PrintMarch 31, 2010
We Have Not Yet Begun to Fight
Okay. Obamanation won this round of the ObamaCare battle. The first of the Democratic equivalent of the Ten Plagues of Egypt has been passed by a president and Congress straight out of a Michael Moore documentary. Harold Witkov of American Thinker calls this a gift from the "man who thinks of himself as our Pharaoh."
But he will not win the war. He will not win because American exceptionalism is alive and well, as is God. Yes, I know that this sounds awesomely Neanderthal and about as politically correct as eating Twinkies and playing dodgeball...or, perhaps, eating Twinkies while playing dodgeball.
But, to echo one of those dead white men from the Revolutionary War, when called upon by the British to surrender, we "have not yet begun to fight." And fight we will against Obama's expressed intent, as Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) proclaimed with brutal honesty to "control the people."
Bottom line: Obama is, indeed, out to destroy the freedom and culture that makes us an exceptional nation. Popular FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly says flatly: "The battle lines are clearly drawn: individual freedom versus federal power."
Well, guess what? "We the people," as the framers of our constitution put it, do not want to be controlled. We the people do not consent to your "fundamental transformation" of our nation. And we the people will win...because God is on our side.
Or, perhaps more accurately, we are on God's side. And not just any God -- but the God who is the foundation of Western civilization, the one who says, "Hey, you don't have to believe in me if you don't want, and I won't direct my followers to sharpen their axes on your head -- but I do ask that you treat each individual with respect."
And so He asks that we listen to Him on such essentials as emphasizing individualism and valuing the unique dignity of each human life. This is the basis of Judeo-Christian culture. The United States was established on this foundation, emphasizing freedom, individual responsibility, and respect for life. The Tea Parties are simply the latest group striving to live according to the one our founders called our "Creator" and to whom they gave star billing in the Declaration of Independence.
Even the communist Chinese are impressed by the results of our Western culture: As one party-funded scholar put it after intensive study, the overriding strength of the United States is a Judeo-Christian tradition that provides "a moral foundation" for prosperity and success (see the critically acclaimed The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success).
And now Obamanation is moving us away from God and his ways. Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and longtime friend to the president, along with much of the Obamanation, calls it "social justice." The communist Chinese, however, call it irresponsible. They've taken a long look at what Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson describes as Obama's move toward "socialist anti-Western philosophy"...and they want none of it.
Chinese to Obamanation: It's one thing to be anti-American, but it's quite another to be stupid. Find someone else to invest in your transformation. In other words, gimme that ol' time religion!
Our founders wove a relationship with God into our political structure. They were convinced that the "invisible hand of God" and His morality were required to build a free and prosperous nation, according to James H. Hutson, chief of the manuscript division of the Library of Congress. A people protected from the state by the "overarching law of God" will produce prosperity, the founders reasoned -- and they were neither Communist nor Chinese. (A worthwhile discussion of our divinely guided strength is contained in Anthony Esolen's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization.)
There have been setbacks, of course, with degradation and folly occasionally winning a round: The New York Times, for example, was established in 1851; the Harvard Faculty Club came into existence in 1931; and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was conceived in 1938.
Nevertheless, contrary to Barack Obama's original spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, God has not "damn[ed]" America. Rather, he has blessed America...and blessed the world by blessing America. The giving of private Americans to Haiti, for example, or before that, tsunami relief in Asia, "dwarfed even the best" of what other governments contributed. French aristocrat Alexis DeTocqueville took time out from stalking snails to visit nineteenth-century America and predicted the continued emergence of a uniquely compassionate and prosperous society. The subsequent century showed him to be right.
We do not deserve the government Obamanation is giving us. Nor do we deserve to be scorned as an America that Rev. Jim Wallis -- Obama spiritual advisor, version two -- calls "the great captor and destroyer of human life...totalitarian [in our] claims and designs."
Obama clearly doesn't like us. And he's laid out his goals, expressing open admiration for, variously, the genocidal systems of Mao and Stalin, and especially Islamic culture. Well, call me old-fashioned, but somehow I don't think regimes that murdered more than a hundred million of their own citizens -- and a culture that sanctions genital mutilation, misogyny, and rape -- are much of a bargain.
Now, a bias alert: I live and have lived a life that, in fact, many of our elite may consider seriously depraved. Despite being raised Jewish in New York City, I have passionately supported Israel for all of my adult life. I have three graduate degrees, but I do not read The New York Times and can both sip Starbucks and walk at the same time.
In addition, I accepted Jesus Christ in midlife, one of my advanced degrees is from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, and -- after more than two decades as a media and retail executive -- joined the faculty of a fundamentalist Christian university.
In other words, I am the Obamanation version of the Antichrist: Jewish, Baptist, pro-Israel, capitalist...does it get any worse?
Oh, yes -- my wife was a stay-at-home mom.
Stuart Schwartz is on the faculty of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
