discussion with a campus crusader

this kid is starting to annoy me.

"not to mention how many soldiers have died to keep your ungreatful self free."

freedom is not something that men can give eachother.  that is convienience.  freedom has never had anything to do with lack of consequences, which is all the soldiers can provide.

"America is the most free country in the world"

in terms of legal rights, that would probably be the netherlands, and in spiritual terms, it would most certainly be neither.  the vast majority of the people here are not free from anything but the immediate consequences of their selfish actions.

"He fought a spiritual war, against all odds, defeated sin, and made it possible for our salvation--our freedom from the bondage of sin. "Greater love hath no one, than one who lays down his life for a friend,"

this is precisely my point.  this is the only freedom.  he made roman slaves the most free people ever to have lived.  if he had your ideology he would've invaded rome, deposed augustus, written a bill of rights, and set up a democratic, capitalist society.  it borders on blasphemy to imply that the self-serving, materialistic "freedom" that this country worships is the same concept as the only true freedom, which Christ gives.  and it's also exactly my point that self sacrifice IS the single greatest thing you can do.  being a soldier is a twisted perversion of the kind of sacrifice Christ taught.  it simultaneously lowers you to the level of livestock operating a machine, and elevates your own ideals to something worthy of killing anyone who resists them.  it strips other men of the sanctity of their lives, and gives that sanctity to a way of life you try and force on the whole earth.

"I believe in the power of freedom from tyranny, mass-murder, and oppression."

men and women have been tortured to death under tyrants and had far, far greater freedom than the fat, self-obsessed bourgeoisie who you claim to be the freest people in the world.  you seem to believe in freedom from earthly suffering as some kind of holy ideal.  if you didn't use it as justification for one set of men demonising others, it would still be un-Christian.  Christianity is not about comfort, wealth, progress, "sucess", "freedom", or the earthly pursuit of happiness.  to kill anyone in the name of those things is to blatently ignore the most basic teachings of Christ and the innate divinity of all life.  if the way to end suffering were some political struggle like you think it is, then why does Christ silence all political discussion around him?  he neither supports nor opposes any nation - and blatently opposes any action his followers want take against any of them.

"give unto Caesar"..."go the extra mile (when his troops force you to go the first one)" - the romans killed more than nazi's ever did, and their cruelty, brutality, and imperialism was something everyone was aware of when he told his followers to serve them.  "Slaves, obey your masters" - we are not called to play God, or serve the opressed any more than their opressors.  what you called "appeasement" is EXACTLY what we're supposed to be doing.  if the terrorists demand half of what we have, we're supposed to be throwing in extra.  he never said "give him your shirt as well...but only if he's a good man".

"I could care less about what the Church of a patriarch says about war."

Patriarchs, as in the people who were revered by the first christians, and whose guidance helped compile the Bible?  truth does not change.  either the church was heretical from the time the last apostle died until your specific sect of "christianity" appeared, (if you're like most of the campus crusade people, I'd imagine your brand of christianity probably appeared in the 1800s in new england), or the church that agrees with what those first Christians believed still is the valid church.  if you don't care what those first christians believed, you are a heretic.  I'll assume you misunderstood me and thought I meant another kind of patriarch - though I'd be rather depressed if you managed to be raised by missionaries and not even recognize the name Tertulian.