Apparently, being the parent of a child murdered by a Muslim terrorist gives one moral credibility. There is no other way to explain the vast attention paid to the ideas of Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the American who was slaughtered by the Islamic sadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That is also the only explanation for the all the attention Cindy Sheehan has received. It is not because of the intellectual and moral depth of her worldview.
But the attention paid to Michael Berg has been very helpful in enabling many more people to understand the thinking and values of the Green Party — and those on the left sympathetic to the Greens — and of pacifism. Thinking and values that are, in a word, twisted.
Michael Berg is a Green Party candidate for Congress from the state of Delaware and a pacifist. According to The Associated Press and many other reports, Berg believes George W. Bush is more evil than Zarqawi. Berg said that the blame for most deaths in Iraq should be placed on President Bush, who he said is "more of a terrorist than Zarqawi."
Here is one example: "Zarqawi felt my son's breath on his hand as held the knife against his throat. Zarqawi had to look in his eyes when he did it. George Bush sits there glassy-eyed in his office with pieces of paper and condemns people to death. That to me is a real terrorist."
When asked on CNN about his reaction to the death of Zarqawi, he responded: "Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being."
The incredulous CNN interviewer, Soledad O'Brien, then asked Berg, "At some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?" Berg responded: "No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?"
Thanks to such views, Berg has been nominated by the Green Party to be its candidate for Congress for the lone congressional seat in Delaware.
If the fact that a man who regards his son's butcher as a better man than the American president is rewarded with a party's nomination to Congress does not tell you all you need to know about the morally twisted world of the Greens, nothing will.
It was, I believe, David Horowitz who first pointed out that with the death of communism, those who held communist views will morph from Reds to Greens — "watermelons," he called them: green on the outside, red on the inside. Why worshippers of nature lose their moral bearings is a question for another column.
Thanks to Michael Berg, the country also better knows the warped moral universe of pacifists.
Pacifists are often personally sweet and endearing people who advocate "peace," and therefore their doctrine is usually spared the moral contempt it merits. Among its many moral and intellectual weaknesses, pacifism ensures that cruelty will prevail on earth. When asked by talk show host Michael Medved if he, Berg, would have killed Zarqawi as the terrorist was about to cut his son's throat, Berg said he would instead throw his body in front of the knife — thereby ensuring, as Medved noted, that two innocent people would be murdered.
That is the consequence of pacifism — far more cruelty and death. But the spread of evil apparently means little to pacifists. There must be some joy in feeling oneself so morally superior to those who believe that killing is sometimes morally necessary that even the ritual murder of one's son does not shake the pacifist's fanaticism.
The more Michael Berg speaks — using the murder of his son, a Bush supporter and supporter of the war in Iraq, to publicize his views — the better it is. Because every time Michael Berg speaks, he shines a needed light on the moral darkness of the Greens and of pacifism.
