The United States Witch Force

Mack Hall


The United States Air Force has officially welcomed witchcraft through granting a worship space (apparently a ring of rocks on a hilltop) to Wiccans (which sounds ever so much nicer than saying witches) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

The cynical among us might ask (and we do) why witches would want to fly airplanes when they possess perfectly serviceable brooms.

The more reflective among us might ask if this nation has at last lost its collective mind.

And the even more reflective might consider how this process of degradation of religion (which is a perfectly good word) has been going on for a while.

The historical religious tensions in this country are very real, but so are frequent and noble examples of mutual respect: General Washington writing a letter to a Jewish congregation to thank them for their loyalty to the new nation, General Lee integrating his parish, the four chaplains on the sinking USAT Dorchester in World War II sacrificing their lives by giving their lifejackets to other men. These actions were not predicated on some vague moral relativism but on the core beliefs of each faith. The Jewish chaplain who gave his lifejacket to the first soldier he saw without one did so because he knew that was exactly the most Jewish thing he could do.

Mutual respect cannot deteriorate into relativism, however, for then respect must cease to exist. One can no more refer to truth being subjective than one can refer to the sunrise being subjective. Tomorrow the sun will rise, even if a majority of Americans vote that it should not. One can honestly hold that the Real Presence in Holy Communion is not true even as another honestly maintains that it is true. What cannot be honestly held is the feely-goody concept that the Real Presence can be true for Mr. Smith because he wants it to be true, and not true for Mr. Jones because he does not want it to be true. Even more dishonest would be Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Hoogerwerf agreeing to vote democratically on whether or not the Real Presence is true, and further agreeing to be bound by the results.

Mutual respect among people does not logically extend itself into indulging the fantasies of the childish or deluded among us. Witchcraft is a make-believe neo-paganism of a very silly and made-up sort that real pagans – Aristotle, Plato, and Virgil come to mind – would have laughed out of any ancient temple, grove, or spring. The paganism of our ancestors was an honest and intelligent attempt at understanding reality, not the feverish imaginings of the ill-educated whose religious instruction in youth was no more substantial than a Fisher-Price Play Church.

A cadet at the United States Air Force Academy pursues truth. A petulant will demanding that 2 + 2 should equal 5 because the bearer of the will wants it to be so cannot change the reality that 2 + 2 must always equal 4 and can be no other. Such an individual cannot be trusted with any position of leadership and responsibility. A cadet who insists that physics and trigonometry are subjective “truths” depending on the individual’s feelings should not be trusted with a bicycle and certainly not with an aircraft. If this individual thinks himself The Blue Flower Fairy and wishes to worship toadstools or oak trees, and maybe even learn conversational Klingon, he is free to do so, and Godspeed (so to speak) him. The rest of us are equally free not to be required to fund him in a military academy or obey him as a superior officer in the defense of this nation.

If a candidate for a military academy represents himself as a witch, Harry Potter, an elf, or a light bulb the response should be a hearty, insensitive belly-laugh as the poor sap is led gently away.

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