2016 June 16^th

Today’s columnist making a fool of himself is Cal Thomas; he tells us that “Congress should declare war on all terrorist groups.” Well Cal, any high school civics student will tell you that can’t happen. Congress can only declare that a state of war exists between The United States and some other sovereign state, or states; “all terrorist groups” just won’t handle it. Maybe you just meant that metaphorically. If you did just mean it metaphorically, what was the point?

Thomas manages to dismiss President Obama’s call for stronger gun laws by writing,”Does he believe that someone who claims to be on a mission from Allah would not be able to obtain guns and explosives illegally?” Does it follow, Mr. Thomas, that we should have no laws banning anything because lawbreakers can get whatever we ban? A car thief can steal your locked car, or break into your locked house, so why bother to lock anything?

Thomas follows up on his “declaration of war” metaphor by suggesting because we are at war certain civil liberties need to be abandoned. “In wartime certain liberties have been suspended in order to protect the country. This may be one of those times. Or should we wait until our enemies obtain a weapon of mass destruction?” Here is the typical right wing fear mongering and appeal to the paranoid among us. Who wins when, in fear, we give up our freedoms? Interning loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry was a notable blot on Roosevelt’s administration and here is a right wing columnist suggesting, once again, that we act out of fear to limit freedom.

Omar Mateen, the Orlando killer, was a Muslim and he had made several trips to Mecca as was required by his faith; but Mateen had issues far beyond his faith. Beginning with his early elementary years Mateen’s teachers found his inability to control his temper was obstructing his schoolwork. The family did not speak English at home so Omar, in addition to an inability to control his temper, had to deal with a poor command of English. His rages caused his first wife to leave him after a few months and they were also a problem in his second marriage.

He was no stranger to the gay bar where this massacre took place; indeed, there is some evidence that Mateen was not exclusively heterosexual. His father was clearly homophobic. The Muslim religion is well known to be very opposed to homosexuals.

This homophobia is shared by some Christians as well. Here is something written by Cal Thomas himself when he was a vice president of the Moral Majority:

God designed norms for behavior that are in our best interests. When we act outside those norms—such as for premarital sex, adultery, or homosexual sex—we cause physical, emotional, and spiritual damage to ourselves and to our wider culture. The unpleasant consequences of divorce and sexually transmitted diseases are not the result of intolerant bigots seeking to denigrate others. They are the result of violating God's standards, which were made for our benefit.

— Cal Thomas, Immutable Morals

Thomas has not sunk to the point of wanting to kill all gays as have his co-religionists, Pastors Kevin Swanson, Joel McDurmon and Phil Kayser. These pastors insist that the Bible demands that gays be killed. It appears that for some people and on some topics the Bible and the Koran are in complete agreement.

You’ll read nothing about that in any of Cal Thomas’ columns.