Friday, April 14, 2006

2378 An unfortunate expression

If I were going to reflect on the death of a man named Coffin, I probably wouldn't used this idiom:

"The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who died yesterday at 81, "was no ordinary man and he leaves no ordinary hole," said the general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA."

Yikes! Usually, you can only ridicule the NCC for their usual lefty policies.

However, being me, and not afraid to speak ill of the dead if they were dead wrong about something, I'll just add that although Coffin was a "Vietnam peace activist" and war protester and the model for a character in Doonesbury he contributed to the death of over two million of our Vietnamese allies when we turned tail an ran out on them in the 1970s, aided by your friendly peace and justice activists (whose grandchildren in spirit are helping to organize our illegal labor terrorists). If he trusted Jesus and not publicity for his salvation, he will be forgiven because his debt has been paid, but we'll all be judged. He may have to face some folks in heaven who will give him a perspective he wouldn't listen to on earth. Or maybe one of the perks of heaven is he'll have perfect understanding.

Perhaps I just not getting it, but I do wonder why he didn't learn from this experience when he was a WWII soldier and knew first hand how trustworthy the Communists were:

"His most affecting encounter with what he considered scalding injustice came at the end of the war, when he was asked to help repatriate about 2,000 Russian prisoners. They had fought with the Germans against their home country and were being shipped back to the Soviet Union to face prison and, most likely, death. Coffin knew it but never spoke up in their defense and did not warn them.

For the rest of his life he regretted his decision and swore to himself that he would never do that again. "It made it easier for me to commit civil disobedience in 1967, in opposition to the war in Vietnam," he later told the Chicago Tribune." Indianapolis Star




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