Your Religion Is False

After a lot of reflection, I’ve decided not to wade into the controversy over the Fort Hood Massacre. Sure, shooter Nidal Hasan appears to have been a devout Muslim who shouted “Allahu Akbar” while he was mowing down his colleagues and who had deep respect for Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual adviser to the 9/11 hijackers, and whose business card described him as a Soldier (or maybe Slave) of Allah and who let his medical lectures deteriorate into diatribes about infidels and who made internet postings praising suicide bombers and who attempted to contact Al Qaeda. That’s certainly not enough information to responsibly speculate about his motivation.

No, responsible people are stuck speculating about what’s going to happen to him now. Responsible people like President Obama:

It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know: no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice—in this world, and the next.

You might expect that I’d be disapproving when the President starts confidently asserting what’s going to happen in “the next” world. But you’d be wrong. In fact, I quickly realized that “Next-World Justice” is the key to otherwise-intractable political reforms.

For instance, I feel pretty confident that in a generation or two, assuming we haven’t gone extinct, that we’ll look back on the current-day practice of imprisoning users and sellers of recreational drugs as some sort of medieval barbarism.

However, my “let’s legalize drugs, so that people don’t have to be locked behind bars for engaging in the same recreational activities you did” letters to the White House have not managed to elicit a response. (Unless you count the autographed picture of Bo, which I don’t.)

But my new approach (“Drug users will suffer enough in the next world, so can’t we leave them alone in this one?”) seems like it has a much better chance of working, as it’s worded in Obama’s own language.

For my next act, I’ll try to convince the CPSC that people who sell pre-1985 children’s books will get their just deserts in the next world too!

Tags: al qaeda, anwar al-awlaki, barack obama, bo, children's books, cpsc, cpsia, drugs, fort hood, islam, justice, legalization, next-world justice, nidal hasan, terrorism, white house