Call my People, O’Reilly

Isn’t life kooky.

Though a weird series of events, I got invited to the National Day of Prayer, in Washington, DC. Mike got invited through me. We were going to hear Franklin Graham speak. He is Billy Graham’s son.

Today I saw this story on Yahoo News: Group Wants Evangelist’s Pentagon Event Cancelled. Some guy named Mikey Weinstein–that’s really what he calls himself–says Graham should be disinvited because he has criticized Islam as “evil.”

Mr. Weinstein is in charge of an obscure outfit called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. My wild guess: the foundation consists of an 800 number that goes to his cell phone. For years I’ve wanted to call myself a foundation or a coalition, purely to lampoon the practice of using pompous language to make oneself seem important, but I never got around to it. I know it would get me on cable news a lot. That’s where cable guests often come from. You form a corporation for $75, get an agent, and let the networks know you’re available. Seriously, that will get you on the news. Don’t forget to wear a suit, and get some glasses to make you look intelligent and serious.

His website lists no staff.

Points to ponder: how long has it been since Mikey Weinstein attended services at a house of worship, and what is his prayer schedule like? One would assume that a person who fights for religious freedom would have a religion which he wishes to be free to practice. Can’t find any references to Mr. Weinstein’s religious bent on the web.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Weinstein has dedicated his life–no exaggeration–to battling evangelical Christianity. In other words, he is battling all Christians who believe the Bible. If you go to church on Christmas and Easter and you never pray, Mr. Weinstein has no problems with you, because you aren’t accomplishing anything. He is only after serious Christians.

Here is a clip from Wikipedia:

The group was founded by Michael Weinstein in early 2006 to oppose the spread of religious intimidation by evangelical Christians in positions of power within the US military. Weinstein describes the group’s target as “a small subset of evangelical Christianity that’s called premilliennial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity or just Dominionist Christianity.”

Am I crazy, or is this persecution? If he were an atheist (he probably is, though) fighting all religions, I would not be hearing sirens, but targeting one branch of one religion seems bigoted and irrational. What would people say if I dedicated my life to fighting Orthodox Judaism or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, while leaving other religions unmolested? They’d call me a Crusader and a bigot. How is Mr. Weinstein any different?

Is he fighting Muslims who want to rearrange their work areas and schedules so they can pray? Is he fighting to keep healthy, inexpensive, delicious pork on the menus at military mess halls? Does he want to force Jewish soldiers to work on the sabbath? I wonder.

Mr. Weinstein is disturbed by Christianity’s influence over our military. Me, I think it’s the single best thing about our military. The political side of our government is extremely venal and godless, but our soldiers and sailors are still working to bring us God’s blessings. That’s very important. If there is one part of government you want God to bless, it’s the part that fights our enemies directly, by force of arms.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize! I saw that on the web. The Nobels are amazing. Does the list come directly from Satan’s desk, or what? Has anyone looked at the list? Is Satan’s signature at the bottom? Is the list delivered to Stockholm by an imp?

All you have to do is attack Christianity, capitalism, or America, and you make the cut. They should start calling them the Ignobel Prizes. They’ve become completely absurd. They used to go to people who did useful things like revolutionizing physics. Now all you have to do is lie about global warming or spend twenty days in the White House without achieving anything.

Mr. Weinstein is a lawyer, so he knows what “sandbagging” is. It means attacking your opponent at the last possible moment, so he has no time to prepare a defense. That’s what he’s doing with his attack on Franklin Graham. The event is taking place two weeks from now, and Mr. Weinstein has had a long time to get his spiel ready, and he waited until yesterday. He knows there will be no time for a thoughtful dialogue now. He’ll provoke a kneejerk, drive-by attack from the press, and if he manages to generate hysteria, it will still be in full bloom on the day of the event. Those are bush league tactics in my book.

Nonetheless, there is some validity to his position. When you ask the government to subsidize an event, you sell your soul to the founder of the feast. This is why universities are so crazy. They take piles of taxpayer money, and it comes with strings attached. By making the National Day of Prayer a government event, we pretty much asked for potshots from extremists. I don’t know why we need the government’s imprimatur. Seems to me we could just coordinate and show up on our own.

Church tax exemptions are problematic, too. Preachers have a responsibility to preach about politics, but if they uphold it, they run the risk of losing tax exemptions. So they stay quiet when God-hating fringe characters run for office. That harms America. Better to be like Jesus and let the fish you catch pay the taxes. That’s my opinion. If God is with you, presumably your flock will support you well enough to allow you to pay Uncle Sam to get lost.

I would like to see a wave of evangelism so strong, we would bury the malcontents and our government could go back to acknowledging God openly. But that hasn’t happened yet. We should take attacks like Mr. Weinstein’s as inspiration to evangelize and get the votes we need to produce a godly government. And we should pray for him to change and find the good things we’ve found.

I’m going to pray that the attack fizzles, and that we learn to mobilize in Washington without the government’s help. Leftists don’t need government help at Burning Man. We don’t need help with tea parties. We should be able to orchestrate massive prayer events on our own.