An average kid with moderate talent, since her late teens, between acting, mothering, cooking, and singing, Gwyneth Paltrow has subjected America to incessant rounds of painful “No wait…let me start again,” off-tempo renditions of Für Elise followed by impromptu tap-dancing exhibitions by a grown woman who might as well be dressed in a tight pink tutu.

Gwynie (I like to call her Gwynie) is an attractive woman with a superior gift of imitating British accents.  Ms. Paltrow started her career in Hollywood when her mother, actress Blythe Danner, and her father, the late director Bruce Paltrow, together with family friend Steven Spielberg brokered a deal and got her a starring gig in the movies at 19 years of age.

An unabashed recipient of Hollywood nepotism, after winning an Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love Gwyneth was crowned the “Muse” of Miramax studios by film producer Harvey Weinstein.  Since that day, Gwyneth has been nothing short of unbearable.

Raised in Massachusetts, Gwynie moved back to Los Angeles where her career and love life with Brad Pitt took off. Paltrow traveled the world, and now speaks British-style English, French, Spanish, and a little Italian. Gwen even married a temperamental British rock star – Chris Martin of Coldplay – who she’d never have met without the benefit of a VIP backstage pass.

After adopting London as her new home, Ms. Gwyneth, in classic Madonna I’m Evita-I’m British-I’m a single mom to a couple of African kids- mode, dissed America, set up house in Berkshire Gardens, and practiced her fake English accent while taking children Apple and Moses to buy groceries in trendy food shops.

Over the years the only thing more irritating than Paltrow feigning a British accent in the movie Sliding Doors was seeing her accepted as a gourmet cook. Gwyneth Paltrow even traveled with Mario Batali through Spain and lunched with Ina Garten, the “I’m cooking a fabulous dinner for my good friend Gwyneth” Barefoot Contessa.

After soaking fava beans became too much of a chore, Ms. Paltrow re-focused and said “I could do that. I bet I could do that,” and decided to resuscitate her former career as a Duet singer, but not just a singer, a country singer, which right there was weird enough for a woman who spent so much of her life practicing speaking with a British accent. Nevertheless, two weeks into her revitalized singing career golden child Gwyneth was starring in the movie Country Strong.

Soon after, Paltrow showed up on the 2011 Grammy Awards singing “Forget You” with the Muppets and Cee Lo Green and vamping around in a precociously overconfident number on Glee.  Mrs. Coldplay’s routine was rivaled only by Katie Holmes embarrassing herself while torturing the nation on So You Think You can Dance.

The desire to share her varied gifts must have motivated Paltrow to go beyond her expertise in thespianism, Epicureanism, and crooning, because in addition to mastering all three, Paltrow created Goop.com, a place where a Renaissance woman could branch out, blog, and author an informative newsletter.

At Goop.com, the artiste/chef/chanteuse tells readers: “Make, Go, Get, Do, Be and See.”  The only way to describe the venture is that Goop is authored by an overindulged, self-impressed, spoiled rich kid sharing navel-gazing insights into experiences, locations, products, and ideas few people will ever encounter, let alone be able to afford.  Can anyone say “Clueless?”

Paltrow’s Oprah-style New Age views are a cacophony of beliefs similar to the Cheese Board area of Goop’s “Make” section. While Gwyneth’s channeling of Tammy Wynette, making Duck Ragu, recommending skin products from a French pharmacy, and explaining the Year of the Tiger is irritating, it is still all relatively harmless. However, her views on religion, philosophy and sexuality step out of the Christian Louboutin realm and into the downright unappreciated.

Case in point: Gwyneth recently introduced her seven year-old daughter Apple, whose name was chosen because it was “Biblical,” to the idea of lesbianism. Mom assured the tyke that her classmate, who had two Mommies, was “lucky,” after which she implied on Goop that she didn’t know the answer to the question: “What does it actually say in the Bible that will cause some people to be upset by my line of thinking?”  You mean besides confusing a first grader?

I don’t buy the feigned perplexed confusion, because based on Gwyneth Paltrow’s history the query was more of a challenge than a question.  It’s likely that Paltrow has already resolved the issue and feels totally confident that, even if the Bible and God Himself doesn’t support her “line of thinking,” hers is still the right answer, because in Gwyneth Paltrow’s superior world her answer is correct simply because it’s hers.

Along his lonely way, Eli stumbles into a town resembling those of the Old West. The leader of the town is a self-appointed, ruthless leader named Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman who is simultaneously a cross between Mickey Rourke from 9 ½ Weeks and Mickey Rourke from The Wrestler, as well as the whole process of evolution between the former and the latter. Carnegie is an evil megalomaniac who sends his lowlife savages in search of the Book, convinced that possession of a copy of the now-extinct Bible can help him spread his rule and establish control over degraded humanity.

In case abusing his concubine, killing some people, and treating the rest like dirt was not enough to convey that Carnegie is a bad guy, we are shown that his favorite read is Mussolini’s biography. Yet, with all the weight of culture going against him, Carnegie is the only person who had managed to forge some semblance of a settlement with brewing elements of potential civilization.   His wild town—reminiscent of an Old West settlement but surrounded with cannibals instead of Indians—is the only semi-safe and positive place in an otherwise out-of-control and collapsed world. He is assembling a hierarchical society and he needs the Book to bring, as he thinks, “all the weak and wounded” under his dominion. His intentions are sinister and self-serving, but he seems to be the only person who understands the real power of the Book and its ability to transform and civilize the brutally egotistical and animal nature of disintegrated humanity . . . while at the same time correctly assessing any man’s, including his own, inability to re-create functioning societal interactions without a binding belief system.

Eli, on the other hand, is hell-bent on delivering the Book all the way west, as if Carnegie town, the etalon of the west, isn’t west enough. Eli is unwilling to bestow the power of the Book to the maniacal ambitions of Carnegie who, nevertheless, manages to usurp the Book by exchanging it for a hostage, Eli’s model-looking girl companion (the precise type of a woman you must leave home when you are going on a mission for God, which to his defense Eli attempts to do but finds himself powerless against the Biblical urge of Hollywood producers to stick an out-of-context young pretty face in everything they do). 

When the salivating Carnegie breaks open the thoroughly locked Bible, he tragically realizes that it is written in Braille and there is no one left who can read it since there is no one left who can really read anything anyway.

At the end of the movie, to our—and even to Ray Bradbury’s—surprise that Michael Moore is not the only person he should be mad at for stealing his ideas and book titles, we find out that Eli, in fact, memorized the entire Book. He IS the book and he finally gets himself to the place where the book was needed, where God, as Eli claimed, wanted him to deliver the Book…and that place is…—and this is where I wanted to deliver my popcorn, in partially digested form, to the row in front of me—that place is San Francisco.

Alcatraz prison has been turned into a citadel of cultural values and is protected by a hi-tech armed force, making it into a cross between Berkley and Guantanamo Bay. It is here that some surviving intellectuals—including a cross between Howard Zinn and the wacky Christopher Lloyd character from the Back to the Future franchise—collect surviving cultural values, print them, and distribute them to survivors, cannibals and murderers . . . who, when they are not busy eating and killing each other for old radio parts, are of course going to read Yeats and Keats.

As the head intellectual leads Eli through the sterile archives of stored masterpieces, he points out the fact that they had recovered some pieces of Mozart and Shakespeare but hadn’t had gotten any copies of the Bible yet, and now, well, they have gotten that too … delightful, isn’t it?  Wait now. This guy Eli carried this book (or himself) through dirt and blood, killed and mutilated people who endangered his mission, was chased by cannibals and maniacs . . . and after all this, the intellectual goes …”oh, perfect we got ourselves yet another bestseller.”  That’s all?  You’re kidding me, right?

This comfortably secular and politically correct ending is sad not because it is formulaically stupid but because it robs the movie of the great potential of actually being a movie about spirit as opposed to a movie about a religious book that it lamely is.  As with most current American artistic expression, The Book of Eli blindly follows the established academic elites’ anachronistic view of a cultural value as something belonging to a museum, library, archive, university and solely validated by peer views, professional commentators, Al Gore, and accepted intellectuals—basically, anyone but the people by whom and for whom those values are created.

Ironically and particularly with the Bible, it was a different story.  The Word of God was delivered directly to the people who needed it, who in their despair and ignorance depended on it not as a cultural value but as a living breath of divinity upon which depended their very existence.  It was given to the likes of people who inhabit Carnegie’s wild settlement and it was given to people like Carnegie, willful and often times evil kings, who nevertheless had the ability to deliver the Word to the people who needed it, because the Word had the power to cut directly to the people, bypassing those who tried to use It for their selfish purposes.  It was given to ruthless emperors like Constantine and mass executioners like Paul and it transformed them.

The Word of God was given to lowlifes and prostitutes, to criminals and sinners, to murderers and tyrants. In short, the Book was given to everyone but the scribes and Pharisees, the self-appointed custodians of agreed values, the professors and intellectuals. If anything, the Word was the simple liberating truth of passion that defeated the established complex dictatorship of the mind.

And this is the real story of the Great Book of Eli instead of the religious bestseller carried by a guy named Eli who, even in a post apocalyptic wasteland, feels the urge to conform to elite snobbery which, for what we know, might have been responsible for the apocalypse in the first place.

To quote Dolly Parton, here we go again. Groups like CAIR rarely have their priorities in place -they’re always “reacting angrily” to perceived slights or hypothetical backlashes – when they really should be reacting angrily to those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam.

But you know who really gets my gopher? Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He says the gun sights not only give our enemies a propaganda tool, but adds, “I don’t have to wonder … how the American public would react if citations from the Koran were being inscribed onto these U.S. armed forces gun sights instead.”

Now, I believe Weinstein has lost more marbles than a blind man playing Kerplunk. Whether or not Bible references should be on rifles is a decent debate, but they will never lead to extremist-driven violence. Terrorists, however, always champion their radical Islamic code – and the Ft. Hood shooter more than connected that dot before slaughtering innocent Americans. But even the most radical Christians don’t fly planes into buildings.

But look, American soldiers usually shoot terrorists well before they get close enough to see these Bible references, anyway.

That alone should prevent hurt feelings.

Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Patti Anne Browne

a comedian to be named later!

Cheer’s John Ratzenberger!

and perhaps some Robot Theater

P.S. Remember to also catch me on the O’Reilly Factor tonight!

Credit where credit is due… Hollywood is trying. Granted, six years have passed since “The Passion” proved we Christians can be convinced to return to a medium that has spent decades taking great pleasure in insulting who we are and what we believe; and with that clinical Christmas card of a follow up called “The Nativity” it seemed as though they would never figure it out. But between the unapologetic Christian “Blind Side” and now the down and dirty “Book of Eli,” there’s reason to hope the Pagans of the Pacific might have just moved a little closer to cracking our code.

“The Book of Eli” isn’t just Christian, it’s off-the-rails Christian … literally. Heathens might as well hit the lobby at the end of the second act because the final act is all about the faith. You’re more than welcome to stick around, but I have a feeling those of you with red strings tied ‘round your wrist will be checking your watch for the last twenty-minutes. Not we Bible-thumpers, though. That’s when it all comes together; and it’s moving and smart and best of all, not some hyper-reverent snoozer.

So, thanks Hollywood. Oh, I’ll be kicking your ass again in a sec, but for now… really, thanks.

 The book is the King James Bible, it’s the last one, and its protector is Denzel Washington’s Eli, a man old enough to remember life during The Before, before the last war some thirty years ago. Ever since, through a post-apocalyptic America, he has made his way west, walking alone and honing his survival skills. Gangs of marauders with robbery on their mind are no safer than the few stray animals unfortunate enough to cross Eli when he needs a meal.

Eli doesn’t understand the how or why of his mission. He just knows what God has called him to do, and in a touching act of faith has spent three decades of suffering and sacrifice to fulfill and complete something he instinctively understands is more important than himself — three decades of trudging through a desolate, colorless desert landscape where water is more precious than gold and cannibals are a constant threat. Like the book he carries, Eli is part Old Testament and New: Part Job, part St. Paul.

Carnegie (Gary Oldman) is a character right out of those great Westerns where one ruthlessly ambitious man runs a dusty old town and orders about a gang of gunslingers who cater to his every whim. Carnegie’s primary whim, however, is something he has in common with Eli: an instinct. Only the voice he hears comes from a darker place and tells him that he can fulfill a mission to widen the hold on what’s left of the world by using the Word of God as a weapon to “run the hearts and minds of the weak and desperate.”  Think of him as a community organizer – the Jeremiah Wright of The After.  

Carnegie runs a blown-out saloon complete with prostitutes and a bar. But his real hold on power is due to a secret water supply. Paying off his henchmen with H2O and girls, he sends them out to murder and rob innocents in the hope of finding the Good Book.

Carnegie also runs Claudia (the ageless Jennifer Beal) and her daughter Solara (the absurdly fetching Milas Kunis). As is expected, the dynamics Carnegie has become accustomed to, relationship and otherwise, will be turned on their head when Eli strolls into town. Oh, Eli’s not looking for trouble…  

Like most of you, many years ago I decided that after the apocalypse it will be The Mighty Gary Oldman I’ll choose as arch-nemesis to my Road Warrior (or Tina Turner). Oldman has a high-old time here, and what a credit to this great actor that he can perfectly inhabit the buttoned-down Commissioner Gordon one day and leave no scenery left un-chewed as Carnegie the next. Every line of dialogue, facial expression and movement is delivered for maximum impact. Oldman understands this genre, what it takes to be its villain, and succeeds in finding a place of his own.

And oh how I loves me some Denzel.

After exploding on the scene with their still-just-as-powerful 1993 directorial debut “Menace II Society,” the Hughes Brothers (Albert and Allen, who have yet to make a bad film — this is their 5th) understand the iconic power of their star; the way he walks, talks, laughs, stands, and holds a weapon. In lesser hands the stoic Eli would barely register as a character. The power of an actor like Washington is in his unique and near-extinct movie star ability to fill the void of a character’s silence with an emotional inner-life without saying a word – with pure presence.

The directorial touches are everywhere. Listen for a fitting nod to “Once Upon a Time in America” and check out the posters on walls. The directors get the big things right, as well. Thank the Good Lord, no shaky-cam. The actions set-pieces are extremely satisfying, especially an early one we see only in silhouette.

But make no mistake, this is a genre film. A B-film (with kind of a silly final twist). No molds are broken. You’ve seen it all a hundred times before. But this is a Christian genre film … a very Christian genre film with a fabulous cast and stylish direction. And I’m still thinking about it, still debating which choice of the Brothers Hughes I liked most…

….the all-kinds-of-awesome casting decision to put Tom Waits in a post-apocalyptic Western, or the film’s most Christian moment – most generous moment – when a nod of respect is granted to our friends who have found God through other faiths.

But the new movie “The Book of Eli” doesn’t fit either of those molds. In fact, this wildly entertaining, ultra-violent, post-Apocalyptic tale of a lone wanderer named Eli (Denzel Washington) who will defend the mysterious book in his possession at all costs is one of the oddest yet most forthright faith-based films to ever come out of a major studio. 

Eli is carrying a copy of the last Bible on the planet, since all other religious texts – including Torahs and Korans – were rounded up and destroyed 30 years before after religious strife was believed to have caused a devastating global nuclear war. Eli believes he’s heard the voice of God telling him to bring the Bible to an unspecified place in the West, but a ruthless despot named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) knows that if he gets his hands on the precious book, he can distort its teachings and have total control over the minds and spirits of the people who live in his empire of revived, Old West-style towns. 

With Eli joined by Samara (Mila Kunis), a Carnegie servant girl hoping to find a better life, the race is on between the duo and the tyrant’s small army of henchmen and weapons to maintain final control over mankind’s destiny. And that means Washington will slice, dice, sever or shoot anyone who gets in his way. 

Directed by Allen and Albert Hughes (aka: The Hughes Brothers) –  who previously built their careers on nihilistic fare like “Menace II Society,” “Dead Presidents” and the pimp-praising documentary “American Pimp” –   “The Book of Eli” couldn’t be a bigger surprise. But Washington has long been one of Hollywood’s most openly Christian actors, and in taking on the executive-producer role for “Eli” as well, he has placed his clout squarely behind his beliefs to create a film that adds plenty of spiritual substance and feeling to what might otherwise have been a time-worn template for predictability. 

It’ll be interesting to see the box-office results, for Oldman and his henchmen are profanely tough-talking baddies and the battles with Washington are as violent as a movie gets. Yet the movie also features many tender moments in which Eli reads the Bible privately while praying, or one beautiful scene in which he recites particularly vivid Scriptures to the illiterate Samara. 

“The Book of Eli” wears its heart on its sleeve from beginning to end, clearly crediting the Bible as the one book above all that can change the world. And while Oldman’s Carnegie has plenty of fun as the film’s face of evil, the film as a whole never strays from its vision of Eli and Samara as unshakably right and Oldman as unmistakably wrong. 

That clear point of view, mixed with doses of surprising emotional depth, should prove to be a welcome bonus for viewers, whether they’re Christian or not. It’s simply refreshing to find that with “The Book of Eli,” Hollywood has created a genre film that delivers on hardcore action while hardly settling as a by-the-book exercise.

On this small base surrounded by a mixture of enemy and friendly territory, a memorial has been erected just next to the Chapel.  Inside the tepee are 21 photos of 21 soldiers killed during the first months of a year-long tour of duty.  The fallen will belong forever to the honor rolls of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and they will join the sacred list of names of those who have given their lives in service of the United States of America.

—

The symbol of the 2nd Infantry Division is the Indian Head.  At night, soldiers of the “Indian Head Division” can be seen passing by the tepee, sometimes stopping to peer inside before walking into the darkness.

Sometimes the soldiers walk by carrying lights that are red or green, or sometimes white.  Tonight, Cobra Battery was firing illumination rounds from the cannons, which boom from the darkness, arcing a round into the night, where miles away a canister unsheathes, and the parachute opens, and brightness floats silently, shimmering over the valley where these soldiers died.

The firing is not done in remembrance, but to support ongoing combat operations.

Inside the tepee are the 21 photos, and a Bible.  The book is opened to Psalm 31.

In front of each photo, electric candles flicker through the night.

Mostly there is silence.

Soldiers put cigarettes in front of each photo, though they say that many of the fallen did not smoke.

…for thou art my strength.

Only during such times are strong men and women of greatest importance.  At all other times we have Hollywood.

Today we need soldiers who never forget their brothers, while they carry forward with devotion and strength.

The War in Afghanistan has truly begun. This will be a long, difficult fight that is set to eclipse anything we’ve seen in Iraq. As 2010 unfolds, my 6th year of war coverage will unfold with it. There is relatively little interest in Afghanistan by comparison to previous interest in Iraq, and so reader interest is low. Afghanistan is serious, very deadly business. Like Iraq, however, it gets pushed around as a political brawling pit while the people fighting the war are mostly forgotten. The arguments at home seem more likely to revolve around a few words from the President than the ground realities of combat here. I can bring the ground realities, but can sustain the coverage only by the graciousness of readers. Please keep that in mind. Please click…

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Given that the culture-dividing issues, thanks to Obama, are more obvious than Joan Rivers’ last lip implants, it is mind-boggling to me that many ministers are mute or side with parties, policies and principles that are antithetical to the Judeo-Christian worldview. I don’t know if you got this memo in seminary but pastors are not only supposed to salvage souls but also build the good society. 

In some kind of ascending order, it seems to me there are 10 reasons why pastors and priests avoid political and intense cultural issues and thus aid and abet evil: 

1. Fear of Man: If you purport to be a man of God then your regard for God and His opinion must trump the trepidation of the creature God created from spit and mud. Come on, man of God, don’t fear the crowd . . . we’re peons with cell phones who’ll shoot Botox into our foreheads. We’re weird and fickle weather vanes of what’s en vogue. You’ve got to lead us. Therefore, move into the Moses mode and command us to be and do what is holy, just and good. The grinning, mild, subtle Oprah approach doesn’t seem to be stemming the current flood of cultural filth. 

2. Ignorance: Most people are not bold in areas in which they are ignorant . . . always excepting Janeane Garofalo, of course. I know keeping up with all the pressing political issues is maddening, but that’s life, brother, and if you want to be a voice in society and not just an echo, you have got to be in the know. Staying briefed is par for the course for the hardy world changer. 

3. Division: Y’know, I hate the current non-essential divisions in the church as much as the next acerbic Christian columnist. Squabbling over the color of the carpet, who’ll play the organ next Sunday or who is the Beast of Revelation, is stupidity squared. That being said, there’s a time and place for a holy throw-down and an ecclesiastical split from political policies and parties.  For a minister to seek unity with secularists when they are trashing and rewriting Scripture with impunity is to side with vice and to allow darkness to succeed. 

4. Last Days Madness: Many ministers do not get involved in political issues because they believe that “it simply doesn’t matter” since “the end has come.” These defeatists believe that any change in the jet stream, war, earthquakes, a warming globe, the success of a corrupt politician—or even a new Shakira video—are “proof” that God is getting really, really ticked off and that His only recourse is to have Christ physically return and kick some major butt.  Attempting to right culture is, in the defeatists’ eyes, equivalent to polishing brass on a sinking ship; therefore, they are content to simply pass out gospel tracts, tramp from Christian rock concert to Christian rock concert, eat fatty foods and stare at Christian TV. 

5. Sloth: Classically defined, sloth is lethargy stemming from a sense of hopelessness. Viewing our nation and the world as an irreparable disaster, where our exhortations, prayers, votes and labors will not produce any temporal fruit, leaves one with all the fervor of a normal guy who’s forced to French kiss his sister. If you’re wondering why your flock is so apathetic, Pastor Eeyore, ask yourself if you have stolen the earthly hope that their valiant efforts can actually prevail in time and not just in eternity. 

6. They don’t want to lose their tax-exempt status: Many pastors, priests and parishioners have been cowed into inactivity by the threatened loss of their tax-exempt status if they say anything remotely political. This can make pastors who don’t, or won’t, get good legal advice about as politically active as Howard Hughes was during the flu season.   

7. They bathe in paltry pietism: Pastors avoid politics because such concerns are “unspiritual,” and their focus is on the “spirit world.” Yes, to such imbalanced ministers, political affairs are seen as “temporal and carnal,” and since they trade in the “eternal and spiritual,” such “worldly” issues get nada. 

This bunch is primarily into heavenly emotions and personal Bible study, and they stay safely tucked away from society and its complicated issues. How sweet. They forget that they are commanded to be seriously engaged with our culture or fall into the worthless manure category Christ warned them of (Mt. 5.13). Snap. 

8. They have bought into the Taliban comparison: Pastors have muffled their political/cultural voices because they fear being lumped in with Islam by the politically-correct thought police. The correlation made between Christians’ non-violent attempts at policy persuasion and the Taliban’s kill-you-in-your-sleep campaigns is nothing more than pure, uncut crapola. 

9. They can’t say “no” to minutiae: Some ministers can’t get involved in studying or speaking out regarding pressing issues simply because of the ten tons of junk they are forced to field within their congregations. Spending time wet nursing 30-year-olds without a life and being bogged down in committee meetings over which shade of pink paint should be used for the women’s ministerial wing of their church, ministers are lucky if they get to study the Bible nowadays—much less anything else. 

10. They like the money: The creepy thing about a lot of ministers is their unwillingness to give political or cultural offense when offense is needed, simply because taking a biblical stand on a political issue might cost them their mega-church, which means their seven homes, their Bentley and their private jet. Oh well, what do you expect? Christ had His Judas, and evangelicalism has its money loving hookers. 

If the ministers within the good old US of A would crucify their fear of man, get solidly briefed regarding the chief political issues, not sweat necessary division, not get caught up in last days madness, maintain their hope for tomorrow, understand their liberties under God and our Constitution, not become so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good, focus on the majors and blow off bowing to cash instead of convictions, then maybe . . . just maybe . . . we will see their righteous influence cause our nation to take the needed sharp turn away from the secularist progressives’ speedily approaching putrid pit.

“A rose by any other name is still a rose.”

Liz is driving me to the 9-12 Westwood Tea Party.  I’m biting my fake fingernails because I’m one of the speakers and I don’t have a speech yet.

Liz: Do you have your speech all ready?

Me: No…I’m kinda nervous.  I mean, where do I start? Should I talk about:

1)  Obama’s last speech where he lied 13 times? Not even little sneaky lies you have to research, but big, bold, blatant lies!  ”My plan will not fund abortions, or insure illegals!”  Lie, lie, lie.

2)  The former Liberally-Biased Mainstream Media that is now a completed, fully-functioning Progressive Propaganda Machine?  Ignoring the Acorn tapes, and the Van Jones story! That’s called the lie of omission!

3)  Or, …hey, you know what I read?  I was flipping around in the Bible and since it’s 9 -12 I just flipped to Psalm 12 and it said the most perfect thing…about lying in the government!

Liz: Really?  Did you see Glenn Beck today?

Me: The protest sign in the Washinton D.C. crowd that said Ephesians 6:12?

Liz: Yeah!

Me: I looked it up!  And, right while I was reading it, Glenn Beck said, kind of apologizing, “I don’t usually do this…ya know, read the Bible on the air…but..

Liz: I know!  He read it!

Me: He read the Bible on the air!

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Ephesians 6:12
King James Version

Me: I wish I had a Bible.  I should read that Psalm 12 thing in my speech.

Liz: I think I have a Bible in the car…(she looks around and finds one in the glove compartment!)

Me: You do!

She has one!

I flip to Psalm 12 and read it out loud to her and my bored teenager in the back seat.

“Everyone talks in lie language;
Lies slide off their oily lips.
They doubletalk with forked tongues.

I’m tired of hearing, “We can talk anyone into anything!
Our lips manage the world.”

God, keep us safe from their lies,
From the wicked who stalk us with lies,
From the wicked who collect honors
For their wonderful lies.”

Psalm 12
The Message Version

Liz: You definitely have to read that!  It’s perfect!

We get to the Federal Building.  It is a beautiful California day.  Lots of American flags are flapping against the blue sky.  I do a couple handstands on the platform for my handstand photo collection.  I bump into my freedom fighting buddies.  We hug and admire each other’s signs.  I love the one where George Washington has the cartoon bubble over his head that says, “WTF?”

I have Liz’s Bible stuck in the waistband of my jeans because my hands are holding two protest signs.

I start thinking about whether or not to read the Bible in my speech.  Why am I afraid to?

This is not a Liberal crowd.  Liberals would not approve of Bibles being read in public.  They took them out of the schools and are trying to get “In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God” taken off of our money, and out of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Speaking of The Pledge…What about that YouTube video?

–

If that doesn’t reek of Daniel 3:6 and Revelation 13:15 I don’t know what does!

Communists do not allow Bibles.  When I was a child, my Dad was writing a check to an organization that smuggled Bibles into Russia.   I said, “Why do they have to sneak Bibles?”  Dad said, “They’re Communist.”

Atheists do not like Bibles.

All decisions and most political issues all come down to whether you are FOR GOD or AGAINST GOD.

The reason Liberals-Communists-Atheists don’t like Bibles is because they do not want the competition.  “No man can serve two masters…” Matthew 6:24  You cannot worship God and the State.  You must choose one.

Very interesting that Obama has a new web site called serve.gov.  Or, Serve Government.
Reminds me of the Bob Dylan song, “You Gotta Serve Somebody/It might be the devil, and it might be the Lord/but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

As I stood in front of the sea of faces, flags, and signs, I opened my mouth and let my heart speak.  I saw myself digging the Bible out of my waistband and holding it up in the air.  I heard my mouth saying, “I always took my freedom for granted.  My freedom to worship.  This is the next thing Obama is going to try to take away from us.  Newly appointed Mark Lloyd and Cass Sunstein’s agenda is to stop conservative/Christian talk radio and TV and Internet….”

At the end of my speech I said, “Psalm 12 says…”  Right then, I was given the “Wrap It Up” sign.  I paused for a second. I mumbled something about hoping in God and not a man.  Then, I left the podium.

I did not read it out loud.  I don’t know why.

The people auditioning me will all be liberals.  Should I hide my recent, passionate Tea-Bagging activities, if the topic comes up?  Why should they hate me?  I only want the best for everyone.  My beliefs in the Bible, and freedom and capitalism are only ideals that bless people.  And, they worked real good from 1776 to 2008…with a hitch in the 60s where immorality, free love, the pill, drugs, divorce, and the breakup of the family started the thread of morality unraveling.  You can’t have a great country without the spirit of The Ten Commandments hovering in the hearts of its citizens.  

This execution squad has probably already labeled me.  But, the labels, they are a’changing.  Republicans have moved left.  Liberals have moved left.  I guess it’s The Second Law of Thermodynamics, “the world is in a state of entropy,” or decay, or left-moving.  Now the word “radical” is in the mix.  It’s a swirl of words that represent belief systems, or “world-views” as Chuck Colson put it in his book, “How Now Shall We Live?”  

One must watch the news all day to keep up with the swiftly changing currents.  Dennis Prager had the author of “Heaven and Earth” on his radio show today, and I sighed with relief.  Finally, someone is addressing the global warming hoax with a real scientist.  But, suddenly KGIL has canceled all of it’s conservative talk radio programs and replaced them with music.  The hairs on my arms pop up.  Has the Fairness Doctrine begun?  And we didn’t even get to fight it?  

I saw a real fat girl once, slowly walking down the middle of an empty street in a “poor” neighborhood.  She was eating from a bag of Cheetos.  I was in my car at a stop light, watching her.  I thought maybe no one told her that Cheetos make you fat, or maybe her life is so sad that that bag of Cheetos is the highlight of her day.  Sometimes, Cheetos is the highlight of my day.  I said a little prayer for her.  Then, she dropped the empty bag in the middle of the street. 

My empathy dissipated. 

Statistics confirm the fact that most “poor” people have no fathers.  My father told me that Cheetos makes you fat.  He also built a gym in our backyard.  We lived in a very “poor” neighborhood.  Our house cost $10,000 when he bought it in the 50’s.  The neighborhood then got worse.  All of our neighbors’ houses began to look dirty and have five broken cars and beer cans in their front yards.  Our house was always immaculate and our front yard always had freshly mown grass.  My father took us to church 3 times a week.  He read the Bible out loud to Grandma and Grandpa every Sunday night, at Grandma’s house, because Grandpa was an agnostic and wouldn’t go to church.  My father taught me how to read when I was 5, so that when I started first grade I was the best reader.  I skipped second grade. My father played the piano every night and taught us show tunes, and how to harmonize.  My father taught us how to water ski.  My father was a gymnastics coach, so he taught me a “flip flop” and I was the only cheerleader who could do that.  My father protected us. He bought a bee bee gun that looked like a real gun, to scare burglars away.  We were robbed four times.  He said, “I could never kill anyone.”  My father made us feel safe.  He gave us confidence and a history and a future. 

That Cheetos girl probably doesn’t have a father.  And, no amount of government assistance, housing, food stamps, free college, or ObamaCare can give her that.  She needs a father. 

Obama didn’t have a father.  Maybe that’s why he sees the government as Daddy.  

My auditioning/execution squad enters the room and all my thoughts start to swirl away.  The only thought that remains is that I must tell the truth.  I only want the best for everyone.

That farmer was my great-great-Grandfather. The bible he carried off to war now resides at my parent’s house, and I have had occasion to carefully turn its pages, looking for clues to what drove him. Other than his name and a few notes on the inside cover, he left the answer to posterity. I imagine, though, the answer wouldn’t be much different than some of the other Iowa farmers I’ve known who’ve answered the call. Farmers like my great-great-uncle Billy Stebner, who as an old man used to thrill my brother and me with his tales of pursuing Pancho Villa into Mexico with General Black Jack Pershing.

Farmers like my maternal Grandpa John Cullen, who followed Pershing on his next assignment in Europe, and saw the horrors of trench warfare at the Marne. Or his son John, a Marine who fought amid the carnage of Okinawa. Every week he wrote a letter to his five kid sisters, including my 6 year old mom, telling them everything would be okay.

Farmers like Donnie Burge, a cornfield hot rodder who enlisted with the 5th Army in ‘55 and spent the next two years getting his arms covered in tattoos and staring across the 38th parallel at a scowling line of North Koreans. Luckily the ceasefire held, and he returned to take over the family farm. And sire yours truly.

Farmers like my brother-in-law Ron, who spent 3 tours in Vietnam as a Huey pilot. Just like my Uncle John he wrote reassuring letters home to his 6 year old kid sister, who grew up and married me. After the war he spent another 10 years as a helicopter school instructor at Ft. Rucker, and returned home to the dairy country of Northeast Iowa. Three of his own farm kids have answered the call; most recently my niece Devin, who spent 2004-5 in Baghdad driving a 3-ton truck with the 389th Iowa Combat Engineering Battalion. Farmers like her husband Rick, currently serving with the 389th in Iraq on his 2nd tour, away from their baby daughter.

Every single one of them fill me with awe and amazement, and a humbled sense of gratitude for having the great cosmic fortune to be born in a country capable of producing farmers (or non-farmers) like that. Where do they come from, this long line of common men and women of uncommon valor, who risk everything only to shrug it off with a simple “I just did my duty”?

I’m afraid I’ll never quite comprehend it, but an awestruck thanks to every last one of you.