My thoughts, prayers and deepest gratitude go out to the 7 CIA employees killed and 6 others wounded Wednesday in a terrorist attack on an agency base in Afghanistan. Left behind are the families: spouses, children and extended family members who must mourn, eventually heal in some fashion, and find the courage to go on without these “silent heroes, mighty patriots.” The base chief, who I wish I could have had the privilege to have met and then been a better person for it, was a mother of three who was among those killed in the attack. You always will hold a hallowed place in my heart of hearts for as long as I walk my destiny on this planet.
CIA director Leon Panetta said those killed “were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism.” In physical proximity this may be true. But in metaphysical, emotional, and spiritual terms, I know you will always have a home in my heart that I want these silent heroes, mighty patriots to know will always be as close as they need 24-7 no matter how far off they may be doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country. And know there will always be a candle lit in the window of my heart waiting for you to come home to and walk through the door of my house. I know and feel I owe so much to you all who have died and those remaining silent heroes, mighty patriots in the CIA who Panetta reminds us we owe “our deepest gratitude, and we pledge to them and their families that we will never cease fighting for the cause to which they dedicated their lives — a safer America.”
I am so tired of this theater of “politically correct,” where our sheep want what they have to remain untouched and unchanged, live in denial and do not want to believe there is evil in the world regardless of the wolves who feed without mercy on these sheep in such a fashion as “Trust your neighbors, but brand your stock.” As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman reminds us, “The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.”
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And it is this “theology and sacred law” I direct toward the Mullahs, you hafiz who purport you have memorized the Qur’an, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, I am putting on notice. The uneducated villagers who often recognize you as literate Muslim with less than complete Islamic training as their “mullah” or some type of religious cleric who as hafiz think similarly as Shakespeare once reminded us, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances. . .” This is my notice to you all: All the world’s stage and it’s peoples, including your men and women may be merely sheep in your madrasah. But as Grossman assures us, “Still the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land.”
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As another sheepdog, I believe as Joel Kotkin argues, not on the threat of an increased emphasis on religion and ethnic culture offering the prospect of a humanity breaking itself into narrow, exclusive and often hostile groups. But rather, I bring another kind of tribalism of sheepdogs, similarly as Kotkin contends, beyond you hafiz and your madrasah that is “forged by globally dispersed ethnic groups.” These global tribes combine a strong sense of common origins and shared values. These tribes Kotkin contends “do not surrender their sense of a peculiar ethnic identity at the altar” of your madrasah, “or technology or science but utilize their historically conditioned values and beliefs to cope successfully with change.”
I leave you now with this warning in putting you on notice similarly as Wilmshurst once reminded us regarding “the temple of human nature remains unfinished:”
. . .The light and wisdom to guide and enlighten humanity are wanting in us. The full blaze of light and perfect knowledge that were to be ours are vanished from the race, but in the Divine Providence there still remains to us a glimmering light in the East. In a dark world, from which the sun has disappeared, we still have our five senses and our rationale faculties to work with, and these provide us with substituted secrets that must distinguish us before we regain the genuine ones.”
This brazen attack a U.S. counterterrorism official told NBC News will be avenged. Like these silent heroes, mighty patriots, sheepdogs in their own right; I put you hafiz, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda on notice. I too will avenge the deaths of these CIA employees with a system of religious philosophy that provides as Wilmshurst contends, “a doctrine of the universe and our place in it” by which we may as Jeffers argues, “understand that mankind has fallen away from a “high and holy” center. Those who desire it must look within themselves.”
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In my mind these fallen CIA employees are “The regenerated man, the man who not merely in ceremonial form but in vital experience, has passed through the phases of which Masonic degrees are the faint symbol,” as Jeffers quotes of Wilmshurst, which “is alone worthy of the title Master-Mason in the building of the Temple that is not made with hands but is being built invisibly out of the souls of just men made perfect.”
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On this Eve of the New Year, let me toast these fallen silent heroes, mighty patriots, and those remaining silent heroes, mighty patriots in the CIA, “What goes on around you,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, “. . .compares little with what goes on inside you.” These fallen (in my mind and heart) silent heroes, mighty patriots represent as Barbara Frale informs us of the Templar knight, “the perfect achievement of that ideal combination of physical force and inner strength so exalted in the twelfth-century epic poem The Song of Roland, which celebrated Roland and Oliver, brothers in arms and heroes of a great battle against the Saracen enemy:”
Roland is strong and Oliver is wise
Both are extraordinarily brave:
Once they are both on their horses in arms,
Not even at the cost of death will they flee from battle
Valorous are the counts and elevated their words
As the pagan felons rapidly advance
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