There is no piece of sound advice that cannot be so thoroughly perverted as to render it dangerous.

Growing up, I was often reminded of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I also heard a lot about the admonition of forgiving your enemies, all the while turning the other cheek. And lest any of this not be understood properly, there was always the Fifth Commandment: Thou Shall Not Kill.

Seems pretty clear, doesn't it? Instead of fighting the people who want to kill us, we should open our arms and love them. Love them, and they'll see we mean them no harm. When they see we mean them no harm, the world will dissolve into one giant Rodney King moment, and before you know it peace and harmony will envelop us all. All it takes is the wisdom — and presumed courage — of taking this first step, and future generations will thank us for breaking the cycle of hatred and revenge that has plagued humanity since the earliest moments of our existence.

So, what is a good boy like me doing today advocating that we kill the Islamo-Fascist sons 'o bitches that are trying to murder my countrymen, and instead of forgiving those we capture but don't kill, lock them away in GITMO and throw away the key? Where's the forgiveness? Where's the compassion? Where's the humanity according to the values expressed above?

The answer, of course, is that cartoon versions of reality rarely reflect reality itself. Pull a couple of historical quotes out of context, written in a social and cultural time very different from our own — not to mention in a foreign language that must be translated into English — and apply them through a glittering generalization to the specifics of events today, and you don't have a model of preferred behavior. You have a prescription for certain disaster.

Let's start first with the Golden Rule. Remember back in 2006 when Nancy Pelosi exhorted her fellow lawmakers to "follow the Golden Rule" when dealing with Islamo-fascist terrorism? 

I found it interesting that Speaker-to-be Pelosi couldn't actually bring herself to say "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  I assume this is because even the most self-deluded, Bush-hating, Democrat conspiracy nuts know that regardless of what the U.S. does, the Islamo-Fascists are going to keep on cutting off the heads of the people they capture (that is, those they don't just kill outright). So, she put it in the double-negative, completely incomprehensible format of "don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you," which allowed her to say the phrase "Golden Rule" without actually having to cite it in its intended form. 

This wasn't just the accidental by-product of a confused mind, although as a general matter I'd be willing to take a shot at making that case for Speaker Pelosi and other leading Democrats and Liberals. Speaking this way has a number of additional advantages as well. 

First, it allowed her to say something that sounded moral and religious while keeping a straight face, at least while the cameras were rolling. This way she wouldn't confuse her supporters by sounding like Jerry Falwell, who regularly quoted the Bible and said other religiously-inspired things like this. Those who've heard about the Golden Rule before could identify the reference and thus recognize her good Christian intentions, while those who think the "Golden Rule" is a new S&M video about blonde Amazon female supremacists could identify with her supposed intentions as well.

Second, by saying it this way, even if her sentiments are perceived properly, you have to read her words a couple of times to understand her. This means that the phrase won't come back to haunt her as directly as some of her previous comments. I'm thinking here of things like her December 16, 1998 statement: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

But there was a third, equally compelling reason for Ms. Pelosi to invoke this Golden Rule imagery. Going back to the exit polls from the 2004 election, Democrats were shocked to discover that "values" played an important role in the decisions of many voters. To their shock and horror, a Morality Gap of the magnitude of the 1950's Missile Gap had suddenly appeared, and Democrats found themselves on the wrong side of the equation.

After huddling with their top strategists, Pelosi and other party leaders launched a quick, pre-emptive strike designed to restore the value-balance imbalance.  Democrats would show that they were just as moral and God-fearing as those right-wing Christian fundamentalists who hijacked the Republican Party, and they would illustrate this at every opportunity. Thus, we were treated to the following point-counterpoint debates on important political and social issues:

God-Fearing Republicans: "We oppose aborting an otherwise healthy, developing child when the life of the mother is not at stake."

God-Fearing Democrats: "We are moral God-Fearing Democrats who oppose Republican attempts to place any limitations on a Woman's Constitutional Right to Choose."

God-Fearing Republicans: "We support President Bush's plan to reduce taxes to stimulate the economy."

God-Fearing Democrats: "We need to raise taxes on the rich (without defining 'rich' as a family of 4 with a combined income of $50,000) because it is the moral thing to do."

Notice the pattern? It's a little tricky, so you may need to re-read the Democrat passages a couple of times to appreciate the brilliant subtlety of their strategy and tactics. Give up? Okay, here it is. Maintain the same old Democrat policies that the people rejected, but inject the word "moral" into each sentence. No need to say why supporting abortion or raising taxes is moral. Just use the word over and over, and pretty soon you will be seen as a moral alternative to Republican policies.

To actually live by the "Golden Rule," you have to actually live by "The Golden Rule." Re-defining it, re-inventing it, or doing whatever you want and calling it the Golden Rule doesn't cut it, as you can see from the above excursion into the mind of Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats. But it's also more than this. Just like Lincoln said of the Constitution — that it isn't a suicide pact — neither is the Golden Rule. I treat others well, hoping that they will accord me the same treatment. But if they don't and choose to come after me with a knife or gun, I have no problem defending myself. Those who decide to ignore the Golden Rule have no right to expect me to "turn the other cheek" and lay down like a lamb to slaughter.

Which brings me to my next point: forgiving my enemies. Now again, maybe it's just me, but I always thought that forgiveness was what someone asked for, not what I arbitrarily decided to bestow. Let's assume my daughter deliberately breaks a lamp and says she's sorry. She asks for forgiveness, and I agree to forgive her. There are still consequences for her actions that must be taken into account, however. She might have to repair or replace the lamp, or if she's too young to do either, there are some extra household chores for her to perform. Saying you're sorry and receiving forgiveness is the first step. Making actual amends for the problem you created is the completion of this process.

Now contrast this with my daughter deliberately breaking a lamp, me discovering the broken lamp and recognizing that she did it, and then immediately forgiving her actions with no further exchange of words. What sense does this make? What lesson has she learned? And more importantly, what lesson have I taught?

Forgiving someone for something for which they sought no forgiveness merely encourages more bad behavior, because it removes the idea of consequences from an action. "I'm sorry," if said at all, is just a hollow refrain. The idiocy of this strategy is magnified a thousand-fold when the action in question isn't a broken lamp, but a malicious act directed against a fellow human being.

While I (or a nation) may choose to forgive a captured terrorist for their actions, it doesn't mean that the consequences of that act are also forgiven. I can forgive someone for doing me or my country harm because they have demonstrated sincere contrition, but still expect them to serve out the remainder of their prison sentence (including execution where appropriate) for their crime. In short, I'm quite prepared to forgive my enemies who, by their words and actions, demonstrate changed behavior and sincere contrition. But I'm still in favor of keeping them locked away in GITMO for the rest of their lives if execution isn't a practical option. It's nice that they no longer want to slaughter innocent people in the name of Allah, but there's this little fact that they did do this kind of thing before they sought "forgiveness."

Which gets to the final point, the Fifth Commandment: Thou Shall not Kill.

I thought naively at one point, before I started to think seriously about this issue, that surely everyone can agree that lobbing missiles across an internationally-recognized border to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians is wrong.  That is, unless you're Reuters, who won't label a terrorist a "terrorist" because that would impose a culturally-inappropriate moral judgment on the actions of these barbarians, or CNN which somehow forgets to disclaim that its independent tour highlighting "civilian" casualties caused by an Israeli air strike was completely controlled by the non-terrorist terrorists who are lobbing their missiles at Israeli population centers.

One man's terrorist is not another man's freedom fighter, regardless of what conventional wisdom says. It's not a matter of being a Christian or Jew, Muslim or Buddhist, agnostic or pagan. Certain simple truths transcend every race, religion and culture. They may be expressed differently, or carry additional rules and regulations unique to a certain group of people, but at its core they are all the same.

In a freely elected representative republic or some other form of genuine constitutional government, individuals can be executed for their crimes, wars can be declared against other nations or hostile forces, and property can be confiscated against the landowner's wishes. We may, as individuals, disagree with our elected representative's decisions to execute murders or attack our overseas enemies, and we may wonder what convoluted reasoning led to a Supreme Court decision that seizes Aunt Maude's home so a budding Donald Trump can build his new shopping center.

Our opposition may be visceral (if Bush was for it, I'm against it). Or it may be based on our literal understanding of a book written in Hebrew and Greek and then translated into English centuries later, where it now reads in English "thou shall not kill" under any circumstances, instead of "thou shall not murder" under any circumstances. That little change in wording I first heard mentioned by Dennis Prager carries great implications, and is the source of much honest debate over how to properly interpret this moral edict. 

This is America, and it's all right to frame the issue either way, depending upon one's own personal view of things.  These competing ideas fight it out in the arena of politics when we debate executing certain criminals, or putting an end to bellicose Middle Eastern tin-horn dictatorships.  There is no intrinsically right or wrong decision on such matters, because a perfectly reasonable individual moral justification can be made for either policy: all killing is wrong, or only murder is wrong. If an individual chooses to live his life as a pacifist and extend this belief in pacifism to his own self-protection, I'm not here to criticize. I just hope he has his will in order so his wife and kids don't end up on the public dole.

The "Thou Shall Not Murder/Kill" interpretation only becomes an issue when the debate is between (a) the state never taking a life under any circumstances, or (b) the state taking a life only when certain objective conditions are met. However, it is not a debate between when the state is permitted to kill, and the alternative philosophy that killing is okay anytime an individual feels like it.

Even those who give the state wide latitude to execute a criminal or conduct a war never condone random, individual acts of murder. Break into my house, and the state of Texas gives me the right to exercise deadly force. Play your stereo too loud next door, or throw garbage on my neatly manicured lawn, go to a different church, or look at me funny while I'm walking down the street and I don't have the right to kill you. It isn't a matter of defining the proper moral guidelines for killing someone who pisses you off, gets in your way, disrespects your lawn, looks at you funny, worships a different God, or just plain exists. It's never right for an individual to do this, or for the state to kill someone arbitrarily. 

Self-defense and protecting one's home from intruders is not a random, petulant act of murder by one individual against another. It is a de facto authorization by a Constitutionally-elected, representative government based on the notion of God-given rights to fight the evil that invades your domain. It is an evil that, by its very presence in your house if not its overt actions, threatens your personal well-being or that of your family. 

Only the most facile, morally-equivalent proponent would argue that since both examples involve individuals, and both examples involve death, they are morally the same.  It's the same as failing to recognize the difference between walking off with a ream of paper from the office storeroom, and stealing a boatload of cash to escape to Tahiti, because both actions are technically "theft."

This is the world we live in: complicated, inter-connected, complex, and demanding that we actually think about what we do (or don't do), instead of base our existence on cartoonish understandings of moral and legal principles. It's reflected in the way people choose to confront evil, when they're not consumed with ignoring it or explaining it away.

One final example will illustrate the difference the two major American parties have in confronting those who mean us harm. Although the Democrats will, under duress, allow for ground troops to engage in battle, as during the Vietnam War and Obama's Afghanistan policies, politicians try to micro-manage military decisions for political gain. Rules of engagement are obtuse and convoluted, designed to appease constituencies at home and please foreign critics, rather than win a war.

The preferred plan of attack is to kill faceless people via high altitude bombing (think: Clinton and Bosnia), or by substituting the aggressive use of Predators for ground troops (think: Biden and Obama). While such tactics can indeed supplement an effective ground strategy, they are a poor substitute for it. But they do have the advantage of limiting US casualties, thus limiting domestic criticism, while killing unseen people from a distance, thus making war antiseptic and therefore more politically acceptable.

By contrast, as evidenced by the Bush years (both father and son), when faced with a threat like Islamo-Fascism, Republicans tend to do things like invade countries, assassinate people, commit troops to a surge, and say things like "our objective is to win" — and then back up those words with appropriate actions.

Agree or disagree with the effectiveness of the Republican's actions, or the wisdom of certain geopolitical strategies in the first place, but the undeniable truth is that you're less likely to see a Republican President make repeated apologies for presumed US transgressions in an effort to persuade bad people to like us, and when pressed to take action, wonder how much foreign dictators and the nations supporting terrorism will like us if we do?