The Times are they a changin' ?

There are so many days, these past eight years or so, that I wake up and wonder if we are reverting back to the old days. But, I don't mean the days of Ozzie and Harriet, I mean the Crusades.

You know, that 800 year campaign of terror against any peoples that had opposing ideas to the Papacy and early Christianity. The power of the Pope had his day...and his knights and Knights Templar, etc. The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the Knights Hospitaller. After the final fall of Acre, they took control of the Greek island of Rhodes(been there...), and in the sixteenth century, were driven to Malta, before being finally unseated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.

Bush began his crusade, he called his Reign on Terror, from a dream he had where god told him to invade Iraq. All in the name of god he wants to bring freedom and democracy to people around the world and rid the world of terrorists.

Rick Warren began his crusade in 1980 in a small church in Riverside, CA. He has gone on to sell over 20 Million copies of his non fiction book, The Purpose Driven Life, and preaches his ideas of the love of god to all who will listen.

The original Crusades killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people over hundreds of years and many campaigns. These more modern Bush crusades have killed millions of people over a handful of years.

The Crusades were to spread the idea that the remission of sin was a driving factor and provided any god-fearing man who had committed sins with an irresistible way out of eternal damnation in Hell.

Rick Warren outwardly opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Of course, all in the name of love for god. Although, like the earlier Papal Crusades, Rick Warren will allow gays and lesbians into his church if they repent and announce the remission of their "sins" and stop being gay...

Jerry Brown is the Attorney General of the state of California. He is going to take to trial the case of Prop 8 as unconstitutional. The proposition states that marriage is for only men and women, not men and men or women and women. Ken Starr is his opposing counsel. You can't think this shit up! So appropriate, though.

It's funny to look up marriage in the various dictionary's. You can begin to see the conservative dictionary's and the more modern ones. That is part of the dilemma.

Marriage is a legal relationship between spouses: a legally recognized relationship, established by a civil or religious ceremony, between two people who intend to live together as sexual and domestic partners. Seems simple enough for me...I'll stick with this dictionary for a while...

There are those that say it is only for man and women, all in the name of god. There are those that say a woman should NOT have a right to choose, all in the name of god. It's all god's plan as long as it doesn't have anything to do with their life. Of course, it's all good when they can go and repent every Sunday for their transgressions and therefore have an out in their god's eyes.

Good god...

One must remember that the Crusades were more about power, money, obedience, control than they were about their supposed cause of god.


and Bob Dylan wrote
"The Times They are a Changin'"

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music


are the times a changin' ?



This, the 223th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!


(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs