Every Monday, a group of near-sighted anti-war protesters congregate outside the Metro entrance to the Pentagon, holding up outrageous signs like, "Jesus would never join the military" and "Refuse orders to kill!" My personal favorite: "If you love your enemies, they wouldn’t be our enemies any more."
I’m reminded of the verse in Proverbs: "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions. A fool’s mouth is his undoing, and his lips are a snare to his soul."
I’m amazed by the naïveté! Outside of the outlandish signs, it’s just down-right comical! For brief moments, I find these protesters funny.
Finding it pointless to even debate these signs, I think people don’t give them attention because these protesters don’t bring anything to the table; they bring half-baked ideas which, quite frankly, are often not even their own. I’ve asked may people that take their position questions concerning national security and what they would do. They reply back by saying that we could put the money into our "ailing healthcare system."
Did you know that the Department of Health and Human Services spends the most amount of money? Not the Department of Defense. NIH accounts for more than 25% of the United States budget. Most people simply assume that the Department of Defense is the largest.
What I’d really like to see is a protest that celebrates and thanks the people here for their work. If you’d like to organize this, I’d be more than happy to help you!
This post contains spoilers!
I SAY AGAIN: SPOILERS!!
It took me about 3 weeks to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. As a whole, I thought it was a good book and a good ending. However, I don’t think it was Rowling’s best work. I think Order of the Phoenix was still her best novel. So, without further adieu, here’s how I faired with my predictions:
- At least two protagonists will die. My bet is on Ginny (Ron’s sister) and Harry.
- Half-correct: While Ginny didn’t die (although, I was kind of hoping for it), Harry Potter did die. Even though he comes back to life, he did die. Personally, I thought this was a cheep ending. I would have much preferred that Harry die. It would have been much better.
- Dumbledore will live be brought back to life.
- Correct: Yes, Dumbledore doesn’t really come back to life, but he plays an important role in the plot.
- Snape will turn out to be evil and will actually kill one of the two protagonists.
- Half-correct: Snape wasn’t evil, but still killed people.
- Hermoine will marry someone, much to Ron’s disappointment. How far this disappointment will go is still up in the air.
- Half-correct: Hermoine does marry Ron. Again, this is a really cheesy and predictable ending.
- Harry’s evil aunt and uncle will be haunted by the ghosts.
- Incorrect: What happened to them? They just disappeared in the beginning of the book!
- Jack Bauer will torture Voldermort for information leading to the arrest of the Death Eaters.
- Correct: Was anyone else surprised by this? He just came out of nowhere. I guess that’s what makes him Jack Bauer.
- Voldermort will not die.
- Incorrect. No further comment.
- Hogworts will be destroyed.
- Correct: I was actually happy to see this school destroyed. I think Rowling made a difficult choice between the school and Potter. I don’t think it was the right choice, but it still made for a good ending.
- Cho turns out to side with Voldermort.
- Incorrect: This would have been a really good twist.
In the end, I was disappointed by how disgustingly predictable the end was. The book was slow, compared to Rowling’s earlier installments. There is, however, a lot of deaths and torture in this book. I thought it was a fitting end to our boy hero. It will be interesting to see how Warner Brothers portray this book. I guess we’ll have to wait a few years.