Amen. For the both of us.

My little story about my antiepiphany was anecdotal. It did cost me a lot. It took me twenty years to discriminate between the existence of God and the works of men using scripture for their own agendas. Some lessons have a steep price tag.

But I’m much better now.

This thread is probably deader than a doornail, but just in case you check back in I feel some need to tell you that I found your comment very thought provoking.

First off, glad to hear you are much better now

Second, I suppose I’m sorry to hear that it cost you twenty years to sort out some stuff that is, it seems to me, very important to you. Sorting it out, however, is what matters most. Best wishes with that.

The thing that provoked what I found to be an odd series of thought for me was the matter of how I arrived at some sort of innoculation against “religion” vs. how an obvously thinking man like you needed 20 years to sort out the stuff important to you.

Early on I arrived at the notion of “where’s the rub?” I honestly don’t get why the existence of religion and/or “believers” so deeply upsets so many people. Aside from ocassionally having to wait a few minutes while a congregation clears their parking lot, or shooing away the odd missionary or moonie here or there, religion just never has “cost” me anything of much value to me.

It may be that I had some odd combination of an early turn toward skepticism or, perhaps, that my early exposure to religion was RC back in the days of the Latin Mass. Since I couldn’t understand a work they were saying (that may not have mattered since RC doesn’t focus on “scripture” all that much – at least not outwardly to the congregants) I arrived early in life at some odd notion that “religion=ritual”. And, well, I just couldn’t find a connection between the rituals and any notion of God that the catechisms seemed to want me to get. I just could not associate the ritual with “God” and, from a darned early age, essentially rejected the religion I was born and educated into.

I suppose that colored all my future exposure to religion. As I was exposed to other sects of Christianity they all seemed like RC-lite to me probably because while the ritual was toned down it sure looked familiar. And the scriptures they seemed to highlight were nothing new. This, of course, didn’t apply to the Baptists I was exposed to quite extensively. They thumped the heck out of their bibles and believed some really odd things wrt RC, but I never saw that as much more than a semi-harmless schtick with some petty bigotry woven in.

Next came exposure to several sects of Judaism and that left me with some idea that the “congregation” part of Judaism was largely a “make it up as you go” sort of enterprise. The Jewish people I got to know well enough to make some exploration of how they went about managing their congregation suggested they sort of “shopped for a rabbi” until they found one who fit (Whattayamean you fired your rabbi? Can you guys do that?). I even got exposed to some sort of deconstructionist Jewish congregation. That one baffled the heck out of me. I asked for an explanation of what the heck they were up to and what I got was that, essentially, they seemed free to rewrite the text to mean whatever they preferred. Once one goes that far I don’t see the point to religion at all.

I later learned that some Christian sects do something similar. That ain’t the way it works, IIRC, for RC. The Powers That Be send the congregation its priest(s) and lord knows where the Bishops and higher ranks come from

As far as The Bible goes, I arrived at “Wait a sec here… this thing started in Aramaic and went through Hebrew and then Greek and then Latin and back and forth and bounced around with those really wierd popes for a few centuries and guys named King James had their cracks at it and you want me to take this as gospel? Not today, thanks anyway.”

So all that was behind me before I ran across my first exposure to “evangelical” and by then my scepticism was way too strong. Once I set eyes on the $2000 sharkskin suit and the Merc I wasn’t listening all that much.

But, in all that, I never ran across anyone (other than the nuns, of course ;>) who made my life difficult in any way I could detect (like I said earlier, I may be just completely insensitive). So while I certainly reject religion I’ve never learned any reason to have any animosity toward any religion I’ve ever been exposed to (unfortunately this is changing and I don’t like having to face up to that). I always had this odd notion that I could walk or stay as I pleased – never felt much “coersive” power from it.

Maybe I’m even odder than I think I am.

Yes, Clausewitz is a philosopher and authority, the others were more historians, I agree. I was imprecise.

Lee’s campaign objectives may have been aimed at Washington but the primary objective was to bring the Army of the Potomac onto ground of his choosing and destroy it. Not beat them, not rout them, but to utterly destroy them. The posse of inept Union generals that had paraded the federals in front of his guns for almost three years gave him valid reason to believe that he could accomplish that mission. He correctly guaged his chances for surviving a war of attrition as nil. The invasions were aimed at D.C. because Lee knew that the political pressure brought to bear on his opposite number would only help to keep the Union side on script.

Lee sought that once crushing victory near Washington because he had to force a collapse of political will in D.C. to have any chance of winning. I always thought the dream of capturing Washington was given too much weight in the commentaries of the war. Yes, the town is in a swamp but by early 1863 what it didn’t have in defensible terrain it more than made up for with earthworks and artillery. Lee NEVER had enough oomph to win a total victory in the field and hope to have enough moxie left to take D.C. by storm. He never had the resources to attempt a true invasion of the North, so he concentrated on dictating tempo and holding the initiative against the enemy in the field. He lost the ability to do even that the day Grant marched after him after the Wilderness. And the Union troops cheered because they knew they had a general that would finish the fight.

Sherman did fight a lightning war, for his era. He moved his troops to preplanned objectives, fighting only those enemies who interfered with reaching those points. He moved at the fastest pace his troops could sustain and the minimum trains (wagon and rail) necessary to keep him supplied. He abandoned his supply lines entirely for his march to the sea.

Knuckle -

My little story about my antiepiphany was anecdotal. It did cost me a lot. It took me twenty years to discriminate between the existence of God and the works of men using scripture for their own agendas. Some lessons have a steep price tag.

But I’m much better now.

Thought this was dead thread and didn’t respond to your comments on Lee’s strategy. I don’t know where you got the idea that Lee was fighting a Fabian strategy, unless you meant after his defeat a Gettysburg. Prior to that Lee sought to inflict a decisive military defeat on the Army of Potomac, take Washington and dictate a peace favorable to Southern Independence. That was clearly his intent in the Antietam Campaign in September 1862 and the Gettysburg Campaign a year later. His intent at Chancellorsville just prior to Gettysburg was to destroy Hooker. He cancelled his third day attack, which would have been Pickett’s Charge in May instead of July, because of a perceived opportunity to defeat Sedgwick’s VI Corps.

Comparing Hart and Fuller to Clausewitz is not valid. First, both writers accepted Clausewitz as a given. They wrote more about means then ends. Clausewitz is not a strategy cookbook, itís a philosophy of war.

Al Qaeda certainly has an OPTEMPO. Their desired attack schedule is 12-18 months. You can check the dates.

It could be that I am just completely insensitive to some sort of heavy duty pressure that My Fellow Citizens feel wrt matters of religion. Or perhaps I am just flat out lucky enough to have escaped it by sheer happenstance.

I was subject to nine years of education in parochial school. It didn’t take. I’ve been into churches or all sorts of sects MANY times, none of them ever locked me in, I was always free to exit at any moment of my choosing. Along the way my experience suggests that there is as large a “religious left” as there is a “religious right” (more on that momentarily). I’ve been subjected to, as far as I know, as many “visits” from those who wish to “convert” me as most other people have. They never cost me anything more than a few moments of my time and, rarely, some sharp and pointed words requesting that that they leave me alone and turn their attentions elsewhere. All that suggests to me that “religion” isn’t any more “contagious” than, for example, homosexuality. It ain’t smallpox and I can’t “catch it” unless I go looking to catch it.

So that makes me downright aggravated by the people who seem to view the First Ammendment as something which should guarantee them “freedom” from any exposure to anything “religious” under any and all circumstances. I can’t help wondering what they are afraid of. Do they believe they, or their children, will bolt from home and join a monastary if they hear Silent Night sung by the Munchkin Fourth Grade Singers on school property? I don’t think so. I think it is just an expression of animosity slathered with an unhealthy dose of superiority complex. But what to I know.

On the matter of Religious Right vs. Religious Left… My experience with various churches (Christian as well as Jewish sects of a fairly borad number of sects) suggests to me that there is every bit as many “congregations” leaning Left as there are leaning Right.

In most cases those who belong to the congregations, I’d wager, don’t view their lean to the left or right as an attribute of their religion. They’d almost certainly explain their political leanings in other than religious terms, or at least try to. Yet we never hear boo about the Religious Left. Why is that? Is it merely because those who belong to the Religious Left have successfully defined their leftism in non-religious terms and the Religious Right has failed to do something similar? Or is it that the MSM and elites dislike religion but are fully willing to tolerate there fellow leftists who subscribe?

BTW, I believe your example of dealing with a case of “religious extremism” demonstrates my point about how it is basically simple to deal with. It may have seemed difficult and painful and cranked up some serious emotions for you at the time, but in retrospect you might admit that it wasn’t particularaly difficult to set the dopes straight and that they had no lasting impact upon your life – the “extremist” part wasn’t as if they got to whack you with sticks or make you grow a beard or force your girlfriend to don a veil or burka. What we seem to view as “religious extremism” is downright milquetoast as far as extremism goes.

Which is all to say that I find “radical secularism” (or anit-religousness, not really sure which it is) far more bothersome and inconvenient in my own life than “religious extremism” has ever been. When folks set in to foaming about the “Religious Right” I tend to think they’ve got their own issues they might want to ponder on a bit.

I cannot recall the last news account of a convenience store robbery that included the line “The suspect pushed the cash amount for his purchase across the counter and cooly walked out of the store.”

Yup. We’ve stolen their oil at their price and then guarded the transport line out to the world, too. For what, fifty years?

I survived a youth experience with a highly unpleasant example of right religious extremism. Like all cult-of-personality abberations laid on top of a mainstream religion it followed one of the two available options: it collapsed the moment the leader overreached the dogma he purported to represent. I am proud to say I had a hand in bringing matters to a head.

It wasn’t a Martin Luther moment or anything. I just asked him (during a sermon on harlots) why it was necessary to destroy my girlfriend because she declined the attentions of his son(s)…imagine the final scene of Carrie, without the pig blood, and you almost get the picture.

Americans don’t do extremes…unless you call patriotism and a belief in our ability to get the job done extremism. Some do. That is their choice and their affair. They attempt to slip on the striped pants and top hat every four years but I don’t think it’s working all that well since 9/11.

You mean you don’t accept that the Islamofacists are just really nice and wonderfully exotic people whom we misunderstand and pushed too far by stealing their petroleum from them?

Are you saying that the “Religious Right” isn’t run by Torqueyomamma and isn’t running massive torture and racial bigotry campaigns throughout the US?

I was an artilleryman once upon a time, so I understand shoot/move/communicate.

The bad guys are just that. BAD. This isn’t a question of competing territorial interests or economics. Americans live and function happily on the leading edge of an indeterminate world, following our dreams and unconsciously assuming that the folks on our left and right are content to do the same. We tend to ignore the problems we cannot directly lay a hand on. Maybe it would be easier to understand fundamentalist Islam if the Religous Right in America actually bore any resemblence to the charicature endlessly published by their opposite numbers in our political arena. As it is, even the worst fearmongering misrepresentation of evangelical Christianity or even an accurate portrait of the KKK falls light years short of the stark reality of what the Islamic agenda means to the civilized world.

The rise of Eurabia aside, there’s just no way for them to function as a worldwide government even if they were able to project enough death and destruction to make it happen. They might bring down civilization via plague, but I don’t see a viable end state for them in the absence of a main enemy. Should they ever defeat the Great Satan, they’d just revert to tribal warfare.

Are they crazy? I don’t know. History is littered with the rise of fanatic political movements in either secular or religious flavors. I know they intend to kill us where they can on the way to eradicating western civilization. Not much reason to invest any more investigation into the why when the what is so clear.

Chuck -

Sherman was profoundly influenced by his experience at Shiloh and the battles that followed. He was intimately familiar with the mind of the Southern aristocracy and doubted very much that the north could ever force a battlefield decision against them. Given the North’s overwhelming superiority in men and material he foresaw any victory coming at the cost of millions of lives and a South devoid of a male population.

The war would be won only when the population as a whole had been coerced into abandoning the myth of the Southern aristocracy. He did his part by destroying the supply line that left the rebel soldier in front of Grant shoeless, hungry, and distraught over the fate of their family.

His determination to take the fight to the sinews of the Confederacy was a revolution in military thought. He dictated the tempo of the fight by forcing the enemy into a reaction mode. He deemphasized the glory of battle in favor of just ending the fight as quickly as possible. I’ve read Hart but not Fuller.

Clausewitz is more popular than technical, agreed. Truisms are always more marketable than specific stategies reflecting the existing weapons, technology, and politics before an authority or pundit.

IIRC, the writings of Liddell Hart and JFC Fuller were more influencial in WWII than those of Clausewitz. Liddell Hart’s biography of Sherman was the book that emphasized Sherman’s tactic of keeping open several possible lines of attack and choosing that where the resistance was smallest; he also remarked on Sherman’s choice to abandon his lines of supply up into TN that the Confederates had sent Forrest to interdict. Of course, to me it appears that Liddell used Sherman as a stalking horse to promote his own previously developed theories of warfare, but the book is still of interest.

…the underlying concepts of western democracy are incomprehensible to them.

Not only are those concepts incomprehesible to them, but whenever they gain a flash of insight those concepts are completely destricutive to their own view. They cannot live in a world where all things are the will of Allah and thanks are directed to Allah and all must submit to everything around them because whatever it is reflects, after all, the will of Allah and one must than Allah for it.

This is as incomprehensible to me as our system must be to them. It seems like a forever loop of chasing one’s tail and yelping and then thanking “the lord” when one catches it and chomps it. Where the heck can that ever go?

I look at that and see something I can’t fathom and when some flash of insight arrives (typically delivered on a platter by Catherine!) I get the sinking, sick feeling that there just ain’t room in the town for them and us (and I ain’t willing to move to the cemetery just yet).

It ain’t gonna end soon or be pretty in the meantime. Bummer.