http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330893,00.html

Election Office Bombed in Northwest Pakistan 2 Days Before Vote

A classic example of radical Islamic terrorism that illustrates their agenda is the blood of innocents, isn't it?  What do RITs hate and fear most of all?  The free exercise of Democracy in action.  How can they most effectively be defeated?  By offering that  opportunity to  peoples previously  oppressed under dictators,  secular or religious.  So the Bush 43 doctrine of spreading democracy across the world, offering the oppressed people of the world access to self-determination, is the single most succinct expression of the goals of the War against Terrorism.  Free people don't campaign for office with car bombs.  Totalitarians and fanatics do.

Certainly it means that more than diplomacy will be necessary in some places, though diplomacy is always part of the arsenal of freedom.  War is defined as the use of force to effect the policies of one's government.  If our goal is to advance the cause of freedom-- and I can imagine no more appropriate goal for US foreign policy! --there are those whose access to power is threatened by the free exercise of self-determination by their people, and their opposition to free and fair elections is apparent in their tactics:  mudslinging, untruths, and lawsuits in places where there is an effective rule of law, car bombs and assassinations where there is not.

I'm including this here just to post this link:

http://haloscan.com/tb/anewtone/8568007257220076227

I hope I'm doing this right.

I don't have anything to say about the Major that isn't better said there, but, I wanted to spread it around a little more.  Follow the link at anewtone to Major Olmsted's blog for his own Final Post.

"Greater love hath no man..."  etc etc.  I'm sorry.  that's so trite.  I'm going to go have a beer and pour a libation to a modern American hero who died exactly, it turns out, the way he said he'd claim to have died, if anyone asked.

Hail, Major Andrew Olmsted.  Bright blessings shine on you and all you loved.

And thanks, from a fellow American.

I have to preface this by saying that I agree with Mr Medved's post of yesterday:

No persecution, no promotion
Posted by: Michael Medved at 7:53 PM

Except for one thing:  who says that the "perfect family" is one man and one woman?

I have to say that certainly the sort of polygamy promulgated by Warren Jeffs is awful:  the women had no choices and were clearly chattel, one step above slaves.  That's not something anyone should promote.

However, that is not the only form polygamy takes.

This is America; the government has no business telling any of us what or who constitutes our family.  If sisters fall in love with the same man, and all three want to marry, create a family and raise children together, why should the government be concerned?  Wouldn't those children be safe and well-loved?

So many of us complain that it takes two incomes to raise children these days; if the marriage consisted of two wage-earners and a child-care provider, regardless of gender, they wouldn't need to put their kids in day care; they could be raised at home by a loving parent unstressed by financial woes.  Sounds pretty good to me.

In some parts of the Himalayas, one woman frequently marries three or more brothers:  the men cooperate in keeping her and the children safe and protected, and if one or two have to leave the home village for some time, perhaps to drive livestock to a distant market, or take a seasonal job out of town, there is at least one man left at home to defend and protect.

If they come to America as legal immigrants, do we insist that she divorce most of her husbands?  Why?

Robert Heinlein described, in a sub-plot of his political novel THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, a form of polygamous marriage he called a line marriage:  the example was a marriage, IIRC, of nine men to five women, of various ages, ranging from the elderly matriarch to the new bride, spanning five generations.  All the adults cooperatively raised all the children, and there was, literally, almost no chance that any child could be orphaned; even if a child's biological parents died, their co-spouses were legally and morally (in context) obligated to keep the child in the family and continue to raise that child to adulthood.  The adults helped each other with financial and business dealings and each contributed to the communal home what each could.

The result was a consistently happy home to which one could always return and that was practically guaranteed to survive beyond any one life, accumulating capital and experience in managing the marriage in positive ways, raising happy and well-adjusted children who would go out look for similarly-successful marriages they could join.  Failing that, those children would create them.

Certainly the system has weaknesses (see Heinlein's novel JOB) but that's because humans aren't perfect and don't always make good decisions.  That doesn't mean the model is useless or evil.

Humans are endlessly creative.  I see no reason why the government should concern itself with who sleeps with who or in what context, though I strongly support laws against bigamy and adultery because they involve violations of contract as well as oathbreaking, most of the time.

Certainly faith communities and churches have the right and, indeed, an obligation to define what constitutes moral behavior for their members, but the US is a pluralistic society, with many such communities and churches, and they don't all agree.  Because of the First Amendment, the government can't choose between the different churches' opinions and endorse just one.  

I would never expect the churches to change their teachings, but they cannot impose those teachings on people who are not members of their congregations.  The government's only legal option is to get out of the marriage business altogether and simply use domestic partnership contracts to define who is responsible for each child and who is next of kin to whom.

Marriage is a religious ritual, vitally important to members of the religious community, but that automatically excludes the government's participation and jurisdiction... or it should.  If the First Amendment was truly being enforced.