Paul Kengor is a professor of political science and the executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Paul Kengor is the author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007) and The Communist — Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink 2012).
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007). His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).
The most frustrating thing I've dealt with in professional life was eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith. Even when Bush was simply asked about his faith, and responded with utterly benign statements, like saying he couldn't imagine surviving the presidency "without faith in the Lord," or noting he prayed before committing troops, echoing every president from Washington to Lincoln to Wilson to Carter to Clinton, he was viciously assaulted.
"We are dealing with a messianic militarist!" thundered Ralph Nader.
"He should not be praying," intoned Lawrence O'Donnell to the MSNBC faithful.
Repeatedly, I was called to respond to this nonsense. My retort was agonizingly simple: I merely ran through example after example of American Founders, presidents -- Democrats and Republicans -- saying either precisely what Bush said or something far more extreme, like Woodrow Wilson claiming God called upon him to found the League of Nations, or FDR mounting a battleship leading troops in a rendition of "Onward Christian Soldiers."
What I said rarely mattered. Every Bush mention of God was a signal, somehow, that this Bible-quoting "simpleton" was trying to transform America into a "theocracy."
Alas, there was another tactic I used: I quoted current Democrats on the campaign trail, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, invoking the Almighty. I knew that if these politicians reached the White House, they'd say the same as Bush, or much more -- with no backlash from the secular media. Quite the contrary, liberals would roll out the red carpet, enthusiastically welcoming faith into the public square.
All of that is prelude to my point here today:
The Religious Left, from "social justice" Catholic nuns and Protestant ministers to the Democratic Speaker of the House and president of the United States, have been incessantly claiming God's advocacy of their healthcare reform. That's no surprise, just as it's no surprise that the press is not only not outraged but silently supportive. There's nary a whimper, let alone howls, of "separation of church and state"!
Consider a few examples, most telling in light of passage of the healthcare bill:
Last August, President Obama addressed a virtual gathering of 140,000 Religious Left individuals. He told them he was "going to need your help" in passing healthcare. Obama penitently invoked a period of "40 Days," a trial of deliverance from conservative tormentors, from temptation by evildoers. He lifted up the brethren, assuring them, "We are God's partner in matters of life and death."
Like a great commissioning, in the 40 Days that followed the Religious Left was filled with the spirit, confidently spreading the word, pushing for -- among other things -- abortion funding as part of an eternally widening "social justice" agenda. The Religious Institute, which represents 4,800 clergy, urged Congress to include abortion funding in "healthcare" reform, adamantly rejecting amendments that prohibited funding. To not help poor women secure their reproductive rights was unjust, declared the progressive pastors. As the Rev. Debra Hafner, executive director of the Religious Institute, complained, federal policy already "unfairly prevents low-income women and federal employees from receiving subsidized" abortions.
Here we see the Religious Left's continued perversion of "social justice." Behold: social justice abortions.
Early last week, a group of 59 nuns sent Congress a letter urging passage of the healthcare bill. This came in direct defiance of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which insisted the bill "must be opposed" because of its refusal to explicitly ban abortion funding. What the bishops said didn't matter, one nun told Fox's Neil Cavuto -- supporting the bill is what "Jesus would do."
The liberal media cheered on the nuns, gleefully exaggerating the sisters' influence. In a breathtaking display, the Los Angeles Times beamed, "Nuns' support for healthcare bill shows [Catholic] Church split." Quoting the nuns, the Times reported that the letter represented not more than 50 nuns but over 50,000. Like Jesus with the loaves, the militantly secular/liberal Times had displayed miraculous powers of multiplication.
Finally, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, invoked the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on behalf of the healthcare bill. She urged American Catholics to "pray to St. Joseph the Worker." Such overtures are hardly new for Pelosi, who routinely exhorts Democratic disciples to vote the liberal/progressive agenda as an "act of worship."
All of that is prelude, of course, to what happened the evening of March 21, 2010, A.D., with a rare vote not merely on a Sunday -- God's day -- but the final Sunday in Lent, the week before Palm Sunday that initiates the Lord's Passion. To President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Religious Left faithful, Jesus, presumably, has gotten his healthcare package.
Amid that process, secular liberals got religion, as their political soulmates spearheaded this "change" in the name of Jesus Christ. It's a quite radical departure from eight years of scourging George W. Bush every time he confessed he prayed. At long last, there is room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior "supports" a certain agenda. Who says conversions don't happen?
This spring 2010 marks some sordid anniversaries: 65 years since the discovery of the Nazi concentration camps that facilitated the slaughter of six million Jews and four million various others deemed "misfits" and "undesirables" by Hitler and his henchmen.
The ugly footage of corpses left behind is a visual reminder of the in-your-face insanity and inhumanity of Nazi fascism. Yet, less obvious is how seamlessly that form of totalitarianism was supplanted by another, one that haunted the scene even longer. For much of Europe in the spring of 1945, an Iron Curtain quickly descended across the continent, as Central and Eastern Europe was again gobbled up, this time by vicious Soviets who replaced vicious Nazis.
That changing of the guard took place at the level of the soldiers, the secret police, the local officials, and, yes, even the concentration camps themselves.
Consider: When Hitler's goons fled the concentration camps at the site of Allied guns in the spring of 1945, it was left to the Allies -- the United States, the United Kingdom, and the USSR -- to grapple with what they suddenly confronted. Once the survivors were freed and carefully transported, what would the Allies do with the camps?
For nations like America and Britain, steeped in Judeo-Christian notions of fairness and justice, the options for the camps ranged from the legal, meaning document them as evidence of Nazi war crimes for the Nuremberg trials, to the theological: exorcise them.
For the USSR, however, the next step was a no-brainer: use the camps. Indeed, fling the doors open and get 'em back in business. The Communists were not about to waste a perfectly functional, German-built concentration camp. If the Soviet system knew how to do one thing, it was to collectivize and redistribute squalor and death.
In truth, that unique Soviet solution ought not to be a surprise, as totalitarians like Vladimir Lenin had not only constructed similar facilities but had used the phrase "concentration camp" two decades before Hitler appropriated the term. Lenin's replacement, Joe Stalin, had annihilated tens of millions in such camps well before Hitler ramped up.
Thus, in the spring of 1945, the Russians saw an opening at the Nazi camps, tailor-fit to Communist ideology.
A crass case in point was Buchenwald, one of the more infamous Nazi camps, where hundreds of thousands had been incarcerated and upwards of 50,000 perished, some in the most sadistic fashion, from Jews who were gassed to priests who were crucified upside down. Americans liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.
Not long thereafter, Buchenwald (located near Weimar, Germany) ended up in the Soviet zone of occupation. Knowing how to run a concentration camp, the Russians were eager to crank the wheels -- especially on Germans now at their feet rather than at their throat. For Stalin, Beria, Molotov, and a disturbingly high number of malicious colonels and lieutenants and common soldiers, it was payback time. Payback would be done according to Lenin's definition of morality: there is no morality, except that which furthers Soviet interests.
A witness to this poisonous worldview was a 22-year-old American citizen named John Noble, who lived in the Weimar area and got caught in the crossfire. He observed Red Army soldiers ransacking his neighborhood, rounding up innocents, and imbibing in special displays of depravity toward women: "In the house next to ours," Noble told Laurence Rees in Rees' outstanding book, World War II Behind Closed Doors,
Soviet troops went in and pulled the women out on the street, had mattresses that they pulled out, and raped the women. The men had to watch, and then they were shot. Right at the end of our street a woman was tied to a wagon wheel and was terribly misused.
The poor souls who survived this torment were shipped to various German-turned-Soviet hellholes for long-term incarceration. Noble was tossed into Buchenwald, which was conveniently renamed Soviet Special Camp No. 2.
The story of Buchenwald under Nazi management is bad enough; it was reproduced from Auschwitz to Dachau. But the 20th century is rich in unforgettable lessons. Among them, the world would do well to remember that Buchenwald was liberated only temporarily in 1945. Its demons did not rest, ready to leap into a new set of vessels. Stalinism provided them by the tank load.
Buchenwald and its ilk are cold, gray markers of the menace of totalitarianism. It is a headstone standing astride the 20th century like a giant grim reaper, robbing the world of 50 million lives in World War II and 100 million more under Communist regimes -- unprecedented carnage. It's an old story, a familiar evil, one born of an ancient source that every generation must be prepared to meet and defeat.
I'm not one to bother with the latest alleged blockbuster buzzing from the salons of Hollywood high culture. Over the course of two valuable hours, I can only take so many car chases, explosions, and run-of-the-mill depravity. Alas, I had a welcome respite from all of that last weekend when I joined a crowd of about 700 at Grove City College's Crawford Auditorium for a special screening of the newly released "The Perfect Game," made possible by Jim Van Eerden, a wonderful, talented man who graduated from Grove City College over two decades ago and who is the film's executive producer.
I will not attempt to don the hat of critic, assessing various esoteric elements of the work as "film." There were, however, some things that really stood out as I watched this moving story -- things in keeping with my normal hat as an observer of faith, politics, and history.
The movie is based on the true story of nine boys from Monterrey, Mexico, who made it all the way to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1957, where they won the legendary Little League World Series, and by no less than a perfect game tossed by pitcher Angel Macias. They were led by the inspiring tandem of a coach named Cesar Faz and a priest named Padre Estaban.
I saw a movie that should appeal to both sides of the political fence and, spiritually speaking, to an even wider audience.
Of course, this isn't a political movie. The message is one of faith and hope, a general principle that applies to every member of the human race. Nonetheless, here's a movie that liberals and conservatives alike can applaud. It embodies the American dream, pursued by poor Mexican kids, who struggle to make it out of their village, over the border, and across America, from Corpus Christi to Kentucky to I-80. They persevere on hard work and prayer. They endure the ugliness of the segregated South. They are underdogs, discriminated against, as are the African-Americans they encounter, not to mention the female sportswriter who follows them.
From a faith perspective, the movie is warmly ecumenical. The boys are first shepherded by their devoted priest, who blesses everything from Holy Communion to baseball gloves. When the priest returns to the parish mid-way through the boys' successful run, the team is fostered by another fatherly spiritual mentor: an African-American Baptist preacher, who encourages the boys and offers selfless service, as does his lovable wife. Intercessors range from Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Book of Psalms.
The movie's unafraid, unapologetic commitment to faith is splendid. It is commitment, frankly, that risks the wrath of the apostles of American secular culture. This will be the film's highest hurdle in achieving popular acclaim. Hey, so be it.
Yet, what most impressed me was the film's faithfulness to truth and history.
How many times have you watched a movie intended to inspire, that deals with a certain era, and find no mention of faith? You sense, given your knowledge of the way things used to be, that a church, a minister, a devout parent, a Sunday school teacher had to have been involved somewhere. You do a little research, only to find it was indeed a matter of faith that propelled the hero to greatness. And yet, tragically, the post-modern mavens expunged this "faith angle" from the script. It was just too "religious."
Instead, then, the final product is, in reality, a deceptive perversion of truth -- and not worthy of inspiration. The creators airbrushed the Creator who, in point of fact, made the entire drama possible to begin with. That's another kind of game: a quite imperfect one, a form of cinematic and historical fraud, produced by a dominant culture that violates trust.
Mercifully, that isn't what happened with "The Perfect Game." Here was a crew -- from writers to producers -- that spoke the truth. Truth was valued and honored. Whatever else you might say about the movie, from technical merits to some pretentious, impressive-sounding mumbo-jumbo, that's an artistic achievement as special as a perfect game. *
"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." --George Washington
Paul Kengor is professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from V & V, a website of the Center for Vision & Values. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007). His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).
Twice in this space last summer, I wrote about Iran -- specifically, the dramatic June protests against the theocratic-totalitarian regime of Holocaust-denying despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. More than that, I focused on President Obama's reaction to the Iranian cry for freedom.
Obama's initial response was outrageous. It improved only after widespread criticism. Still, even given the improvement in his rhetoric, it was a telling display of our new president's tragic lack of recognition of what presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush termed the "March of Freedom."
I concluded those articles by emphasizing the need for Obama to employ the bully pulpit of the presidency to promote this vital groundswell of freedom in Iran. I noted how Reagan had done precisely that in places like Poland in the 1980s, with grand historical results. For Obama, this means not simply reacting to occasional incidents in Iran -- when they rarely present themselves -- but to be proactive, creative, to regularly call out the tyrants and encourage the dissidents. Obama must do this if he wants to push the freedom tide, if he wants to try to change the status quo in a dungeon like Iran, which for 30 years has been the world's worst terrorist state.
If I may, I'd like to offer a specific example from the Reagan playbook. It happened 28 years ago -- Christmas time -- this week. You will not hear about it in our public schools and liberal universities. That's a loss for liberals, too; they're missing a moving lesson that their guy -- President Obama -- could benefit from considerably.
The moment was December 1981. In the Evil Empire, "church watchers" were on duty, sitting in chapels monitoring the "stupid people" entering to worship. The Communist "war on religion" (Mikhail Gorbachev's apt description) was in full riot, as was the ugliness of Communist repression generally.
The prospects for shining light upon that darkness seemed bleak. The Soviets were on the march, having added 11 proxy states as allies since 1974. The new man in Washington, President Ronald Reagan, was sure he could reverse Moscow's surge. He would jump-start the process in Poland, a repressed Communist Bloc state -- but one where hope survived.
Just then, on December 13, the lights went out again. At midnight, as a soft snow fell on Warsaw, secret police raided Lech Walesa's Solidarity labor union. The Polish Communist government, consenting to orders from Moscow, declared martial law. Solidarity's freedom fighters were shot or imprisoned.
But as Poles prayed for light to pierce the shadows, some remarkable things began to transpire. A week and a half later, the Polish ambassador defected to the United States. Right away, President Reagan welcomed the ambassador and his wife into the Oval Office. They were overwhelmed. The ambassador's wife wept, as Vice President George H. W. Bush put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her.
The ambassador then made an extraordinary request:
May I ask you a favor, Mr. President? Would you light a candle and put it in the window tonight for the people of Poland?
Ronald Reagan rose and walked to the second floor, lit a candle, and put it in the White House window.
But Reagan wanted to do more. He saw a window of opportunity. So, on December 23, with Christmas only two days away, speaking to all of America in a nationwide address, the president connected the spirit of the season with events in Poland: "For a thousand years," he told his fellow Americans:
. . . Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.
The president then took a remarkable liberty: He asked Americans that Christmas to light a candle for freedom in Poland.
It was a significant gesture, for Poland, for America, for a free world. Poles heard about it, and took it to heart; they talk about it still today.
What does this have to do with President Obama and Iran? Everything. To wit: How about doing something similar for Iranians today? Why not light a candle as a sign of hope for Iran's freedom fighters? If not a candle, then something -- some kind of overt public display.
Would such an action offend the Iranian leadership? Of course -- just as the light of day and light of truth repels a vampire.
The point, again, is for the American president to be proactive, creative, encouraging, to advance positive change. He can make these simple but profound gestures even as he proceeds with his domestic agenda. Reagan did.
Of course, there's an interesting juxtaposition: Both domestically and in foreign policy, Reagan sought to remove power from the state and transfer it to the individual -- whether through tax cuts for Americans or through undermining the Communist totalitarianism shackling Poles. Obama is looking to empower the state domestically, while not undermining the theocratic totalitarianism shackling Iranians. It's an instructive contrast.
And so, President Obama, I go back to my conclusion in my earlier articles: If you want to employ America as that light, as that beacon of freedom, then get going.
Bring a flicker of hope to freedom's dungeon. Shine it into the terror state of Iran.
Of course, proclaiming liberty to the captives means desiring it to be so. A proclaimer must first be a believer. Like Reagan, and, yes, like George W. Bush, you need to believe in the American ideal -- in the heart, the soul, the gut. You need to believe, as Ronald Reagan did, that America is less a place than an idea. Is Obama a believer? I said six months ago that time will tell. So far, the story isn't promising.
America honors its deceased presidents, its fallen troops, its late senators, and even its musicians and movie stars. But what about its veterinarians?
Well, there's one veterinarian who deserves pause for recognition. His name was Nels Konnerup. He recently passed away at age 92.
Born in Everett, Washington, on December 4, 1916, Konnerup was shaped by the crucible of the Great Depression. He survived it the old-fashioned, American way: faith and family, himself and his parents, hard work, rugged individualism. For the remainder of his life, he would lament Americans' slow surrender of responsibility from the self to the federal government.
Konnerup put himself through college at Washington State University. His subsequent contributions were numerous, with a resume of rich distinctions, including uniquely valuable service during the Cold War.
While many players fought for freedom during the Cold War -- ambassadors and admirals, soldiers and secretaries of defense -- Konnerup served the way he knew best: veterinary medicine. Circling the globe at a rate of 50,000 miles per year, he developed remarkable methods for pest control that saved the crucial livestock that fed billions from Asia to Africa to Central America.
In China from 1946-47, Konnerup boosted Chiang Kai-Shek's attempts to prevent Mao Tse-Tung from transforming the world's most populous nation into a giant killing field. He arrived with thousands of doses of vaccine for Rinderpest, a cattle disease with very high mortality. He quickly discovered a fatal problem missed by the bureaucrats in Washington: the lack of refrigeration at Chinese villages and farms. On the spot, Konnerup developed a clever method for preservation and delivery of the vaccine, applying a "rabbit-adapted attenuated vaccine," which he had been employing in Australia. It worked. He established a vaccine production laboratory in Nanking.
Unfortunately, other factors eventually triumphed in China, as Mao emerged victorious. The Communists kicked out Konnerup and his colleagues -- but kept his vaccine. Of course, they implemented something far more destructive than Rinderpest: Mao's Sinification of Marxism. Through collectivism and wealth redistribution -- a triumph of ignorance that was the antithesis of Nels Konnerup's creativity -- Red China exterminated tens of millions of human beings. Communism slaughtered what Rinderpest could not -- by leaps and bounds.
Konnerup went elsewhere, serving the U.S. government in several capacities. He was a secret weapon in ensuring that Marshall Plan aid to Europe, once delivered, was not eaten by flies and ticks. Think about it: American aid saved a starving post-World War II Europe. At the political and diplomatic level, it was the product of President Harry Truman, of Secretary of State George Marshall, of an isolationist Republican Congress that stepped to the plate and cut a badly needed check to our allies; all of this not only fed Western Europe but kept it out of the throes of Soviet Communism.
And yet, once that vital aid was underway, it would have died if the livestock it sought to replenish were destroyed by disease. Here, too, Nels Konnerup did what he did best: He had responsibility for the health of over 60,000 head of livestock destined to Europe by steamship. No small task -- but one he pulled off.
After that, Konnerup served Douglas MacArthur and the U.S. military government in Japan. Like MacArthur, he also went to the Philippines; there, he helped resolve the malnutrition wreaked by rodent damage. Both Japan and the Philippines were crucial Cold War allies.
In retirement, Konnerup kept his fertile mind busy. He wrote letters to editors and columnists who raised his ire. Somewhat of a curmudgeon, among his pet peeves was the junk science and "flawed sophism" of un-scrutinizing "self-proclaimed and self-anointed environmentalists." He was a man of real science and real environmentalism, not given to the bandwagon. He had little patience for the latest "crisis/emergency" treaty destined to shut down an industry or economy. He was skeptical of the newest claims of Armageddon by partisan politicians, amateur environmentalists, and assorted "nefarious nabobs."
"Let there be integrity in definitions!" urged a frustrated Nels Konnerup.
Alas, an aging Konnerup continued to battle the eternal, insatiable progressive push for centralization and federal-government dependency that had vexed him since the 1930s. A eulogist at his funeral said:
Nels looked forward to the afterlife . . . because he expected to see FDR after he died, and gleefully anticipated poking him in the backside with his pitch fork.
Nels Konnerup died where he began: in his native Washington state. There was no statue erected, no statement from the White House, no obituary in the New York Times, no CNN headline. There were, however, a lot of people, from Berlin to Beijing, who owed their health to this unheralded veteran of the veterinarian sciences, who showed that there are many ways to fight the good fight and serve your Maker. *
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." --James Madison
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from V & V, a website of the Center for Vision & Values. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007). His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).
The death of ten to twenty million people is nothing to be afraid of. --Mao Tse-tung
Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of this humanity. The right to life does not depend . . . on the pleasure of anyone else. --Mother Teresa
I recently wrote about the spectacle of New York's tallest building aglow in red and yellow to commemorate the founding of Mao Tse-tung's People's Republic of China. Oblivious New Yorkers basked in the glow of a leader and nation that killed more people more quickly than any leader or nation in history. Within its first two decades, Mao's Red China annihilated 60-70 million people, exceeding the combined death toll of World Wars I and II.
As I said, I'm not surprised by such horrible historical ignorance. This is what our education system, from K-12 to universities, has taught -- or failed to teach. Besides, Mao was idolized by many of the 1960s leftists who today pervade our culture and politics.
Well, behold another painful exhibit: President Obama's director of communications, Anita Dunn.
Speaking on June 5 at a high-school graduation ceremony at the National Cathedral, Dunn provided the youngsters with some nuggets of wisdom. She cited "two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa."
I know that seems unbelievable. Yet, thanks to the advent of FOXNews, talk-radio, and the web, these things are no longer easily censored by the partisan mainstream media. You can look them up yourself.
Specifically, Dunn's comments were exposed by Glenn Beck on Fox. In response, liberals are attacking not Dunn but Beck. This is sadly predictable, as it has always been anti-Communism that upsets liberals.
It's maddening to have watched the children of the 1960s openly embrace Chairman Mao -- some for 40 years now -- and then, on a dime, cry foul (with the media's backing) when criticized. But so be it.
Dunn has since tried to argue that she was using "irony." Even more lamely, she claims to have borrowed from a comparison she heard from late Republican political strategist Lee Atwater.
In fact, if you actually watch and read Dunn's remarks -- CNN didn't quote them in full -- you'll see she was not being ironic. She was dead serious, going into precise detail on how Mao inspired her.
Almost as if she were describing a political squabble within the Democratic or Republican Party, Dunn spoke of "when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over." She added:
Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. They had the air force. They had everything on their side, and people said [to Mao], "How can you win? How can you do this?"
Therein was the core message in Dunn's parable: Inspiring the youngsters with the tale of Mao's triumph, Dunn said: "Against all the odds . . . Mao Tse-tung said, 'You fight your war, and I'll fight mine."'
Dunn told the graduates to "think about that for a second." As they so meditated, she prodded with this insight: Dunn told the teens that they "don't have to accept" others'definitions. They should not accept "external definitions." No, she told them, standing aside a crucifix, they must set their own definitions. "It is about your choices," Dunn instructed. "You figure out what's right for you."
She told the youngsters to establish their own definitions of what's right and wrong in following their own path.
To be sure, this was indeed Mao Tse-tung's philosophy: Right and wrong is not left to a single, universal authority -- to a Supreme Being -- but to oneself. Each and every human being is his or her own moral arbiter. This explains how Mao killed so many people without bothering his conscience. The Marxist-atheist created his own definitions. He decided it was right to let all those people die in order for him to follow his own path, according to his own definitions.
Of course, Anita Dunn obviously doesn't support killing 60-70 million people. But she does support a morally relativistic philosophy that is hurtful enough on its own. That philosophy, taken to its logical conclusion, allows for the kind of reckless madness advocated by Mao. This is a philosophy that, left to the wrong people -- to evil people like Mao -- can be extremely dangerous.
This is why moral relativism doesn't work, why it is nonsense, and why even its purported advocates rarely support it. (For a great book, see Greg Koukl's Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air) And it is why our schools shouldn't be inviting graduation speakers to deliver such inane messages to wide-eyed youngsters preparing to enter the world.
Alas, needless to say, none of this, from the moral relativism to Maoism, would have found approval from Mother Teresa. As the saintly nun from Calcutta put it, "There is only one God and He is God to all." We are not our own gods. There are external definitions of right and wrong -- set by God, not by ourselves.
That was Mother Teresa's philosophy, and it wasn't Mao's. When is America going to start equipping its youth with truth, both historical and moral? For now, we'll continue to reap what we've sown.
Even CNN was shocked. Even the Obama White House was shocked.
"Only nine months into his presidency," reported a baffled CNN news anchor this morning. "President Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The announcement made jaws drop even at the White House."
When I first heard the news, I thought it was a joke.
The announcement from the Nobel Committee defies belief, even as I've come to expect the inconceivable from the committee. I learned long ago not to take the Nobel Committee seriously. And yet, this gesture far exceeds any previous towering leap of incredulity by the committee.
To be sure, I knew the Nobel Committee would at some point award Barack Obama its hallowed prize. That was a given. But right now, only nine months into Obama's presidency, when Obama himself would surely agree that he cannot name a single foreign policy accomplishment?
Actually, the situation is worse than that: According to news reports, nominations took place eight months ago, only weeks into Obama's presidency.
How could that be? Does this make any sense at all?
It does when you consider what the Nobel Committee has become, and how it operates according to leftist political objectives. The committee has honored Barack Obama in order to make a political statement in support and encouragement of his foreign policy. The committee knows that its award has nothing to do with the absent foreign-policy accomplishments of a presidency not even a year old, or a diplomatic record that doesn't exist. Its purpose is to help Obama pursue the kind of foreign policy favored by the leftists who run the Nobel Committee.
The European-globalists on the committee agree fully with the leaders who heaped praise on Obama during the UN circus weeks ago. They agree with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez that Obama has brought "hope" to the world. They agree with Fidel Castro's hailing Obama's lead on "climate change." They agree with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Obama agrees with him on America's past "ugly behavior." Like Moammar Kaddafi, they wish Obama could be president "forever."
This award is not a statement on what Obama has done but a rubber-stamp approval of his plans for America and the world. The committee wants to lend cover to Obama as he pursues a global course opposed by conservative Republicans back home and his generals and commanders abroad. To be sure, this is the kind of meddling in domestic politics that the Nobel Committee usually decries.
That said, I'm actually quite pleased with this action. Why? Because it further undermines the credibility of the Nobel Committee as an allegedly impartial organization. This further shows that the group is inherently political and unabashedly left-wing. In other words, this gesture has the noble effect of exposing the ignoble Nobel Committee for what it really is.
I would like to offer two quick examples from the very recent past:
In 2002, the Nobel Committee awarded President Jimmy Carter. Personally, I long supported recognizing Carter for negotiating the Camp David Accords, which was a great accomplishment in an otherwise disastrous presidency. And yet, the Nobel Committee waited over two decades to give Carter the prize. It awaited the presidency of George W. Bush, whose foreign policy these liberal Europeans doggedly opposed, as did a very vocal Jimmy Carter.
The committee's decision to finally commend Carter was motivated in large part by its desire to make a statement against Bush. It was a crass political move by the shamelessly partisan committee. It put a dark cloud over Carter's recognition; it stained the prize.
One more example: A decade before Carter, the Nobel Committee honored Mikhail Gorbachev.
Here, too, I think Gorbachev deserves accolades. I'm a conservative who credits Gorbachev for helping to peacefully end the Cold War. Unfortunately, the committee should have given Ronald Reagan a share in that prize. Instead, the committee specifically thanked Gorbachev for taking down the Berlin Wall, an action that Gorbachev had explicitly opposed from the outset -- thus prompting Reagan's Brandenburg Gate speech. What a farce!
And now, in 2009, once again, the Nobel Committee has honored a leader in a blatantly political way -- and in a way that dishonors itself.
Frankly, Obama supporters should be angry. This award, based on transparent political interests, will not be taken seriously. Had the Nobel Committee done this later, Obama's advocates would have something to applaud.
Instead, they will find themselves trying to defend the nonsensical -- or, at least, the left-wing nonsense of the Nobel Committee. *
"[O]f those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1
We would like to thank the following people for their generous support of this journal (from 9/10/09-11/9/09): William D. Andrews, Ariel, David J. Bean, James L. Blilie, Robert M. Buchta, Franklin Buchta, Priscilla L. Buckley, Thomas M. Burt, Dino Casali, David Cole, Walter J. Costello, Maurie Daigneau, Dianne C. DeBoest, Arthur D. Dickson, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Don Dyslin, Irene M. Elkins, Jane F. Gelderman, Hollis J. Griffin, Joyce Griffin, Joyce Griffin, Alene D. Haines, Paul J. Hauser, Hohn H. Hearding, Bernhard Heersink, Jaren E. Hiller, Thomas E. Humphreys, David Ihle, Burleigh Jacobs, Marilyn P. Jaeger, Edgar Jordan, Margaret Kearney, Edward B. Kiolbasa, Rema MacDonald, Woodbridge C. Metcalf, Robert A. Moss, David Norris, Gary J. Pressley, Patrick L. Risch, Philip E. Rosine, Irene L. Schultz, Thomas E. Snee, Leif Solberg, Carl G. Stevenson, Norman Stewart, Robert D. Wells, John V. Westberg, Robert L. Wichterman, James P. Zaluba.
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from V & V, a website of the Center for Vision & Values. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004) and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007). His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).
The late Republican political strategist, Lee Atwater, a brilliant Machiavellian, used to invoke what he called "The Napoleonic Maxim:" Never interfere with the enemy when he's in the process of destroying himself.
If Atwater were alive today, how would he advise conservative Republicans in responding to the "healthcare reform" being pushed by President Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Congress? Would he suggest they do the Machiavellian thing or the moral thing? I'm hearing both options.
Consider the Machiavellian thing: Conservatives, particularly on talk-radio, are in an all-out frenzy to rally Americans to halt "Obama-care," and for good reason. But what happens, politically, if they succeed?
If conservatives succeed in stopping this train-wreck, they may save Barack Obama from himself. They will untie the albatross that could sink his ability to win a second term; ditto for another term by this radical-left Congress. And if Obama is reelected, he can do countless other things they will consider likewise destructive, from taxes to social policy to the courts to foreign policy, often under the radar.
While the analogy isn't perfect, think about the election of the Republican Congress in 1994, which was propelled by President Bill Clinton's early leftward lurch, most evident in Hillary Clinton's 1993-94 attempts to socialize medicine. The public responded by electing the Gingrich Congress. Forced to moderate, a more centrist Bill Clinton emerged, and easily won reelection.
That more moderate second term had some benefits, even producing balanced budgets. But it was a second term that included some terrible things, from partial-birth abortion to court picks that made conservatives cringe, not to mention the sordid impeachment trial.
So, conservatives urging a halt to "Obama-care" should be careful what they wish for: Could they help produce four more years of President Obama? Would that be best for conservatism? Would it be best for America?
That brings me to the counter-argument, raised by several friends of The Center for Vision & Values. Call it the "moral thing:" If the Obama-Reid-Pelosi plan is as bad as it seems, then, indeed, the higher priority ought to be to stop the Europeanization of our healthcare system -- to avoid unnecessarily revolutionizing the world's best healthcare system.
Since 2003, Barack Obama has openly advocated a "single-payer universal healthcare program," repeatedly and explicitly, as have his liberal colleagues in the Congress. Such a system, such an ultimate end-goal, potentially begun by this current plan, would permanently bureaucratize the system.
Ronald Reagan once said that the closest we will ever get to eternal life on this planet is a government bureaucracy. He was right. And if you turn America's healthcare system into a single-payer government system, it would be extremely difficult to turn back. It would be like unscrambling eggs. And what's at stake?
I'm greatly concerned with a toxic combination of inevitable rationing and what's being termed end-of-life counseling, which some fear may be mandatory. As someone who has been in the pro-life movement for years, plus studied history, politics, and, before that, worked full-time in healthcare -- both as a hospital employee and reporter for healthcare publications -- I've closely observed the long march by liberal "progressives" from the eugenics of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to euthanasia. They got their way on abortion -- which, according to the AP, is covered in the current government "healthcare" plan -- and God help us if the door to euthanasia is cracked.
It also doesn't help that likewise steaming down the track are the modern left's parallel obsessions with "people problems" like "overpopulation" and "climate change."
None of this is good. And these forces are coming together at a time, a perfect storm, when the left has finally achieved the political power it has craved. This is the "crisis" it needs, to borrow from Obama's chief of staff.
For years, the political left has groped for control of the nation's healthcare. Now, at long last, the prize is in sight, thanks to the way Americans voted in November 2008.
This is not to say we don't have problems in our healthcare system. No one is saying that. But for the radical progressive, that isn't the issue. These folks dream of federal power, of central planning, of literal management of lives. This is their long-awaited, glistening moment.
Reform healthcare with legitimate reform, addressing real issues, like the genuine problem of the minority of Americans who, for whatever reason, are not insured. Do the moral thing.
"How can anyone take this man seriously?" writes Marilyn, a frequent reader of our Center for Vision & Values articles.
Attached to Marilyn's email was this headline, "Gore compares climate change fight to war against Nazis." As the accompanying article noted, Al Gore, speaking at the World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, warned his audience -- mostly British -- of the imperative to confront climate change, as Britain and the Allies once battled Hitler.
"The former U.S. vice president said the world lacked the political will to act," reported the London Times, "and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change."
Fancying himself a contemporary Churchill, Gore sounded the clarion call, declaring that the essential missing ingredient is courage and commitment. Like the brave Sir Winston in those ominous days of the Battle of Britain, Gore stoically exhorted: "We have everything we need, except political will."
As for those pusillanimous appeasers who cover their eyes to the need for urgent action? Presumably, they are modern Neville Chamberlains, appeasing the evil of global warming, just as history's Great Appeaser placated Hitler.
Predictably, Al Gore's extremist proclamations were largely ignored by the mainstream press that tragically serves as educator-in-chief to most Americans. This isn't the kind of headline deemed newsworthy by Katie Couric and CBS News.
That brings me back to Marilyn's email: How can anyone take this man seriously? Well, the fact is we've done just that for almost 20 years. Believe it or not, Gore stated precisely these things in his 1992 international bestseller Earth in the Balance. What Al Gore said in London last week is no different from what he has said -- and gotten away with -- for decades.
Consider some passages from Gore's 1992 manifesto: In one of the many deeply disturbing passages in a deeply disturbing book, Gore hailed ecological activists as "resistance fighters" and "people of conscience" engaging in a just war akin to the World War II resistance that fought the Nazis.
That thought alone is incredibly offensive, especially in what it implies of those who reject Gore's environmental prescriptions. In particular, however, the parallel is a grave injustice to those who suffered under the Nazis. Jews ought to be outraged. Gore's moral equivalency reveals a breathtaking lack of historical measure -- odd for a man who writes on the triumph of "reason."
Gore's Nazi metaphors are ubiquitous in Earth in the Balance. Warning of an "environmental holocaust," Gore exhorted: "Today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin." Gore asserted that America's consumption of resources is reminiscent of Germany's descent into fascism.
As if his Nazi analogies weren't aggressive enough, the Nobel Peace Prize winner envisioned
. . . a kind of global civil war between those who refuse to consider the consequences of civilization's relentless advance and those who refuse to be silent partners in the destruction.
Yes, that's right: a "global civil war."
Consequently, Gore urged, the rescue of the environment must become the "central organizing principle" of all societies and modern civilization. This will require not just sacrifice and struggle but "a wrenching transformation of society."
Al Gore prophesied nothing short of environmental Armageddon, an apocalypse, and called for a crusade. The word crusade, in this case, had religious connotations, in contrast to when FDR, Eisenhower, or Reagan called for "crusades" for freedom.
Indeed, it is rarely recalled that Earth in the Balance carried the instructive subtitle, Ecology and the Human Spirit. This environmental manifesto was a sort of spiritual autobiography by Gore, his epistle to Mother Nature, his adoration of the Earth. This is evident in the chapter, "Environmentalism of the Spirit," where Gore insisted that the "environmental crisis" demands "a new faith in the future of life on earth."
So, in short, Al Gore's remarks in London are nothing new.
In a just world, or at least, in an America where "journalists" provided objective news coverage, these Al Gore absurdities would have been exposed long ago, and this man would have never gotten close to the vice presidency let alone the presidency. Of course, that's why journalists never touched them, in the hopes that Gore's scary statements would never see the light of day -- or of television cameras.
What's even scarier is that a majority of Americans took this man seriously enough to vote him president in 2000. We dodged that bullet, but Al Gore's dream lives on with sudden renewed vigor, as the most leftist president and Congress in American history stand poised to make it a reality. ("Cap-and-trade" is the first shot in their environmental salvo.)
At long last, Al Gore's "wrenching transformation" may be upon us, courtesy of Americans' choices at the voting booth. *
"If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. --George Burns