New Year's Eve 2011, And the Year 2012.

Hamilton Wright Mabie made this poetic statement, "New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights."


I have always felt this, the last page of a calender year falling as anonymously as every other page, softly floating to the floor. But New Year's eve does have a somber quality, being on the invisible cusp of a new year, with all it heady aspirations and/or anxious inhibitions....New Year's eve is, as the hippies say....heavy.  


This year the heaviness is of a different sort, and though my stomach is in knots like every year, the butterflies are almost all great things. Romance, destiny and colossal change all in a glorious collision in my soul. Of course there is much else on my heart also that makes this much like those other years, many prayers still unanswered, so much exploitation pandemic in this fallen world. But this year, the heaviness is a burden I have longed to carry, a labor of love.


So I will skip the rants this year, you can read the ones from last year, I bet they still painfully apply. This year I want to look back on 2011, on what I am so thankful for, and ahead to 2012, a year of new beginnings. Here goes:


I am thankful for another year full of Grace and Mercy and the Love of a Heavenly Father.


I am thankful for a woman named Narges K. Ashtari and for her beloved Prishan Foundation. 

Narges and the angelic child that inspired her to start Prishan Foundation!

I am thankful for River Moses, my incredible son.

River...ever pensive, ever speaking his mind! Exploring the base of several pillars at the Windsor Ruins  near Vicksburg, Mississippi.

I am thankful for the 34 permanent residents of Assist Orphange, for those 34 precious orphan girls, for Abraham and Jainy their caretakers and their two biological sons Abbi and Appu.

The girls of Assist home in Rayagada, Orissa India, along with Abbi and Appu!

I am thankful for my Ekklessia family, the community of believers there that have proven their love through humble service.


I am thankful for all of you, the Conspiracy Of Hope, who speak out on behalf of the exploited and give generously of your time and love and resources.


And I am sooooo very thankful for Jan. 11th....the day I leave for India!!!!


So this year, to break with the tradition of all my years, I want to make a New Year's resolution. And if I might be so bold, to ask you to make it with me. Thank you.

This year I resolve to keep the cause of the orphan child daily dearer to my heart. I resolve to be a louder voice for the voiceless children trapped in slavery. I resolve to be recklessly abandoned to their freedom. To give all that I can, all that I am, to that end. I resolve to love the orphan as my own child, to never stop until they are out of harm's way, until they are finally resting in the tender love of their new family.

I'll leave you with this. One of my very favorite authors, G. K. Chesterton proposed that “The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul”. 


So this year rejoice in the opportunity to start again. Receive the mercy and grace to do just that. And like Ghandi exhorted us "Be the change in the world you want to see."

Until Next Year!! I love you all so much!!

X-mas 2011.

Americans will spend around 200 billion dollars this year on Christmas. The holiday that celebrates the birth of the Christian savior, the one born in a pig's trough in a 1st century shanty. And of course they will spend it on every sort of nonsense. Just over 50% of the pets in the US of A will receive gifts. At a conservative 40 dollars a pet, with 80 million pets getting gifts, that's a meager 3 billion and change. A far cry from the 41 billion annually that is spent on pets including 900+ dollar testicle implants (240k sold so far) so that your castrated pet will "retain their natural look and self esteem"..... 


There's the throngs of rabid consumers who didn't sleep on November 24. The day meant for giving thanks, a day set aside as a remembrance of the blessings that we already have in great abundance was punctuated with a night (or a week) of anxious waiting in the parking lots of giant retail meccas. Then at some ungodly hour, the veil of sliding glass was rent, the many mouths of strip malls opened wide, and the crowds pushed themselves frenzied and wild eyed into the belly of the beast. They trampled the slow and the timid, they wrenched product from the weak and the amateurish. 





I am so embarrassed to be human. I believe the article of the maniacal obsession was a $2 waffle maker. You'd of thought it was the cure for AIDS or the last cup of water on earth. If that video whets the appetite, here is a collection of some of the most egregious black Friday deaths and injuries ever. Yes. I said deaths. And all as a preamble to a day celebrating the baby Jesus. The one who had no earthly possessions. Who had no home. Who lived a life in humble servitude to the poor and the hurting. 


Yesterday, to prove that people are the worst type of brand-whores and celebrity worshipers, shoppers in North Carolina came to blows over the New Air Jordan tennis shoes. At 180 dollars a pair, a mob ran through the store's doors to be able to say that they have the new Jordans. 

Dear shoppers. Michael Jordan doesn't even play anymore. He's a 48 year old scratch golfer who cannot dunk from the free throw line anymore, not even at Chuck E. Cheeses. He doesn't know you are wearing his shoes. He doesn't even care. Well let's be honest he does care, about 180 dollar's worth, that you buy them. But he will never see you wear them, he will never stop you on the street and say, nice kicks my friend. He never will. Nope. 





How bout 200 billion on orphan relief? Even the 41 billion we spend on pets? Hell even the 3 billion we spend on gifts for our pets? How bout lining up outside of brothels and brick kilns, waiting all night to snatch kids out of the ruthless grips of traffickers and slave masters? How bout the same kinda determination that we use to acquire a 2 dollar waffle maker or even 180 dollar shoes, that kind of passion and resolve??!! If nothing else. Let's just drop the pretense. Take the name of Christ off of it all. Quit trying to add credibility to this season of product lust and tinsel worship. 


This is how I imagine hell. The smell of gingerbread and eggnog and the whole place is decked out in greens and reds and silvers and the tree is lit and there are new presents every morning and all you have to do is think it and there it is, waiting under the tree the next day. And your belly is always full and the music always soothes and the fire roars and crackles the most delightful little hisses and pops and this day repeats every day forever. And you don't have to think about the poor and the enslaved because they are not here in your perpetual X-mas. 


But then neither is Christ.

Politics Schmolitics!

Still a year from the elections and I am already green at the gills running to the hills sick of the rhetoric, the divisiveness and the look at me I am the savior of the status quo while simultaneously the fulfiller of dreams speeches spewing from the mouths of the would be rulers of america. I honestly can't stomach much more of this. Politics for me is love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. Easy as pie. 


Mmmmmm pie.....


I was driving back this morning from Jackson, MS, our state capitol and therefore the mecca for all thing tax and title related. I had to get a duplicate title for my jeep because I am selling everything I own and moving to India. But that is a story for another day...

I was lost in a daydream (give you a guess who that might have been about) when a bumper sticker on a truck got my attention. Mostly because of it's sheer size. The megalithic banner proclaimed. "I Miss Reagan". 


Now I am thinking to myself, does this guy really miss Reagan???  Were they like BFF back in primary? Did they share a foxhole in 'Nam?? And I realized what he means is he misses the life he had when Reagan had the wheel of the Executive Branchmobile. Politics has descended far from the days of "Ask not what your country can do for you...." Where is the personal sacrifice, not for the once great future State, but where is the humble service to the poor?? 


So in the spirit of all things political...puke....I asked my friend Michael "Cool Hand-3years in the book of-Luke" Dixon, who is also a fellow blogger and minister of the small community church where I attend, to tell me "theologically speaking" what a country might look like with Jesus at the helm. I have touched on this before here. Be sure to note Mike's sublime sarcasm. He has the gift. But don't let it fool you, he actually believes this stuff. I have heard him in as many words describe this upside down kingdom of Christ in greater detail several times in front of a crowded chapel. Here's his take....


"In a land where Jesus is president. Ironically election is no longer a divisive term politically or theologically. He is in office because he campaigned by giving everything he has away. There are no more citizens. Just sons and daughters. His cabinet is made up entirely of children. There are two laws and it is up to you to obey. 1) Give every part of yourself to God (yes even the gross parts) and 2) Love everyone on earth like they are the God in whose image they are made.


The tax code is simple: If you have more manna than you need give it away to those who are hungry before it stinks up your tent. Foreign relations take place around a large table. Everyone brings their best food and wine, and we tell stories. (I, that is Mike, will be eating with the Thai members of the family, and telling stories with the American southerners). The army trains by running wide armed at stuffed dummy replicas of the "enemy", and then practices throwing themselves at their mannequin feet with a towel and basin. This will take some practice before they can really get between the toes. All zoos have no fences because the snakes don't bite and the lambs use lions as pillows. Oh and we all get to talk face to face with the President anytime and anywhere we want, His schedule is surprisingly open."

I asked Mike to write this mainly to add a bit of spiritual authority and academic credibility to this post which seems only to highlight my increasingly cynical view of the three-ring circus of politics. Let me say I am not immune to how charged certain issues are, how important certain laws can be, but what I am saying, what I am hoping, is that we will all examine our motives for how we vote and ask ourselves, do the most fragile among us end up more broken? Do the weakest among us have their loads lightened? Do the orphans and widows have any representation, any voice at all? 

I will leave you with these two things: The wisest words on practical politics I ever got, 

"Get off your ass and serve somebody!"

......and a short poem I wrote for my son when he was 5 or 6. 

I'm tired of talkin' politics

Let's talk polliwogs instead

Or lollipops or poppycocks

Or the shape of someone's head

We can talk on any subject

From mumbley-pegs to bumble bees

But since were talking politics

I'll vote for you if you vote for me

Meet My Son...

My son came into this world screaming, purple and pissing on the kindly nurse who just wanted to have the umbilical cord cut and get on with her very long shift. He is 13 now, brilliant as his mum, and not nearly as hard headed as his old man. The moment he came into the world, my life was no longer my own. My life was to protect him, to round the sharp corners of the planet. The day we left the hospital I had such a relentless white-knuckled grip on his baby seat, I swear to you, a regiment of soldiers would have torn my arm straightaway from its socket before i could have let go of my son. What follows is for posterity sake, to quote the venerable mr. cummings "miracles are to come, with you I leave the remembrance of miracles".

e.e. cummings. 

These are the lessons my son taught me. This is the wisdom of childhood, unpolluted by the world-weary cynicism of the adult world, still teeming with a boundless imagination, tireless and sublime. This is the lens he sees the world through, these are the new eyes that he gave me. This is the miracle of being a father, this is the miracle of children.


The first lesson was stark and simple and unutterably profound, I realized the moment he was born that I no longer owned my own heart, it now beat outside my chest, now rested in the infinitely fragile frame of an infant child. As he grows that realization grows with him. As he hurts I hurt more, as he triumphs I am ever rejoicing. And the love I feel for him, transcendent and deeply visceral, was the very thing that broke my heart and compelled me to join the anti-child trafficking movement.


The second lesson was I am a selfish ________. Fill in the blank, you're prolly pretty close. Ask his mum if you need some more colorful words. Nothing like a child's total dependence on you to make you realize you still think of your life as your own. A child's world is as big as his belly. If he is hungry he opens his mouth and there is a very discreet amount of time allotted for it to be filled with food before it is filled with screams. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED feeding him, changing him, but seriously, I mean how much can a child eat??! And does he not realize where it all goes?!! And what is with the not sleeping, the multiple middle of the night feedings??!?? Really?!? But now, oh how I miss those moments, those first everythings, those tiny little hands grasping everything for recognition, those little legs peddling in the air prophesying running, bike rides, and long hot summer swims. Maybe the second lesson should be re-titled to: Don't be a selfish ________, you'll miss some of the best moments of your life. 

The third lesson was never underestimate a child, never give them a pat answer, never, ever ever ever think you are smarter then them. You. Are. Not. From the time my son was 18 months he was dedicated to consuming all knowledge known to man. He was intuitive, uninhibited, relentless in his desire to understand the workings of the world. He would say, "How does a car work?" To which I would answer. "Well son, it has an engine, that runs on gas, a bunch of little explosions of that gas create the energy that moves the car forward." Ignoring my insult to his superior intellect my son would again say "tell me how a car works". Slower this time and with maybe just a hint of condescension. So I would start with decaying plant matter in the ground, the heat and the pressure that turned it to crude, the drilling, the refining, the shipping, the pumping, the internal combustion, the pistons, rods, rocker arms, the tranny, the drive train, the rear differential..... And then when I was done my son would say. Tell me again. So I would, with the help of his corrections if I attempted to give an abbreviated version. After a few run throughs he wouldn't ask again. He had it. 18 months old. By 24 months he had his mind around the applied Physics of fulcrums and levers and pivot points. Now at 13 he speaks freely on every subject from sub-atomic particles to the dark matter hidden in the universe. I no longer require the use of Google. I have my son. 


There are of course a thousand other lessons my son taught me but none hit me with the blunt force of a thousand freight chains like this one: I was not prepared for the love I would feel for him. And then in that single most incredible moment when my heart was exploding I realized I was only feeling one single drop in the ocean of the affection God has for His children. I have never been so humbled, so speechless, so deeply affected by anything else in my life. So many misconceptions about the heavenly Father melted away in that instant when I held my son. So many times since then when my aching for my kid became a revelation of God's infinite love for me, for us, his silly, skint-kneed, snot-sniffing, broken, beautiful children.


I am not the father I had hoped to be, I am still so selfish, still consumed by so many things that probably don't amount to anything. But every time I am with my little man I want to be a better father, and patiently my son teaches me, each time anew, that the most important thing is just to give a child your time and affection. The rest kinda takes care of itself. This post is especially hard for me because I will be away from him for an extended time soon and because I am very private person, and oh so very protective of him. And because he reads my blog I want to say I love you Mosie. I am so proud of you. You are the best thing I ever did. This is the remembrance of the miracle you are to me, the miracle that you are to this world, and the many, many miracles to come.

Meet my son, River Moses.

Spoils of the climb. Riv finds a crocodile skull duck-taped shut at the bottom of Red Bluff.

At the Windsor Ruins in North Mississippi. River, never one to be so very meticulous in minding unnecessary rules, ignores the "Keep Out" warnings and explores the site.

Above, River sends unsuspecting seagulls squawking at the beach in Gulfport, MS. Below, my handsome, incredible, brilliant young man.

The Night Hides A World, But Reveals A Universe.

I love to read the proverbs of other cultures. I love how it reminds us we are all so much alike. To me there is something very compelling, very salt of the earth about the oral tradition of a phrase that has stood the test of so many generations, that has survived the revisionists and the post modernists and the younger generations chaffing under the disciplines of their elders, throwing off the shackles of tradition. It speaks of course to a proverb's practical wisdom that so many lips for so long have uttered the phrases and felt completely justified if not obligated to do so. Today I have been reading Iranian proverbs and poetry.

The main text of poster is an Iranian proverb means: "Our cow doesn't milk, but pisses plenty", that describing a person who tends to make mess of things, rather than making them right.

These Iranian proverbs range from the practical:

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.

You can’t push on a rope.

The joy of finding something is often worth more than what is found.

The larger a man's roof the more snow it collects. 

Standard fare really, similar sentiments found in every language, every culture under the sun. A testament to their universal truth. Then the slightly more abstracted, at least if nothing else by the translations:

A drowning man is not troubled by rain.

Every man is the king of his own beard.

He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string.

The lion (and the lioness fellas) is most handsome when looking for food.

But there are also the romantic ones. I like these best:

The loveliest of faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy. 

Only a heart can find the way to another heart.

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. 

A woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea. 

Then there are those that bridge the gap between proverb and poetry, where the best of Persian culture begins to bleed through:

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky... Finally, to take a step without feet.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you..

But it is the Persian poets that I believe really capture the essence of the heart of the Iranian people. Such passion and such reckless abandon to it. Hafiz has always been my favorite. He was a master of love poetry:

...Your love 

Should never be offered to the mouth of a 

Stranger, 

Only to someone 

Who has the valor and daring 

To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife 

Then weave them into a blanket 

To protect you...

and...

...One regret, dear, 

That I am determined not to have 

When I am lying on my deathbed 

Is that 

I did not kiss you enough.... 

and the sensuous and heady..

Lean your sweet neck and mouth 

Out of that dark nest where you hide, 

I will pour effulgence into your mind. 

Artist's rendering of the most famous Persian poet Hafiz.

Hafiz also wrote about our relationship to God with such unapologetic romance and passion. The way that relationship should be. Intoxicated by the Spirit:


I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through.....listen to this music.

I am happy even before I have reason. I am full of light even before the sky can greet the sun or moon. Dear companions, we have been in love with God for so very, very long; what can we now do but forever dance?

This place where you are right now

God circled on a map for you

Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move 

Against the earth and sky,

The Beloved has bowed there – 

Our Beloved has bowed there knowing 

You were coming

But my all time favorite has always been this one. To me it speaks about the surpassing joy that comes from knowing God, of resting in the finished work of Grace, of letting go and surrendering to the mysterious wonder of His sacrificial, unconditional, never ending love.

What is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God and that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move that the saint is now continually tripping over joy and bursting out in laughter and saying, I surrender! Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves.


I do not agree with some of Hafiz's philosophy, and he has certainly been mistranslated as have all poets. But he consistently touched this truth. That the heart of man and the heart of God have a gravity, a convergent trajectory. That we are made for this collision, and that we should stop resisting the pull. As Hafiz would say..

Just sit there 

Just sit there right now

Don't do a thing

Just rest

For your separation from God 

Is the hardest work in this world

For NKA...

I Wish I Was Superman.

She says "I want you to write a poem about the world through a child’s eyes, and then how it changes so much as that same child grows up...how screwed up everything that seemed so magical and amazing becomes, how we don't see things the same way, how our innocence and purity fades as we get older... That is what I want please Mark."


I cannot say no to her....(Why would I ever want to?) But how do you write a poem for a girl who is a poem. It is like sitting in a garden full of flowers looking at a photo of flowers, well something like that. 


But I think she wants more than a poem. I think she wants Superman to fly backwards around the world and reset the whole damn thing. I think she wants a world full of kids to get to be happy for just one day. I think she wants more than a poem, but then a poem is possible, a poem is not too much to hope for. A poem is not too much to ask. I wish I was Superman. That words were super powers.

I close my eyes. A fuzzy picture from Sunday school. Jesus with softness in his eyes, children on his lap. "Let the little children come to me for this is the Kingdom of Heaven." Jesus with fire flaring from his stare, better to tie a stone to your throat, he hisses, throw yourself into the sea, than to cause a child to lose faith in magic, to take their innocence. 


Poems are too hard to write, poems write themselves. Every poet knows that. The rest are liars. Give credit where it is due. Poems are their own muse. But I will do this. Anything for her. She deserves this and so much more. I will write her a poem.


But first I start with a list. A list of childhood:


The beetle king and queen and their kingdom of dirt.


Jack the cloud giant. 


The dog with his pillow saddle, a jump rope for reigns, a forked twig tucked into the elastic of underwear, the best six-shooter ever.

A sheet is always a cape. A scarf a secret identity. A limb is always a sword, except when it is a horse and usually both.


Cardboard rocketships. Couch cushion mission control.


Fresh cut grass and puddles upon puddles. Sloppy happy toe-soaking puddles.


Sticky tricky popsicles. Always popsicles.


But this is my childhood, not hers. Not the one that hundreds of thousands of children have. Wasting away in brothels and brick kilns. Innocence shattered. Magic a fools errand.


When we were young we preferred picture books, distrusted the thick volumes on the high shelves. Such unaffected vanity to tell us exactly how to feel, to not show us a picture and let us figure it out. And always some mothballed woolen mustached great aunt trying to kiss us. Well kisses are for turning frogs to princes, for dad to say he is sorry to mum, for last goodbyes. Kisses are not for yuck, nevermind. Girls are NOT allowed into the fort.


But if you feed us we grow. Children become adults. Play becomes work. War doesn't end at dinner time. The dead don't get dessert.


So I make another list. A responsible list. An adult one:


The beetle infestation in the yard. Call the exterminator. Monday will be fine. After 12.


These are the names of clouds. Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, Nimbus. Not Jack. Never Jack.


The dog is not a toy. The dog means this is the perfect life. The 2nd car, the dog, and the 401K. All on the list. All checked off.


Sheets and scarves are bought for their thread count. Twigs and limbs dull the lawnmower blades. They are for the burn pile. Only burn when there has been rain. Never on windy days.


Cardboard is to be recycled. Couch cushions go on the couch. 


You are tracking grass and mud and water onto the....WIPE YOUR FEET!


Eat more fiber. Be regular. Regular is the key. You should have a bowel movement twice a day. Anything less is irregular. Take two of these and call your doctor if the condition persists.


Truth is, adults like picture books too. Books that make them feel what they cannot feel, souls so callous from excess. Child porn is pandemic. Sex the currency of hearts. There is a reason why adultery has the word adult in it. Let the grown ups do their dirty deeds, but what about the flesh trade in innocence?? What the hell is that? They did not choose this life!


That brings us to another list. Another reality. A list without words to tell you how to feel.  Just images. Just a world where beetles are food for starving children. Where skies have the clouds of giant warplanes. Where guns are not pretend. Where if dinner even comes the dead don't un-die, bullets don't un-fire. Where dogs play in front of mansions built for them and homeless children play on garbage heaps. There are no capes or rockets to take the children from this. There is no escape. Not even in the magic mind of a child. Imagination does not, cannot exist, in the vacuum of hopelessness. There is only exploitation, rape, disease and death. 

Cambodian Sex-slaves

This is the reality for millions of children of our world. Unless we make a new list. A vow together, to each other. Not quite the poem she asked for, but maybe a start, maybe some beautiful words. Promises. 


Promise to adopt a child or ten of the 143 million orphans in the world before we have another of our own.


Promise not to buy a house in a world of 200 million homeless, a third of those children. 17 million homeless orphans in India alone. 


Promise to eat only what we need, and fast regularly in solidarity with the starving. In remembrance and honor for the 16,000 children that die everyday from hunger related disease.


Promise to never spend on an article of clothing what the average per capita income of a nation is. To never buy conflict jewels. Never buy jewels at all. To buy fairtrade, slave free products whenever we can. 


Promise to reduce consumption, reuse, recycle. And give what we save to the poor. To sell all we do not need and do the same. To divest ourselves from the economy of self and invest in the future of children.


Promise. Promise you will open your mouth every day with prayers and praise and awe and wonder. That you will pour good back into this dirty world. That you will be a little purer. A little more innocent. That you will make a little magic.


Promise to be a voice for the voiceless. To never be less committed to justice than evil men and women are committed to injustice. 


Promise to love until it hurts and then maybe just a little more.


But don't promise me. Promise yourself. Promise the children. Promise her. 

Daffodils...the flower of the first of spring...of new beginnings.

Rush Limbaugh And What Is Wrong With America.

ABC News, is reporting that Obama has sent 100 US troops to Uganda to help combat the Lord's Resistance  Army. According to the report, "Two days ago President Obama authorized the deployment to Uganda of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces remove from the battlefield Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA." 

Joseph Kony, defiant.

The report continues; "The president made this announcement in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner Friday afternoon, saying that  'deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa.'"  

Rush Limbaugh, on the golf course, far from Uganda.

Political pundit and talk show entertainer Rush Limbaugh had this to say. "Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the Lord's Resistance Army.  And here we are at war with them.  Have you ever heard of Lord's Resistance Army, Dawn?  How about you, Brian?  Snerdley, have you?  You never heard of Lord's Resistance Army?  Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them.  Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan.  And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them."


Mr. Limbaugh, a coterie of 4 people, having never heard of the LRA does not a consensus make. And if you are right, if that is an accurate statistical representation of the ignorance of Americans to the atrocities committed by the LRA in Uganda then shame on us. Shame on us! The country of Uganda has been terrorized by Kony and his demonic rebels for years. Tens of thousands of men women and especially children have been killed, raped, tortured, maimed or much worse as in the instances, well documented, of the children themselves forced to commit the atrocities on their own families. Turned into killing machines by a coward who hides behind children and lets them fight his wars. The LRA are rapists and they are murderers and they ARE NOT Christians. 


Geez.....


Mr. Limbaugh then goes onto relay the Lord's Resistance Army's objectives as he interprets them sounding almost like a defense of the LRA... "To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people; to fight for the immediate restoration of the competitive multiparty democracy in Uganda; to see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans; to ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda, to ensure unity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans, and to bring to an end the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the LRA ideology."  


Mr. Limbaugh meet John Ochola who would rather die than look at himself in the mirror. He bears the scars of Kony's "ensuring of the peace."

Meet some of the of 44 girls abducted and raped and maimed from Sacred Heart Secondary School and St. Mary's Girls School near Gulu. 

Or these two toddlers. Hacked to death by the LRA. Meet these to precious babies Mr. Limbaugh. I could go on posting. For all the American people, the full scope and reach of Kony's evil. The 35,000 child soldiers and slaves. The countless girls repeatedly raped, their young bodies a breeding ground for more soldiers. Not ringing a bell Rush? 

President Obama told John Boehner that sending troops to Uganda: "[is] in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States..." To which Rush asks rhetorically and sarcastically, with mockery as his intent, "Would somebody explain to me what you think our "national security interests" are in Uganda?" 


Rush, do you need a history lesson. Was it in our national interest to equivocate as Hitler committed genocide to the tune of 6 million? Was it in our national interest to let Saddam pillage Kurdish towns? We responded in both cases, albeit belated. Why? Because terror breeds terror. Evil is an ever quicker spreading cancer. When nations wrap themselves in the ignorance ease affords evil advances. Is it in our national interest to stop Joseph Kony and the LRA? 


Finally, one of Rush's staff apparently googles the LRA and Rush responds; "Is that right? The Lord's Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We're gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys -- and they claim to be Christians."


Mr. Limbaugh. Do your research first next time. Check out Invisible Children who have been fighting against the LRA for years. Get informed Mr. Limbaugh. Child Trafficking is everywhere. Child exploitation is everywhere. It is on our streets because we are asleep. Full from excess and lethargic. That Mr. Limbaugh is what is wrong with America. That Mr. Limbaugh is what is wrong with you.