The other morning I awakened with the refrain of a childhood hymn that I have not heard for over eighty years coursing through my brain:
Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm,
And dare to make it known.
With summer media madness enveloping us – sensationalized gross immorality, lies in courtrooms, homosexual triumph, blog assassination of character, feckless political leadership – can “Dare to be a Daniel” mean anything at all?
Philip Bliss wrote the hymn for his Sunday School class in 1873. Just three short years later, at age 38, he died from injuries sustained while attempting to rescue his wife from the crashed burning train on which they were traveling. What good did “Dare to be a Daniel” do him, a cynic might sneer? What good could it do for us today, I ask?
After all, was not Daniel thrown into the fiery furnace by his envious political enemies for foolishly resisting a purely social mandate: refusing to worship the contrived idols of the establishment of his day. Why can’t we just go along with whatever the intellectual and political class have contrived to be the norms or policies of our era?
Today, Americans are in a quandary. So very many are economically hurting, and so many are wondering what to do? Not a few of those who enthusiastically promoted the election of Barack Obama are having second thoughts. Republicans are pleased that they took over the House of Representatives as a result of the November 2010 vote, but they are uncertain as to what they can do, or should do, with it in the House. November 2012 is just over the horizon.
I suggest to those committed to moral and spiritual values – including all who are said to comprise the several brands of Conservatism and the Religious Right – that there is an indissoluble link between one’s moral values and our urgent need for economic recovery and jobs creation. It has always been thus as the driving force of our entrepreneurial heritage. Dishonesty, greed, mismanagement tend to get cancelled out and we return to center.
Can it happen again? Indeed it can. We are in the midst of such a process and we can do a lot to ameliorate Islamic terrorist fear and re-boot our country again to prosperity.
Conservatively minded Independents, Republicans and Democrats could make it happen very quickly. The orderly, sane, heritage-laden elements of the Tea Party Movement are just the precursors of what could happen quietly, nationally, decisively in the next sixteen months.
The threat to the major world civilizations is radical Islam
The threat to the major world civilizations -- America, Mexico, Britain, Europe, India, China, Japan, Indonesia, the African and South American democracies – is radical Islam. That is the way the various radical Islamic groups see themselves. Despite the flirtations of our State Department with the Muslim Brotherhood and the irrationalities of the Main Street Media, Americans are awakening to that fact.
Years ago Alija Izetbegovic set out radical Islam’s goals in his
Islamic Declaration (1970) in which he declared that the renewed conflict between Islam and Christendom in the Balkans is simply an extension of the centuries-old conflict between Islam and anything else. The alternative is clear, he wrote: Islamic power without an Islamic society is either utopia or violence. Muslims must either change the world or be changed themselves because Islam is more than a faith; it is an order of things.
It is noteworthy that during the recent Balkan Wars against Serbs, copies of Izetbegovic’s Declaration largely disappeared from American library shelves. Few American politicians knew anything about it and those who did largely ignored it, just as we did Hitler’s Mein Kampf during the 1930s.
Today that same goal is encapsulated in the declared creed and intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood: Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. The goal of militant Islam has always been – always means many centuries old, back to its roots –the elimination of Western Civilization.
Islamic societies are closed societies
The median age of Western societies increases year by year, which puts them at a distinct disadvantage in many crucial respects. By way of contrast, the explosive birth-rate of Islamic societies has resulted in majority populations that are young, unemployed, with few skills for a technological economy, easily radicalized. Inevitably that puts us at increasing risk.
Islamic societies are closed societies. Access to argue, to persuade, to evangelize, to proselytize (in regard to democratic or open society principles, or matters of faith) is denied, and if practiced is punishable, even by death. There is no rational way to deal with such radicalism.
Energy, Terrorism, 2012 presidential elections
In the present circumstances the only effective strategy open to us is economic, and that strategy is readily accessible. I do not mean sanctions or boycott. It concerns energy. If “it’s all about the economy, stupid” worked politically in the past, “it’s all about energy, stupid” is what has to filter into the brain of the political class now.
It’s strange for me as a theologian to say this, but the link between our heritage and values, the world situation, our political and economic future, and our energy policy is clear. Energy is the priority issue, now and for the future, for all economies of the world.
In this, President Obama’s policy is particularly badly skewed. He wants us to consume less. But neither the technology for novel generation of energy, nor supplementary energy sources, are in place for economic recovery or growth. His actions intentionally force energy prices to rise (tapping into our oil reserves as recently announced is a political band-aid ploy). In short, Mr. Obama’s policies ensure either further economic decline or economic stagnation. If Mr. Obama is re-elected either he will reinforce this trend, or we will end up in a 4-year stalemate. In both cases our enemies hold the trump cards.
We are now funding the terrorism we fear. Why can’t we see this? The higher the energy costs rise, especially the price of oil, the more potent and actual becomes the terrorist threat. We can easily thwart that terrorist threat within ten years. How? Just the announced intent to do so would have an immediate and profound effect on world markets and quick market recovery.
Apart from individual, irrational terrorist attacks, the only way strategically planned terrorism against the West can succeed is through lots of money. Reduce their money supply or, better still, cut it off and terrorism is reduced from international Jihad to mindless individual acts of terror.
Consider what could happen if a conservatively minded president, who has business sense and an eye for economic recovery, is elected. The mantra for the 2012 presidential campaign should be:
American energy independence within ten years.
This is surely technologically possible but, equally important, as a campaign announcement it would put immediate downward pressure on world oil prices, emasculate OPEC, and would become an impetus for economic renewal in America.
The newly elected president’s announced primary strategy upon his or her inauguration in January 2013 should be to make that mantra actual policy:
American energy independence within ten years.
Please America, make it happen!
One of the verses of
Dare to be a Daniel goes like this:
Many giants, great and tall,
Stalking through the land,
Headlong to the earth would fall,
If met by Daniel’s band.
