March 30, 2014
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun Sentinel

RE: Confession is good for the soul – Some comments on your unlinkable public service announcement on how to spot Florida con men

My dear Professor,

A while back you told me that you were not very familiar with The Divine Comedy.

I hope this classic example of vincible ignorance does not extend to “A Christmas Carol”.

It, like its predecessor, is a story of sin, redemption, and salvation. “While the light is left to burn the vilest sinner may return”, “The Hound of Heaven”, “Amazing Grace”, stuff like that.

Those of us who can read tea leaves, a trait not limited to the blessed and beloved Tea Partyers, know that underneath your column about the suede shoe shod, electric blue silk shirt wearing poltroons who would steal your eyes for grapes is a lifetime of guilt about to explode.

It might be best to summon a Haz-Mat SWAT team lest your toxic detritus befoul us all.

Jesus Christ, a man who more than 2,000,000,000 [and if that’s not a consensus I don’t know what is] is both the Son of God and God, said to Peter, the first Pope in a line that leads us straight to current rock star Pope Francis, “Those things that you bind up on earth I will bind up in Heaven”.

God’s mercy is infinite.

Ebenezer Scrooge was saved by it.

“They are pathological liars.”
“They are gluttons for publicity.”
“They are consummate sales people.”
“They suck up to the rich and powerful.”
“They are Pollyannas.”

I CAN THINK OF NO BETTER DESCRIPTION OF MODERN AMERICAN
LIBERALS – FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC PARTY SECT.





“You can keep your doctor if you want to.”
“We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.”

I really shouldn’t mention the inconvenient truth that 3 times in the
20th century – 1916, 1940, 1964 - 3 progressive predecessors to the
fanged, toxic modern American Liberal Cossacks promised
that they wouldn’t send American boys to fight in foreign wars
SO I WON’T.

You have taken the most important first step.

You have looked back a la Colonel Nicholson in “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” and said, “My God, what have I done”?

Now you must seek God’s forgiveness.

When He forgives you you must face the poor saps who believed all your buncombe laden, clap-trap, balderdash and cry mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Dante ends one of his Cantos saying ‘He came out of the cave and looked up and saw the stars”.

Think how much better you’ll feel when you are to unburden yourself of the blind obedience to such sinfully folly stuff as “shovel-ready jobs” and “the summer of recovery”. “Cash for clunkers” is a burden no man should be asked to bear. Having to believe that there are 57 or was it 58 states must be like a perpetual mental proctoscopy.

“The sins we do two by two we pay for one by one” is, alas, still the coin of the realm. Your cry for help has not gone unnoticed. If you feel that you may need special help in atoning for your past sins I can arrange to have several discalced mendicant monks scourge you on the steps of the church of your choice.

It’s the least I can do.



Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET