My husband was 11 when Germany surrendered and American Soldiers occupied his home town, Hoff, Germany.  He loved the American occupation, first because it meant food.  He could wait outside the gate of the compound and, after breakfast, salvage piles and piles of pancakes to take home to his mother and sisters.  It also offered enterprise.  He followed the soldiers, picked up their cigarette butts, and when he had collected enough tobacco, took it to a farmer and traded it for eggs or milk. 
     But more important than anything else he was struck by the American soldiers themselves.  They walked tall.  Even the lowliest privates strode like Gods, full of a sense of self-worth, fully alive to themselves. 
     He recognized, even at that young age, the difference between and subject and a citizen.  Americans see themselves the equal of anyone, beholden to no one.  We have, over the last 40 years, allowed a group of politicians to entrench themselves into a kind of ruling class, and their rhetoric reflects that they have forgotten that truth, that citizens are beholden to no one.  So John McCain dismisses the Tea Party as Hobbits.  I campaigned for you Mr. McCain, twice, but the next time I see you I’m going to put my little hairy foot someplace where the sun don’t shine. 
     Diane Feinstein oozed disdain, huge purple globules of disdain, to think that Ted Cruz could question her knowledge of the constitution.  “I’m not a sixth grader. I’ve been on this committee for 20 years.” (As though her working for 20 to ban firearms were some kind of recommendation. As Cromwell told a member of Parliament:  "You have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately. ... In the name of God, go!")
     Feinstein ended her tirade with, “I respect your views, Mr. Cruz.  I wish you could respect mine.”  She obviously does not respect Ted Cruz’s views.  She oozed contempt the entire hearing.  I wanted Cruz to school her once again on the meaning of “shall not be infringed,” but I’m afraid she might have come unhinged.
     President Obama stepped into that elite ruling class with ease. “I am not a dictator.  I cannot force the Republicans to do the right thing.” Do you sense the subtext?  “I, of course, know what is right.  Those stupid, unwashed masses who cling to their guns and their religion have no idea.” 
     This move from citizen to subject did not happen over night, but somewhere over the last 50 years we have lost what it means to be a citizen, fully independent, in no need of state largess.  There was a time when we felt no difference in the inherent virtue or value of the individual whether rich or poor, lawmaker or candlestick maker.   We have our Ivy League colleges to thank for that seismic cultural shift.   Progressives have worked tirelessly to increase the individual’s dependence on the government, hoping to make us forever grateful for whatever largess they might bequeath us. 
      My prayer is that we can shuffle off this coil of bondage and servitude and stand once again like my father stood, tall and straight, striding boldly into the storms that awaited him, knowing that he walked with God and needed nothing else. 

I have long pondered the attitude of atheists, thought that were I an atheist, crosses and crèches would arouse my humor, not my gall.  I would smile and shake my head in wonder that so many people can believe in such hogwash, and I would go merrily on my way, safe in the knowledge that I had not been so duped.

Why then do atheists protest so vehemently against religious symbols? 

This morning I read a meditation on Psalm 63 that served as something of an epiphany.  Perhaps the Psalm speaks more truth than I had thought.  “O God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as a dry and weary land yearns for water.”  Perhaps the core of every cell in our bodies is imprinted with a thirst for God, a hunger to know the almighty. 

Perhaps those cell walls are our intellect, our noble reason of which we are so proud.  It resists. “Silly, how could Jonah have been swallowed by a whale and lived to tell the story?  How could the blare of Joshua’s trumpet have felled the walls of Jericho?”

Perhaps the symbols of religion reawaken that longing to such an extent that they must be banned lest we fall into the humble pit of faith.

With regard to Israel, we need a little balance in reportage.  The lead story, top of the fold will tell how Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza strip killed a civilian and wounded 25 others, setting fires and causing chaos.  It leaves the reader with the impression that Israelis just bomb the Gaza strip willy-nilly, just for giggles. 

What the media will fail to mention is that the air strikes were retaliation for 4 Kassam rockets and 11 mortar shells that had been fired at southern Israel from Gaza (jpost.com). They will also fail to tell you is that the reason civilians are killed is that Hamas plants its artillery near hospitals and schools and residential areas so that if Israeli strikes take out Hamas rocket launchers they are bound to harm civilians. Hamas uses the innocent as human shields. 

The media would also have us believe that the Jews usurped the area from the “Palestinians.”  Actually Palestine was never a state or a country.  There were simply "Arabs" who moved into a geo-political area of the Ottoman Empire called "Palestine.”  About half of today’s Israelis are Mizrachim, descended from Jews who have been in the land since ancient times, about 3200 B.C.   

When Caliph Omar conquered Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt in 636 C.E. Jews, massacred in huge numbers, were forced to flee the inland villages towards the coast.  So it was not the Jews who usurped “Palestinian” lands; it’s Arabs that even today vow to carry out Calip Omars mission and drive the Jews into the sea. 

Let’s consider a modern day scenario.  Say the Europeans who settled in this country dispersed the native populations into Europe and other parts of the world.  Say they were persecuted everywhere, slaughtered, on the brink annihilation. Suppose the international community decided to take action and force America to provide the native populations a permanent settlement, a little piece of land half the size Washington’s Bainbridge Island, only 15 percent of which is arable.   What if the other residents of Bainbridge Island launched the 2,653 missiles and rockets at the natives supported and financed by the rest of the United states of America, all intent on pushing the natives into the sea? (That’s the number of rockets that were launched against Israel last year.)

Whom would you side with: the brutal Americans attempting to drive the natives into the sea or the persecuted peoples trying desperately to hold on to a little scrap of their homeland?