Subject: txt libs othr vals bdd -
Preaching once was an art largely confined to the pulpits in the churches of this country. Now, some sermons have been reduced to sound-bite size and mounted on the rear bumpers and hatches of automobiles....
...I was first lectured with soaring statements of principle. "Peace" has apparently returned "by popular demand," and this odd assertion was emphasized by several prominent peace symbols. I learned that dissent is the highest form of patriotism... I was ordered "to think globally and act locally." I must "work for peace." And, of course, I really must learn to "COEXIST," the letters of which being composed of various political and religious symbols...
Any preacher must know his audience and the sermon must fit that audience. Thus, the message in the sermon can tell us much about how the preacher perceives or evaluates his audience. ... The audience for the sermons of this driver, and for so many who carry the same messages, is Middle America. It is America that needs to be preached to and changed. It is America that fosters strife in the world. It is America that stifles expression and must be reminded of dissent's connection to patriotism. It is America that that must be urgently advised to 'coexist'...
Those reading these exhortations for peace will not be those who are actually instigating war in the world.
It will not be the Islamic extremists in various places around the world who will ponder these messages of peace. It won't be the Chavez-supported narco-terrorists in Latin America, or the perpetrators of genocide in Darfur, or Russian troops occupying parts of Georgia, or the Chinese colonialists in Tibet.
The people who actually wage wars would be surprised, and possibly amused, by the idea that peace is back 'by popular demand'...
John Lennon's popular song "Imagine" is an anthem to the inane, where merely wishing can make it so, and where in an especially strange version of utopia. The mind that listens reverentially to Lennon's song is the same sort of mind that finds these bumper sticker platitudes compelling. Such drivers share Lennon's indulgent and fashionable alienation against this country and all that made Lennon's life so comfortable.
His is a mind that excuses the grim realities that burden so much of the rest of the world, while unfairly projecting those grim realities onto his middle American audience.
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