Posted on 04/04/2003 12:16:28 PM PST by Stephen Schwartz
I'm going to use this manner of replying to the many kind comments from Freepers about my outing of Comrade Keating.
First, let me say I'm pleased and proud not only to be an ex-leftist but to be an ex-lurker at FR. It's good to be out in the open among people I respect and admire for having done a great job keeping the flame of American ideals alive.
Second, some housekeeping items. Keating has no regular job and works as a temp. As soon as I can locate his current address I will post it. I am not messing around here.
He is not the same as the traitorous Marine. Mental hospital experience? I think so, but don't know for sure.
CAIR and American Arab Anti-Discrim types supported Milosevic because they were all opposed to the U.S.A. Serbia and Iraq had/have extensive commercial and military links.
Third, let me sincerely address what I am certain must still be vestigial suspicions, stirred by rats like Dennis Raimondo and his neo-Nazi friends, about my involvement with Islam.
My Islam was an extremely personal matter for me until September 11th. Frankly, had those terrible events not occurred I might have continued to keep my personal religious odyssey private; at that time I had it in mind to write a book about historical aspects of the Jewish-Muslim relationship. But when our country was attacked, I had no alternative but to come forward and openly fight against the Saudi/Wahhabi conspiracy. I knew this opened me up to personal scrutiny as to my motives, and to doubts and reproaches about my path. It hasn't been easy; certainly it isn't easy for a person with a Jewish father to be accused, as I have been, of betraying the Jewish people.
I did not betray the Jewish people. I was not born Jewish; my mother was Christian and, in fact, I was baptized a Presbyterian. But my parents were leftists and I received no religious training as a child. I worked my way through religion myself, in the pretty typical California way, starting with Buddhism, then going to Catholicism, then studying Judaism, and finally encountering Sufism.
Nevertheless, I didn't go "shopping for God." I didn't "become" a Buddhist, or convert to Catholicism, or to Judaism (I would have had to convert in the latter case, since my mother wasn't). I did, however, come into Sufi Islam because it, to me, brings together the best of the rest: the serenity and personal space opened up by Buddhism, the sacred law and mysticism of the Jews, the transcendant love of Jesus, and the intensity of faith in Islam. I travelled around the world and saw the universalist faiths in their best forms: Zen temples in Korea, Catholic processions in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Spain, and Islam in the Balkans. I was never interested in religion as a norm or an abstraction; I was always interested in religion as it affected people's own lives. I never turned against any of the forms of faith I had encountered. I still treasure the powerful faith my Protestant grandfather embodied; and the beautiful works of anti-Communist Catholic priests in Nicaragua and among the Albanians; and of course I defend the survival of the Jewish people -- and hope and pray for some way out of the terrible confrontation with the Arabs and their corrupt leaders.
I'm writing all this personal stuff because I feel I owe the Freepers an accounting of who and what I am.
I also have to admit that throughout my journeys through faith I was a Communist revolutionary -- until 1984. I wasn't shopping for God but I was kind of a tourist in religion, while my business was revolution. But religion kept calling me. And in 1984 I made up my mind to stand with the Nicaraguan contras against the Sandinistas. I did this because I am bilingual in Spanish and knew what had happened in Cuba, and had sworn to myself I would never again support the imposition of a dictatorship in the name of liberation, and because I knew enough Nicaraguans to know that although they wanted an end to Somoza they didn't want him replaced by atheist Cuban commissars.
So I became a supporter of President Ronald Reagan, lost all my friends, brought suffering down on family, felt a lot of doubts, but carried on.
Dennis Raimondo has gotten a lot of laughs out of all this, which is, I suppose, his right. In his latest vomiting he makes fun of the fact that I remained faithful to the union movement. Well, I don't think becoming a full on American patriot and a supporter of free-market democracy means I have to become a scab. Nor do other folks I know. Debra Saunders, the conservative columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, where I worked for 10 years, happens to be a shop steward in the Newspaper Guild, of which I was secretary. We stood together on the picket line to defend our union at a time when Dennis Raimondo was parading around claiming he was a strike-breaker (he wasn't -- it was just another of his fantasies). My Protestant grandpa from West Virginia preached the Gospel and cried when he spoke of Jesus -- and he also was a rock solid union member, in the Structural Iron Workers, which was one of the most militant unions of the time. I will never renounce my loyalty to the cause of American, anti-Communist, trade unionism. If that makes me something other than a conservative, well, I've had lots of disagreements with lots of people.
One thing I do ask now: let's stay away from inquiries into religious details. It's the American way to let me find my path. Freepers know I stand for the defense of the stars and stripes against all enemies, especially against those who claim to act in the name of Islam. If there is anything more I have to say about this, it would be something like this:
I told some friends a few days ago that I regretted ever having been a newspaper reporter. Then we got the news about America's dearest sweetheart, Jessica Lynch of Palestine, W. Va., who fired her weapon unceasingly when she was laid low by Saddam's troops. How I wish my mother had lived to read this story. She would be as proud as I am, of her roots in the great state of West Virginia -- which has as its immortal motto, "Montani semper liberi" -- "Mountaineers Are Always Free."
If I have a message to Muslims, it is this: Jessica Lynch is an American woman, a Christian, a believer, a soldier. Respect her, respect us. As my Albanian friends put it, nobody puts a veil on the Statue of Liberty's face.
But then we got the news of the Shia Muslim hero, Muhammad, who found and rescued Jessica. He saw her being beaten in the Iraqi hospital and he went to our troops at great risk to himself to tell them what he had seen. He went back into the hospital twice on missions to help save her. And our brave troops saved her.
Please, the next time someone tells you something bad about Muhammad, remember this Muhammad, and what he did.
When I heard about Jessica Lynch I told my friends I would have been honored to be a reporter then, to write her story. And, having once employed in movies, I'd be thrilled to make a movie about her story, and the story of Muhammad, who reached out to rescue her.
It would open in the West Virginia from which my mother sprang... green hills and hollers and mists... and the music would be Ralph Stanley singing:
"Oh death please consider my age
Please don't take me at this stage
My wealth is all at your command
If you will move your icy hand
Oh the young, the rich or poor
Hunger like me you know
No wealth, no ruin, no silver no gold
Nothing satisfies me but your soul
O, death
O, death
Wont you spare me over til another year"
I have a last confession to make to the Freepers. I am a poet, and I hate the "poets" who say to be a poet one must hate our country and its soldiers at war. Here is an offering from our great national bard, Walt Whitman:
"TURN, O Libertad, for the war is over,
(From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world,)
Turn from lands retrospective, recording proofs of the past;
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past;
From the chants of the feudal world—the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste;
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come—give up that backward world;
Leave to the singers of hitherto—give them the trailing past;
But what remains, remains for singers for you—wars to come are for you;
(Lo! how the wars of the past have duly inured to you—and the wars of the present also inure:)
—Then turn, and be not alarm’d, O Libertad—turn your undying face,
To where the future, greater than all the past, Is swiftly, surely preparing for you."
It's good to find a home.
Why was this rambling vanity posted on the California topic?
That would be a no-no on Jim Robinson's forum. Just friendly advice.
Also, it's Justin not Dennis R.
I saw this. That man walked over twelve miles through bullets with an exact drawing of the hospital room, it's exact location, how many guards were posted, enemy strengths, and exactly how to get to Jessica.
I was amazed.
I have been posting on FR since 1997, bud: you signed up in 2001. Schwartz signed up the day he posted this drivel. So who died and left you in charge?
And don't tag me with Schwartz's leftist politics. He is the one droning on about the glories of labor unions, my friend, not me.
Sheesh! What is it with FR, these days, anyway? Has everyone gone mad?
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