We are at war.

What exactly does that mean to you? Honestly to different people it means different things. Many realize we are at war but don’t perceive us at war. We have those who take it so serious it disrupts their lives. We then have the extreme opposite in the population that don’t take it serious at all.

President Bush wants us to go on with our lives. Which we should, to give in is to allow the enemy to win. I know there are a lot of things going on to be scared about and the media does not help but before the war we have things to be scared about and we seemed to put them aside enough to get on with our lives. What things? The threat of getting sick, getting cancer, getting shot, getting food poisoning, getting robbed, getting in an accident, a flood, a tornado, a volcano erupting and many more things in life are threats to our well being. The difference is being aware of what could happen and taking precautions to prevent them. It really is not any different then the treats we live with in this war.

We have those who oppose the war. I can understand their view of when is killing enough and that killing is not the answer to the problem. But how can you cry out for peace and non-violence when you are being attacked? We did not start this fight. We were attacked. Do you honestly think if we lie down and do nothing we would not be attacked again? Terrorist, bullies, anyone that ‘threatens’ us do so until or unless we stand up for ourselves and sometimes that means fighting back. If the initial warning of fighting back does not back the person or persons down then you have no choice but to fight back. I personally feel if we had not fought back in this war we would now have thousands or millions of our people sick or dead because we stood back and did nothing.

Some say we have asked for what has happened to us by our past actions. We have been attacked because we helped Israel. We probably have not actually helped Israel enough! Terrorism is not new; it has only been ‘some place else’.

It is a very interesting time. We are seeing things happen in this country that 6 months ago would not have happened. We now have been allowing prayer in schools. Things that we were so strongly against because it offended someone… we now see as a way to help us deal with our country being attacked. I agree all beliefs should be honored but no one ever said…. You could not believe as you wished. It was only the ‘human rights activists’ that said we were wrong in pray because we normally prayed to God.

Is not democracy…. The majority vote rules? Yet we in the past years have been so ready to fight for one individual that we have court cases to remove such things as the 10 commandments from in front of courthouses. Money and time was wasted to on these court battles to remove something that was giving as a gift to a city or a state or what ever.

Is not the largest amount of religions of this country based on the ones that believe in God? Does not majority rule? Just because you display a nativity scene or the 10 commandments or a Buddha does it mean you do not allow for or respect other peoples views?

There is nothing wrong with human rights but we have gone to the extreme that if just one-person objects…. It has to be removed…or at least taken to court to be removed. Does this not go against what we as a country stand for? Does not compassion and understanding and tolerance of difference suppose to be what we are based on? What our for-fathers wanted? But it seems only the majority rule when it comes to these things. I am sorry but human rights of an individual have gone too far in regard to some things. I am a woman, I know what it is like to be discriminated against and discriminations is a bad thing but you have to find the fine line where standing up for an individual right is worse then not standing up for those rights. We want to teach tolerance to our children yet we tend to teach them intolerance more then we teach tolerance with the thing that have been going on with ‘rights’ issues.

We took Christ out of Christmas. I am not saying it is wrong to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. It just seems to me we have taken and diluted all religions and their holidays by first taking Christ out of Christmas. It’s like taking the Buddha out of Buddhism.

We are at war. What are the things pulling us together? What are the things that are helping people get through this terrible tragedy and those tragedies that yet to happen? Our prayers. Maybe not all to the same God, but to a ‘supreme being’ or the Universe…it is all the same and it is what is helping us all move forward in strength instead of giving up in fear. There is a sense of what is best for ‘all’. What will helps us the most get through this. I know there are people worried that we will rush to change laws so that prayer is allowed in schools and not just tolerated because of the times.

We had gotten so bad on the subject that even though a student who wanted to say a traditional pray at an assembly like a foot ball game was not allowed because of fear of the school of a court battle. I think that is pretty sad.

Saying a prayer that a majority of the people want or need to hear is not offending to another exact in a petty stupid world. Anyone that believes in his or her religion will not be offended by someone praying differently then they themselves do. They will just pray in their own way. There are many ways to ‘compromise’ the pray things so that all are acknowledges. Lets say that if you have a different religious person in a class or school. How about allowing them a time period…say one day a week to lead the prayer in their religion. This way we teach tolerance, differences and also the actual ‘lack’ of differences in believing in a religion. The beliefs may be different but they all basically have the same general beliefs in some shape or form. Is it not better to work it out then to take religion out of children’s lives?

Yes, I know there needs to be a separation of church and state but not to the point that we have. A person wearing a cross can be an atheist and just like the looks of a cross. A court can have the 10 commandments outside and still be objective and never allow any church to influence it.

We are at war. We have actually done more to help terrorist to attack us out of… our wanted individual rights. I will not go into details on the subject because we have enough problems to deal with right now. But we must as a country when this is all over find the fine line to the division of what are our individual rights and our right to know in comparison to what is our country’s rights to help protect the country. Even our own media tends to help the terrorist in how it presents the news. We do have rights to know but we also have things that need to be known only to those on a ‘need to know’ basis only. I am not saying we should go to a period that we make it so the individual is unable to find out what is going on but we need to do it in a way that we can track who is paying attention and for what reasons.

We are at war. I know some people who have no idea what is going on around the country. I know some who prefer not to ever think about it. We have our children in schools wishing to not hear about it any more because they are tired of hearing about our war. They want things to be as they were before this all happened. They want to put it aside and go on with life, as it was never thinking about it. Sorry, but, do you want to die? Our threat is real. To think that nothing else will happen here in this country is to be naive. But you need to not live in constant fear either. You need to proceed with life as normal but adding that you need to keep an eye out for something unusual. You need to be aware that we may not have another WTC like attack but we will have something else happen. Keep your eyes and your ears open. That does not mean being suspicious of Muslims in their country it means you just keep your eyes and your ears open. Its like many of our citizens live life in inner cities and crime areas. You keep alert to strange things that don’t normally go on.

We are at war. Not only us as a nation but also us as a world. We are not the only victims here. Other nations realize this that is why they are helping us. No one is immune to what is going on. We do not live in a day and age when you hear about something somewhere else and know it will never affect you. I think we should all realize that what happens anywhere in the world effect everyone in the world. It is the ripple effect, the for every action there is a reaction. It might take a while but it will in some way affect everyone.

We are at war. I wish we were not. I pray for our country and this world for we really are in this all together!

God Bless!

Lynn Beck

LBeck99703@aol.com
Home page: LBeckWorld homepages