Tourist

My son's tour has been extended by six months. Half a year extra, wasting his efforts and risking his life in this lost war that we cannot win. How many amerikkkan lives have to be thrown away chasing after the mad dream of this stupid texass cowboy? Another Vietnam, thanks to another corrupt repubican power-hungry madmanistration.

Or so Reid would have us believe. He actually said it ... before he took it back: "this war is lost." And Obama: "wasted American lives..." And Kennedy: "another Vietnam". Well, that's all of them.

No, I don't like it. I wanted my son home in June. Now it's December. What if something happens to him? God doesn't seem to mind the loss of sons. Not enough to prevent it. And we must thank Him for His mercies, and we must bless him for His lessons. I don't mean it to sound bitter. But I'm not wrong. We must have faith. But in what? That evil will not befall us? That we can survive it? That even if we don't, we're saved? The damned have faith too. We can only have faith that God will do as He sees fit to do. Rather a tautology. That's why we can't say God is on our side -- we have to get on His side.

So is this war lost? Not yet. It certainly can be. We have officials -- I cannot bring myself to say "leaders" -- who see a vested interest in our humiliation. To them, such humiliation would ingratiate them back into the international community. You know about the international community. It's the one that sells nuclear technology to Iran, and buys Iranian oil at $14 dollars a barrel, and sets up child molestation rings in African countries, and so on. On and on. We have officials who give speeches and put forward bills that cause the hearts of the enemy to rejoice. You know about that. When your enemy announces that he cannot beat you, and feels he has already lost the fight, well, you are glad.

But enough of this. It is self-evident. The question is, does it matter. Great powers rise, and they fall. Nations and cities and families all decline. Either you fail in old age, or you die sooner. But while we are here, while we have strength, what meaning will we give our lives? For life has no meaning in itself. Not in itself, it doesn't. How could there be murders and atrocities, if life were valuable in itself? The fact that Nazis killed Jews tells us that life is not valued. We don't even value our own lives, some of us. For every person, a decision must be made, whether or not to value life. Then it has value, or it doesn't. For that person, I mean -- who am I to speak for another?

The women who caused us to contemplate our anuses this week -- the Crow-David women, with their desire that we use one single square of toilet paper per sitting -- what they value is the Planet. They and their cohorts will plow the clouds in private jets, but would mandate the consistency and viscosity of our bowel movements. This is the thing to which they give value. Would I be amiss in thinking that they support a woman's right to choose? I think not. The Planet and the international community are what they value. And their personal right to use private jets. Human life, on an individual basis ... not so much. My point?

It's called duty. My son serves. He's not the idealist that I am. But he is making a sacrifice, of time and safety and comfort, and he does it stoically. Now he has been called to extraordinary duty, and he will continue to serve. But it's like faith, and like the things we value -- subjective. The enemy serves too. Fools serve their causes. Traitors serve their interests. Degenerates serve their appetites. It all has equal attraction, to those who are attracted. Like seeks like. The cause that my son serves, as we see it, is one of creativity -- the antithesis of entropy. Let us be a part of building order. Let us organize the natural tendency to chaos into the artificial, the imposed stricture of civilization, rather than winking at barbarism and oppression. So I see it.

It's all very grand, isn't it. If we narrow the view down to individuals -- whose lives matter or don't matter depending on the value we give to them -- then I have a simple question. Who should we respect? Those who say we've lost this war ... no, wait a minute ... we haven't -- or those who say we must win this war, and will -- which? Those who would police your anus to save the planet, or those who would adopt a baby rather than tear it limb from limb? Am I wrong? Am I unfair? That would be a matter of perspective. The same way life is a matter of perspective, valuable or not, depending.

As individuals we have little power to win wars or save planets. All that is too grand for me. I raised a son, though, who means everything to me. I am convinced that democracy is superior to tyranny. I am convinced that the planet -- which has survived meteor impact and flood and glaciation and the rising of mighty mountain ranges, and the outpouring of countless megatons of volcanogenic carbon dioxide -- can survive the exhaust of your mother's SUV or your enthusiastic over-folding of toilet tissue. I might be wrong, though. I'm not wrong about my son. The man he has decided to be, well, such men understand duty.

There is no assurance of success, with duty. It is entirely personal. It has to do with the meaning we give to our lives.



J