Turning The Corner On Race

From: The Desk of Gary Bauer

The election of America’s first black president represents many things. It represents a feeling of national atonement after hundreds of years of racial discrimination. It represents a clear benchmark in our nation’s quest to move beyond race in our politics.

Barack Obama’s election should also signal something to all those who have made race baiting their raison de ‘etre: dust of your résumés — it’s time to find new work.

That includes Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose race baiting has done a disservice to the black community by turning every grievance into yet more evidence of America’s endemic racism.

It also includes the political Left and its media allies, who have made a living off identity politics. The Left’s knee-jerk reaction to any political issue in which race, gender or ethnicity are even remotely involved is immediately to split the two sides, pitting one against the other. Then they watch as substantive debates over policy degenerate into bitter and often superficial feuds over identity.

When race and politics mingle, the Left-wing media know they can generate big ratings simply by confusing correlation (conservative opposition to a black candidate) with causation (conservative opposition to a black candidate because he’s black). Television and radio are the perfect formats to showcase the media’s feigned confusion. . . .

The Left and its media allies desperately wanted to make racism a major component in [the November 4th] election. But the exit polling told a different story.

Eighty percent of voters said race was “not a factor” in their choice for president. Interestingly, Obama beat McCain among the 20 percent of voters who said race was either a “minor factor,” “important factor” or the “most important factor” in their decision. This suggests that race may have been a net benefit to Obama.

The liberal media need to come to terms with the fact that America has turned a sharp corner on race. Once they do, with less time to devote to identity politics, perhaps they will find more time to do their job — to report real news and evaluate political candidates on their ideas and records.

Read the entire article here. . . .

Political Correctness: It Is Wrong To Point Out What Is Wrong

Political correctness is a strategy used by secular progressives to silence opposition to ideas that are intellectually indefensible. Political correctness is only the pretense of tolerance, because it is limited to its own narrow-minded bias. There can be no free exchange of ideas where political correctness dominates the social norm. It is a Machiavellian tactic used even by the media to limit free speech. A.W.R. Hawkins speaks directly to the problem with political correctness:

Political correctness is a façade constructed in opposition to reality and sold as “tolerance.” Because of this, its purveyors are given to moral relevance and all who reject it are branded as “intolerant.” When properly implemented, it stifles our ability to think clearly.

Perhaps nothing epitomized this better than Reuters’ post 9/11 refusal to use the word “terrorist” in reporting the news of terrorists blowing up buildings, themselves, and others in acts of terror. Steven Jukes, Reuters global head of news, defended the refusal thus: “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word ‘terrorist.’ To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack.”

I have just one question here: If we can’t speak the truth about terrorists determined to destroy our children, our culture and ourselves, when can we speak truth? (The politically correct response here is “what is truth?”)

We must understand that a major tenet of political correctness is that there is nothing more wrong than the act of pointing out what is wrong. Political correctness is understandably hostile to facts and its followers quite intolerant of anyone who refuses to budge on the fact that absolutes exist; for the rejection of absolutes is a most convenient way to open discussions about “the non-existence of God” in university classrooms throughout the country.

Continue reading A.W.R. Hawkins here. . . .

Charles Carroll: “The Mercy Of My Redeemer”

Charles Carroll

“On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits, not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.

“Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer.” (Signer of The Declaration of Independence)

The Christian Patriot

Our fathers have made one more trial, knowing that past failures were from want of Christian principle, and that they had settled these shores expressly in obedience to Christian principle, and therefore they might hope. In faith and prayer they struggled; for they felt, that with God all things are possible in the cause of righteousness, and they hoped their children would feel this too. From the first, they set out with the idea of making this community that happy people, whose God is the Lord, – a Christian nation, – what the world had never yet seen, but what all its experience concurred in testifying it must seem or it would never see the amount of prosperity man is capable of attaining on earth. A Christian people! Not merely a sober, industrious people, without religion, if such could be expected, but distinctively a Christian people. Bright and glorious idea, far-seeing wisdom, true friends, and see its kingdoms prospering at this time just in proportion as they come near realizing this idea, other elements of their greatness being the same . . . But, if there were not fear of hypocrisy, verily and indeed happy would be that people, with whom God was effectively their Lord through the strict observances of such a rule. Then might we see such a phenomenon as a Christian people.

As it is, let us, – and it seems more incumbent on us than on any nation that lives in the sun’s more expressive, than as a mere geographical term. When we are called a Christian nation, let us allow more the meant, than that we are not savages or barbarians, or only semi-civilized, as all those nations are in which Christianity is unknown. Christian should be more than European or American, as distinguished from Asiatic or African. It should be more than latitude and longitude; more than eastern or western, northern or southern; more than tropics and zones, equator and ecliptic, arctic or Antarctic.

And how can we make a Christian nation? To become so, must be an individual, not a collective act. Legislation cannot do it, if legislation would. Resolves of majorities, in caucus or in Congress, in towns or by states, or even unanimous votes, is not the way to affect it. The simple and sole process is for each person privately to resolve, for his single part, no influence in legislative deliberations, no political name or fame whatever, – nay, the shrinking woman and child, whose deliberations look not beyond the homestead, or who can legislate only over their own hearts, – these can add a stone, as truly as the mightiest statesman or the loudest demagogue, to build up the national temple to the Lord. Public opinion is the life-breath of our own government, and therefore to Christianize that, we have but to Christianize ourselves. O what it is ye may achieve! No such power as this is possessed by the subjects of any government but yours. They cannot regenerate their sovereign. They cannot even pray for his conversion with hope, the assurance, of the prayer being granted if sincere, which may warm your breasts.

And is there a consideration of earth or heaven that is not present and potent to move us to this prayer? Pour it out to God, if righteousness would have but the promise of the life that now is. If a majority of the citizens were sincere followers of Jesus Christ, is it not evident, the councils of this nation would be wiser and mightier, its progress more glorious, its dominion even more potent than any the world has ever seen? The day when it shall be resolved, that the same evangelical principles shall govern states that govern churches and gospel professors in their private relations, would be the true jubilee of freedom. That will be the mind’s and the soul’s declaration of independence. That will be breaking every yoke at length from body, and heart, and spirit. Thenceforth slavery, in any form, would be but a tradition and a name; whereas now it is the commonest of conditions, and to the mass liberty is but a name; for he that serveth any sin is the slave of sin. That day will come, when the people choose.

Choose it, resolve it, O my brethren, as the first of civil duties. Whatever your party predilections, sacrifice them all for the party of righteous men. Support no administration, and oppose none, but on the ground of moral principle. Go with them as far as Jesus Christ would go, and no further. Read the constitution by the light of the Gospel. The Savior be your paramount leader. (Rev. Mellish Irving Motte, Sermon, 1840)

The Commercialization Of Thanksgiving

From: The Desk of Dr. C. Matthew McMahon

In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day up one week earlier than had been tradition, to appease merchants who wanted more time to feed the growing pre-Christmas consumer frenzy. Folding to congressional pressure two years later, Roosevelt signed a resolution returning Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November, as Congress in 1941 permanently set the fourth Thursday of each November as our national day of Thanksgiving.

Roosevelt’s inclination to subsume Thanksgiving for commercial interests foretold much of the secular inversion of “thanksgiving” to come. In autumns we now exist amid the oppression of crass materialism in advance of that December day when we give thanks for the birth of Christ, oppression vastly different but somehow remarkably similar to that experienced by our Pilgrim forefathers in England. And, at all times we move amid the seduction of cultural decadence in our everyday lives, again remarkably similar to that tempting our Pilgrim forebears and their families in Holland. Nevertheless, for all the decay and dissolution assailing us, we are still at our core, a nation deeply blessed by God. In our age of great, widespread physical and material comfort, and sensory satiety and satiation, our deepest deficits are spiritual ones — most especially, a lack of accurate perception of the depth and breadth of the bounties that God alone has bestowed upon us. Too often, we look to government as the provider and guarantor of the many blessings we enjoy, rather than to our Heavenly Father. And, also too often, we forget to gratefully cherish the best of our national blessings, that liberty for which our Pilgrim forebears were willing to risk all comfort and security. As Abraham Lincoln noted so many years ago, “…[It is] announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord….It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.”

[During this Thanksgiving season], may God rest your heart and mind, may He bless and keep you and your family, and may He continue to extend His blessings upon our great nation, guiding us one and all by His Word. May He grant us patience and perseverance in the unexpected turns and tests of our age. May He impress upon us the spirit of our forefathers, their soul-deep craving for freedom, expressed with courage and wisdom, as we meet the particular challenges of our days.

And let us always approach our Heavenly Father with true thankfulness — not just today, but every day — not only in our triumphs, but also in our trials — by acknowledging our utter dependence on Him to supply our wants and needs, for in Him we live and move and have our being. Even self-reliance is, at its root, reliance on Him:

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” –Philippians 4:6-7