Culture Clips – January 30, 2007

Prophecies of Doom

If we could bind together all the rhetoric over the Middle East, it would fit neatly into the Old Testament's Book of Jeremiah. Beware, bewa re, beware.

Americans are only beginning to appreciate the issues there, and what they mean to us. We've been asleep, occasionally stirring only long enough to hit the snooze button. Before September 11, few of us had heard the words al Qaeda, jihad, Wahabi, intifada. We've had to learn them, like it or not, and parse their ominous overtones and threatening syllables of doom.

If our prophets once wandered in a wilderness of irrelevance, now they're roaring through a desert without directions or even a road map. (The "road map to peace," as we've learned, is but a chimera.) Arabic has replaced Russian as the language to learn in self-defense. A survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds that the United States is disliked most by Muslim countries. That's no surprise, and the feeling is mutual, but we've lately realized that Islamist attitudes can be easily turned into action.

Newt Gingrich, the new Jeremiah, warns that Israel faces nuclear holocaust and the danger doesn't stop at the shores of the Dead Sea. The United States "could lose two or three cities to nuclear weapons, or more than a million in biological weapons," he says. The West has put itself at risk: "We don't have the right language, goals, structure or operating speed to defeat our enemies."

The former speaker of the House, who may be a candidate for president, has never minced words. But rarely has he been so outspoken about how our liberties are threatened: "Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany, and more determined than the Soviets . . . freedom as we know it will disappear, and we will become a much grimmer, much more militarized, dictatorial society."

…Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who also yearns to be president, echoes the Gingrich analysis. He calls Islamic jihad "the nightmare of the century" and warns against comparisons to the Cold War. "For all of the Soviets' deep flaws, they were never suicidal. Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. That assumption cannot be made to an irrational regime that celebrates martyrdom." He's talking about Iran.

Suzanne Fields
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/SuzanneFields/
2007/01/29/prophecies_of_doom

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Name that President

"No greater thing could come to our land today than a revival of the spirit of religion. I doubt if there is any problem -- social, political, or economic -- that would not melt away before the fire of such a spiritual awakening."

Name the optimistic president of the past 80 years who said that and added, "We guard ourselves against all evils -- spiritual as well as material -- which may beset us. We guard against the forces of anti-Christian aggression, which may attack us from without, and the forces of ignorance and fear which may corrupt us from within."

Jimmy Carter? But he wouldn't use divisive language like this: "Today the whole world is divided between human slavery and human freedom -- between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal." Wow, would that start the ACLU hollering!

No, maybe the answer is Ronald Reagan. He faced down an evil empire, so he might have said, "We face one of the great choices of history the continuation of civilization as we know it versus the ultimate destruction of all that we have held dear -- religion against godlessness."

You're telling me it wasn't Reagan? Who, then? Maybe our current president would say things like "There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb (Some say) the United States might just as well throw its influence into the scale of a dictated peace, and get the best out of it we can. They call it a 'negotiated peace.' Nonsense! Is it a negotiated peace if a gang of outlaws surrounds your community?"

No, that's not the Bush style, and it's certainly not the content or tone of a Clinton pronouncement. Maybe Ford or Nixon? Johnson or Kennedy? Eisenhower or Truman? Wait a minute -- could this defender of Christian ideals be Franklin Roosevelt? Roosevelt, who thrust conservatives into apoplexy?

Yes, according to a book edited by William J. Federer, "The Faith of FDR." Next Tuesday, Jan. 30, is the anniversary of Roosevelt's birth 125 years ago. To those of us who have grown up in secularism, it's astounding to see how FDR did not merely mention God in a closing sound bite, but maintained a Christian emphasis throughout many of his speeches.

What president today would quote, in a national address, not merely a verse, but a big chunk of the Sermon on the Mount, as Roosevelt did on Washington's Birthday in 1943? What president today would write a foreword to a special edition of the New Testament and Psalms produced for the armed forces, and say, "As Commander-in-chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States"?

Marvin Olasky
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MarvinOlasky
/2007/01/25/name_that_president

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CBS News Poll: Majority of Americans Want Abortion Illegal

A new CBS News poll finds that a majority of Americans want to prohibit abortions in all or most cases or want greater restrictions on abortions. The poll results are consistent with the results from 2006 when more than half of those polled wanted to make abortion illegal all or most of the time.

The poll was conducted from January 18-21 and it surveyed 1,168 adults nationwide.

The survey asked respondents to give their "personal feeling" about abortion and asked them whether they wanted abortion to be always permitted, subject to greater restrictions, allowed only in cases of rape, incest or saving the life of the mother, or only allowed to save the life of the mother.

CBS News did not ask respondents whether they thought abortion should never be allowed, although it tabulated the results of those who volunteered that answer.

According to the CBS News poll, 47 percent of Americans want to prohibit all or most abortions and 16 percent want them to be greatly restricted.

About 30 percent of those polled want to limit abortions to the very rare cases of rape, incest or life of the mother and another 12 percent want abortions allowed only in when the pregnancy threatens the mother's life. Another 5 percent said abortions should always be illegal.

Just 31 percent of the public wants to permit abortion in all cases.

Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com

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