Taking Up the Cross

Dear George,

It looks like Harry Reid out wussed Pelosi by a nose. The Senate caved and passed your Bank Bailout Bill, as “credit freeze” replaced “WMDs” as the goad to force Congress to take a course of action that is both unnecessary and disastrous.

With all the sweeteners the Senate added, it now means we have to charge an additional $800 billion on our maxed out international credit card.

But enough of bailouts and economics, I say. Now that we know that America is the land of capitalist anarchy, we can move on to other more bracing subjects, such as the empire that is bankrupting us.

I just came across a statement by NATO Thinker of Big Thoughts, Julian Lindley-French, on why NATO should be allowed to exist even though it is useless in the wake of the Soviet Collapse. He contends that:

The center of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward. As it does, the nature of power itself is changing. The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans and the institution they have built to lead the way.

There it is: the Whitman’s Burden updated and brought into the twenty-first century. This is why we’re getting chewed up in Afghanistan. The West will not rest until the Taliban doff their robes and head rags, and start wearing God-fearing suits and ties (no dress-down Fridays for savages).

This also explains why the reemergence of a militant Evangelical Christianity is so crucial to our efforts to westernize the barbarians. It takes massive amounts of Christian love to change the world. Only the theological absolutism of doctrine has the backbone necessary to present the heathen with a choice between conversion or death.

Baby bombing sticks in the public's craw when done for oil, democracy or capitalism. But, when the bomb as an incentive to get them to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior, then it is not only acceptable, but necessary.

Jesus told us to pick up the cross and follow him, and for America, the cross he was talking about was financial ruin and the death of our Democratic Republic. It’s all part of the big picture. The payoff will come in the twenty-second century, when the Pashtun who heads up the World Bank is looking over a loan application from an impoverished United States. Memories of how we brought civilization to his country will be stirred as he feeds the application into the shredder.

It’s a small price to pay for a world that is both capitalist and democratic.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones