Two Op-Ed Articles

I am deeply hurt by two op-ed articles. As I read When Columnists Cry 'Jihad' by John McCandlish Phillips I wanted to respond to every line in the article. Stuck in Lincoln's Land by David Brooks left me awed at how I can interpret events described by David Brooks entirely differently than David Brooks does. Both articles take a personal us versus them point view best summed up by Brooks “. . . the faithful and the faithless go at each other in their symbiotic culture war . . .”

I feel classified by Brooks and Philips as being amongst the faithless. How can I, a person of great faith, be called faithless? To me this talk of faith is dirty mud slinging rhetoric described by George Orwell in Animal Farm. All animals are equal. Pigs are more equal.

By faith, Brooks, Philips, and others with their shared beliefs, mean people who have the same faith as they do on a particular issue. All this talk of relativism and absolutes boils down to: All faiths are equal. Our faith is more equal. Their absolute is that they are right and everyone else wrong. Don’t all these people of Brooks and Philips faith realize that once those of us who believe differently are defeated, that then they will fall fighting amongst themselves as to whose absolutes are correct?

This completely unshakable belief in their absolute rightness is frightening. This is not the faith of Lincoln as described by Brooks. Brooks describes a Lincoln who was so conflicted about what was right, that he left the decision to the uncertain outcome of a battle and then claimed God chose. If Lincoln had faith, clarity of vision, then he would have known that "God had decided the question in favor of the slaves" without needing the battle of Antietam. Give me the uncertain Lincoln any day over the certain Hitler.

In life there is only one absolute - change. Deal with it.