Let's Get Real About the Crisis Facing America

It's About God

As we all watch the financial crisis with a mixture of horror and disbelief and bewilderment, it’s enough to make serious people cringe when our leaders step up to a ritualistic denunciation of greed and dishonesty. Serious people sense something a little bigger is going on here. There is, and let’s be blunt.

What we’re witnessing is an all-out attempt to destroy the idea of individual freedom and responsibility under God—as embodied by the American system of government, and as undergirded and permeated by Judeo-Christian values. It is precisely because the heart of humanity senses this all-out attack—and fears that it is succeeding—that the current crisis has been so severe and worldwide.

This is the danger we are facing, and if we fail to recognize it and shape our response accordingly, financial harm will be the least of our troubles. _______________________

The human actors in this drama do have names, and we have to name them in order to deal effectively with it. But the actors in and of themselves are not the entirety of the problem; it’s their thinking. The actors will come and go, but unless the thinking is addressed and hopefully changed or at least rejected, we will remain in danger.

The process of naming names inevitably invokes the thought that what follows is mere side-taking in a vigorous but ultimately not particularly consequential, every-four-years political debate. That thought is way off the mark. Unfortunately, it is a measure of just how ensnared our age is in spiritual stupor that in the pious rush to be non-partisan, non-judgmental, non-critical, and tolerant of everything, we fail to see that we are eroding our ability to know the difference between good and evil, and declining to choose good over evil. Nothing is more consequential than knowing the difference between good and evil, and choosing good.

The names to be confronted are Islam, George Soros, Modern-day Liberalism, William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Barack Obama. The named individuals are not evil; the thinking they represent is. It has to be seen as evil in order to be exposed and avoided.

Islam

The theology of Islam proclaims Muhammad as the final prophet of God, and Muhammad’s concept of Allah as the only true God. The theology of Islam approves violence toward infidel unbelievers; it approves the oppression of women. Anyone who actually reads the Koran or the hadith knows this. It is willful blindness to assert that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’. The notion that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are reconcilable through a common heritage of ‘the God of Abraham’ is borne of ignorance or naiveté. The Allah who is patterned after the personality, passion and impulse of Muhammad is not the loving God of Christianity. What God is, and what people think God is, has a very direct bearing on how they behave, on how they view ‘law’ and ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘government’. The American system of government could not possibly have emerged out of Islamic theology. Islam is in direct conflict with the American system of government and its Judeo-Christian underpinnings. We’re going to have to choose which one we’re going to live under.

George Soros

George Soros is a billionaire financial speculator who was behind the near breaking of the Bank of England in the 1990’s. He is a Hungarian-born Jewish refugee who witnessed and ultimately escaped the horrors of Nazi Germany during World War II. More than one commentator has noted that Soros’ experience led him to conclude that the best society is the so-called “open society” where the supreme value is ‘anything goes’ and that he must do all he can to bring down societies based on religion and moral guidelines tied to religion. As one American Thinker commentator put it: “[George Soros’ ideology] espouse[s] man as supreme, especially over God. [It] depend[s] upon internationalism over the nation-state concept. [It] require[s] the destruction of individual cultures and traditions. [It] demand[s] a tyrannical tolerance for every idea being treated in absolute equal fashion.

[He envisions a world where] both Judaism and Christianity would simply cease to have the slightest significance. That's the world he has been trying to build ever since. (bold and italics added)

George Soros is the overwhelmingly largest financier behind moveon.org and a variety of other left-wing political groups that seek to implement his anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian agenda. [Brushfires update in February 2009—Note the next two sentences] There is not at this stage clear evidence of his involvement in precipitating or exacerbating the current financial crisis. There is, however, evidence of his deliberate orchestration of an earlier financial crisis of international magnitude, and there is zero doubt that if the current crisis results in major steps toward socialism and collectivism in America (nationalization of banks and other industries), and an increase in reliance on government in place of God, his agenda is being served.

Modern-day Liberalism

Decades ago, the word ‘liberal’ generally referred to attitudes and ideas promotive of political and economic freedom. But the concept has shifted radically. Whittaker Chambers, a man who understood communism’s oppression of freedom and its effect on the human spirit, zeroed in on what corrupted the idea of liberalism: the mistake of believing the definition and promotion of political and economic freedom is the province of man to the exclusion of God.

In describing the argument of the communist, Chambers wrote: "if man's mind is the decisive force in the world, what need is there for God?" He correctly noted that the core struggle between communism and the free world was a struggle between "those who reject and those who worship God."

But even if Whittaker Chambers was among the most prominent modern era observers who correctly identified the man vs. God conflict, and even if George Soros is a modern-day voice for the ideology of man as supreme over God, this conflict is not a new issue to humankind. St. Paul had already spotted this type of thinking and rebuked it, calling it the ‘carnal mind’ that is ‘enmity against God’. But as this thought of man as supreme over God has subtly but forcefully spread, its effect is to argue that human government can be the substitute for God. It encourages man’s faith to be in government and men (and women) rather than God, and seeks to inject human opinion to supplant God’s laws of righteousness and moral living.

Why does all this matter? Because human-government-as-god rejects God as God. A central question underlying the upcoming election is whether more government control is the solution to the crisis. But will there ever be a time when giving more power to human-government-as-god is better than turning to God as God?

William Ayers

William Ayers is an admitted and unrepentant terrorist who openly proclaims his hatred of America and what it stands for even today, and demonstrated that hate in the 1960’s by planting bombs at the Pentagon, the Capitol, and at New York City police headquarters, and at the home of the judge presiding over his trial. He sought to kill Pentagon employees—whether military or civilian—and succeeded in killing New York City police officers. He despises American ideals of individual freedom and responsibility under God; he is an atheist who even now is active in pushing educational ‘reform’ that would teach his view of the basis for agitating and ultimately overthrowing the American system of government. His wife and partner in terrorism, Bernadine Dohrn, publicly encouraged children to kill their parents as part of the revolutionary overthrow of American society.

William Ayers is a 20 year friend and activist colleague of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. Barack Obama launched his political career in 1995 at an event held in the living room of William Ayers’ home. The two of them worked together for seven years on the board of a charitable organization.

Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah Wright is a preacher of black liberation theology—a Marxist political ideology that teaches, among other things, that Jesus was black, the Romans and Jews were white, and Jesus’ mission was all about overthrowing oppression by white people. He has publicly preached “God damn America!”; he has publicly labeled America as “the US of KKK A”; he has publicly preached hatred of whites and Jews. Black liberation theology is, to be as gentle as possible, a gross distortion of Christianity. Barack Obama was a 20 year parishioner of Jeremiah Wright’s church; he has called Jeremiah Wright his spiritual advisor and mentor. Jeremiah Wright presided over Barack Obama’s wedding and the baptism of his children.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s father was a Kenyan Muslim. His stepfather was an Indonesian Muslim. Barack Obama attended an Islamic school as a child in Indonesia. He has studied the Koran, has attended Muslim mosques and has attended for 20 years Jeremiah Wright’s church of black liberation theology. He has proclaimed himself a Christian and speaks of his Christian faith (at least, he does so when reminded by George Stephanopoulos).

We all rightfully proclaim the inability to know what is in another’s heart and therefore refrain from any conclusion as to what another’s faith really is. But based on the visible record, Barack Obama looks to be a man of little faith in anything except his own exalted view of himself. Islam and Judaism and Christianity are for the less erudite among us; for him, they are props and tools for him to chat knowledgeably about and posture with as necessary to achieve the goal of power.

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Often our instinct is to find ways to apologize for or forgive or look the other way or hope for the best as it relates to people like Soros, Ayers, Wright, and Obama. Many hold on to the hope and belief that conservative vs. liberal is ‘just politics’, and America will always survive and prosper and we can all get along if we just have leaders to ‘reach across the partisan divide’ (both Bushes and, unfortunately, John McCain, epitomize this thinking). And we want desperately to dismiss concerns about Islamic theology, so we take comfort in pointing to the fact that many individual Muslims are decent, mild-mannered people who do not embrace the violent teachings of Islam.

But all these reactions ignore the big picture of what all of this represents. The unifying themes of Islamic theology, of the thinking of Soros, Ayers, Wright and Obama, and of Modern-day Liberalism are hatred of America, hatred or disdain for Judeo-Christian values, hatred and rejection of God in favor of human-government-as-god, hatred of the central concept of individual freedom and responsibility under God. Such hatred does not foster the survival and prosperity of America; it seeks the destruction of America.

And all of this hatred is nearing occupancy of the American Presidency; the leadership position of the free world—indeed, of the world itself.

This is the danger we are facing. The collapsing economy is a symptom, not a cause.

Do we have the moral courage to speak up and stand up for our American system, our foundational Judeo-Christian values—for the idea of individual freedom and responsibility under God that is so central to our way of life? The first step is a wholesale rejection of Obama and the liberal Democrats on November 4. Will we do it?

Paul Gable

Written October 2008; posted February 10, 2009