To the Shores of Tripoli, Yet Again

(Originally published on TownHall.com April 14, 2011)

Twenty-five years ago today, against the salty crosswinds, I was lowered from a moving helicopter by cable to a missile boat in the Mediterranean Sea, speeding toward Libya at thirty-two knots.  Though I'd already worked long hours in the previous altercation with that country from my base in Spain, I had only been on station three months, and this was my first actual deployment.  The combination of excited anticipation and "hurry-up-and-wait" monotony in the three preceding days of travel was everything, good and bad, it was cracked up to be. But whatever butterflies were flitting around in my stomach now were netted by the comforting reminder that the CH-46 Sea Knight chopper carrying me to my assignment was the same bird my brother, a Navy Avionics Technician, was working on half a world away.  I had read The Last Detail in college a few years earlier and had determined that if there was one thing I would never, ever do, it was join the Navy.  But Lawrence had enlisted two years before I did and had convinced me that the Navy of the 80’s was nothing like the Navy of the 60’s, so on the merit of his word alone, I had signed up.  His subsequent counsel and willingness to “take the first hit,” as it were, helped me gain the top honors in boot camp, language school and technical school, so as we lifted off from the carrier USSAmerica, I felt oddly at home in this tandem rotor helo that I’d never seen in real life until that day.  The air strike, though, was set to begin in just ten hours; I would barely make it on board in time to go to work.

After planting my feet on the Ticonderoga’s helipad and being hit in the head by the swinging iron pulley of which I had just let go (“Hit the deck!” was Navy vernacular that had not yet impressed itself upon me), I made my way to the space known as the Special Signals Exploitation System (SSES).  My Leading Petty Officer, Dennis H., quickly brought me up to speed on the upcoming events:  "At 0200 hours, eighteen F-111's are going to come down here"—waving his hand from north to south directly over our "X" marker on the now-primitive green aerial monitor—"and bomb the crap out of Tripoli."  I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at the all-in-a-day's-work nonchalance of the statement.  He continued. “Twenty-four A-6’s and F-18’s from the Coral Sea will hit Benghazi at the same time.  We’ll handle battle group air defense and take out any naval threats from here.”  And with that, it was down to the task at hand. 

The USS Ticonderoga (CG-47), the primary Electronic Warfare platform of the America battle group, was the Aegis-class flagship, a cruiser with a radar system so sophisticated that it could take over all flight operations should the carrier’s command-and-control be taken out.  But despite her state-of-the-art combat technology, she was doomed along with all her class to early mothballing, as she was one of the few remaining non-nuclear warships in the fleet.  She was diesel-powered, with the fuel tank on the starboard side and the water tank at port.  With eight Harpoon missiles weighing a ton apiece on the port deck astern, the ship had a constant list of three to seven degrees, depending on the counterbalancing fuel and water reserves.  (This led to some comical moments.  Besides always having to steady oneself between the bulkheads in any bow-to-stern passageway, and having vertical straps in our racks to keep us from falling to the deck as we slept, Aegis personnel had the unique “duty” of leveling the water tank (to reduce the list) in particularly painless ways.  While carrier personnel routinely sped through two-minute showers so as not to be written up by the stopwatch-wielding Petty Officers eying their every splash (no, I’m not kidding), Aegis crew members got used to their own bedtime lullaby over the 1MC:  “Attention:  Refueling still three days out.  Until further notice, all personnel are requested to take extra-long showers.  Thank you for your cooperation.”  Sometimes it’s bad to be hated by your fellow sailors; sometimes it’s just plain fun.)

I spent my first watch familiarizing myself with the ship, the targets, and the mission.  Having worked plenty of 16-hour watches before, I simply assumed that I’d stay on duty as long as necessary, but at 2200 hours, Dennis booted me out of the space and told me to go get some sleep, as I’d need it the next day.

When I returned to SSES the next morning, the activity was high-pitched, but still calm and orderly; no Maelstrom here.  Damage assessments from the bombing raids were still coming in, and we were fielding reports of two or more of our pilots being captured or killed. (Unfortunately, it turned out that they were indeed lost – two F-111 pilots, the only two who had actually thanked their Commander for sending them on this mission.)  The next forty-six days were an education and an adventure to which, even now, I know I can never do justice with these few paragraphs.  And I certainly admit that, in terms of American blood and treasure, the conflicts in which I was involved in Libya and Lebanon from 1986 to 1990 were nothing compared to the Middle East wars in which we are involved today. 

I do, however, have a few thoughts.

More than anything else, I’m struck by how much has changed in the last twenty-five years.  Back in the “good old days” of the Cold War and the relative clarity of state-sponsored terrorism, Americans on the whole still had a fairly good grasp on the reality of particular threats to our national well being – in this case, militant Islam.  There were objections from some, of course, but we struck Libya in 1986 for the same reason Thomas Jefferson did in 1801:  Forces from a hostile nation stated their intention to conquer us and raise their flag – both political and religious – over our Capitol, and demonstrated their seriousness by attacking U.S. citizens and vessels again and again, and demanding ransom from our government for the favor of “leaving us alone” (temporarily).  The methods, attitude and intent of this enemy have not changed.  

What has changed is my country.  While there was no significant domestic activism back then running interference in the media and academia for the Islamists who want to destroy us (and are much more capable of doing so now than they were then), such homegrown intellectual “insurgence” is now the rule rather than the exception.  The combination of educationally indoctrinated ingratitude toward the gift that is the United States of America, widespread ignorance of our history, militant secularism and slavish multi-culturalism has coalesced to build an even thicker wall between us and our heritage, and the shallowness of so much of our cultural thinking provides us with no tools to chip that wall away. 

And so, here we find ourselves, right back in Libya – again.  But this time, for what?  Rather than defending Americans or American interests, the current vogue of a Postmodern, post-national, post-American political philosophy sweeping through our public mindset has produced a cloudy motivation to “defend innocent civilians from their abusive government,” even though Libyan protesters are only one of maybe a dozen population groups being routinely destroyed by their rulers right this minute, and we’re doing nothing to help them.  And as in Egypt, many of these “innocent protesters” are the very type of radicals who want to do to us what Tripoli's Ambassador swore to do 226 years ago, and even the memory of a devastating attack on our shores only ten years back is not enough to give us pause to consider the implications.  Now, largely unable to define and verbalize what our “national interests” even are anymore, we serve as just another arm of some international coalition that has no interest in helping America maintain her own character.   Where does this all end?

As a person of faith, I don’t look to my country or any other earthly resource for my ultimate identity or security.  But I do believe in being thankful for, and a good steward of, what I’ve been given, and I just happen to have been given the greatest nation on earth to call my home while I’m here.  That used to be a sentiment shared by most Americans, but now I see countless forces at work, toiling day and night to wipe that attitude from the national psyche.  They may very well succeed, because the words of William Butler Yeats are as true today as they were when he penned them ninety years ago:  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  

I will always remember my military days fondly, and I feel privileged to have served during a special time in our history, a time that will only exist now in my and my shipmates’ memories.  I can't go back to Spain, because (I'm told) I wouldn't recognize it. My question is: Can I go back to... America?  Is it still here?  Will I recognize it twenty-five years from now?  Five years from now?  Tomorrow?

I don’t have the answer, but like Ronald Reagan, the president I learned to love while serving under him (and whose First Lady Nancy christened my beloved Ticonderoga), I remain hopeful. 

Your Hair is Purple, So Now I Have to Feed You?

(Originally published on TownHall.com September 21, 2009)

Walking to my car in West Hollywood yesterday, I noticed two young women, maybe 19 or 20, talking to a 40-ish woman up the street. The older woman was holding some papers and digging in her bag; I thought maybe she was a canvasser and was hunting for a card or a pen.

I turned and walked back a few steps to listen to an outdoor speaker playing a song I had forgotten all about, called “Human.” Something struck me when I first heard this tune and, doing a little research, I found that it was inspired by a statement by Hunter S. Thompson that “America is raising a generation of dancers.” Although people have had varying interpretations of the lyrics, the songwriter, Brandon Flowers, has said himself that it is a “mild social statement,” and the lyrics speak against a puppet-like conformity that casts off freedom and responsibility to dance without question or protest to the tune piped in by today’s “conductors” of nihilism.

I leaned down toward the speaker and listened:

Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance,
They always did the best they could
And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye
Wish me well...
You've gotta let me go.

Are we human?
Or are we dancer?
My sign is vital
My hands are cold
And I'm on my knees
Looking for the answer...
Are we human?
Or are we dancer?

My moment was interrupted by the two girls, who had found their way to me. As the song continued in the background, one of them spoke.

“Do you have any spare change?” she asked. “We want to go to Carl’s Jr.”

I wasn’t sure I heard right, so I asked her to repeat herself. 

“Could you help us out?” Pointing to her friend, “She just spent her last five dollars dying her hair purple, and she wants to get a Carl’s Jr.”

Her friend, smiling and giggling, held up her hands to show me the purple dye stains.

“And so you want... what?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure I got it.

“We want to go to Carl’s Jr., and she just spent her last five dollars. Can you help us out?”

Oh, so that’s what the other woman was doing.

Now normally, for any number of reasons, when people come up and ask me for a handout, unless they’re 20 years old or look like the criminally insane killer who walked away from a “field trip” at the Spokane County Fair the other day, I give them something. But this was, well, one of the above.

“Okay,” I said, raising my hand to give them the “wait a minute” signal. “This is a philosophical issue.”

The Girl Doing the Talking was instantly disoriented. “A philosophical issue?”

“Yes, a philosophical issue,” I said. “Look, you’re both young, you’re healthy... do you work?”

Purple Hair Girl didn’t answer. Talking Girl replied, somewhat weakly, “I go to school.” 

“Okay,” I allowed. “But you’ve made a choice. Of your own free will, you chose to spend your last five dollars getting purple hair, and now you want me to pay for your hamburger.”

(This was all the more egregious because I was at the time carrying a freshly bought smoothie and veggie wrap from Jamba Juice. I thought only young Liberals ate that stuff, while old Conservatives were mean to the cows. But I digress.)

The girls were looking quite dismayed. Confused. Puzzled. Perplexed. Slapped in the face with a 20-pound salmon.

“But... my house is all the way over in Glendale. If I have to get on a bus and go all the way back there...” (To withdraw more money from the Bank of Mom and Dad, she was clearly about to say. Life is so hard!)

“Again,” I drilled forward, “Is that my responsibility?”

“No, but... it would just be nice if...”

“Look,” I said, “I like helping people out. People who are actually down and out or who actually need it, but not people who are young and healthy and make the choice to spend their last five dollars getting purple hair and then ask me to buy them a meal at Carl’s Jr. Sorry, but I’m not helping you.”

The girls wandered off in a daze (and in search of a more willing benefactor of the new, “Progressive” American work ethic, no doubt). There were many more things I wanted to ask them, like, “Who was our first president?” “Is South America above or below North America?” “How many states are there, and which president said there were 57?” But I too was in a bit of a daze, and couldn’t think fast enough.

Now in fairness, when I was their age, I wasn’t terribly responsible myself. And I’ve certainly wasted a lot more than five dollars on any given day. That’s not the issue here. The issue is the choice made after the silly dye job – a choice that betrays an utter absence of any kind of elementary moral grounding at all, that something about this kind of activity simply is not right.  Add to that the fact that when I gently presented them with the concept that their request was improper, they looked at me like I was from the planet Zarkon.  With such an oblivious, morally empty mindset carried all the way into young adulthood, there is no reason to believe this will ever change; it will simply evolve into an active worldview made increasingly destructive as they get older and influence others, including their own children.

Chalk it up to Postmodernism, I guess – an utter detachment from all sense of social order as previous generations understood it; a complete lack of any training in or understanding of even a basic set of values that would inspire and permit certain choices, while prohibiting and preventing others. I lived on the street for three months, and never asked anyone for a dime. Not because of “pride” – on the several occasions when someone saw my state and offered me something, I gratefully accepted – but because I knew my situation was my fault, and I just didn’t think it was right to expect others to pick up the tab for it. And I know it’s politically incorrect to say so, but – God provided, and I survived. But such a foundation, a sense of appropriateness, a sense of personal responsibility for the circumstances in which our own decisions put us... I’m not sure these girls have, or ever will have, any of that in them at all. 

Of one thing I am sure: First thing Monday morning, they will be back in school, continuing on their course of indoctrination about how cold and cruel and selfish Conservative America is, and how mean-spirited and un-compassionate it is not to want higher and higher taxes on all the bad evil rich people (that is, anyone who makes more than they do, excluding Liberal Hollywood celebrities) to pay for every kind of entitlement that Congress, ACORN and its 196 front groups, or SEIU can drum up. They will dance on happily, string-chasséing allegiance to the Democratic Party and swooning at every word our President says, while dutifully recoiling at the very thought of giving ear to the words of someone like, say, George Washington. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Mike Huckabee. Or even Jon Voight. Or even Chuck Norris. Or even their non-Progressive peers, hiding in the catacombs of their own campus. They will continue to cement their complete lack of knowledge of or interest in the most rudimentary elements of American history or heritage. They will gain no appreciation for the freedom they received at birth, nor understand that it is a bargain that comes with a price: work hard; carry your own weight; risk failure; and you may actually live a better life than you would in your professors’ pet wonderlands (Cuba, Venezuela, etc.). They will not be challenged all year to reflect on Divine things, nor even be curious about how the ancient Bible speaks to their own existence; they will not pause to consider the effects of their actions on their own lives, or the life of their community; and they will not develop any sense of protective shame to guard against character-destroying behaviors like blithely asking anyone around for money when they’re not suffering at all and have never worked a day in their lives. Worst of all, they will not be given any tools that will enable them, at some future time, to reverse this present damage.

But they will have purple hair, which will at least enable them to navigate the middle ground between Red and Blue states, where they may, respectively, be asked to pay their way or have goat’s blood thrown on them by a PETA activist. And sooner or later – scratch that, sooner than later – they will have a hamburger. Paid for by strangers. You and me, that is. Taxpayers.

The Bee Gees got it wrong: No, you shouldn’t be dancing. Not like this, anyway. Not if you want to be... human.  

What any Christian should think about before voting for Barack Obama

(Originally published on TownHall.com October 31, 2008)

I know it’s late in the game, and some of you may have already voted, but I still feel compelled to speak. Let me say at the outset that this is not a “Republican,” “Conservative,” or even a political argument. God is not a member of any political party, and our voice and vision should always transcend such limitations as well.

Even more to the point: God is not particularly concerned with protecting our comfort, or our lifestyle. Millions of our brothers and sisters across the world have nothing compared to us, and their circumstances are not likely to change anytime soon. Some are persecuted for their faith; others imprisoned; others killed. None of that is a mark of their “success” or lack thereof, any more than our inherited blessings are a mark of ours.

I don’t know why I was born in America, where I have freedoms and opportunities that I couldn’t come close to in many other places, while some brother in Christ whom I’ve never met was born in a Third World hovel and martyred at fifteen. I only know that this is what I’ve been given, and part of what I’ve been given is a citizen’s participatory republic, where I and all others like me have a certain amount of power, directly under the law of the land, to affect the way this land is ruled.

“My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36)

Here’s where it gets tricky, because this is still the world of which God’s kingdom is not a part, and whenever we begin stamping any party or cause or candidate with God’s explicit approval, no matter how obvious it may seem, we run the risk of dragging the pure vision of God’s kingdom right down into the dirt and forfeiting the real power that God has given us to do good in this world. “Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth.” That command does not expire on Election Day.

For me, this is first and foremost an internal issue; an issue of what we approve of and agree with. And the political choices we make will obviously reflect that. It’s one thing to find ourselves under the rule of a reprobate regime, where our directives are still the same – be faithful; love God; love our neighbor. It’s quite another thing, however, to voluntarily put ourselves (and our neighbors) under the rule of such a regime by endorsing its philosophy and aiding in its rise to power. When we do that, we’ve already succumbed to the spirit of the world in toto, and whatever ills befall us as a result do not fall under the heading of “suffering for God.”

And so this is not an appeal to vote for this candidate or that one, and it is certainly not an appeal to fear, which spirit we have not been given. It is only an appeal to examine what you’re coming into agreement with – the philosophy; the character; the worldview; the conduct of leadership – and to remember that that will have at least as much of an effect on you as it does on some transient thing like an election. Please read the following pages with that in mind.

He who rules over men, must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, like the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain. (2 Samuel 23:3, 4)

I am perplexed, to say the least, to see so many Christians falling in behind Barack Obama, especially since, throughout this entire campaign, I have never heard so much as one Biblical argument from these supporters for doing so. Not one. And so I would like to give just a few of the reasons why I think these brothers and sisters are making a terrible mistake.

And they built the high places of Ba’al … to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jeremiah 32:35)

We’re all familiar with the story of God’s people turning their backs on the Lord and sacrificing their children to Molech. What’s been lost to many of us through the centuries, however, is the core betrayal at the root of all that. The name Molech, derived from the Hebrew melek and similar to the Arabic malak, is the word for “king.” The statue of Molech through whose mouth the worshippers threw their children into the fire was a representation of the king, who in turn represented the state. At its core, “Molech worship” is simply worship of the state. This alone should destroy any illusion in the eyes of Christians that Socialist-type politics are worthy of their support, because if there is any single characteristic of such politics, it is the elevation of the state to the status of “Provider.” And make no mistake, that is the central philosophy driving the campaign of Barack Obama. He said recently, in response to objections to his plans to vastly increase government (against the will of most of us, and at our involuntary expense), that he wants to “make government cool again.” Make government “cool” again? When was it ever “cool” in the first place? Did I ask for this? Did you? Where is this going to take us?

The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
(James 1:20)

Obama is constantly telling us that our present economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Interesting he should bring that up. Compare the famous peacefulness and communal respect of the shanty towns during the Depression, where the out-of-work and hungry masses did not subscribe to this kind of government idol-worship, to the seething anger so often displayed on the part of Obama supporters, few if any of whom are suffering anywhere near that badly today. People who look to the government to give them their living are often in a perpetual state of rage, because their expectations can never be met. But this should be utterly anathema to a Christian. God is our Provider, and no, he does not “provide” for us by setting up a thieving, confiscatory system to take money away from our neighbors and give it to us. While God is not particularly concerned about this or that tax, he is concerned with what drives it, especially when the thing driving it is government idolatry. I submit as well that raising up our children with this ungodly expectation that the government be their Provider is our modern version of “making them pass through the fire to Molech.”

Which leads me to my second point:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house … nor anything that is your neighbor’s. (Exodus 20:17)

But … covetousness, let it not even be named once among you … For this you know, that no … covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (Ephesians 5:3, 5)

People who increasingly demand more from their government, and thus support more and more wealth confiscation for more and more entitlements, never seem to be up front with the other implication of such demands. In a word, it is COVETOUSNESS – wholly condemned by God. How so, you ask? Simple: You want the government, acting as your agent, to break into your neighbor’s house, take what is his, and give it to you. Wouldn’t it be more honest simply to go to your nearest neighbor who seems to have anything at all more than you have, tell him you’re angry because he has more than you, and demand that he give you what you want, simply because you don’t have it? At least you’d be telling the truth, instead of hiding behind the false veneer of compassion covering so much of the policies put forth by our leading Democratic candidate and his party.

As for “the rich,” who must of course be judged, demonized and targeted for this extortion (as well as constantly redefined and “resized” to fit the government hand in our neighbor’s pocket), they will answer to God, just like the rest of us, for any lack of compassion they may or may not have exercised with their wealth. If it’s harder for them to enter into the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, I’d say they have enough to worry about. But it is not for us to decide for ourselves that they’re all bad; they all must pay; they all must have their wealth taken away in order to pay for our covetousness and idolatry. (A recently released radio interview from 2001 has Obama clearly advocating the “redistribution of wealth” and directly equating it with “economic justice.” This is exactly the opposite of what God says in Leviticus 19:15, when he commands the rulers, “Do not pervert justice …. Do not favor the poor or the rich.”) What Obama advocates is the same thing all Socialist and Communist regimes have used to break a society – class warfare, which his campaign regularly foments and exploits. It is not a Christian attitude.

At this point you may be asking, what about all the rich people who support higher taxes, bigger government, and other such policies, even if it’s going to cost them money? Besides possibly assuaging the guilt (deserved or not) that some wealthy people probably carry, it provides something else: Rich people who share Obama’s worldview are happy to hand over more of what they have to the government, because it’s a sacrifice to the “god of the state,” and any truly devoted person loves to make such sacrifices. (Perhaps this is why our own voice has fallen so silent and powerless in these matters of governmental stewardship, as we, corporately, have often been unwilling to make sacrifices to our God, in all areas of our lives, on an equal level?)

Do not be deceived: Evil company corrupts good habits.

(1 Corinthians 15:33)

What do a person’s closest associations say about him? And why do we not seem to care?

Here are some of Obama’s (for the sake of not beating the same names we’ve all heard into the ground, I will only use initials):

FMD – Head of the Communist Party in Hawaii. Self-proclaimed enemy of America. Obama’s high school mentor and longtime confidant until his death, whom he refers to repeatedly with admiration in his memoir.

GS – Communist billionaire and meddler in U.S. affairs, working for years to turn our country over to Socialism. Self-proclaimed hater of America. The money behind such America-hating propaganda machines as MoveOn.org and The Daily Kos. Obama’s chief financial backer (and puppet-string puller, in the eyes of many observers).

WA – Co-founder of 60’s extremist group The Weather Underground. Self-proclaimed enemy of America. Along with his group, bombed the U.S. Capital, the Pentagon, the New York City police headquarters, and various banks, police stations and courthouses, killing one and harming many others. Famous for the line, “Bring the revolution home, kill your parents.” Totally unrepentant. Obama launched his political career in WA’s living room. They later served together on the board of the Woods Fund, funneling money to a PLO front group. WA hired Obama to run The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation that eventually spent $110 million, under Obama’s direction, to, in WA’s own words, “radicalize students.” Still exalts “the spirit of rebellion.”

BD – WA’s wife and fellow America-hating terrorist. Former law partner of Michelle Obama. Did prison time for refusing to testify against other Weather Underground members in the famous Brinks armored car robbery, in which two people were murdered.

RO – Deposed Kenyan dictator, trained in then-Communist East Germany. Upon losing his last election, incited riots that left over a thousand dead and hundreds of churches burned to the ground. Named his first son Fidel Castro. Obama’s cousin, for whom Obama spent a month electioneering in Kenya and raised over $1 million in campaign money.

RK – Former PLO activist and spokesman. Sworn enemy of Israel. Close friend of Obama (and WA). Obama and WA attended an anti-Israel benefit for RK, at which Obama toasted the guest of “honor.” (The Los Angeles Times has admitted that they have a video of this, showing Obama laughing it up with both WA and RK, but as of this writing, they have refused to release it.)

TR – Syrian financier and chief Obama backer in Chicago. Convicted on multiple counts of fraud and other charges during the Obama campaign, and on his way to prison. Longtime friend of Obama’s.

JW – Racist preacher of false gospel of anger and Afrocentrism. Self-proclaimed hater of America. Obama’s chosen pastor for over twenty years.

And this isn’t even the whole list.

To a man, and woman, all of the people Obama has chosen to bring closest to him and whose influence he has invited into his own life have displayed the same anti-American, anti-Christian and/or anti-Semitic, hateful character. Do you not think that a man’s inner circle, over his entire life, shapes him? Look at your own inner circle. Do they not influence you, and are they not collectively a part of you? I would be more than happy to hold up for scrutiny all of my closest friends and associates. Frankly, they make me look better than I am! But I wouldn’t trust anyone on this list for five minutes in my living room. Obama has consistently evaded questions about any of these associations, and has engaged in a systematic, Herculean effort to hide the truth about them. What is there that he does not want you to see? And what is it about these kinds of people that Obama is so comfortable with, and what is it about Obama that is so appealing to them?

You have formed my inward parts; you have woven me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made… Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. (Psalm 139:13, 14, 16)

The Lord hates … hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:17)

Brothers and sisters, this one still floors me. Barack Obama is the most radical abortionist ever to serve in Congress or run for the presidency. But we have become so inured to the holocaust of infanticide that, as far as I can tell, most of us just yawn when the subject comes up. He said that if his teenage daughter got pregnant, he wouldn’t want her to be “punished with a baby.” His solution? Punish the baby – with death. Obama voted three times in Illinois against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would have required medical personnel to give aid to babies born alive during a botched abortion. He said it would be “an erosion of the right to choose.” Like our Speaker of the House, Obama apparently believes that there is no more sacrosanct right in America than the “right” to kill a baby in the womb. Now I expect this kind of thing from people who haven’t been taught of God, but Christians? What kind of hypnotic spell are we falling under, where so many of us have no objection to this at all? I even heard a survey a couple of weeks ago that showed large numbers of Evangelicals voting for Obama because they thought he’d be better for the pro-life cause than McCain. What kind of deceived insanity is this? Go back and read Isaiah 6. Can you really picture that Lord being perfectly OK with millions of babies whom he created being chopped in pieces and thrown in the trash? Obama has stated that his first act as president will be to sign the “Freedom of Choice Act,” effectively abolishing all remaining restrictions on abortion and requiring the public, even those who oppose it on moral or religious grounds, to finance it. Do you really want to stand before the Lord and answer for supporting this kind of atrocity?

And while I’m on the subject, what kind of bizarre, psychological self-hatred thing is going on here anyway, among members of the black community? The entire abortion industry was created in the first place for one primary purpose: the extermination of the black race. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a eugenicist who saw abortion as a tool to “weed out” the inferior members of society – in her view, black people. This is well known, but I don’t see what I should be seeing, that is, the black community in America taking a united stand to destroy this racist, genocidal enterprise. Instead, I see millions of them participating in it, helping it keep them down, and raising up a leader who is its greatest champion. Again… I don’t get it.

The irony here is, the one person I find it easiest not to judge in all this is the woman who’s had an abortion. And I don’t know anyone of our faith who feels differently. The vast majority of these women really don’t know what they are doing. They’ve been brainwashed since birth – often by their own parents – to believe that “it’s not a baby until it’s born,” or some similar lie. If they truly knew what was happening, and were able to see the truth behind the mercenary mendacity of the abortion industry, and maybe were even able to watch a few abortions, I’m convinced that very few of them would actually go through with it. No, the real villains here are the people who know the truth about this, and seed the killing fields anyway – the ethnic-cleansing organizations like Planned Parenthood; the doctors; and the rulers who advance the bloody spree with the stroke of their pen. Like Barack Obama.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Exodus 20:16)

In 1979, William F. Buckley, Jr., the arch-conservative (and devout Catholic) political commentator, called for the election of a black president at the earliest opportunity, preferably by 1984. (He was instrumental in helping Ronald Reagan get elected, and had he foreseen Reagan’s run for a second term, of course he would have said 1988. But his point remains.) He said the whole question about “whether a black man could lead this country” was stupid and insulting, and the best way to end that annoying and idiotic argument (if I remember correctly, he used the word “inane” to describe it) was to elect a black president, prove in short order there is no difference between men of light skin or dark skin in the ability to lead, and silence the naysayers forever. He, the archetypal conservative, was genuinely offended at the very suggestion that there just had to be some kind of deficiency that would unavoidably burden a black president.

Flash forward to 2008 and all the cries accusing conservatives, and anyone who doesn’t agree with Obama, of “racism.” But who’s talking about race? As far as I can tell, only Obama and his campaign. And it’s the perfect set-up – no matter how bad Obama is for this country, no matter how corrupt his campaign, no matter how destructive his policies and worldview; if you say anything against any of that, you’re a “racist.” It’s a free ticket for his campaign to avoid any issue and make as many false accusations as they want – but again, so many of us have been mesmerized by this guy, we don’t seem to mind.

Even now, many antichrists have come… (1 John 2:18)

It was bound to happen – some religious person just had to say that “Obama is the Antichrist,” and make us all look bad. That embarrassing foot in all our mouths seems to have trotted off into the sunset quickly enough, though, thank God.

It does, however, bring up another issue. While the popular “end times” belief is that there is one Antichrist, and he’s yet to show up and bring on Armageddon, the Bible does not teach this. As in the passage above, the Word states that there are not only many “antichrists,” there were already many of them wandering around 2,000 years ago. And the prefix “anti-” did not originally just mean “against,” it meant other. So anyone other than Jesus lifting themselves up as a Christ, or messiah, is by definition an “antichrist.”

Enter Barack Obama, who, standing as his own Apollo-gist in his Greek Temple, has done nothing to discourage the development of his image as a “messiah” to his people. In the same breath in which he invoked his "profound humility" and "knowledge of his own limitations," he humbly prophesied that his ascension would go down in history as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Hardly the words of a man who knows he is “but dust.” While Christ is our Blessed Hope, Obama is, by his own design and poster-paid testimony, the self-proclaimed “Hope” of his followers. And countless Christians have apparently bought right into this. But what business does any Christian have pinning their hope on anyone other than Jesus Christ?

False Compassion

Perhaps one of the greatest offenses of all left-leaning political philosophies is the twisting of the Scriptures, and especially the teachings of Christ, into a (very selective) set of charitable imperatives for the government to pursue. Hence the Senator’s glib brush-off, responding to one question about his entitlement programs, where he simply said, “I refer you to the sermon on the Mount” – as if that was supposed to end the discussion. But those of us who know the Word know that governments are not the disciples of Christ, we are. It is to the individual and the faith communities, and not to the government, that the commands are given to exercise charity. That is the only way such individuals and communities can even take personal responsibility to obey the commands. But Obama’s Socialist system, which makes government the “Charitable Giver,” destroys that order.

Obama said in one interview, for instance, that, if you’re “sitting pretty,” as he pejoratively puts it, you “shouldn’t have any problem” with giving more money to the government to “help the waitress living on minimum wage and tips,” because, in his words, “that’s called neighborliness.” Neighborliness is absolutely a Christian value that we are commanded to demonstrate, but Obama’s definition is a lie of Hitlerian proportions. There is nothing “neighborly” about ever-increasing confiscatory taxation. “Neighborliness” implies relationship, and that is exactly what Obama’s political structure destroys. Back in earlier days, say, before the income tax, the poor worked for the rich, and there was relationship. Neighbors knew each other and assisted each other voluntarily, and there was relationship. Communities shared common experiences and hardships knowing that their members depended on each other, and not the government, and there was relationship. In Obama’s statist Utopia, however, the only “relationship” any of us ultimately have is with the government – a government standing between, above and around every single person, interdicting in every transaction, whether personal, social, educational, medical or financial. Tell me, Barack, why don’t you just help the waitress out yourself? I think it’s because that would actually undermine the statist orthodoxy, which requires an impersonal confiscation machine and a centralized distribution base to maintain its power and mystique. Have you, my reader, ever been to a country under Socialist or Communist rule? I have, and I can tell you, I didn’t see a whole lot of “neighbor helping neighbor,” and the reason was obvious: They didn’t have anything left to help each other with. Obama speaks in disingenuously “neighborly” terms about “spreading the wealth” (by force, of course) to “help the guy coming up behind you” (as in his exchange with Joe the plumber – an exchange Obama initiated, but for which Joe is now being punished. Very neighborly of you, Senator.). The truth is, the government has no idea who’s “coming up behind” you or anybody else, and couldn’t care less. It’s all a shell game to feed a massive collectivist ego and make you, me, Joe the plumber, and everyone “coming up behind” or a million miles ahead of any one of us dependent on the state as Provider – in other words, an involuntary religious campaign to make all of us either converts or “dhimmis” under this new Progressive caliphate, with Obama as the Marxist Ayatollah and the Senate Majority Leader, Speaker of the House, Obama’s 3,000 appointed lieutenants, and all other loyalists in power as the “mullahs” enforcing this godless jihad against the uniquely blessed and successful vision of our Founding Fathers. Again, this is government idolatry. Please, tell me – does any Christian have any business advocating or supporting such a thing?

Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set.

(Proverbs 22:28)

We are living in a dangerous time, made all the more dangerous by our detachment from history, both our own and that of the world. We now have an aging generation that grew up hostile to our past, and the following generation that has grown up virtually oblivious to it. All these young people flocking to Obama by the thousands upon thousands, millions even, because it’s so “exciting” – have you heard one word from any of them that indicates they have any clue at all where they came from; how they got the freedoms they have; what it takes to preserve a nation like ours? I haven’t. On the contrary, few if any of them have any idea what this country is about, and those of them in college have overwhelmingly been taught by professors from the 60’s who pass on their distorted, false view of history to their students. And we’re seeing the fruit of that now, both in the default to secularism and the open, straight-faced espousal of rank Socialism itself.

Just the other night, I was watching on an episode of The Tonight Show a sequence called “Jaywalking,” where Jay Leno goes out on the street and asks random people questions about various subjects. This one was on the presidency, and all the people he stopped happened to be young – Obama’s core constituency – mostly in their 20s. One person didn’t know the name of either vice presidential candidate – Obama voter. Another thought John F. Kennedy served four terms before being shot and was succeeded by Harry Truman, and that one of our branches of government is “Parliament,” which meets “at the House of Representatives” – Obama voter. Another couldn’t name the last president to get inaugurated, and couldn’t name the person who said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” but thought it was said in “maybe the 40’s” during “the Roswell crash” – Obama voter. Another thought “Bush 41” meant “41 years sober” – Obama voter. Another didn’t know how many presidents we’d had; thought “Bush 41” was a drink; thought the next person in line for the presidency after the vice president was “the First Lady vice president”; had no idea what “P.O.W.” meant or that John McCain had been a prisoner of war, and thought the war he served in was “The Cold War” – Obama voter, wearing an Obama shirt.

This is the gaping hole in our national head that Obama has so masterfully exploited. I don’t believe there is one Obama voter in a thousand, at least under the age of 40, who knows five percent about our government or history of what an eighth grader would have known sixty years ago. This is the only reason Obama has ever been a viable candidate at all. Without this vacuum of understanding or critical thinking, he would have been a blip on the radar, never to be heard from again. That last person interviewed, explaining why he had no idea McCain was a P.O.W., said, “I don’t really pay attention to him.” Exactly. Obama supporters are admonished never to learn or consider different points of view, only to attack the people who present them. That is how he keeps his masses ignorant, pliable, driven by emotion, and dependent on him.

So few of us seem to remember the divine providence that gave us this nation, but have you ever seen, thought of, or heard of any leading candidate for president so far removed from the philosophy, worldview, education, historical perspective and conscience of our Founding Fathers as Barack Obama? What detachment could be more complete, and why does so much of “the pillar and ground of the truth” not see it? This nation was a gift from God, won with terrible sacrifice. And the soldiers who fought for its creation did not leave their bloody footprints in the snow to be stained over by the pernicious gall-waste of Marxism. Are we about to throw this wonderful gift back in the face of our Maker?

Need to get a little supernatural here

I understand that not all of my fellow Christians believe that God speaks to us today through anything but the Bible, and that’s okay. Even most of those who don’t, however, will agree that God uses circumstances, impressions, dreams, and other such things to get a message across; you have probably experienced this yourself. I bring this up because I want to tell you about two different visions of our very near future, and get your opinion:

I recently saw a man on Christian television who is known for speaking prophetically. He’s very popular, famous and wealthy, and his words are sought after by many. He said that America is about to elect a man whom we “wouldn’t really think of as being a Christian,” but once he’s in office, God is going to “put his Spirit in him to do his will.” Okay, that’s one. A week or two later, I heard a testimony from someone else – an anonymous person, a simple Christian woman who does not have any famous name or ministry. But she had a dream. And in this dream, the Lord spoke to her and told her that America wants a king, and so he’s going to give her a king, because her cries for “change” are louder than her cries for mercy. Now, which one of these words sounds more like the God of the Bible? The one from the prophet who “only prophesies good things,” and says that no matter what evil we do, or what wickedness we approve of and empower, God will wink at it and make everything good anyway? Or the one who gives us a choice whom we will serve, and when he sees that we want a king instead of him, gives us what we want? (Think “Saul.”) We stake our future on image and oratory instead of substance and truth, and we do this of our own free will. We cast off all restraint and plunge head first into political and social waters that have drowned all who tried to swim in them before us, and we do this of our own free will. Is God just supposed to be our heavenly maître d’ at this bash, clearing the path ahead of us and topping off our wine glasses whenever we snap our fingers? You tell me.

I Had a Dream

We were fleeing the city, speeding east on the highway, the choking fumes of the desolation chasing after us in the wind. We could still hear it all, see it all, smell it all. Suddenly a horrible whistling sound. We turned and looked up. Two large missiles out of the eastern sky flew over our heads. One hit a building; the other hit a train. The building thundered and crashed to the ground, a rolling shock wave following, clearly visible as it knocked over the entire urban expanse in its path in every direction, like a shaken tablecloth trashing a carefully laid dinner. The train, already burning and exploding into the sky, derailed and rolled over in a flaming, smoking cocoon of dust, fire and death. I turned back around and put my head in my hands, barely able to speak the words, “I’m actually seeing it … the end … the end of America. In my own lifetime … the end!”

This was not the first dream I’d had during this campaign of the wholesale destruction of our country, but this time I finally got the symbolism. The building, standing strong and tall, brick and mortar, represented the established institutions on which this country was built: a representative constitutional republic; economic capitalism; and personal liberty, including free speech and freedom of religion, as won under the protective umbrella of the Judeo-Christian values that gave them life. The train represented the forward progress of this nation, propelled by the preservation and enrichment of those institutions. The missiles were the twin assaults against these institutions and this progress by Barack Obama’s worldview and political war machine – government control of everyone’s personal wealth (and thus everyone’s personal being, as our wealth is simply an extension of our bodies), and humanist dissolution of our values, best represented by his militant abortionism and the utter dishonor, pseudo-messianic narcissism and subterfuge that have marked his entire campaign and foreshadow the conduct of his presidency.

Mark My Words

I’ve barely scratched the surface here and left many things unsaid, but here is the bottom line: I believe this is the day Nikita Khrushchev dreamed of when he said, “We will destroy you from within.” By all evidence, Barack Obama is a radical, Left-wing extremist whose fundamental beliefs and agenda are diametrically opposed, on virtually every level, to those of the Founding Fathers of this country, and are incompatible with our Constitution or our national institutions. His goal is to change this country from what it was created to be into a Utopia of his own imagination, and to do this, he must systematically take away our individual freedoms, one by one; limit the level of achievement any individual can reach; indoctrinate the citizenry, starting at childhood, into his new collectivist worldview; change the Constitution from a protective document that establishes the citizen’s rights over the government to an invasive document that establishes the government’s rights over the citizen; and create a universal dependence on government provision at every level of personal and social life.

I believe with all my heart that Barack Obama is not the person he pretends to be, and if he is elected, we will all find that out soon enough. He is riding the waves of the perfect storm of mass ignorance, shallow idol-worship, multi-cultural anti-Americanism, journalistic dereliction of duty, postmodern relativism, sweeping cultural decline, and the inaction and ineffectiveness of those of us who know better. But if you remember the Perfect Storm, it does not end well for anyone in the boat.

Please heed this warning.

Closing Notes

After writing this and reflecting on what I’ve seen go on in the political realm in my lifetime, I confess, I was not of a light heart. Not so much because of what I saw that may be on the horizon, but because I’m reminded how we got here. Too often, I think, we have turned our focus so far outward that we have forgotten what our purpose here even is. All of this will pass, and nothing we do here will be of any benefit to us in the next life if we’re just throwing the same dog into the same fight with the rest of the world. I feel like I shouldn’t have even had to write this letter. This has all made me tired – tired of getting upset about things I can’t control; tired of using harsh words; tired of having to swing a club. I don’t even enjoy winning arguments – it does nothing for me. I’d rather lose a thousand arguments and win one friend for my Friend. I’d rather spend my time just … doing the “greater works” (John 14:12) and going about my Father’s business. 

No, I think it’s time for a change, but not something new; something old. “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).

Yeah, that’s it. More time on our knees, less time on the stump. Starting with me.

Whatever happens, America, bless God!

– VG