The view from Don Hynes' Vantage Point is refreshing and, for me, reassuring. The 4th of July fireworks have been somewhat tainted for me since I saw an American fighter-pilot interviewed on TV after returning from a bombing raid at the beginning of the 1st Gulf War. With a beaming smile he described the skies over Baghdad as being lit up "like the 4th of July." Hynes quotes Langston Hughes in his Post Independence Day missive of July 7, 2003...

America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Hynes then ponders...

I�ve been wondering when Christians in America would get tired of this Republican right religious hijacking.

...I know where he's coming from but hasn't this "hijacking" been a part of every religion's history? I would not expect it to go away anymore than the human lust for power and control over other humans. What is reassuring in all this is that we are recognizing that all that is religious is not righteous.

The American people have been "fighting with their eyes shut" for decades. We've implicitly trusted our government to do the dirty work for our protection from external threats, which we have relied solely on the same government to identify. If the vast majority of us doesn't see any problem with this then I wonder if we are anything like those to whom "We the People" refers.

--aslam 

10:21:17 PM