The sectarian uncivil war in the US

Brian Bresnahan:

Very few Marines have that classically blunt demeanor which causes others to wince at every other sentence they speak. Most only allow this type of abrasive behavior to happen occasionally, as needed or sometimes accidentally, with a likely increase in frequency during that time when one returns from a war zone.

I try not to be, but am regrettably guilty of a few of those episodes, the first of which happened just a couple days after my return from Iraq.

I went to eat dinner at an Irish restaurant about a half hour outside Camp Pendleton, eager for something other than MRE’s, chicken and rice, or one of the multiple versions of turkey yakisoba I’d been exposed to during the previous 7 months.

Toward the end of dinner, two couples seated at the table next to me asked if I was a Marine and if I’d just returned from Iraq. The haircut and raccoon suntan after months of wearing ballistic sunglasses in the desert gave me away.

I told them I was and had. They asked what it was like and I gave them a short version of my experiences. The four of them were surprised to hear something other than the doom of the evening news. Unfortunately the conversation then turned to current political matters. Probably not the best subject considering my level of intensity.

That’s when it happened. As the conversation unfolded, one of the ladies, in a statement of religious intolerance, said that she didn’t appreciate the President “shoving his religion down her throat.”

I quickly and bluntly replied that “at least you don’t have to worry about him having your head cut off for disagreeing with his religion.”

The conversation kind of fizzled from there.

...

Christian conservatives like President Bush are some of the least venal people you will ever meet. They are kind, considerate and compassionate. They are the least likely to chop off heads or to prevent someone who disagrees from speaking. On the other hand, the most intolerant people in this country are on the left. They will do everything they can to prevent conservatives voices from being heard on college campuses or elsewhere. They would even like to prevent the one network that lets conservatives voices be heard from airing.