[Vision2020] Another letter about NSA (that's right, another letter about NSA)

[Joe Campbell]

I sent this to the Daily News on Thursday. As yet it hasn't been
published. Paul's post yesterday inspired me to post it here (even
though I had been on Vision 2020 sabbatical).

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Bill Tozer (Daily News, Dec 8) claims that criticism of the violent
rhetoric of NSA is another example of the “extremes to which lefties
will go to attack, discredit, debase and otherwise pervert anything
said or done by Doug Wilson, Lloyd Knerr, New Saint Andrews, Ed
Iverson, Christ Church and everyone else who takes a clear and firm
stance for Jesus.”

Lloyd Knerr, Pastor of the Freeze Community Church, said in a recent
sermon (http://freezechurch.org/page48.html): “I could go on and on
about the blasphemy and the heresy of the Mormon religion, but suffice
it to say that when Glenn Beck tells you that you serve the same god
that he does, he’s a liar.” The NSA campaign tries to draw students
with this challenge: “Yo, secularism, why don’t we step into the
alley” (http://www.nsa.edu/).

I’ll skip asking how a defense of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints can be construed as an attempt to undermine those
who stand “for Jesus.” I will note in passing how odd it is that NSA
is claiming to teach students the skills to deal with secularism yet
is unable to even discuss in public the appropriateness of the
advertisement.

Tozer suggests that complaints about NSA’s violent rhetoric are like
complaints about football teams with violent names: the Fighting Irish
of Notre Dame or the Vandals.

Let’s start with Tozer’s analogy and see where it takes us. Suppose,
prior to an upcoming football game between them, the Fighting Irish
ran an add campaign challenging the Vandals to a “rumble” where they
would “throw” them “up against a wall, lifting wallets and the
occasional gift card.” Now suppose that in response the Vandals wrote
a letter to the editor of the Daily News. Tozer is saying that the
Vandals took things too far.