The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE

by Carlos Carrasco

  Elmer Kidd certainly hopes so.

  Whatever happens tonight, he knows, will be prologue to a final, grander confrontation in the spring when the Supreme Court rules on the case that drew the quarter of a million demonstrators to town. However it might turn out, Elmer knows, it will be grist for his mill. He will soon have the material for the last chapter of his new book.

  ‘Christendom’s Last Stand’, is its tentative title. Kidd has been writing it for the last five years as he chronicled the battles between church and state across the country. His publishers are excited about it. He is glad of that because they published his last book, a science fiction novel, as grudgingly as the critics were enthusiastic in the panning of it. In this, his fifth book, Kidd is returning to non-fiction. It’s always done right by him. He has every intention of taking another swing at fiction someday. In his idle moments he kicks around an idea he has for an insect-fantasy-adventure…

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States,” the voice from the giant television screens jar Elmer from his stoned musings. Kidd stops to watch the Presidential address.

  “Stop taping,” he orders his computer.

  “OK, boss.”

  William Jennings O’Neill, the 47th President of the United States of America smiles down on Elmer Kidd and the the nearly three hundred thousand people crammed cozily in and around the Great Reflecting Pool.

  “My fellow Americans,” the President begins, his tenor’s voice set at its most soothing. “For centuries, on this night, people the world over have traditionally gathered to celebrate the idea of peace on Earth. When all the religious trappings are peeled back, this idea of peace on earth is what is at the core of this special night. This idea need not be considered a far-fetched one. I, for one, believe an idea conceived is half way to achieved. Man did not, after all, take wing and conquer the skies without that first flight of fancy wherein he imagined himself soaring with the eagles. I put it to you then, if the idea of peace on earth is conceivable to the mind of man, it is also possible to the world of man. This peace on earth that we all hope and yearn for and, in our own individual ways, pray for, is attainable. It need not be dismissed as the product of wishful thinking and wide-eyed idealism. Even in these troubled times of ours, peace on earth is within our reach. It is well within the realm of possibility. I, for one, refuse to believe otherwise.

  “Allow me, if you will, to suggest just how it can be made possible.

  “Peace on earth will become a reality when all men and women, all nations and societies agree to live and be bound by one law; the same law. Not Divine law, which we can only guess at, but man’s law which we can all write together. Not God’s law, which is always subject to endless speculation and interpretation, but man’s law which is subject to review and revision. Man’s law is that law that everyone contributes to and everywhere and everyday bridges our differences and cements our similarities into the building blocks of civilization.

  “We cannot after all, not with any real assurance, determine precisely what the deity, if such a being exists, demands or even expects of us. Like many of you, I like to believe that at a minimum, a loving God would want us to get along peaceably. That will only be possible when we live by one law, the law we all write together. I put it to you that it is precisely this law, man’s law, what Aristotle called ‘reason, free from passion,’ that makes human civilization possible at all and allows those who live under its aegis to enjoy the comforts, conveniences and blessings of peace. The legislation before the High Court proposes to secure these blessings of peace for all, believers and non-believers alike, in this, our secular nation.

  “Secularism is, I know, a dirty word to some, but I assure you, it is neither a slight against religion in general, nor is it an attack on Christianity in particular. We secularists do not, as the fear-mongers assert, wish to exclude Christianity from the American tapestry. Rather, we seek to weave into that wondrous quilt the threads of other great faith traditions and philosophies. For regardless of what America might have been in the past, she can no longer be called a Christian nation. At least, we’re not just a Christian nation anymore. America is also a Muslim nation and a Hindu nation and a Buddhist nation and a nation of unbelievers; a nation of agnostics and atheists.

  “America is, in short, a nation of citizens; a grand civilization created for one and all, open to all ways of thought, beliefs and life styles. Our monuments must reflect the great values of tolerance and open-mindedness without which peace is impossible. They must not celebrate just one faith tradition but all faith traditions and schools of thoughts. Especially here, in the capital of our great nation, tolerance and open-mindedness must be on display at all times and in all places. Koranic scripture must be given an honor equal to that presently given Biblical scripture. The same honor must be offered the wisdom of the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Taoist, the Pagan and the wise men of secular tradition. No one must be left out of the great experiment in openness that is America. We have no desire to shut out any group. It is our highest hope rather, that by being as all-inclusive as the new law would have us be, we can spare ourselves the strife, war and the needless bloodshed that religious differences have plagued civilization with throughout history.

  “As America proceeds further into the twenty-first century, a secularist orientation such as the proposed law promotes will become ever more vital to our dealings with our global neighbors. It is through secularism that America will continue to lead the world, bridging the differences between disparate nations and cultures as she helps create a brighter future for all in a single, sustainable, global, human community. The great civilization that can bring peace to all earth and deliver the goodwill this holiday season promises to all men everywhere is no more possible anywhere than here, in these United States of America.

  “Let it begin here, my friends. Let it begin tonight, my brothers and sisters.

  “We Americans, the great melting pot, have always been an example to the world on how the most far-flung of peoples can come to live peaceably together. Our forefathers, regardless of what corner of the world they came from, managed it by submitting to the law of the land as it existed in their day. Let us preserve that brotherly legacy. Let us, likewise, submit to the law of the land as it exists in our day.

  “The Federal government is not your enemy. The Federal government is your partner in this greatest of human endeavors. To assure you of it, I have asked the Governor to withdraw the National Guard. Governor Morley has graciously agreed to my request. National Guard troops are heading back to their bases, even as I speak. You need not fear that the Federal government will force you to do anything tonight or punish you in any way for your beliefs. All that is asked of you, my fellow Americans, is that you do not allow those who would use religion to divide us to prevail over the law that would unite us. Do not believe them when they tell you that Christmas is being outlawed. It is a lie. The law is merely asking you to perform the rituals in the churches for which they were designed. For the sake of peace, I bid you comply with the law of the land. For the sake of law and order, I plead with you to do as Jesus Christ himself admonished and ‘pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.’

  “Good night, my fellow Americans. And may God bless us all.”

  William Jennings O’Neill nods and beams a wide smile before his image fades and is replaced by the Presidential Seal.

  Boos ripple through the crowd in gathering numbers and rising volume.

  Good try, Mr. President, Elmer Kidd says to himself.

  “Resume taping, Ernie.”

  “We are rolling, jefe.”

  The Presidential seal is replaced by a shot of the local newscaster.

  “Charles Hughes, reporting from the National Mall,” he says. “I don’t know if you can hear the demonstrators’ response, but the President’s address has not been received too well with the people out here. Behind me you can see the protest’s organizers already climbing the stairs to the stage
. Let’s listen to their response to President O’Neill.”

  Kidd sees four men and two women climbing onto the stage. Leading the pack is a tall, thin, black man with a bouncing shock of salt and pepper afro. Elmer recognizes him immediately. It is none other than the fire and brimstone breathing Reverend, Jeremiah White. Kidd has a whole chapter of his book dedicated to the colorful Reverend and his tussles with the Feds and various state governments.

  Jeremiah Bernard White rose from near anonymous street preacher to a nationally televised Evangelical rock star overnight. Someone, on a lark, videotaped one of his fiery diatribes to a crowd of homosexuals celebrating their Decadence festival on Bourbon Street and posted it on YouTube. They thought his delivery hysterical and taped him with the aim of getting people to laugh at the ‘crazy homophobe preacher.’ And many did find much to laugh at in his choleric histrionics. Many more though found his unapologetic, politically incorrect assail on homosexuality to be right on the mark.

  It was the year 2015 and the American Psychiatric Association had just removed pedophilia from its list of mental disorders. It happened right on the heels of Supreme Court’s approval of Congress’ Marriage Equality Act. The ruling legalized same-sex marriage in all fifty states. The parallel between the pedophile and the gay community which similarly lobbied to have homosexuality removed as a mental disorder in 1973 as prelude to their campaign for society’s approbation was not lost on many. For those who didn’t get it, Reverend White was happy to explain.

  “Step by step, homos have taken their filthy ways from the privacy of their bedrooms into courtrooms, through boardrooms and finally to the classrooms where they can have our children within their sleazy reach. And now, on their tails, come the pedophiles, making the same arguments in defense of lifestyle, the same complaints of discrimination, the same demands for rights and protected status; they’re following the same tried and proven trail blazed by their perverted predecessors. It is a path that will lead them right to your sons and your daughters; and, it will get them there sooner rather than later. It will be easier for pedophiles. The trail has already been blazed. The precedents have already been set. The roadblocks are already razed.

  “Queers, you see, have not only loosed a physical plague on the world, a plague that has killed millions of people, they have also, through their sick, selfish and slavish devotion to sin, spawned and spread an immoral pandemic that makes it possible for every other abhorrent abomination and disgusting degeneracy to thrive with the advancement of their own wicked ways.”

  His video went viral. When asked to account for his sudden popularity, Jeremiah White claimed it was because he dared to say what most people were thinking. Whenever he was accused of homophobia, the Reverend laughed and insisted “There ain’t a thing about homos anybody need be phobic about. It’s a stupid word queers invented to shut people up. They use it to keep us from stating the obvious, that homosexuality is a sexual disorder, a mental disease that requires treatment and not our approval or our applause.”

  Before long, Reverend White was making highly rated appearances on the 700 Club, the Christian Broadcasting Network, Fox News and other outlets, all of which happily paid the exorbitant fines that went along with their hosting of the firebrand preacher. As his popularity grew so did his opposition. Every homosexual interest group lobbied the government to do something about the man they took to calling, ‘Reverend Revolting.’

  “AIDS is a just punishment for the abomination of homosexuality,” Reverend White said in his last televised interview. “And AIDS is only a tiny taste of the torments homosexuals have waiting for them in Hell for so shamelessly breaking God’s law. They only think they’re flaming now!”

  After the campaign against Jeremiah, the government upped the ante against all religious programming, branding them ‘outlets for hate speech.’ The FCC began shutting them down as they crossed their various ‘Tolerance Lines.’ By 2017, Christian content was banished from both television and radio. References to Jesus or anything overtly Christian on subsequent programming were bleeped out, the same way cursing once was. The Reverend and his cohorts still thrived on the internet but there was legislation in the works to drive them from the web as well. The Net Neutrality Act making its way through Congress promised to do for the world-wide web what the Fairness Doctrine did for radio and television.

  Elmer thinks it rather clever of the protest organizers to have Jeremiah White deliver the first response to the President. It put the networks in a difficult position. He imagines there is a lot of hand-wringing going on at the studios right now as execs hurriedly weigh the pros and cons of defying the FCC by broadcasting the government banned Reverend’s image and message to the American public. The fines for doing so will be stiff ones and the court costs fighting to keep the daring execs out of jail, even stiffer. On the other hand, Jeremiah White made for such exciting television that some will undoubtedly consider the penalties a small price to pay for the ratings. Others will do it just to stick it to the government.

  The Reverend, unconcerned with any of that, approaches the podium, waving and smiling at the cheering crowd. He stretches the goose-necked microphone stand to accommodate his six-foot-six frame and gestures for the crowd to settle down. After another near minute of applause it does so.

  “So,” Reverend Jeremiah White begins. “What did you think of the President’s speech?”

  Two hundred and fifty thousand people boo.

  “Are you listening, Mr. President?” White says with a large, toothy grin. “You can’t blame that reaction on me. That is an un-coached, spontaneous appraisal of your speech, Mr. President. You can’t blame it on my ‘fear-mongering.’

  “Do you want to know what I think of your speech, Mr. President? Probably not, I figure, but you’re going to get an earful of it anyway.”

  The crowd laughs. The Reverend waits for them to settle down again.

  “I think you’re full of it, Mr. President. I think you’re so full of it the excrement can’t help but pour out both ends. You are, in fact, so full of it, Mr. President, there ain’t enough room in you for an original idea. That’s why we got to hear you peddle that tired, old cliché about religious differences causing so much strife, war, bloodshed and all throughout history.

  “You secularists keep insisting that if we just keep God and religion out of politics, we can have ourselves a real peaceful, lovey-dovey sort of society. Yet all the insistence in the world will never convince us of it because we know better, Mr. President. We are not the fools you think we are! We know our history, Mr. President. It is full of blood-soaked examples of what befalls regular folk like us when government folk like you decide that religion is nothing but bunk and God is nothing but the imaginary friend of the ‘ignorant and the ‘unenlightened.’ We know that y’all like to talk about crusades and inquisitions so that no one mentions revolutions and party purges. We know that y’all love to point to the blood spilled in God’s name so that no notices the body count accrued in the name of man and his pursuit of secularism.

  “The Godless government of the Soviet Union is just one such example we might consider. The Soviet secularists decided that religion was nothing but bunk and God was a lot of bourgeois baloney. They said religion had no place in the public sphere, no role to play in the building of a ‘worker’s paradise’ and then proceeded to kill off twenty million of their own people. That’s many multiples more than were killed in all the crusades and inquisitions put together, Mr. President. I did the math for you sir, because considering the state of the economy, your grasp of mathematics is as piss-poor as your grasp of history.”

  There is more laughter and another short pause.

  “Then there is the Godless government of the Red Chinese,” the Reverend continues. “Them secularists butchered over sixty million of their own people in pursuit of their religion-free utopia. Tens of millions more were killed by secularists like Pol Pot, Castro and Hitler, all men who ruled with no thought to any wor
ld beyond the reach of human reason. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe Genghis Khan killed raped and pillaged in pursuit of any particular theological point. And Alexander the Great didn’t slaughter his way across a continent for any god other than his own ego.

  “It is an indisputable, historical fact Mr. President, the blood spilled in the name of God is but a drop in the ocean of blood spilled in the name of man. Throw in the hundreds and the hundreds of millions butchered through abortion by the modern heresy of religion-free government and it becomes crystal clear that secularism is more than just a dirty word, Mr. President. Secularism is a scourge on mankind, risen straight from the bowels of Hell!”

  Applause explodes from the throng. Reverend White pulls the microphone out of the goose-necked extender and begins pacing in front of the podium while he waits for the clapping and choruses of amen to die out.

  Reverend White goes on. “It’s all mighty-whitey of you, Mr. President, to want to protect us religious folk from each other, but who, I ask you, is going to protect us from the likes of you?”

  More laughter and applause spreads through the crowd. He waits for silence before continuing.

  “The President would have us believe that Christianity is not being attacked by the new law. The law, he says, is merely making room for ‘other faith traditions.’ The President wants Koranic and other scripture given an equal place with Biblical scripture. Well I say America has made plenty of room for other faiths. America has welcomed them all to her shores. America has been the most generously pluralistic society in history precisely because America is a Christian nation. And a Christian nation is an open society unlike secularism, which dismissing religion from the get-go as it does, is inherently discriminatory. It is the secularist, who dismissing the spiritual, is narrow of mind and closed of heart. It is the Christian who has the open heart and the open mind. It is the Christian who taught the world the meaning of generosity.

  “Generosity is not pandering, however. There is no ground on which to equate the words of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who spent his life healing and curing and bidding us to love our enemies with the words of a false prophet like Mohammad, who was, after all, nothing but a warmonger and a pedophile. There is no equating the foolish fatalism of Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern nonsense about reincarnation with the optimism of the Christian hope in salvation. The howl-at-the-moon hedonism of the pagan is a moral corrosive that destroys families and societies and is in no way comparable to the purity of Christian joy.