The Bellicose Left

Some of you may remember the Peace n Justice Left. It upheld a noble tradition in the Catholic Church, much neglected in this era of Wars of Empire, of suggesting that “Blessed are the Peacemakers” is not simply a saying to shout down with “America Number 1!”

However, it’s turning out that this, like the Lefty handwringing about “greed” in the Reagan/Bush era which suddenly became exultation about “prosperity” during the Clinton era, was more a function of whose party happens to be in office. Here, for instance, is Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter (home of the Peace Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and all those other Workers for Peace), suddenly filled with spirit of Patton dancing on the skulls of his enemies as our Beyond Awesome President kills bin Laden:

… I do not normally take delight in the death of a fellow human being. Nor do I support the death penalty. But, if there was one man on the planet whom it was important to kill, not to just let die, it was Osama bin Laden. You should not be able to murder well nigh to 3,000 Americans and others with impunity. If you commit such a crime, you should fear every moment of every day that U.S. Special Forces will come crashing through the door to bring you to justice. I am sure bin Laden knew better than to be captured alive. (Given the legal nightmare of Guantanamo, thank God he was killed on the spot!) It took a long time to track bin Laden down, too long, and it is impossible not to think that we might have reached this happy day earlier if we had not detoured through Baghdad. But, this is no time for recriminations. It is time to celebrate.

As I write these words, images of young people streaming into the streets in front of the White House chanting “USA” and singing the National Anthem are coming onto the television screen. If it were not so late and I did not have an early morning, I would drive down myself. Vengeance is not a healthy emotion, I know. Assassination is against the law, to be sure. But, better to indulge and go to confession. I am glad Osama bin Laden did not die in his bed, as I am glad Hitler did not die in his bed and as I am distressed hat Stalin and Mao did. Men who commit such evil do not deserve normal considerations of human sympathy or civilized respect. The world is well rid of bin Laden. It is a great day to be alive.

Not the sort of thing you normally get from the Reporter is it? But this is the God King we are talking about. So we can go ahead and engage in unabashed worship of Mars and rejoice without even a little reflection on whether the death of the wicked is something to rejoice over (Ezekiel 33:11). Sort of like Bush’s attitude to Karla Faye Tucker, right Michael? Only, of course, that was very wrong! Very wrong indeed! Because Bush was Bush but Obama… well, he’s just dreamy!

Meanwhile, as Jay Anderson masterfully points out, it is the blogsters whom Winters has denounced as bloodthirsty and “kookie” (?) who have paused to reflect a bit on whether unabashed glee is really the healthiest response to the very real possibility that a man for whom Christ died has just had his ticket punched for the infernal regions.

But none of that theological stuff matters to Winters. We have a God King to celebrate, so all that “Peace” stuff that the Reporter normally advocates is out the window and dancing on corpses is the new orthodoxy, for the moment.