Who are the real naive ones?

You know, I was just thinking about a letter that someone wrote to a news magazine in the past couple of weeks (I don't remember which one ... I'm reading so much political stuff these days, it's all running together) about Bush supporters blindly following our fearless leader right off the edge of a cliff, or something like that. Generally, we are assumed to have this naive, ignorant, simplistic view of the world and our place in it.

I don't think that's the case at all. I'm a Bush supporter, and I clearly understand that all actions have consequences. I understand that the United States is not guaranteed the top spot among all the world superpowers. I'm afraid that most people think that nothing can happen to us, that the U.S. will always be this great, prosperous nation no matter what we do. But that's not so.

Making America more respected in the world sounds like a worthwhile goal. But what if the means to that end involve withdrawing some of the support we give to Israel? I read a piece by Charles Krauthammer that outlined a horrifying possibility of the Kerry plan for peace. It's naive to think that we can turn our back on Israel without consequences. We can't.

Allowing two people "in love" to spend their lives together and have their relationship validated by society seems to be something that no one would argue against. But if you dig a little deeper ... what is the purpose of marriage, anyway? Why does the government get involved in a committed, durable relationship between one man and one woman, while they don't issue a license to other types of relationships? The answer is obvious, of course. It's because the majority of these relationships involve children and serve as the first building blocks of a family, and families are a smaller unit of society. This has been true with respect to almost every culture since the beginning of recorded history. To allow a few judges and activist groups to change the definition of "marriage" would have major repercussions on the entire society. It would say that marriage and family do not mean anything in particular. That children do not deserve a mother and a father. That mothers and fathers do not have each have special, unique things that only they can give to a child during their crucial formative years. It would allow a select few, a tiny minority, to redefine something that has remained essentially the same for generations and generations and generations, throughout the whole world, without even giving the people who would be affected a chance to speak on the matter. It would be like replacing one lung with a paper bag and expecting the body as a whole to escape unscathed. That's naive.

Sitting down and reasoning with terrorists sounds like an okay thing to do. We give them a comfy chair and some tissues and ask about their childhood. Maybe throw a sympathetic arm around them. But it's naive to assume that people who commit mass murder in the name of their god would be receptive to this "sensitive" gesture. The reality is that there are people in the world who hate us. And they don't hate us because they hate George W. Bush and therefore want to kill the rest of us by default. We've been hated for years and years, by various nations, because we're powerful. Because we live in such excess. Because a woman like me can speak in public, have a job outside the home, get a doctoral degree, hold an elected office. To assume that you can reason with evil is naive. You can't. The world is just not a kind place to be. It's a fallen world, where evil runs rampant, and attempting to conquer evil with an articulate dialogue would result in evil stampeding over us, our thesaurus, and our speechwriters.

To run from using our military, to shun putting our troops in harm's way, has consequences. We have a multitude of brave servicemen and women, who love their country and who believe that freedom is so precious that they will voluntarily give their lives to ensure that others won't have to live without it. If we stop sending that message to the world, instead demonstrating that freedom is not something worth dying for, that liberty is not something that should be defended, then we'll have to face the consequences.

Finally, and most importantly, we can't cleanse this country of God without reaping what we've sown.

Hm. It seems that I'm chatty today.