, you won't do much driving at speed. 
4. While driving, your controller will tell you when to merge onto the track when starting off and when to exit back to the apron to wrap it up. He will also tell you what pace to drive starting out, which will not be fast because he will not turn you loose until he knows you're not going to do something stupid and will follow directions. This is important: with other cars entering the track or exiting all the time, you may pass other cars only (a) on a straightaway and (b) when the controller says so. Screw this up and he may kill your engine remotely. 
5. Speaking of the radio-connected controller, they really need to consider what in my military career were called "pro-words," or procedure words. I learned that the controller used the same terms to say that I was about to be passed or could pass (or not) someone else. This was very confusing and they seriously need to have different phrases for one and the other. Another example is how air traffic controllers and pilots talk; their phrasing is very exact and terms are very specific. When I was flying I was taught that I would be "cleared" only for takeoffs, never for landings or taxiing or anything else. So, as once happened to me, when you are short final to land and you hear the controller say, "static you are cleared for static" you know he's not talking to you and you'd better start looking for an airplane trying to take off on the same runway you have already been given permission to land! At the race track, audio you get in your headphones is not crystal clear anyway, so single-meaning words and short phrases would be a big help.
6. These cars steering response is very sensitive. There is no need to turn the wheel more than a little bit. The faster you go, the more the car sticks to the track; it's actually more secure to go through the curves faster than slower. Also, the track's banking and leveling work very well to keep the car on course. 
7. When they say, repeatedly, to stay at least five feet above the solid yellow line marking the beginning of the apron, they mean it. No driver in my group failed to do this, but the instructors were very clear: in an Indy car, if your wheel touches that line, you will wreck. The Indy car is very rigid and unforgiving of such. 
8. When the controller tells you that you can open it up, go right ahead. The car is very powerful (duh) and will burst forward. Because you are siting so close to the track's surface, you will think you are going faster than you are, so if you feel confident, push it. Remember, the car is stabler faster. (This is my one regret, that I didn't push it as much as I retrospectively wish I had.) 

All this being said, it was a great experience, one like I've never had before, even when driving about that fast on the Autobahn in Germany.

I can also understand why there were so many repeat drivers in my group. One time does not give you enough familiarity with the car to really get up to high speed. So maybe there's another drive coming sometime in the future.

It was definitely fun, although not a passive kind of fun. This is not a passive experience at all! It's kind of like going on an extreme roller coaster, and discovering that you're not merely riding you're also having to drive it and you don't know which curves may throw you off the track if you take them at the wrong speed or wrong angle.

But yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat! Here are a few photos:

Pit row

Waiting to go.

I am in the red car, center. The cockpit is pretty tight to get into since the top opening is smaller than the interior. You don't have any spare room once positioned, but you do have enough. You are actually mostly lying down; legs straight in front and back angle well off vertical. 

Stunning movement of the Lord in Iraq

Despite threat from ISIS, 100 children receive First Communion in Iraq

Details: 

The first communion Mass in Alqosh was an historic moment for a “frontier town” that has been under threat from the militants of the Islamic State (IS) for a long time. Now it can “hope for peace and normalcy” around these hundred children, said Mgr Basil Yaldo, auxiliary bishop of Baghdad and close associate of the Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako.

The Chaldean primate presided over the ceremony that was attended by “all the priests of the city, the nuns and more than 700 people. The faithful were excited because for the first time, the patriarch celebrated communions in the community.” 

Like many other towns in Iraqi Kurdistan, Alqosh too welcomed scores of refugees.

“Life in the area is almost back to normal,” said the vicar of Baghdad. “We hope that soon the whole plain [of Nineveh] can be liberated from the jihadists, and that refugees can return to their villages.” 

The work to secure the area, he added, has “already started and for the past two days Iraqi troops have launched the battle to liberate the villages surrounding Mosul.” 

…Addressing the boys and girls who received the first communion, Patriarch Sako urged them not to abandon their land, the city of Alqosh, but to stay and help in the reconstruction “because there is a (Christian) heritage to be preserved. ” 

The Chaldean primate, Mgr Yaldo noted, also called on young people to “be stronger, come to church and participate in the life of the Christian community as one participates in the life of a family.” 

After the service, the children asked Patriarch Sako some questions. One of them, Mgr Yaldo noted, said that when he “grows up he wants to become a priest to serve the poor and the needy.” 

The patriarch could not hold back his emotion after listening to such words, adding that “it is important to support and share the suffering.”

The uncurious minds of news reporters

As an illustration of the typical cluelessness of the American media, I offer this piece on the future of the United States artillery from The National Interest, "The US Army's New Battlefield 'Big Gun' Has a Dangerous Defect."

The issue of the article is the lack of a fully-functional fire-suppression system aboard the "Paladin M109A7 PIM — the latest in America’s line of tracked artillery pieces ," photo above. But the fire-suppression system is not my point here. In the article we read:

In 2002’s Operation Anaconda, the U.S. clashed with hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters without any large-caliber artillery. Yet with a more entrenched U.S. troop presence in the following years came an increasing reliance on big guns which — in places — fired relentlessly.

Case in point, one artillery battalion in Afghanistan’s mountainous and remote Kunar province lobbed around 25,000 rounds — including mortar rounds — in a year, according to the New York Times.

A 155mm howitzer battalion has 18 howitzers, which we colloquially refer to as "guns" even though they are not guns, they are howitzers.

Now do the math on that artillery unit in Afghanistan and you will immediately see why the story should read, "one artillery battalion in Afghanistan’s mountainous and remote Kunar province lobbed a mere 25,000 rounds  in a year."

Although neither The National Interest nor The New York Times identifies what battalion fired those 25,000 rounds, the odds are near certain that it was a battalion equipped with the M777, 155mm howitzer. Wikipedia has a decent write-up.

As you can see, it is significantly different from the Paladin pictured above, although both guns shoot exactly the same ammunition. The Triple-7 is towed by a truck rather than self-propelled like the M109-series howitzers. The truck also carries crew, ammo and supplies. Towed guns were used in Afghanistan because they were easier to deploy and because in many cases were simpler to move from one place to another over the rugged terrain (mainly because they are so much lighter).

So a battalion of artillery has 18 of these guns. Here is the arithmetic that is so simple anyone but an NYT reporter can do it, including my daughter who was only 2 years old when I retired from the Army and so did not grow up in this culture:

Question: "Is 'fired relentlessly' and apt term for a battalion of 18 guns that fired 25,000 rounds in a year?"

(playing Jeopardy music . . .)

1. 25,000 / 365 days per year = 68.5 rounds per day fired, average.
2. 68.5 rounds per day / 18 guns = (TA DA!) fewer than four rounds per day per gun. 

Does that sound "relentless" to you? The maximum rate of fire of the M777 is 5 rounds per minute. But timing begins at the zero-second mark when the first round is fired. That means that 36 seconds later, that crew is done for the day. The crew spent 0.043 percent of the day "relentlessly" firing their howitzer.

This is by no means any criticism of the artillery crews. Artillery is an "on-demand" combat weapon. It does not make up on its own where or when to shoot. Artillery fire is requested by other arms, mainly infantry and armor, but can also be called for by aviators or assigned by higher commanders. At any rate, what this extremely low use of artillery means is one or more of the following,

• Actual battles with enemy forces were relatively rare,
• When they did occur they were small unit actions and/or at such close ranges that using artillery was impractical
• Rule of Engagement were very restrictive on using a weapon of such destructive power,
• Target location was imprecise,

A little historical scale now. In the Korean War, 

In one 24-hour period during the battle for Bloody Ridge, the 15th FA Bn fired 14,425 rounds. Additionally, from 26 August through 2 September 1951, in support of the 2nd ID during the battle of Heartbreak Ridge, the 15th FA Bn fired 69,956 rounds.

That battalion's guns fired an average of 601 rounds each in that one day, or 150 times as many as that unit cited in the NYT. But consider that 601 battalion rounds per day works out to 33 rounds per gun per hour, or about one every two minutes - and since this battalion used 105mm howitzers, that was much less physically challenging than shooting a 155mm gun since the heavier gun is well, heavier, with its munitions weighing about three times as much as the 105mm.

The trick for the 15th FA gunners in Korea was not shooting every 120 seconds, which is quite easy on that gun (my first unit in my service was in a 105mm unit). The trick is to keep that going for 24 straight hours. I guarantee those gunners were exhausted at the end!

The second example, 69,956 rounds in a six-day period, is a lower rate of fire, 486 battalion rounds per hour, or 27 per gun per hour, a little under one round every two minutes. Again, not physically challenging unless you keep it going for six straight days!

But either case would certainly qualify as "firing relentlessly."

My point in this is that you may now understand why I am very skeptical of what the civilian press reports about military matters, and the more technical the subject is the the more skeptical I get. When I was not blowing things up in the artillery, I served in my alternate specialty of public affairs, including as chief of media relations for XVIII Airborne Corps and Ft Bragg. With not many exceptions, reporters tend to be uncurious people. They generally just write down what someone tells them and that's that.

As my boss used to say, "Reporters don't say what happened. They say what somebody said happened." That's a good thing, actually; you don't want reporters just making stuff up (which a fair number do anyway) but jeepers, who said that this firing in Afghanistan was "relentless?" NYT reporter Wesley Morgan did, that's who, and he thought so because he didn't have the curiosity to run the numbers.

That said, the Interest's brief commentary on the lack of long range on our howitzers is well taken. The concluding line is, "in an artillery war, range is everything." Yet that is only half right. There are two things that are everything in an artillery war: range, accuracy, and responsiveness.

Oh, wait, make that three three things that are everything: range, accuracy, responsiveness and lethality.

Four! In an artillery war, there are four things that are everything: range, accuracy, responsiveness, lethality, and mobility.

In an artillery war there are five things that are everything: range, accuracy, responsiveness, lethality, mobility, and logistics... .

See my point? One thing is not everything in any operation or war. Why does this reporter think so? Well, it makes a good tag line. But also because frankly, he don't know nuthin' about what he's writing about.

BTW, my daughter who knew PDQ that 25K rounds in a year was not "firing relentlessly" is a chemical engineer, so she went to the math right away. But really, this isn't math, it's simple arithmetic and logic, grade school level.

Additional reading: "U.S. Army Field Artillery Relevance on the Modern Battlefield"

Oh, and just for the humor break, my closing grafs about the things that are everything in artillery war uses this famous template.

23 Reasons Why Jesus Is Not A Copy Of Pagan Religions

23 Reasons Why Scholars Know Jesus Is Not A Copy Of Pagan Religions

Saying no to $5 Million

Dear Mrs. Coleman,

I am emailing in response to your kind offer, received this morning, of donating $5,0000,000 to our church. I am sure that you are sincere in wanting your late husband's estate, now held in escrow in Abidjan, to be used in Christian missions to benefit orphanages, widows, and evangelism. And I appreciate you offering me the chance to use the millions for those purposes.

I am so sorry that you are about to die of an undiagnosed illness, so I fully understand why you want me to take possession of the money quickly by contacting the security company in Abidjan and providing it with all my personal back-account numbers so they can transfer the money directly. That's very thoughtful of you!

However, I regret that I must decline your offer for the following reasons:

1. Due to the number of offers I receive similar to yours, mostly from Nigerian oil-minister widows, I no longer accept donations of less than $15 million. It's just not worth the hassle. If you can come up with another $10 million, please let me know. However, that is a constantly-moving target that rises practically weekly. So you should shoot for probably $17 million. At least.

2. My personal service fee, accruing solely to me, is 15 percent of the total donation amount. In your case my fee would come to $750,000. However, I no longer accept donations for which my fee is less than seven figures. And be assured that I would spend it on things other than your stated wishes, mainly on riotous living, expensive baubles, extensive vacations, expensive wines, man toys such as motorboats or Purdy shotguns, Bugattis, and what is left over on simple dam-foolishness.

3. "Coleman" is a funny name for a native-born, Muslim, Kuwaiti government official, even if his widow does want his fortune to be spent on Christian charities.

4. And finally, I decline because frankly, I am not an idiot.

Have a blessed day, whoever you really are, and maybe you could actually try working for a living.

Regards,
D. Sensing

"Honey, sorry I am going to have you blown to smithereens."

Saw this on one of my FB feeds and it brought back some memories.

Under the nets are 155mm self-propelled howitzers taking part in the REturn of FORces to GERmany (hence, REFORGER) exercises that took place by US Army Europe from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s. This is from the 1986 exercise; I do not know which unit.



The one in 1984 took place in the severest winter Germany had experienced since WW2. I froze my kundingi off. I was a battery commander  in 2d Battalion, 3d Field Artillery, 3d Armored Division. My battalion was stationed in the town of Butzbach, West Germany, about 55 km north of Frankfurt.

At the time, my wife and I lived in a very nice, govt.-contracted duplex in Dorf-Guell, near Giessen, pinned here in this screen grab from Google Earth:

This was a northern Reforger (they alternated north and south in the country), so the town was in the thick of the action. During the exercise one day I pulled into a phone booth to call Cathy. She told me that an aviation unit had set up field operations in the very large fields behind our house. I already knew that was "enemy" territory.

So, artilleryman that I was, I apologized to her that I was going to have her blown to bits. Then I grabbed the grids off my map sets and sent it with target description to 3AD Division Artillery's operations center. From there it got handed off to V Corps Artillery, which moonscaped the field (in an exercise-y sort of way) with 8-inch artillery. Darn shame about my wife, though.

Later I learned that Divarty had actually credited her by name as the target-intel source, though, so she had that going for her at least.

American generations

Here is a summary of the prevailing characteristics of each American generation born starting in 1900 and ending with the generation born since 2001: "The Six Living Generations In America."

This author, though, says that generational characteristics are not sharp between generations, and hence "here is a 'fuzzy' consensus on the characteristics of each generation" X, Y and Z.

The American Management Association offers its own summaries of the generations related to the workplace, "Leading the Four Generations at Work."

This is a brief summary of "Members of each generation: perceived characteristics."

"Ten of the Most Disgusting Expressions Ever Uttered in Anybody’s Church"

Ten of the Most Disgusting Expressions Ever Uttered in Anybody’s Church



Yep.

Jesus does not endorse your candidate

Earlier this month, columnist Richard Fernandez wrote,

The problem may turn out to be not whether Christianity can survive the modern world, but whether the modern world can survive without Christianity. The naive assumption of 19th century Marxists was that after belief was abolished, what was essentially a Christian morality would continue to guide the world though without its religious overtones.

They thought that even without God men would not kill or steal or lie or covet their neighbor's wives. Through the operation of some sort of "decency" things would go on much as before, but with electricity and central planning. They thought this because they had lived in an immersive religious system for so long they were no more aware of it than fish notice water.

But as it turned out "decency" was much more fragile than they thought. If the 20th century showed that man unfettered could create monstrous totalitarian belief systems, the 21st is rapidly demonstrating that rather than accept an inner vacuum millions would rather fill it with strange gods if the gods of their fathers were no longer on offer.

Fish may not notice water when it is there. But they do notice it when it is gone.

Perhaps the major challenge of the 21st century is to reinvent Christianity or something like it. Man does not live by bread alone and if that hunger will not be met by God it will be sated by the spirit of darkness.

And so, in a different context than Richard wrote, we come to this year's presidential election. The problem, to paraphrase Richard a little, may turn out to be not whether Christianity can survive modern America, but whether modern America can survive without Christianity. 

There is no "Christian" candidate

The naive assumption of many religionists on both side of the American political aisle seems to be that their only one candidate, but not the other, can sustain Christian morality in the national polity.

It beggars words to describe how foolish - indeed, how un-Christian - this belief is. I find it impossible to affirm even in the smallest way that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump care a fig about the Christian religion at all, no matter what they claim, and at least Trump has the forthrightness not to claim any particular religion at all. Trump's religion is Trump. There is almost nothing I have seen about his platform that bears the imprimatur of orthodox Christianity or its inheritors. I am dismayed that so many prominent Christian figures have endorsed his candidacy. It is more than merely distressing to observe what even conservative commentators are calling, "The Moral Collapse of the Republican Party." 

That said, exactly what is the actual evidence, not rhetoric, but evidence, that Hillary Clinton cares a fig about Christian religion herself? Sure, she claims Methodist affiliation, but exactly what does that mean when examining her truly dismal, spectacularly failing record as a public official? Claiming a religious affiliation does not confer competence, and even MSNBC's in-the-tank hosts were forced to admit one day that they could think of nothing of note that she had ever accomplished. This is a woman whom FBI Director James Comey, under oath before a Congressional committee, confirmed repeatedly had lied over and over and over about handling highly classified material but just wasn't "sophisticated enough" to know the severity of her actions. So yeah, sure, that plus Methodism qualifies her for the presidency, of course. Hillary Clinton's religion is Clintonism. There is almost nothing I have seen about her platform that bears the imprimatur of orthodox Christianity or its inheritors. As one commentator said, Hillary's real objective is inauguration day. She has no goal beyond then. 

All that said, I will emphasize that in fact a presidential candidate's religion is a matter of low importance to me. I want a president who is a Constitutional originalist, religious denomination irrelevant. But we pretty much gave that up a century ago when we elected the proto-progressive Woodrow Wilson. And so here we are:

The dens of thieves that run our country

Now that I've got past that rant, let me ask, "What would Jesus do with national American politics?" Probably this:

Jesus at the Republican National Convention, or maybe the Democrat one. 
Hard to tell since they are both dens of thieves.

How bad has political thievery become? James Bessen of Boston University Law School says it is so deep that political lobbying is now the second-largest influence on profits for America's large companies. 

Government gets bigger and more powerful, which lures companies into viewing Washington as a profit center, which then leads to more policies that expand the size and power of the federal government, which leads to further opportunities for rent-seeking behavior. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One more example: 

That's 4.5 billion of your dollars and mine. This is why Elon Musk's company, Tesla, never has to sell even one electric car at profit and he still becomes wealthier and wealthier. Our taxes pay his profit. This is crony capitalism at it worst (or best, if your name is Elon Musk). 

What kind of national economic model is this? Tom Wolfe once observed that, "The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." Yet Wolfe surely knows that before fascism was anything else, it was a national economic regime. Its features were not exactly original; what was novel was the inclusion of Marxism and whole-country integration by its modern originator and premier practitioner, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1932, Mussolini wrote this definition of fascism:

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State.... ..The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone ... .

It was further explained in 2010 by Robert Higgs at The Independent Institute: 

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life. ...

Feel familiar? It ought to: this has been the economic policy of both parties for at least the last 50 years, with different emphases by one party or the other. American federal polity long ago became centrally located on a less-lethal version of Lenin's question, "Who? Whom?" For Lenin, the question was about who would die and who would live. But for both the Republicans and the Democrats it is about money and power:

• Who will receive the largess they will use tax dollars to provide?
• Whom will be the class they plunder to get it? 
• And how will they spend it to suborn, corrupt or crush so they can keep power?

That is not merely the primary principle of American federal governance today, it is almost the only principle there is. Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, the American Left is not socialist at all; it is fascist, which began in and never departed from Leftism. (Mussolini had been an active member of the Communist International before resigning to start the Fascisti party.) The Republicans are fascist, too, just not as much. But give them 15-20 years and they'll catch up.

How to vote

So to my fellow Christians who will vote this November I say: Vote for the candidate of your choice. Vote your conscience. Vote your convictions.

But do not pretend for one second that it is even possible to vote the Gospel this November. 

John Wesley had some excellent advice:

Fellow clergy, please: 

Your presidential candidate is not going to inaugurate the eschaton. Not even the Millennium. Not even a decent mimic of anything Jesus imagined the Kingdom of God to be, nor even the faintest shadow. There is no divine endorsement - none whatever - of even a single word in the platforms of either the DNC or RNC.

I am not so dismayed that millions of American, Christian laypersons may think this. I do not think that all do, perhaps not even most, anyway. But I am dismayed that there are a large number of Christian clergy, especially of my own United Methodist denomination, who (to judge by their own online posts) actually seem to think that Christian discipleship actually equates with voting for one party and necessarily excludes ever voting for the other. In fact, one of my UM colleagues told me bluntly before the 2000 election (so this has been going on awhile) that is was not possible for a Christian to vote for any Republican candidate and that voting for a Republican was certain proof that the voter was not Christian.

Whenever someone claims that supporting this candidate or that one is based on Christian imperatives, that person instantly loses credibility with me. Zip, gone, vamoose, nada. Because what is really being said is that corrupted political ideology (which is all of them) suborns Christianity and that the work of Christ necessarily is done through the corrupt organs  (which is all of them) of a corrupt political party (which is all of them). And never is this more so than this year and this year's candidates.

I neither demand nor expect that any American political party will ever base its platform on the Sermon on the Mount. It cannot be done anyway. But I long for a day when Americans will awaken again to the supremacy of Christ over the self.

I pray our polity this year is not a bellwether of the years to come. If so, we as a people are too very close to losing our goodness. God help us.

After Orlando: The No Fly List and firearm purchases

I am writing this in response to the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting of the Pulse nightclub on June 12. Since then, many political leaders in America and many of my colleagues in ministry have offered various commentary, but the topic for this post is the insistence of many of them that persons listed on the TSA's "No Fly List" (NFL henceforth) should be prohibited from buying firearms.

That they should be so prohibited, by the way, was a specific point Preisdent Obama made during his Oval Office address to the nation after the Islamist mass murders in San Bernadino, Calif. in 2015.  The quote is:

To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon? This is a matter of national security.

If we are going to debate this and other topics, it is necessary that we all understand what the terms are we are debating and what they mean. So what exactly is the No Fly List?

The NFL is nothing but a list of names that is used to prevent persons with a matching name - or even a similar name - from boarding an aircraft inside the United States. That is to say, the NFL is itself only names and nothing else - no secondary identification such as date of birth, place of residence, color of hair, height, etc.

When you make an airline reservation, either online or on the phone, the reservation system compares your name to the names on the list. If there is a match or if your name is merely similar to a name on the list, your reservation will succeed and you will be sold a ticket, but you will not be permitted to board the aircraft when you go to the airport. In fact, you will not even know your name, or a similar one, is on the NFL until you attempt to check in.

And you may not ever fly again until you prove - to the government's satisfaction, not yours - that you are not the person whose name is the real subject of the listing.

The ACLU has long been highly critical of the No Fly List and some of its chapters have challenged the law and its processes in court. The ACLU explains:

In 2004, The Washington Post reported,

U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list. 

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed. 

A senior administration official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said Kennedy was stopped because the name "T. Kennedy" has been used as an alias by someone on the list of terrorist suspects. ...

"That a clerical error could lend one of the most powerful people in Washington to the list -- it makes one wonder just how many others who are not terrorists are on the list," said Reginald T. Shuford, senior ACLU counsel. "Someone of Senator Kennedy's stature can simply call a friend to have his name removed but a regular American citizen does not have that ability. He had to call three times himself."

In fact, Sen. Kennedy publicly made the same point as ACLU Counsel Shuford. But note that even though Kennedy picked up a phone and called DHS Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name removed, it still took three weeks. In fact, though, "T Kennedy" was not removed from the list, the DHS just issued instructions that Sen. Kennedy would not be delayed. I would submit that us peons will not enjoy that advantage of present DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson answering the phone personally when you or I call him.

The ACLU explains their continuing, serious concerns and legal actions regarding the No Fly List at some length here. And in 2014, Reuters reported, "Federal judge rules U.S. no-fly list violates Constitution."

The U.S. government's no-fly list banning people accused of links to terrorism from commercial flights violates their constitutional rights because it gives them no meaningful way to contest that decision, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown, ruling on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Oregon by 13 Muslim Americans who were branded with the no-fly status, ordered the government to come up with new procedures that allow people on the no-fly list to challenge that designation.

And speaking of the DHS,

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.) disclosed that a congressional investigation recently found that at least 72 people working at DHS also “were on the terrorist watch list.”

“Back in August, we did an investigation—the inspector general did—of the Department of Homeland Security, and they had 72 individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security,” Lynch told Boston Public Radio.

It should be noted that the No Fly List and the Terror Watch List (TWL) are two distinct lists that have different purposes. Being placed on the TWL does not automatically place that name on the NFL and FBI Director James Comey is on record saying that it should not do so.

There is a long list of "false positives" on the No Fly List at Wikipedia article on the topic. A few examples:

• U.S. Representative, former Freedom Rider, and Chairman of SNCC John Lewis (politician) (D-GA) has been stopped many times.
• David Nelson, the actor best known for his role on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, is among various persons named David Nelson who have been stopped at airports because their name appears on the list.
• In February 2006, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) stated in a committee hearing that his wife Catherine had been subjected to questioning at an airport as to whether she was Cat Stevens due to the similarity of their names. [Cat Stevens was a pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam in 1978, and that name was placed on the NFL.]
• After frequent harassment at airport terminals, a Canadian businessman changed his name to avoid being delayed every time he took a flight.
• Abe Mashal, a 31-year-old Muslim and United States Marine Veteran, found himself on the No Fly List in April 2010 while attempting to board a plane out of Midway Airport. He was questioned by the TSA, FBI and Chicago Police at the airport and was told they had no clue why he was on the No Fly List. Once he arrived at home that day two other FBI agents came to his home and used a Do Not Fly question-and-answer sheet to question him. They informed him they had no idea why he was on the No Fly List.

There are many other such examples. So secretive are the NFL's processes that last year the left-of-center Huffington Post published,

Earlier this week, The Intercept published a 166-page document outlining the government's guidelines for placing people on an expansive network of terror watch lists, including the no-fly list. In their report, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux highlighted the extremely vague and loosely defined criteria developed by 19 federal agencies, supposedly to fight terrorism.

Using these criteria, government officials have secretly characterized an unknown number of individuals as threats or potential threats to national security. In 2013 alone, 468,749 watch-list nominations were submitted to the National Counterterrorism Center. It rejected only 1 percent of the recommendations.

Critics say the system is bloated and imprecise, needlessly sweeping up thousands of people while simultaneously failing to catch legitimate threats, like Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

HuffPo went on to explain seven ways you can wind up on the list:

1. You could raise "reasonable suspicion" that you're involved in terrorism. "Irrefutable evidence or concrete facts" are not required.
2. You could post something on Facebook or Twitter that raises "reasonable suspicion."
3. Or somebody else could just think you're a potential terror threat.The guidelines also consider the use of "walk-in" or "write-in" information about potential candidates for the watch list. 
4. You could be a little terrorist-ish, at least according to someone.
5. Or you could just know someone terrorist-y, maybe.
6. And if you're in a "category" of people determined to be a threat, your threat status could be "upgraded" at the snap of a finger.
7. Finally, you could just be unlucky.

UCLA Constitutional Law Prof. Eugene Volokh wrote in The Washington Post,

"... wouldn’t the argument [against the proposal] be that these are just “suspect[s],” and we don’t deny constitutional rights based just on suspicion? If you think you can prove someone is a terrorist, lock him up. If you have probable cause to think he’s a terrorist, and think you can develop proof beyond a reasonable doubt, arrest him. Even if you have only suspicion, follow him, ask people about him, and so on. But if you don’t have enough to prosecute or even arrest someone, you can’t take away his constitutional rights, even if you suspect he’s a terrorist (or if you suspect he’s a drug dealer or a gang member or whatever else).

In another article, Prof. Volokh points out that while many people say that the Second Amendment does not secure the right of individual persons to keep and bear arms, President Obama has himself said that it does. According to Whitehouse.gov, on January 16, 2013, President Obama said:

Let me be absolutely clear.  Like most Americans, I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms.

Another point: I think the question is reasonable that if someone is threatening enough to bar from flying and from buying a gun, shouldn't they be arrested? If not, why not? As the ACLU says,

Until the government fixes its unconstitutional new [as of 2014] process, people on the No Fly List are barred from commercial air travel with no meaningful chance to clear their names, resulting in a vast and growing group of individuals whom the government deems too dangerous to fly but too harmless to arrest.

And the solution apparently is to change that to, "too dangerous to fly, too dangerous to buy a gun, but still too harmless to arrest."

Finally, let's revisit the president's quote from his 2015 Oval Office address, specifically these sentences:

To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon? 

By now I hope the reader can see that imprecision of language is one of the greatest obstacles we have in coming not merely to agreement, but in even speaking cogently to one another. And the president's language here was inexcusably imprecise because the No Fly List is not a list of terrorist suspects, which should be abundantly clear from the sources I have cited above. There is such a thing as a federal terrorist watch list, but that is not the list the president was referring to. Or was it? We really do not know.

Update: The 8-year old.

Update: The Knoxville, Tenn., veterinarian:

Dr. Patrick Stephen Hackett is a veterinarian — not a terrorist.

Try explaining that in the airport security line.

Hackett, a lifelong resident of the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area, was named Outstanding Practitioner of the Year in 1992 by the Tennessee Veterinary Medical Association. He serves as president of the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley.

He’s on the no-fly list.

Hackett has never been arrested and never traveled to the Middle East or other centers of terrorist activity, but he found out more than a decade ago he’s on the federal watch list because he shares the same name as notorious Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Joseph Hackett, who was jailed in the 1970s for planting bombs in Britain.

The difference should be easy to spot. The terrorist is missing an arm and a leg — blown off when a bomb exploded prematurely — while the Knoxville veterinarian has all his limbs intact.

“I don’t know how I got on the list, and I don’t know how to get off the list,” Hackett said.

And note that the actual terrorist and the veterinarian do not in fact have the same name.

Update: Huffington Post writer Chris Weigant argues

But I have to say, while all this seems laudable at first glance, the underlying (and bipartisan) disdain for the United States Constitution is extremely worrisome. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the Second Amendment here, but rather the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Here are the relevant clauses: “No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....” (Fifth Amendment); and “...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....” (Fourteenth Amendment). ...

If we’re going to have a No-Fly List and a Terrorist Watch List to provide security for American citizens, then we need to codify such programs by passing a constitutional amendment which clearly spells out the limits and scope of such programs. To me, there is simply no other constitutional way to achieve this goal.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that such pre-emptive security measures are inherently a bad thing. And I’m certainly not arguing that suspected terrorists should be able to easily acquire high-powered weapons. I’m not “pro-terrorist” in any way, shape, or form. Just to be clear.

But I am arguing that what we’ve got now is blatantly unconstitutional. And it appears nobody else is even willing to make such an argument, at the moment. 

Well, I am.

See also, "America's terrorist watch list, explained."

Courage, an essay for Memorial Day

On Memorial Day we remember the men and women who gave their lives in the service of our country or who have died since their time of service. We should be careful to distinguish between this day and Veterans Day, a day set aside to pay tribute to those serving now or who have served and are still living.

While giving honor to more than one million, one hundred thousand American men and women who died in battle, we draw up short of honoring war itself or glorifying it. General William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union commander who devastated vast swaths of Georgia and both Carolinas during the Civil War, wrote to his wife at war’s end,

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even the most brilliant success is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

Yet while the dead whom we honor today would almost certainly agree with General Sherman's sentiments, they also knew that it is untrue that nothing is worth fighting for. Teddy Roosevelt earned wartime honors in the Spanish-American war and then received the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the end of the Russo-Japanese war. Roosevelt put the tension between our desire for peace and the sometime necessity of war this way:

[M]y disagreement with the peace-at-any-price men, the ultra-pacifists, is not in the least because they favor peace. I object to them, first, because they have proved themselves futile and impotent in working for peace, and second, because they commit ... the crime against morality of failing to uphold righteousness as the all-important end toward which we should strive ... To condemn equally might which backs right and might which overthrows right is to render positive service to wrong-doers. . . . To denounce the nation that wages war in self-defense, or from a generous desire to relieve the oppressed, in the same terms in which we denounce war waged in a spirit of greed or wanton folly stands on a par with denouncing equally a murderer and the policeman who, at peril of his life and by force of arms, arrests the murderer. In each case the denunciation denotes not loftiness of soul but weakness both of mind and morals. – America and the World War

But I am not exploring today the topic of just or unjust wars. This post is about courage.

Every member of the service who faces battle knows about fear. But there are ample opportunities in the military to be in fear in either peace or war.

One fearful day for me was on Sicily drop zone at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on July 1, 1987. A C-130 approached to drop off a Sheridan armored reconnaisance vehicle, flying about five feet above the ground. The chutes deployed but the C-130 hit the ground flat on its underside. It was about 75 feet away from me. The pilot gave the engines full throttle, trying to get back into the air, but the landing gear was buried in the sand and the tail assembly had almost been severed by the impact. The plane ran into a wooded ravine where it blew up.

My friend, Maj. Baxter Ennis, was with me. Like many of the other soldiers present, we ran into the flames because in the military you never abandon your comrades. There was fire and smoke everywhere, not only from the burning jet fuel; the forest was on fire, too. The heat was extremely intense. We finally left, having accomplished nothing. This is that crash:

 

Two flight officers in the cockpit were severely burned but lived. Four aircraft crewmen and a soldier on the ground were killed. I had never met them. I didn’t even know their names until the news media broadcast them. But I don’t think a single week has gone by since then that I don’t think of them, and think of that day.

The pilot was Captain Garry Bardo, Jr..
The navigator was First Lieutenant John B. Keiser, III.
The loadmaster was Technical Sergeant Timothy J. Matar.
The assistant loadmaster was Airman First Class Albert G. Dunse.
The soldier was Staff Sergeant Douglas Hunter.

These are some names I am remembering for Memorial Day.

William Manchester won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of John. F. Kennedy. Manchester fought on Okinawa as a Marine sergeant. He wrote of single-handedly entering a building to take out an enemy sniper: “There was a door which meant there was another room and the sniper was in that—and I just broke down. I was absolutely gripped by fear that this man would expect me and would shoot me.”

Fear in danger hardly needs justification. It is not fear that needs explanation, but courage. As one veteran wrote, the reasonable thing in battle would be to run away. Whence comes the courage to stay, much less courage to heroics? Were they truly willing to die for their country? I don't think so. There's an old story that goes back probably to the Civil War of the young soldier whose commander asked him, "Are you willing to die for your country?" The young man answered, "Certainly not. But I am ready to die, unwilling."

What is courage? Courage is not simply the absence of fear. Indeed, many men who have been awarded the highest decorations for bravery in battle admit they were frightened the entire time.

No, courage is not the lack of fear. One facing real danger without fear is either a fool or ignorant. As someone once wisecracked, "When everyone around you is losing their head and you’ve kept yours, then you don’t understand the situation."

So, then, is courage the mastery of fear? The will to act despite danger and the fear of it is necessary for courage to come forth. But even that falls short as a workable definition. Courage, like fear, is mostly an emotional response to the danger. Courage is not unthinking, but it is usually uncritical. Courage is an act of will but more than that. Courage is an act of being.

Many soldiers have done heroic acts and later said they were hardly in control of themselves. The ancient Greeks called this state katalepsis, "possession," and even the Spartans tried to train their soldiers never to fall under this condition. Audie Murphy was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for action in this condition after his best friend was killed. In this state there is no conscious fear and heroic deeds seem reckless more than courageous.

Without fear there is no courage, but fear and courage are not opposites. Courage is the opposite of cowardice, not of fear. Courage and cowardice are opposite sides of the same coin, but what is the obverse side of the coin of fear?

Again we consult ones who have seen both sides of the coin. William Manchester suffered a non-life-threatening wound on Okinawa that sent him to the honorable safety of a field hospital. There he learned that his unit would make an amphibious assault further up the island. Manchester explained in his book, Goodbye, Darkness, that the thought of his friends facing danger without him to help them “was just intolerable.”

Those men on the line were my family, my home. They were closer to me than I can say. I had to be with them, rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have saved them.

He went AWOL from the hospital, joined his unit was blown nearly to bits by Japanese artillery in the ensuing battle.

Military service, especially in battle, is steeped with the convictions of deepest emotion. In battle there is fear and courage, anger and compassion. There is resignation and determination. There is hope and despair. The chief emotion of the battlefield, unlikely as it may be, is love. When patrolling deserts of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan, soldiers stay where flies the angry iron not for country or flag or other abstractions. In the final sense they fight for their friends. One Iraq veteran wrote,

I've found the hard way that war is not glamorous. You quickly lose the idea of being a man fighting for his country when you have to carry your comrade who has been wounded in a gun fight. That nobility is lost quickly. ... It's not about fighting for the flag, it's about fighting for my life and fighting for my buddies' lives. These men I am lucky enough to serve with, I have become so attached to it's like they are my brothers.

The opposite of fear is not courage. It is love. The apostle John wrote (1 John 4:16-18),

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

John was not writing of the battlefield, of course, but of why disciples of Jesus Christ should have no fear of the judgment of God because God loves us and we love God. God's love is perfect to begin with. It's our love of God that must be perfected. The more perfectly one loves God the less one fears God.

In the Old Testament, the admonition to "fear God" mostly means to hold in reverential awe rather than to be actually afraid. The New Testament uses fear that way, too. But Jesus warns us that God is to be feared in the usual sense of the word. In Luke 12:5, Jesus said, "But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him."

He's talking about God and the judgment of God. What insures us against the judgment of God and therefore against the fear of hell's punishment is love. A misconception among church people is that it is God's love for us that removes this fear. To the contrary, it is our love for God. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear."

Love displaces fear just as oil displaces water. It is not just the fear of God that is banished by love for God. It is the fear of most anything life can throw at us. I am not confusing fear with concern or caution. It is reasonable to maximize one’s chances for good outcomes in danger or times of uncertainty. That is one thing, but to be gripped by fear is another. Love drives out fear as long as we remember that there is nothing in this life or after it that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, and that, as Paul put it, the sufferings of this world do not compare with the glory that God has in store for us (Rom 8.18).

Yet there is a paradox here. If love drives out fear, then is love the only source of courage? “Among men who fight together there is an intense love,” Manchester explained. His story of leaving the field hospital is a love story. Yet it was a fear story, too. His fear, as he also admitted, was that his friends would be in danger and unless he was with them he would not be able to do anything about it. Here his fear for his friends’ safety was not driven out by his love for them, his fear for them and love for them combined to evoke courage. Love and fear, two sides of the same coin. Manchester’s courage was born of both fear and love to place himself in danger to protect his comrades.

Former Marine and author Steven Pressfield put it this way in Gates of Fire:

What can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. ... But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. ... 

When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. That is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. The truth is too holy, too sacred for words.

Anita Dixon, of Wichita, Kan., whose son Army Sgt. Evan Parker was killed while serving in Iraq in 2005, kisses the graves in section 60, where many of the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, among flags placed in preparation of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. on Thursday May 27, 2010. 'I'm putting a kiss on the graves because they're all brothers,' says Dixon, ' the military is a family.' says Dixon. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Whether they served in peace or war, the men and women we memorialize today were not so impoverished of spirit that they were unable to surrender the pleasures of life. They deemed that their love of country and duty to freedom were of greater value and more important imperative, so they reckoned that if dangers must be faced, they would face them in the most desirable way, by placing their own mortal bodies "between their loved homes and the war's desolation."

Because of their sacrifice we go safely to our homes. Henceforth we should stand in humility when their names are read. This date should never go by but that on it our fallen shall be remembered.

The prophet Micah wrote that the time will come when God will judge between all the peoples and will settle disputes between strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. All people will be at peace, and no one will make them afraid (Micah 4:3-4).

Let us pray that day comes quickly. Until then may the Lord watch over those who serve today, to make them instruments of justice, enablers of peace, and finally to see them safely home.