No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

I've had it up to here! Now, imagine me holding my hand horizontally just below my chin to indicate where I've had it up to. Everybody's got a pet conspiracy theory to flog or some new "shocking revelation" in their latest book  WELL, THERE IS A CONSPIRACY GOING ON BUT IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK.  The conspiracy theories and wild talk are little more than a smoke screen to divide us, to confuse us and to hide what's really going on. My favorite book says this:

• For our struggle is not against human opponents, but against rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us, and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm.  Eph. 6:12

Just quoting that text like I seriously believe it makes me one of those "fundamentalist" Christians that the Georgia chairman of an atheist group, which I shall not dignify by naming here, claimed ought to be "exterminated".  His words not mine. So much for a kindlier tone.

As we engage our brothers and sisters in debate over the issues that face our nation these days, let us remember who it is that seeks to confuse and divide us and for what purpose he wishes to do so. If that confusion and division leads us, in the name of safety and security to accept a huge, intrusive and powerful government as a necessity, then we get what we deserve.

When the children of Israel wanted a powerful King like the other nations had, God warned them that a king would take their daughters for his concubines, take their sons for soldiers, their food to feed his armies and their money to pay for weapons.  He warned them that the kings would take their liberty, their land and their labor and return them only illusions of safety and security. We stand between two belief systems that offere us clear choices - small government or large; freedom or imagined security; independence or dependence. 

That we as a nation are still standing despite the determination of the forces of "hope and change" Progressivism, is a tribute to the tenacity of the American people and the quality of what our forefathers wrought. Voices on every side call for compromise, for acceptance of the inevitable and for handing over our freedom in exchange for promises of security and safety that Paul Simon aptly described as a "pocketful of mumbles".

Michael Palin of Monty Python fame, famously said, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition."  I fear the folk who are buying the rhetoric of "hope and change" thinking the kindly government is going to make their car payment for them are going to be in for a nasty shock. Palin was right. No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.*

Tom King - Puyallup, Washington

* And, in case someone wants to draw a link between fundamentalist Christians and the Inquisition, remember please that the Inquisition was a policing arm sponsored by the Roman church and government authorities and they were punishing "heretics" many of whom were convicted of believing the same things fundamentalist Christians hold as principles of faith. If you wonder why fundamentalist Christians fear government, look to what the government sanctioned to be done against us under the Inquisition. And, like I said, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."