WEANED ON HATE

It breaks my heart to see videos of children in Muslim countries who are brought up in schools where all they hear are untruths about Westerners.  They are taught to hate something that they really know very little about.  My frustration for them is that I wonder how they can ever learn to evaluate if all they hear is one side.  And besides, how hard is it to hate?  Doesn't hating come a lot easier than loving?  The extreme madrasahs are factories for little haters, ripe for the next escalation.

Surprisingly, here at home we have experienced in the last eight years a similar phenomenon.  There are several "schools" who instruct in our country...our liberal universities and politicians, but mostly, the media.  Collectively they flood many hateful untruths about our president and our country.  The things they say are spoken and repeated and repeated until they seem like fact.  Charles Krauthammer calls this hostility "Bush Derangement Syndrome".  President Bush does not defend himself against the defamation. Perhaps it is his idea that such nonsense should not be dignified with an answer.  I've learned a lot about grace under fire from George Bush.  He may not have done everything I wanted the president to do...but when all is said and done, he led our country through a crunching time that could have sucked America down the drain.  He was strong on his watch.  He kept us safe.

And what about the haters?  They seem victorious because they took W's approval numbers to single digits.  Their spew, which went largely unchallenged, caused people who do not research and think critically...to hate and then hate some more.  It is pure evil to fan that flame.  Now these Bush-haters all but foam at the mouth as they deride a good man.  We have to listen as everything (including the weather) is blamed on him.  Unfortunately, their lack of honest discourse and civility has damaged the office of the presidency.

But the presidency is not the only thing that has suffered under these libels.  Just as the little Muslim children are affected and their life's course determined by their hatred...so hate will eat away the insides of an American who sets his/her heart against another person and willfully chooses to enjoy hating and destroying.  President Bush will soon be back in Texas with his wife who adores him.  His career took him to the pinnacle of power and service.  George Bush will have the confidence that he has pleased the Lord to the best of his ability.  He can smile at the future.

What will the haters do with their well-oiled fountain of venom?

"'Let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate,'  declares the Lord."  Zechariah 8:17