A Paean Banned by AGN

Of all the cultural and intellectual capitals of the world, Paris, London or New York, only Amarillo is home to one of the most extraordinary intellects of our time. He is a man of such deep wisdom, broad knowledge and high genius that men of great learning and insight are humbled before him. A prodigious writer, decorated warrior and authority on all things aeronautical, he possesses faculties of thought so lofty, so beyond the ken of mere mortals, that all might wonder a demigod did dwell amongst us.

But hark! We hear the drone of our hero's chariot, descending from the heavens, spiraling out of the billowing clouds. Praise, what new message does our winged Mercury bring from golden Apollo? To earth the sky carriage alights, and from its commander’s seat emerges the celebrated citizen, the incomparable aviator, our opinion’s pilot, the wholly remarkable Mr. Virgil Van Camp!

Long have we found ourselves regaled with the legendary exploits of this famous luminary. Who has not been spellbound reading of his Herculean battle with the notorious Hydra, the eleven-spigoted fuel inspection system of the single-engine aeroplane? Who does not recall his epic encounter and harrowing escape from the Scylla and Charybdis of prohibited air space -- the dreaded Temporary Flight Restriction zones -- that enshroud Cheney and Bush?

Monarch of the sky, Athena's rival has battled foe and anoxia alike in the blue-domed vault aloft, but here on earth he has challenged Leviathan itself, the Federal Aviation Administration, in a titanic struggle for the racial profiling of airline passengers. Implacable in total comprehension, our sage sentinel has remained constant in the knowledge that male Arab Muslims are the exclusive security threat to Western civilization, even as Al Qaida began recruiting men and women from other ethnic groups and nations immediately after 9/11.

This unyielding campaign provides only a hint of our savant’s expertise in the cross-cultural political dynamic inherent in the Christian-Muslim nexus. To even begin to appreciate his extraordinary insight, it must be understood that following Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Kierkegaard, Van Camp is the authority on Christian theological and historical issues, and his magisterial work on the Muslim faith is without peer.

As a world renowned scholar, Van Camp has noted that Christianity and Islam profess to be religions of peace, yet both have had their violent excesses. What he has concluded is that Muslim brutality is obviously the rule due to his supra-socio-political analysis of their barbarous culture.

Through extensive reading and personal experience with fellow Christians (completely unprejudiced by any direct interaction with Islamic persons) Van Camp has made the astonishing correlation that every institution in the Christian dominated West that make it a great civilization, from relief agencies like the Red Cross to hospitals, universities and hair styling salons, has been established by Christians. Islam, Van Camp has determined, has no such equivalents, and thus remains a primitive and backward culture.

Strangely, there have been fanciful tales that the Mohammedans do indeed have the hallmarks of civilization, but Van Camp is too wise a historian like Herodotus to conflate fables with facts. Despite his frequent disquisitions on the matter, these curious myths persist.

It is said hospitals were built in Baghdad as early as the 9th century. The oldest Muslim universities, such as Al-Azhar of Cairo founded in 971 or the Nizamiyyah of Baghdad in 1065, were established prior to the first Western university at Bologna in 1088, before Oxford, Cambridge or A&M.

Some believe Islam preserved Greco-Roman science and literature during the medieval ages while Christianity forgot, and that Muslim scientists made their own discoveries, particularly in mathematics, astronomy and medicine. The West’s recovery of Classical knowledge and the contributions of Muslims opened the way for Europe’s renaissance.

Today there are supposedly numerous Islamic charitable and relief organizations such as the Red Crescent, its emblem plainly visible on every ambulance in Iraq.

No doubt these stories are just that, politically correct fairy tales spun by some leftist Scheherazade long ago when Arabian nights were still exotic interludes instead of sleepless nightmares. For all his copious reading it is surprising Van Camp has not documented these fanciful legends. Driven to verify the Quran could be flushed down a toilet, such an inquisitive mind would hardly fail to rebut such challenges to the moral and intellectual superiority of European man. But just as the Olympian gods ignore the petty affairs of men, perhaps our noble Achilles finds the achievements of inferiors beneath his notice.

In a world full of uncivilized people, ignorant and prejudiced, Mr. Van Camp has been most prominent in highlighting their sad existence. There can be no greater tribute to his edification of mankind than to say his accumulated work, his high-piled monument to human understanding, shames golden antiquity’s Augean stables itself.