I just found some articles I’d submitted to The Orange and Blue Observer on March 1, 2010. That’s been a while ago! To my knowledge, they were never published, so you’re the first to see them. They certainly show what was happening on the University of Illinois campus then!
Having survived the Soviet gulag, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn knew what it was to be a prisoner. His seminal work The Gulag Archipelago chronicles the development of the gulag and the men, women, and children killed or maimed there. When his homeland exiled him, he found the West imprisoned in a different kind of cage–a gilded one. This bondage was the theme of the commencement speech he delivered at Harvard University on June 8, 1978. After reading the following quote I knew I had to post the entire speech:
Read More›This Thankgiving, I’m thanking God for about seven million things. At the top of the list are my Lord, family, friends, job, and country.
It’s so easy to rush through life and take all these blessings for granted. Then I get a wakeup call.
Read More›I found this among my Grandfather’s papers on a dot-matrix-printed sheet of paper. I’m guessing it gave him quite a chuckle, which is why he kept it. The author is unknown.
Take a simple math problem, subject it to thirty years of new, improved teaching methods, and deduce the formula to yield our average yearly drop in SAT scores.
In 1960
“A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?”
In 1970 (Traditional Math)
“A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price; in other words, $80. What is his profit?”
In 1970 (New Math)
“A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100, and each element is worth $1. Make one hundred dots representing the elements of the set M. The set C of costs of production contains 20 fewer points than the set M. Represent the set C as a subset of M, and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?”
In 1980
“A logger sells a truckload of wood for $100. His cost of production is $80, and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.”
In 1990
“By cutting down beautiful forest trees, a logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making money? (Topic for class participation: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?”
My grandfather, Dr. Carl F. Painter, wrote this letter to us grandkids on August 17, 2001. There are 11 of us, and I pray that we will carry forward the Godly heritage that my grandparents entrusted to us!
I consider this to be the most important letter I ever wrote or may ever have the opportunity to write. To each of you eleven grandchildren I’ll try to pass along the thoughts and counsel that I hope will most enrich your lives. Your grandmother Dorothy and I have been so blest and happy to have each of our children remain strong in their faith and see them pass along to each of you the desire to follow Jesus. We pray for each of you that you in turn will pass this rich heritage on to your children. We pray as Jesus did that “not one of you will be lost.” There are so many ways that the evil influences of your generation will tempt you to turn aside and we know that you will face incredible obstacles in your future.
A good athlete thrives on an obstacle course. The Apostle Paul and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews both compare the Christian life to a race in which running effectively involves a total commitment and a resolve to abandon all encumbrances. In my college years I competed many times in running events and a few times with famous competitors such as Fred Wilt and Wes Santee, who taught me much about how to master the techniques of running to win. On one occasion I had the opportunity to meet Gil Dodd the great distance runner at a large indoor track meet in a field house at Naperville, IL. One of my team mates asked Mr. Dodd, then a coach of one of the teams entered, for his autograph and I watched as he wrote, “Wherefore seeing we are encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us.” He noted the passage was Heb 12:1 and then signed his name. Every good runner exercises strong self discipline in extensive training preparing for a race. Take sufficient time preparing for the race before you, but keep pace with those of good character and do not ever let evil influences catch up on you.
The Apostles also compare the Christian life to deadly warfare that requires a total commitment to defeating the forces of evil arrayed for battle against us. The full armour of God and the sword of the Spirit are essential to success in winning this battle. The Devil is relentless in his attempts to find where you are vulnerable and attack your weaknesses. Keep vigilance in your daily walk with your Lord and seek His power to overcome temptation and be alert to the subtle deceptions the Devil will use to detract you from serving God. Remember God does not permit the Devil to tempt you beyond that which you are able to resist and with each temptation He provides a way of escape. But He expects us to be alert and use the way He provides. Always remember that the best defense is a good offense and the sword of the Spirit is your offensive weapon.
Character that God expects of us takes a lifetime to build and yet it can be lost in a few reckless moments. The pure virtuous character the followers of Christ must demonstrate makes the world a better place for everyone. Your life can influence many others to follow the Lord and be saved and that is such a heavy responsibility to realize your actions can bring others to Christ or lead them away from obedience. Think about each step you take as to how it may help or hurt someone else. No one is an island whose life will not affect others. As Jesus asks, “How much then is man more than a sheep?”
Many in the world are trying to redefine truth as if it were flimsy and changeable to be anything someone might desire. You and I know that truth is embodied in Jesus the sovereign and creator of the universe. Always surround yourself with truth and don’t waver in it. You may feel that you have a long life ahead of you and you will have plenty of time to think about these things later, but life is shorter than you realize and later will be sooner than you think.
My grandfather and my father left me a great heritage of Christian character that I have not fully exemplified, but I want each of you to see how wonderful it would be for each of you to pass along this legacy to your children and your grandchildren as an unbroken chain. What a great family reunion we will have in that heavenly landscape. Grandma Dorothy and I will pray for each of you every day all of our remaining days on this earth and look forward to meeting great-grand children we may never see here in that great reunion in the place God will provide.
There is much more we would like to write to you about that. We hope to include more in another letter the Lord may yet let us write sometime. Again we want you to know we love you so much and are so proud of your maturity and your Christian walk with the Lord.
Freedom can be inconvenient. It can demand things of us we’d rather not give, and demand us to think when we’d rather coast. But it’s better than the alternative.
Noah Webster defined a slave as:
“1. A person who is wholly subject to the will of another; one who has no will of his own, but whose person and services are wholly under the control of another…
“2. One who has lost the power of resistance; or one who surrenders himself to any power whatever; as a slave to passion, to lust, to ambition…”
If we refuse to think, others will do our thinking for us. If we cede our right to conscience, the battle is over. Without the ability to personally decide and act upon what we believe to be right and true, we will be utterly defenseless. What’s “right,” or “politically correct,” will then be what those who rule us determine it to be. This is the logical result of relativism: alternate realities must reconcile somehow, and force is the simple, direct method.
All this is nothing new. The current administration’s slogan may be “Forward,” but it’s leading us down a path rejected centuries ago. Collectivism? State-induced infanticide? That’s so 5th century. Progressives are regressing.
Of course there’s the argument that new civilizations need new methods. But we Americans already vetted and rejected these long ago.
It’s ironic that President Obama would deliver his “You Didn’t Build That” speech in Virginia, because this is where we already put collectivism on trial. It didn’t go so well. The Jamestown colony nearly starved. As Jamestown Secretary Raphe Hamor wrote in a letter in 1614:
“[F]ormerly, when our people were fedde out of the common store and laboured jointly in the manuring of the ground, and planting corne, glad was that man that could slippe from his labour, nay the most honest of them in a generall businesse, would not take so much faithfull and true paines, in a weeke, as now he will doe in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever their harvest prospered, the generall store must maintain them, by which meanes we reaped not so much corne from the labours of 30 men, as three men have done for themselves…”
If a colonist was assured a share in the reapings, why should he break his back bringing it in? The trouble was, not enough food was brought in. Killing the profit motive killed the profit.
As Mr. Hamor further explained:
“Sir Thomas Dale hath taken a new course, throughout the whole Colony, by which meanes, the generall store… shall not be charged with any thing: and this it is, he hath allotted to every man in the Colony, three English Acres of cleere Corne ground, which every man is to mature and tend, being in the nature of Farmers… and they are not called unto any service or labor belonging to the Colony, more then one moneth in the yeere, which shall neither be in seede time, or in Harvest, for which, doeing no other duty to the Colony, they are yearly to pay into the store two barrells and a halfe of Corne: there to be reserved to keep new men… thereby the lives of many shall not onely be preserved, but also themselves kept in strength and heart, able to performe such businesses, as shall be imposed upon them: and thus shall also the former charge be well saved, and yet more businesse effected.”
When a wise Jamestown governor abolished collectivism and put each colonist in charge of his own life, the colony thrived. Over two hundred years later, the Founders encouraged personal ingenuity, for example by placing Article 1, Section 8 in the Constitution. It gives Congress the power “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Instead of creating bloated agencies such as the National Endowment of the Arts or the National Science Foundation which redistribute funds bled from the productive private sector, the Founders created an environment where an individual could protect and benefit from his own ideas.
But, of course, that required that an individual himself be protected. “Intention to abort” was first grounds for conviction in Maryland in 1652, and Virginia classified abortion as murder in 1710. The Declaration of Independence affirms each American’s “right to life,” and throughout American history this was increasingly interpreted as encompassing unborn children. By 1965, abortion was illegal in all 50 states. Roe v. Wade turned the clock backward. We regressed from what we already knew.
In May, 1857 the American Medical Association appointed a Committee on Criminal Abortion. It investigated the causes of criminal abortion and ways to reduce them, presenting three major findings about “this general demoralization”:
“The first of these causes is a widespread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime — a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.
“The second of the agents alluded to is the fact that the profession themselves are frequently supposed careless of foetal life…
“The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being. These errors, which are sufficient in most instances to prevent conviction, are based, and only based, upon mistaken and exploded medical dogmas. With strange inconsistency, the law fully acknowledges the foetus in utero and its inherent rights, for civil purposes; while personally and as criminally affected, it fails to recognize it, and to its life as yet denies all protection.”
After hearing these findings, the Association adopted resolutions “against such unwarrantable destruction of human life.” This remained the official position of the Association until 1970.
How far we’ve fallen. Redistribution is so widespread it’s become commonplace, and on August 1, 2012, the Health and Human Services’s mandate that all insurance companies cover sterilizations, abortifacients, birth control, and abortion took effect.
George Washington’s words ring true today:
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own… The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.”
The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.
When a small band of American colonists took on the world superpower of their day, they didn’t speak from a position of military superiority. They also didn’t cite a Rasmussen poll or make an emotional appeal. They presented the facts: King George III’s actions assaulted God’s laws.
Their actions weren’t based on a moral majority; they were based on a moral authority. This appeal to a higher law is not to be underestimated. The Founders were deeply motivated by a Judeo-Christian worldview which showed that the unchanging God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the definition of all that was good, and that He had revealed absolute truth by embedding it in each person’s soul, and providing a written, unchanging account of His Word. The Founders freely acknowledged the role that Judeo-Christianity played in the framing of this new nation’s laws. As John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” James Wilson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Constitution, said, “Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine… Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”
According to Judeo-Christianity, each person has inherent worth because he is created in God’s image. But because man is fallen, he is not perfectible in this life. God is the ultimate authority, and no man is “above the law.” Anyone’s actions can be weighed against the ideal that God provided. The Founders established a system where all laws were compared to the Constitution, and, ultimately, to the absolute law of God. Americans could pursue a “more perfect” union by studying the ideal God provided for their nature and human systems and work to more closely approach the ideal. The Founders’ understanding of this and their first-hand experience with a tyrant allowed them to build a system that affirmed personal freedom and provided a limited government with separated powers. They gave us something they had not inherited from the Crown: a Constitution.
The words of our Declaration and Constitution were not intended to molder behind glass; they were intended to be read and understood by every American citizen. They can stand up to detailed legal scrutiny, but they can also be grasped by someone who wants to understand the Founders’ original intent. Interpreting the Constitution isn’t a privilege reserved for nine men in black robes; it’s something each of us should do. How else can the policeman, soldier, judge, or President’s oath to uphold the Constitution have any meaning? How can any of us obey a law we don’t understand?
The genius of the Founders’ system is evident, even as we see it crumbling through misuse. A person did not have to be a Jew or a Christian to survive and thrive in America, but he did need to respect the principles that governed the nation’s founding: principles such as the equality of all people before the law, the right to own private property, and the requirement for multiple witnesses to testify in criminal proceedings.
Law was not arbitrary, but purposeful. Laws could be found to be good or bad based on how they compared to the highest law of the land, and the Law of God. Even after many of our leaders ceased to be personally guided by Judeo-Christianity, a latent memory of this worldview maintained the original design of our nation.
All that is changing. Clay and iron are being mixed, and the amalgam is brittle. Various worldviews overlap to a point, but some of their core properties are completely incompatible. One must gain the ascendancy. A battle of worldviews is taking place in America, and it’s unclear which will dominate. Six of the major players are Biblical Judeo-Christianity, Secular Humanism (“liberalism”), Marxism-Leninism (“Leftism”), Cosmic Humanism (“New Age”), Postmodernism, and Islam.
All offer very different approaches to ethics, history, law, theology, and other aspects of a worldview. If Judeo-Christianity offers a bounded sandbox for statecraft, Marxism-Leninism stokes animosities between sandcarriers and sandcrafters, Islam demands a pre-fab home, and Postmodernism questions the existence of sand. Since many of the worldviews deny the very existence of God, they lift up man to the throne of absolute judgment. They see truth not as a fixed ideal, but as an evolving mass, which the more ambitious seek to shape. All have different answers to the question “What is the basic nature of man?” which is why they differ so completely on questions such as the ethics of taxation and redistribution, union lobbies, abortion, and homosexuality. Many worldviews do not see the Constitution as a guide to understand ultimate reality or a protective barrier that applies the truth discovered in a triumph over tyranny, but shackles on human development.
Several key battlegrounds between the worldviews are the education, culture, and politics. The trend in these institutions is not for a person to critically evaluate ideas on their merits, but to find the consensus and conform to it. Our educational system could be a location for the free interchange of ideas, but more often it radically transforms a person’s worldview by making full use of authority structures. The process that began inside the classroom can continue outside, if a person does not critically evaluate the messages of worldviews blazing to them through films, celebrities, and the news feed. Finally, as Sharia Law’s codified dhimmitude so eloquently demonstrates, a person does not have to convert to be manipulated and subjugated. A worldview can dominate others by occupying positions of power, even if its adherents are in the minority. Because the laws of our nation reflect our lawmakers, as the elected officials go, so goes the nation.
If we are to reclaim our nation, we must do what our Founders did. We must compare our laws and our leaders to the ultimate standard, draw our own conclusions, and take action. This country is too precious to surrender.
The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.
Obama’s relationship with African-American voters just got a bit more dysfunctional. This marks the third year he’s been too busy to personally address the National Association of Colored People (NAACP). The best stand-in the White House could provide was Vice President Biden, who emphasized the NAACP’s purpose: “On civil rights, your raison d’etre, the reason for our existence, I want to remind everybody of one thing: Remember, remember what this [organization], at its core, was all about… It was all about the franchise. It was about the right to vote. Because when you have the right to vote, you have the right to change things.” He then claimed that Republicans are threatening this basic right: “[Republicans] see a different future, where voting is made harder, not easier, where the Justice Department is even prohibited from challenging any of those efforts to suppress votes.”
It’s ironic that Vice President Biden would decide to level this charge, given the history of his own party. It is the Democrat party, not the Republican party, that has sought to disenfranchise voters through legal chicanery and, when that fails, outright coercion.
The Republican Party was formed in opposition to slavery. One of its co-founders was Charles Sumner, who in 1865 as a U.S. Senator gave a two-day speech against slavery and was mercilessly clubbed by a pro-slavery, Democratic representative on the Senate floor. Later, in the midst of the Civil War, it was a Republican president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a Republican Congress that passed the Thirteenth Amendment that in 1865 outlawed slavery: all 116 of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress voted for this amendment while only 19 of the 82 Democrats did (and these were the Northern Democrats). Even though the Civil War was over, intense prejudice still existed. As former slave states rejoined the union in the days of Reconstruction, many former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers were present in the Democrat party and not all were content to respect the rights of African-Americans. Congressmen required state legislatures to fully endorse the Thirteenth Amendment in order for their representatives to be reinstated in Congress.
When Southern States adopted Black Codes to intimidate African-Americans, it was a Republican Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It overruled the Dred Scott decision by affirming citizenship for all people born in the U.S., requiring due process in legal matters, and instituting equal protection of all citizens before the law. It was also a Republican Congress that passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 that prohibits any citizen of age from being denied the right to vote, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Together, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments held promise of new opportunities for African-Americans. Practice, however, proved difficult. In 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was an African-American candidate for federal office in Mississippi. He was a Republican, and his political opponents mercilessly disputed his candidacy. Though he was an American, a free man born to free parents, and never enslaved, Mississippi Democrats claimed that he had only been a citizen for two years—from the date that the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in 1868—and thus did not meet the requirement that a U.S. Senator be a citizen for at least nine years before assuming office. Overcoming these objections, on February 25, 1870 Mr. Revels became the first African-American U.S. Senator and the first African-American elected to federal office. He restarted the representation of the state U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis abandoned to join the Confederacy.
The significance of this was not lost on his contemporaries. As fellow U.S. Senator, Republican James Nye from Nevada, said: “Jefferson Davis went out to establish a government whose cornerstone should be the oppression and perpetual enslavement of a race because their skin differed in color from his. Sir, what a magnificent spectacle of retributive justice is witnessed here today! In the place of that proud, defiant man, who marched out to trample under foot the Constitution and the laws of the country he had sworn to support, comes back one of that humble race whom he would have enslaved forever to take and occupy his seat upon this floor.”
Republicans had fought for the right for African-Americans to vote, and African-Americans fought for the right to be elected as Republicans. All seven of the African-Americans elected to federal office in the 41st and 42nd Congresses were Republicans.
Such “uppitiness” was not to be tolerated. If African-Americans could not be kept down through legal disputes, it could be solved in other ways. The antagonism that fueled the Civil War found other outlets–the Ku Klux Klan was born. It served as the domestic terrorist wing of the Democrat party, href=”http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/grant-kkk/” target=”_blank”>targeting Republican voters.
It took the action of former Civil War General U. S. S. Grant and legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to stamp down the KKK.
Even with this action, voter intimidation continued. One thinly veiled threat in a Charleston News and Courier read, “Killing is not always murder, and violations of law are not always a crime. There is an earlier law than the statutes–the law of self-preservation. That law was the guide and master in South Carolina in 1876, and it will be appealed to whenever there is any danger of a return to the vileness of negro rule.” Appealing to the members of the U.S. House in 1882 to defend African-Americans’ right to vote, Republican U.S. Representative and former slave John Lynch said: “They were faithful and true to you then; they are no less so today. And yet they ask no special favors as a class; they ask no special protection as a race. They feel that they purchased their inheritance, when upon the battlefields of this country, they watered the tree of liberty with the precious blood that flowed from their loyal veins. They ask no favors, they desire; and must have; an equal chance in the race of life.” The Republican Party reprinted excerpts from Mr. Lynch’s speech in theirRepublican Campaign Text Book for 1882, and documented voter fraud and intimidation in Democratic strongholds.
As time went on, there were extensive efforts to repeal the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments even in 1900, and the flawed “historical” film “The Birth of a Nation” was used as a recruiting film for the KKK beginning in 1915. This was the first film shown in the White House, thanks to President Woodrow Wilson. Direct quotes from President Wilson’s book “A History of the American People,” appeared throughout the film, such as: “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” President Wilson segregated the federal government and supported a bill that would have made it a felony for a white man to marry a black woman in Washington, D.C. His endorsement of “The Birth of a Nation” allowed its director to stave off onslaughts from the NAACP.
Between 1882 and 1964, 4,743 lynchings were documented in the U.S.–3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites. Many Republican party platforms condemned lynchingsand Republicans and Democrats introduced anti-lynching bills, but the bulk of the Democratic party successfully stamped out each of these bills and did not address lynchings in their party platform. In 1932, more than 75% of the African-American vote went to Herbert Hoover over FDR; FDR won, however. During his four terms in office, the Democrat party took a new stance on racial discrimination, and began to win over African-American voters. FDR’s successor, Harry S. Truman, became the first Democratic president to support pro-African-American policy, and faced intense opposition from the bulk of his own party. Some Democrats joined Eisenhower in his fight for civil rights. Finally, in the 1960s, a Republican Congress advanced civil rights legislation that a Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law.
From FDR’s second term to the present day, a majority of African-American voters have voted Democrat. But this trend is not inevitable. Outspoken African-American conservatives such as Allen West, Deneen Borelli, and Thomas Sowell are showing that the legacy of African-Americans such as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington is alive and well.
Thomas Sowell’s advice on regaining the African-American vote is to boldly show African-Americans the alternatives open to them. This is exactly what Mitt Romney did this week in his address to the NAACP: “When it comes to education reform, candidates cannot have it both ways – talking up education reform, while indulging the same groups that are blocking reform. You can be the voice of disadvantaged public-school students, or you can be the protector of special interests like the teachers unions, but you can’t be both. I have made my choice: As president, I will be a champion of real education reform in America, and I won’t let any special interest get in the way.”
African-Americans have a long and powerful political history. As they become better acquainted with it, their view of the Democrat Party and their place in it may change. If African-Americans look elsewhere for a political home, we must ensure they find a viable alternative.
The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.
When retired Navy SEAL Kevin Lacz was asked why he decided to become a SEAL, he said: “It’s an easy question. I wanted to be one of the best of the best. I knew I’d always be in good company. I wanted to serve my country, and I thought the best way I could do it was to be a SEAL. It was the best decision I could make, and I’m really proud of it, and I’m really proud of the people I was able to serve with.”
The courage of the men and women of our armed forces is inspiring. Serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, they fight a primitive yet postmodern ideology that encourages its adherents to endanger civilians, sacrifice themselves and others as homicide bombers, carry out random acts of violence using improvised explosive devices, continually indoctrinate even children religiopolitically, and engage in psychological warfare—all in the name of Allah.
Fighting such an ideology in remote and desolate regions poses a significant challenge; fighting entrenched antipathy here at home poses another. Two generations ago actors such as Jimmy Stewart ran bombing raids on and off the screen, but today the mainstream media, and Hollywood in particular often marginalize the military, reclassifying heroes as victims (“Stop Loss”), brutes (“Badland”), or both (“Brothers”). In the news media, military casualties instead of military successes are emphasized—when the wars are mentioned at all.
Our men and women in uniform deserve better. They have sacrificed security, comfort, and so much more to defend this nation, and the least we can do is to show our gratitude. Veterans Day offers one opportunity to do this, but that leaves 364 more days a year to thank the mothers, fathers, brothers, and friends serving in the armed forces.
One way to do this is by taking part in Troopathon, an annual effort to support the troops by sending care packages. The organizers of Troopathon plan to raise more $500,000 between now and July 12th—in spite of ”hacktivist” attacks on their website. $25 sends one care package to one soldier or sailor, and $1,000 does the same for up to 60 soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen. To find out about all of the available options, see the Troopathon donation page.
Films such as Act of Valor are storming the media battlefront, and we must join in on the action. It’s up to us to show the 49,800 troops in Iraq, and 102,200 in Afghanistan that we stand with them.
As Rush Limbaugh has said, “I’ve talked with these guys in Afghanistan. The opportunity to tell them how much they’re loved and appreciated despite how they’re portrayed in the media at the time and how much they’re really respected was an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up.
“What you’re doing for them, sending these care packages, a lot of people think the government takes care of all that for them. And they don’t. It’s impossible for the military to do for everybody what you guys are doing.”
The following was originally published on the Howard County Right to Life blog.
On January 22, 2012, community members from across Howard County gathered at the courthouse in Kokomo, Indiana to remember the unborn children claimed by abortion. Mr. Bill Federer, a historian, author, and President of Amerisearch, spoke about the Christian roots of our nation and the God-given mandate to care for all humans.
Mr. Federer began with a look at the changes in America over the last three decades: “I look at the Scriptures: Deuteronomy 28. It says, ‘These are the blessings if a nation hearkens to the voice of the Lord. They will be a lender and not a debtor. And these are the curses if a nation does not hearken to the voice of the Lord: they will be a debtor and a stranger amongst them will rise up and be their ruler.’
“Do you realize in the last thirty years America has gone from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation? We are the most in-debt nation in world history. So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re on the judgement side of the page.
“What has happened in the last thirty years? Well, we have aborted millions of children. And the same thing that God told Cain [applies today]: ‘Your brother Abel’s innocent blood cries out from the ground.’ There’s a cry that’s going up to Heaven and I believe that what’s staying the hand of judgement is us: is you and me, here.”
He then looked back at the U.S. during the days of slavery, when we were also under judgement. Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, said:
“Fondly we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil should be sunk and every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by a drop of blood drawn by the sword, let it be said: The judgements of the Lord are altogether true and righteous.”
As Mr. Federer pointed out, “Here’s Lincoln. He had the audacity to connect the judgement of the war with the sin of slavery. Is anybody going to connect the dots today?”
History provides more than cautionary tales, however. Mr. Federer relates how President Lincoln lead a national day of fasting and praying, and three days later the course of the Civil War was staggeringly altered.
This course is open to us today: “You are here because you’re stirred in your heart to leave your nice, warm home and come here and stand in the cold because there’s something burning on the inside of you: a flame that’s strong that says I’ve got to do something for our country.”
“I was with Alan Keyes last week. We were talking about the Constitution and he explained that the judge that gave the Roe v. Wade decision said if it could ever be proved that the unborn are considered by our Constitution to be citizens, then this decision is void. And Alan Keyes says, ‘I found it. I found where the unborn are mentioned in our Constitution.’
“I said, ‘Wow! Where?'”
“He says, ‘In the Preamble. It says, “To secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we establish this Constitution.”‘
“Posterity. What’s posterity? Well, those are your descendants that you’ll never meet. Well, if you’re going to care about these descendants that are generations in the future, you’re going to care about the ones that are just one generation in the future. You’re going to care about the ones that are right there in the womb about to be the next generation in the future. You’re going to care about the unborn.
“Our Founders sacrificed their prosperity for their posterity. They pledged their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor for a generation yet unborn. Today our government is doing the opposite. We’re sacrificing our posterity for prosperity, saddling the unborn with an unpayable debt–besides killing the unborn.
“George Washington, in 1776, stands before his army and he says, “The fate of unborn millions now depends on the courage of this army. We have to resolve therefore to either conquer or die.”
Though the lives of heroes loom large above our mind’s eye, Mr. Federer reminded the crowd assembled that God has placed them here on earth at this time for a reason, and thought forward to the day when our lives are over and we’re listening to the heroes of the Bible tell their life stories.
“One by one, Gideon, the Apostle Paul, and Deborah–all of them [are going to tell their stories]–and then everybody’s going to look at you and say, ‘You: we haven’t heard from you yet! What did you do when it was your turn to be on earth? Tell us what was going on… all the courage and faith you had to stand against injustice and [stand] up for righteousness.’
“Y’know, I don’t want to squirm in my seat and say, ‘Uh, can you call on someone else for a minute and let me think about this?’
“No, I want to say, ‘Let me tell you what they were doing! They were killing babies, they were changing marriage, they were doing everything and I said I’m going to stand up. I don’t know all the stuff they know. I just have my little sling. I’m just going to let the Lord use me.’ Y’know, if anybody’s around when I die, I’ll tell them to put on my gravestone, ‘Not ability, but availability.’ Y’know, you make yourself available and the Lord’ll add the ability. So I look forward to the day that we’re all up there and you get to tell your story and we’ll remember together being here this day.”
For more information about the events at the rally, see this article by Splash!Kokomo. For more of Mr. Federer’s research into the history, see www.americanminute.com.
Where were you when the Twin Towers were attacked? I was playing music on my keyboard in my room when my mom urgently called me downstairs. My mom, sister and I watched the breaking news on TV: a building in New York City had been hit by a plane and had caught on fire. Smoke and flames were billowing from its side, and the commentators were speculating on its structural integrity and the safety of the buildings surrounding it. I was absolutely confused: what were these Twin Towers? What had caused the plane to crash?
Then the second tower was attacked. The whole dynamic changed. This was no freak accident. You could come up with a hundred explanations for how one plane could spiral out of control, but two, on the same day, in the same location? It was impossible.
Fear and uncertainty swirled in my brain. Who could possibly have done this? And why?
Then I thought about the people inside the buildings. In my naivete, I truly believed everyone was evacuating the building as we watched. After all, I lived in rural Indiana, and the largest building I’d ever been would hardly have taken more than 10 minutes to clear. The reality didn’t sink in until I saw people jumping from the buildings. In a moment my horror that these people would commit suicide instead of evacuating was replaced by the realization that they were taking the last desperate chance available to them.
Thinking back through the events of that day, I’m struck by how absolutely unprepared we were. American children today have grown up with TSA restrictions, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and most of all an awareness of the hatred many Islamists have for their country and for them. By contrast, I was born during a time of peace. When my family flew, friends and family could accompany us to the boarding gate. I never had even heard the word “terrorist” until 9/11, and I thought everyone loved America.
Our national naivete played directly into the hands of the Islamists who meant us harm. We never imagined that anyone would want to use our transportation system against us, or would be willing to brutally use planeloads of innocent men, women, and children to murder their fellows.
Yet even amid the tragedy of 9/11, the mercy of God stands in bold relief. Not every plane struck its target that day. As the Islamists lost their element of surprise, quick-thinking men such as Todd Beamer were able to subvert their plans.
Yet the loss of life is staggering. 2,996 people died that day: 19 murderers and their 2,977 victims. All the victims were civilians except for 55 Pentagon personnel. The victims on the planes were taken by surprise, and were conscripted into a plan of terror that no sane person could ever have anticipated.
As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, let us remember those who lost their lives in the attacks on the Twin Towers. Let us also remember all those who have sacrificed their lives to defend our great nation in the days since 9/11.
May the God of all comfort comfort us in our time of need, and encourage us in our fight against Islamism.