Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

If we can never see beyond our own lives and take into account the lives of others we, as members of a community, will never be able to live up to the ideals in which we are obligated to maintain.

I’m really not sure where that quote came from to be honest. I found it scribbled on a long forgotten piece of paper the other night when I was going through a box of things from high school looking for old photos to share at the Dexfield Reunion this summer.

I felt it tied into the issues facing us this past weekend, and in particular to the story of a town that struggled not only with the loss of one of its native sons, but also with the hurt and anger caused by one group exerting their freedom.

Maybe if you aren’t really aware of how close the war in the Middle East is to you and I, you may have read over the name of a young Perry man who gave his life this past week in Afghanistan fighting for the cause of freedom. For many of us the nightly news of the deaths of these young men and women never really hit home. I’ve got no vested interest in a person from Clinton, or Sioux City, or in this case even Perry, although I know what it means when a soldier looses his life on the field of battle.

But maybe it was simply because this young man was from Perry, which to you and I really isn’t that far away, that it made me actually stop and think about the cost of this conflict. Not only in money and human lives, but also in the emotional stability of a single community, and thus to all of us as a whole.

I did not know Lance Cpl. Joshua Davis, nor did I know his family. I know Perry, spending enough time up there as a teenage boy to remember the bowling alley tucked into the downtown area, and spending Friday nights going to the movies there, and topping a date off at the Dairy Stripe on the east end of town. I do, however, understand the sacrifice that he and his family have given for all of us and for that we, each of us, you and I are forever indebted to him.

There was much made about the protest from the members of the whack job Westboro Baptist Church over the weekend during the funeral for Lance Cpl. Davis. Yes, just as you are outraged over the message that the WBC is trying to get across, I too have spent a number of hours listening to talk radio and reading the discussion blogs, secretly wishing a plague of locusts upon that congregation. I firmly believe that the message of Christ’s love is not what is behind their protests, nor even behind their ideals. I’m not even sure that their distain against homosexuality is what drives them, no more than the money they are more than happy to take from anyone who challenges them in court. No, their message is one of hate, of intolerance and of bigotry, the very things that Marines like Lance Cpl. Davis and many of our young men and women are on foreign soil fighting against.

There are groups like WBC roaming around this country, and yes even in our own back yards, preaching messages to anyone who will listen about what is and isn’t Christian like, and what following the Word really means. When in reality their worldview and yes, I dare say even their view of Christianity is completely off center. Fundamentalists, and I’m not talking about the people that the liberal left like to call the “right wing” , but fundamentalists take the word, take the belief and spin it until it is unrecognizable from the real Word, the real truth and it is only used to support their agenda and mind set.

These kinds of groups, and the people that buy into this garbage, deserve less attention than they have gotten in this column today. They will continue to spill their hate and their misdirected messages as long as people listen and they can continue to benefit from it. In reality we should call WBC and groups like them terrorist organizations, because that is exactly what they are. There are thousands of Muslim groups on this planet teaching the Koran and the good works in that book. And yet, if a group spins those teachings we call them terrorists or at the very least fundamentalists nut jobs. Why does not WBC fit into that same category?

There was no good deed done this past weekend benefiting that young mans family, his community, his fellow Marines, or any one of the thousands of people who lined the streets of Perry, and stood at the corners of gravel roads and watched as his flag draped casket went by. No, the WBC brought a message that no one here wanted to listen to, nor believe. They simply wanted to inflict further hurt and further anguish upon the people who wanted to honor Lance Cpl. Davis. Regardless of their intent, neither their message, nor their people are very Christian at all.

See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.