When former (is there really such a thing?) US Navy SEAL Ben Smith left his comments here at a post I published on April 22 ( US Navy SEAL Ben Smith: “You are no less important than our troops fighting overseas.” ), it prompted a spirited conversation in the comments section between “Nikki”, a liberal, and Dave from Dallas.  I’m reprinting Dave’s most recent offering which puts everything in proper context.  Read it and see if you don’t agree.

Thank you Dave from Dallas for taking the time and making the effort to teach Nikki and other liberal “thinkers” out there that there IS evil in the world.  As Glenn Beck says “The Truth is like fire”.  And Dave, you’ve set a blaze that’s shining a bright light on the reality of good and evil.

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Nikki,

I grew up apolitical. No mention of it at home, no interest in it. Divorced parents, no religion, no church, no real guidance of any kind except a father who was kind of angry and confused that anger with desire to teach discipline to his sons. I got a lot of discipline that was thinly veiled anger. Didn’t talk to my dad much for the first ten years of adult life. I got over it, he got older, and we talk a lot now, but still not about important things. Mom’s okay but not smart about anything really.

I was a late bloomer with no particular positive or negative influences toward or against any political views. As I’ve said, when I was younger I thought liberalism was the ‘cool, smart’ view and so I echoed it, not out of belief or even comprehension but because I wanted to be seen as smart and cool, for ALL the reasons young men want that. abortion was about a woman’s right, vietnam soldiers were baby killers, rich guys were evil and greedy…

I do not believe I’m alone in this. I think lots of young people adopt the leftist view out of a desire to seem smart and cool, and compassionate, and caring, and ‘better’ than those other people who are so greedy and evil and piggish. This phenomenon is why Churchill (I think) said if you’re under thirty and not a liberal, you have no heart, but if you’re over thirty and not a conservative you have no BRAIN. Life’s lessons teach conservatism.

I’ve had failures and successes, and I’ve confronted some real evil and realized that ‘good vs. evil’ is not a game. There is evil in the world. My best friend is black, but also in 1991 a black man carjacked and raped and murdered my wife.

OCD101 would say I’m lying about the first, and the second is the reason I am a RRAAAACCIIISSTT. she has issues. :-)

But for me, far too often ‘compromise’ is sought when instead the side of ‘good’ ought to be supported. I cannot find a moderate position halfway between the surgeon and the tumor. Compromise on principle leads to abandonment of principle every time.

I suspect what Ben was talking about wasn’t so much changing minds as adding needed information so that whatever conclusion we draw is an informed one. Many people do not realize the extent of the deep philosophical grounding in Marxism that many of our present crop of leaders have. Many people do not know the dreadful tragic history of Marxism whenever it has been this close to actual power. Many have heard of gulags but do not fully understand that they are the end of the road for any all powerful government which makes dissent unpatriotic and illegal. I hear all about the crusades and the inquisition every time anyone wants to respond to arguments about 100 million dead under Marxism. But the crusades and the inquisition were hundreds of years ago and killed thousands of people, some of whom were Islamic warriors who would be fighting someone else if not the crusaders. Islam was spread by the sword at the command of its prophet. It was a warrior religion.

Marxism killed 100 million people within the past hundred years… and more still, if you go before Marx and discover many of his ideas were implemented in the French Revolution.. the guillotine took the heads off a LOT of ‘bourgeouisie’ 200 years ago, and the result was mass starvation and unemployment and chaos. Napoleon had an easy road to power, because the great experiment of “the rights of Man” had failed so tragically. Marxism leads to Nazism and Fascism and to all the other ‘isms’ of the left. History shows it, clear as day. As George Bernard Shaw famously said, “I don’t want anyone to suffer, but there are an awful lot of people I”d like to kill”. A respected Brit writer, but a Marxist with racial superiority issues. His work led directly to the development in Germany of Zyklon B, the gas used in the camps to kill Jews. It was intended as a painless death, but the Nazis figured out it was actually very painful. By then, they didn’t care. Presumably, neither did Shaw.

DId you know that Chairman Mao fancied himself an expert on agriculture? He once gave an order that rice be planted deeper than it had been planted for thousands of years before. He believed the seeds would grow stronger plants if they had more dirt to fight through. This was NOT a suggestion, and the farmers did it. For this and other similar reasons, tens of millions of people STARVED to death. It seems idiotic now, but the example is clear. This government of ours has less than ten percent of its appointed experts with ANY BUSINESS EXPERIENCE. That is three or four times less business experience than any previous American government. Even Geithner, the finance savior, recently admitted all his previous jobs were about creating policy, and he never actually had a REAL job.

Ben wants people to know these things. The conclusions draw themselves. I do not take any pride in holding fast to my conclusions. They are drawn from facts, and if facts emerge that contradict me, I am happy to draw new conclusions. I try to stay informed for this reason.

I do NOT bend on my principles. They help me draw my conclusions. But my mind can be changed on those conclusions with information, and Ben is using his training to think strategically about dispensing that information. It is, actually, a war. His training is hugely important. I was not a soldier, but I”m a fighter in this war.

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