Hopefully Marc and Stephen can remember to be Christians first, and right second.
As for being dizzy. Maybe you need to not follow either. Perhaps they are both wrong, or both right. There isn't always a black and white answer. They are both giving good reasonings, however issues can go deeper than they have gone. Issues can even go deeper than they are able, because many issues are classified and they will not ever in this life know the reasonings for every American action. I think we can find questionable reasonings for every action made by the US, even in our own American revolution. It's easy to say we were in the right now, since we won. However, when you look at some of our actions against the loyalists, it was scandalous. My wife's ancestor was a Tory, and forced back to Scotland after living decades in Georgia/Alabama. In reality, the colonialists were rather unfair in their renouncing all taxation, since the French and Indian War was very expensive and England only wanted us to pay a portion of the costs. In the War of 1812, we actually had more reason to go against France than England, and probably should have. Then there's the Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression, or War between the States). Did Lincoln have the right to stop the secession of the Southern States? Did the South have the right to secede, and if they did, was the manner in which they did it lawful, or were they required to go through Congress and the courts? But, I could do the same for many of the Nephite wars, also. Nephi could be shown to be a very two-faced person, pretending to not want power, yet sneaking out in the middle of the night with a large contingency, and stealing the national treasures. So let's not be too judgmental on the decisions made by nations. We don't always know the full reasonings. We often only get one side of the story. And we often don't understand the entire environment within which decisions are made. I don't think America evil because it has made some bad decisions in war. I think it has made many mistakes, but then I think most of those mistakes were made in trying to do something better. Kind of like Woodrow Wilson in his efforts to save Europe by drawing new national lines, ended up creating national feuds that continue to this day. Do we condemn Wilson for making the attempt? Or do we realize that there were some things he just did not foresee. Do we condemn Clinton for shooting a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan for terrorist actions, or do we realize that he was acting on the same level other presidents had done since the early 1970s? Do we condemn Canada for not becoming a world power in its own right and step in to be the world's police force, so we could sit back? I don't think so. Nor should we be condemned when the world continually throws that responsibility onto us, when we really don't want it. We've asked the UN to step in several times, then we have to step in to fix it. Sorry, I'm not going to be so harsh on people, simply because they are human. Show me some actual evil actions on their part, and I'll consider condemning those actions. But show all sides of a story, not just the history-shaded-one-color that some would have us see. K'aya K'ama, Gerald/gary Smith gszion1 @juno.com http://www .geocities.com/rameumptom/index.html "No one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he's free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe JWR: I just hate it when Marc Schindler and Stephen Beecroft get too intense with each other. I usually ends in one or the other taking a lengthy leave of absence from the list. And of course, since their contributions are among the chief reasons this is such a good list, I really hate to see it. Both Marc and Stephen are debating in such fine style that I am undecided whose side to take. I am an American, not a Canadian, so on that basis perhaps I should move in Stephen's direction. On the other hand, I have been totally disgusted for the last 40 years by the way this once great nation deports itself on the international stage, so maybe I should move in Marc's direction. Then again I am a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-communist, so perhaps I should move towards Stephen. I'm starting to get dizzy. ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /// ZION LIST CHARTER: Please read it at /// /// http://www.zionsbest.com/charter.html /// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aaP9AU.bWix1n.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
