Kevin Stilley

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May 28, 2012 by kevinstilley

For What Would You Die?

Why do we observe Memorial Day? We do not celebrate the death of anyone but remember and honor their sacrifice. Life is sacred, to lay it down for the benefit of others is worthy of remembrance and honor.

So, for what would you die? Family? Friends? Your country? Freedom? Truth?

Once we admit that there are causes for which it would be appropriate to die, we acknowledge that there are things more important than life, and that death is not the greatest evil — that suffering and death can have great meaning and purpose. The question is often asked why a good God would allow suffering, the implication being that God must either be not good or not powerful enough to prevent it. No, that does not follow. That reasoning is specious. Once we acknowledge that there are things to be valued more greatly than life and comfort we can not put an all-knowing God into the dock. He can allow the unpleasant, for reasons that are meaningful and good.

The death of Jesus of Nazareth exhibits this reasoning. The murder of the only righteous man was a great evil, and yet the event is full of meaning and purpose. Jesus is our propitiation – He is our mercy seat.

I encourage you to think upon Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3 as an appropriate follow-up to the observance of our national Memorial Day.

Filed Under: Blog, Philosophy, Theology Tagged With: antinomy, Apologetics, atonement, Blog, death, Jesus of Nazareth, meaning, Memorial Day, propitiation, purpose, righteosness, sacrifice, suffering, telos, War

November 27, 2009 by kevinstilley

The Best Defense . . .

I was too weak to defend, so I attacked.
~ Robert E. Lee

Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
~ Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf

We are so outnumbered there’s only one thing to do. We must attack.
~ Andrew Browne Cunningham, before attacking the Italian fleet at Taranto on November 11, 1940

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Book Cover

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes Tagged With: defense, Offense, quotations, quote, War

November 27, 2009 by kevinstilley

War – select quotes

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“Let there be light!” said God,
and there was light.
“Let there be blood!” said man,
and there’s a sea.
~ Lord Byron


Once more into the breach, dear friends,
Once more; …
~ William Shakespeare, in King Henry V

* * * * *


And say not thou “My country right or wrong”
Nor shed thy blood for an unhallowed cause.
~ John Quincy Adams, in Congress, Slavery and an Unjust War

The cannon thunders… limbs fly in all directions… one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice… it’s Humanity in search of happiness.
~ Charles Baudelaire

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.
~ Winston Churchill, in regard to the growing German threat

Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.
~ Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 2

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events… incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations. … Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.
~ Winston Churchill as quoted in This Time It’s Our War by Leonard Fein

Nothing is more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
~ Winston Churchill, in The Malakand Field Force

I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can’t help it — I enjoy every second of it.
~ Winston Churchill, in a letter to a friend, 1916

Blood is the price of victory.
~ Karl von Clausewitz, in On War

In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.
~ Croesus

Public opinion wins wars.
~ Dwight David Eisenhower

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Action is the governing rule of war.
~ Ferdinand Foch, in Precepts

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
~ David Friedman

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.
~ George Herbert

You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.
~ Ho Chi Minh

So ends the bloody business of the day.
~ Homer, in Odyssey

The responses of human beings vary greatly under dangerous circumstances. The strong man advances boldly to meet them head on. The weak man grows agitated. But the superior man stands up to fate, endures resolutely in his inner certainty of final success, and bides his time until the onset of reassuring odds.
~ I Ching

Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.
~Andrew Jackson

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
~ Thomas Jefferson

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
~ Thomas Jefferson

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The first casualty when war comes is truth.
~ Hiram Johnson

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
~ Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
~ Karl Kraus

But what a cruel thing is war; to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, adn to devastate the fari face of this beautiful world!
~ Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife on Christmas Day, 1862

It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit that we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.
~ George Marshall

Some say the American soldier is the same clean-cut young man who left his home; other say morale is sky-high at the front because everybody’s face is shining for the great Cause. They are wrong. The combat man isn’t the same clean-cut lad because you don’t fight a kraut by Marquis of Queensberry rules. You shoot him in the back, you blow him apart with mines, you kill or maim him the quickest and most effective way you can with the least danger to yourself. He does the same to you. He tricks you and cheats you, and if you don’t beat him at his own game you don’t live to appreciate your own nobleness.
~ Bill Mauldin, in Up Front. NY: Henry Holt & Co., 1945. pp. 13-14

The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry.
~ Bill Mauldin, in Up Front. p. 14

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
~ H. L. Mencken

War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first that the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country; but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it.
~ John S. Mosby, in War Reminiscences

War is the only game in which it doesn’t pay to have the home-court advantage.
~ Dick Motta

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
~ George Orwell

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.
~ George S. Patton

When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.
~ Arthur Ponsonby, in Falsehood in Wartime, 1928.

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
~ Pindar

A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
~ German proverb

There are casualties in war who are neither killed nor wounded. A shell kills four men and intimidates a thousand.
~ Rene Quinton, in Soldier’s Testament

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
~ George Santayana

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
~ William Shakespeare, in Richard III, Act V

The purple testament of bleeding war.
~ William Shakespeare, in King Richard II

I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash–and it may be well that we become so hardened.
~ William Tecumseh Sherman, in a letter to his wife, June 30, 1864

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror.
~ William Tecumseh Sherman, in his address to the GAR Convention on August 11, 1880.

Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
~ Tacitus, in Histories

The war made me poignantly aware of the beauty of the world.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien

We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.
~ Harriet Tubman

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
~ Sun Tzu

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
~ Sun Tzu

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
~ George Washington, from his Address to Congress

It is a bad thing always to be fighting. While in the thick of it I am too much occupied to feel anything; but it is wretched just after. It is quite impossible to think of glory. Both mind and feelings are exhausted. I am wretched even at the moment of victory, and I always say that, next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is battle gained.
~ Duke of Wellington

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes Tagged With: Blog, Leadership, proverbs, Quotes, Robert E. Lee, violence, War, western civilization, Worldview

October 8, 2009 by kevinstilley

General George Marshall – Select Quotes

It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit that we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.

__________

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: George Marshall, Morale, Quotes, War

September 28, 2008 by kevinstilley

How Could A Loving God Command Genocide?

The following books are recommended for further reading in the chapter “How Could A Loving God Command Genocide?”, in That’s Just Your Interpretation: Responding to Skeptics Who Challenge Your Faith, by Paul Copan.

God Is A Warrior (Tremper Longman III and Daniel G. Reid)

Now Choose Life (Gary Millar)

Perspectives On War in the Bible (John Wood)

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Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Apologetics, Ethics, War

August 17, 2008 by kevinstilley

Rethinking Empire & War – Book Recommendations of Douglas Jones

Douglas Jones, Editorial Director of Canon Press, has recommended the following books for Rethinking Empire and War:

Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ, Klaus Wengst

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, Norman Solomon

The Ruses for War: American Interventions Since WWII, John Quigley

American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy, Andrew Bacevich

The New American Militarism, How Americans are Seduced by War, Andrew Bacevich

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, William Blum

Endless Enemies: America’s Worldwide War Against Its Own Interests, Jonathan Kwitny

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Stephen Kinzer

War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges

The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, Alfred McCoy

American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, Michael Otterman

Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, Walter LaFeber

America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-2006, Walter LaFeber

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Politics, War

July 19, 2008 by kevinstilley

Robert Novak – Defending The American Dream Summit

Robert NovakThis evening Robert Novak spoke during our dinner at the Defending the American Dream Summit. Yes, I know what some of you are thinking who routinely read my blog. It has not been long since I said of Novak that as he has aged (he is 76) he has gradually stopped doing research and reporting and instead has become a gossip columnist. (And, yes I made a similar claim about the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund who will be speaking to us tomorrow.) But, let me tell you, Novak’s speech this evening and the Q&A session afterwards were both insightful and interesting.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Barack Obama, Barry Goldwater, Blog, Defending the American Dream, Dick Morris, election, flip-flop, Iraq, John McCain, justice, Politics, President, Rasmussen, Robert Novak, War

May 26, 2008 by kevinstilley

Ulysses S. Grant – Select Quotes

Ulysses S. GrantThe right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.
~ in Personal Memoirs, vol. 1

I never learned to swear. When a boy I seemed to have an aversion to it, and when I became a man I saw th folly of it. I have always noticed, too, that swearing helps to rouse a man’s anger; and when a man flies into a passion his adversary who keeps cool always gets the better of him. In fact, i could never see the use of swearing. I think it is the case with many people who swear excessively that they do not mean to be profane; but, to say the least, it is a great waste of time.
~ quoted in Cigars, Whiskey, and Winning Leadership Lessons, p. 9

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: anger, Army, Blog, Civil War, Confederate, Fighting, General, language, Leadership, President, Quotes, Ulysses S. Grant, Union, War

May 13, 2008 by kevinstilley

Recommended Listening – Pete Briscoe

One of the advantages of spending several hours on the highway every day is that I get a chance to listen to lots of recorded lectures and sermons. Today I listened to four of Pete Briscoe’s sermons preached back in May and June of 2007. They were part of his Turning a Kind Eye series and were on the topics of Darfur, The War In Iraq, Abortion, and the Environment.

All four were artfully woven together and Biblically tight. It made me think of a definition of “rhetoric” offered by Agricola. He referred to rhetoric as “the utility of truth.”

All four can be found in the Bent Tree sermon archives. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Aardvark, abortion, Bent Tree, Bible Church, Darfur, DTS, elder, environment, global warming, Iraq, pastor, Pete Briscoe, Praxis, War

May 1, 2008 by kevinstilley

Epicenter: The Middle East

Historical perspective, political and current event analysis, personal memoir, and Biblical exegesis; — what’s not to like? I finished listening to the seven-disc audio book and immediately started over with disc one again. There was just too much good information to take it all in the first time around.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, Books, current events, Eschatology, gasoline, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jewish, Joel Rosenberg, middle east, oil, Politics, prophecy, War

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