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SARAH PALIN AND THE WAR FOR AMERICA'S SOUL
by David Kupelian
WND.com
Oct 5 2011
For just a few minutes, clear your mind of the endless political
analysis and intrigue that fill the news media, talk radio and
Internet. Let it all go, and take a deep breath.
Now, let's consider together the extraordinary spectacle we see
unfolding before our eyes in America today.
Sarah Palin, who just announced she will not run for the presidency
in 2012, is a good place to start. Consider the following Twitter
comments made by young Americans earlier this year about the former
Alaska governor:
~U"Join us in praying to God that Sarah Palin contracts cancer
and dies."
~U"My hatred for Sarah Palin continues to grow. I think this woman
should be assassinated."
~U"I hope Sarah Palin dies a slow and painful death."
~U"I hope she dies gnashing her teeth."
~U"Sarah Palin is the single most dangerous threat to the future of the
human race. Thick venomous cretin she is. Someone bloody shoot her."
These are only five out of dozens of similar Twitter messages, all
equally horrendous, all calling for a torturous death for Sarah Palin.
They came after a deranged man named Jared Loughner tried to
assassinate Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in downtown
Tucson - and many people, for some utterly incomprehensible reason,
decided to blame Palin.
The irrational hatred toward Sarah Palin cannot be explained in
the usual terms of politics and ideology. The traditional divide of
"liberal versus conservative" or "Democrat versus Republican" cannot
explain such dark, almost other-worldly expressions as "I hope she
dies gnashing her teeth" or death threats against the Palins' children.
As we all know, ever since John McCain chose Palin as his VP
running mate three years ago, the left - including the entire elite
media - have been pathologically obsessed with her. During the
2008 presidential campaign, the big media couldn't be bothered to
investigate Barack Obama, whose background was chock full of Marxists,
terrorists, pornographers, criminals and rabid anti-American racists.
Nothing of interest there. But they sent platoons of journalists
to Wasilla, Alaska, dumpster-diving for dirt on Palin - including,
for example, their investigation into who paid for the tanning bed
she had installed in the governor's mansion. (She did.)
Since then, there have been continual attacks and dirt-hunting, most
recently with both the Washington Post and New York Times begging
readers to join in the witch hunt to find something incriminating in
24,000 Palin emails. Once again, they found nothing of consequence.
Many pundits have opined as to why there's so much hatred toward Palin:
She's too conservative; she's too good-looking; her voice irritates
them; she shoots wolves from a helicopter.
Early on, I took a passing stab at this question in "How Evil Works":
Haven't you ever wondered why, when someone on the public stage
radiates noble character, common sense and natural grace - like Ronald
Reagan did, or more recently Sarah Palin - he or she is regarded by the
"big media" with an inexplicable revulsion? Hatred is almost too soft
a word. It's because Reagan and Palin manifest the very qualities of
character that the jaded media elite lost long ago, and since being
thus reminded of their lost innocence is painful and unwelcome,
they feel compelled to attack the "reminder."
Since then, "Robin of Berkley" - pseudonym for a Berkeley, Calif.,
psychotherapist - wrote a poignant and meaningful column along these
same lines in American Thinker. Here's what she concluded: "Leftists
loathe Palin because she has retained something that was stripped
from them years ago: a wholesomeness, a purity of heart. People on
the left despise Palin because she shines a bright light on their
shame and unworthiness, which they try desperately to deny."
Of course, this syndrome goes way beyond Sarah Palin. In fact, if you
look carefully, this is actually the defining phenomenon of modern
American life.
We're talking about literally a war between light and darkness. I
don't mean that as a metaphor, but as hard reality.
Michele Bachmann caught some of this recently as a presidential
candidate, when Newsweek did a hit piece on her, plastering a maniacal
"evil eye" photo of her on the cover and headlining it "The Queen of
Rage." Bachmann is one of the most gracious and genuinely caring ladies
I've ever met. Indeed, caring for a couple dozen foster children, as
she and husband Marcus have done (not to mention five of their own)
takes love - not rage.
Of course, the so-called "rage" Newsweek accused Bachmann of being
"queen" of is the "rage" of the tea party, for which both Bachmann
and Palin are icons.
Allow me to digress here and point out that leftists are masters of
what psychologists call projection - meaning, you literally accuse
innocent people of the very faults of which you yourself are guilty.
So the left, which is fueled entirely by rage and envy, accuses
the tea party, which is fueled by love of country and concern over
Obama's "fundamental transformation of America," of being full of
"rage." If you've ever been to a tea party event, this notion is seen
as laughable delusion.
Do you remember in the early months of Obama's presidency, the
Department of Homeland Security produced a report warning about the
threat of homegrown, radicalized, militant and potentially violent
"right-wing extremists"? And who exactly were these scary people? If
you were pro-life, had an NRA bumper sticker, were concerned about
illegal immigration or government debt, and especially if you were
a returning military veteran - just home after having defended your
beloved country with your very life - you were potentially a dangerous
"extremist" and threat to the country, according to the government.
Ollie North wrote a great piece in response, called "I am an
extremist," in which he explained:
According to the U.S. government, I am an extremist.
I am a Christian and meet regularly with other Christians to study
God's word. My faith convinces me the prophesies in the Holy Bible
are true. I believe in the sanctity of human life, oppose abortion
and want to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
I am a veteran with skills and knowledge derived from military
training and combat. I own several firearms, frequently shoot them,
buy ammunition and consider efforts to infringe on my Second Amendment
rights to be wrong and unconstitutional.
I fervently support the sovereignty of the United States, am deeply
concerned about our economy, increasingly higher taxes, illegal
immigration, soaring unemployment and actions by our government that
will bury my children beneath a mountain of debt.
Apparently, all this makes me a "right-wing extremist." At least that's
what it says in the April 7, 2009 "assessment" issued by the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.
Fast-forward to August 2011. After the debt-ceiling melodrama in
Washington, in which the tea party demonstrated the most sanity
of any of the characters, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -
in a column titled "Washington Chain Saw Massacre" - described tea
partiers as "cannibals" "zombies" and "vampires." She wrote:
They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive.
They were like vampires, draining the country's reputation, credit
rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and
mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved
victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic
beasts in "Alien" flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of
teeth, bursting out of Boehner's stomach every time he came to a
bouquet of microphones.
Again, let's be crystal clear who is being talked about here. "Tea
party" is just a contemporary cultural label for what used to be
called normal.
Normal people - regular, fair-minded, live-and-let-live, law-abiding
citizens with traditional values: work hard, save your money, play by
the rules, help other people, don't spend more than you have. These
are the people being called "cannibals," "vampires" and "terrorists."
On this video of Bernie Goldberg on "The O'Reilly Factor," pundit
after lefty pundit can be seen passionately comparing tea party folk
with terrorists:
~UMSNBC's Steven Rattner: "It's a form of economic terrorism. These
tea party guys are like strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle
of Times Square at rush hour, and saying, 'You do it my way or we'll
blow you up.'"
~UBloomberg's Margaret Carlson: "They strapped explosives to the
capitol."
~UMSNBC's Chris Matthews: "The GOP has become the Wahhabis of American
government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the
service of their anti-tax ideology."
Ironically, noted Goldberg, "these are people who don't call real
terrorists 'terrorists.'"
And of course, before tea party people were maligned as "terrorists,"
"zombies," "cannibals" and "vampires," they were "racists." And
before that - before the name "tea party" even came into use - the
same normal American people were maligned as "right-wing extremists,"
as noted above courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security.
Do you understand what we're looking at here?
There is a growing and highly influential segment of our society
that thinks normal, "Ozzie and Harriet," traditional-minded Americans
are evil.
The picture of 'normal'
When I see a tea party scene with a patriot dressed up as George
Washington, or a soccer mom with her kids holding homemade signs
saying "God bless America," or a grandmother thoughtfully picking
up litter after the rally so the city's maintenance crew won't have
much to do, I like to think of these good folks as characters right
out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
Rockwell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for painting
"vivid and affectionate portraits of our country" - like the man
standing up at a town hall meeting to exercise his freedom of speech
and the crowd pledging allegiance to the flag and Thanksgiving
dinner and Boy Scouts and saying grace before a meal and Christmas
and baseball and hunting and fishing and ... Well, you get the idea.
Norman Rockwell painted the America normal people love.
But did you know there are influential people in America who hate
Norman Rockwell paintings?
Blake Gopnik, until just recently, was the chief art critic for the
Washington Post for the past decade.
Gopnik says he is "offended" by and even "hates" Norman Rockwell's
art. "I can't stand the view of America that he presents, which I
feel insults a huge number of us non-mainstream folks."
Hmm. "Non-mainstream" - wonder what that means. If Gopnik hates Norman
Rockwell's vision of America, what does he love?
Here's a clue: He came to the defense recently of a taxpayer-funded
exhibit at Washington's National Portrait Gallery by homosexual artist
David Wojnarowicz of a film featuring a crucifix with ants crawling
on Jesus' body. You paid for this.
The Wojnarowicz exhibit also featured male sex organs, naked brothers
kissing, men in chains and other stuff I'm sure you're delighted to
have paid for. This is what the Washington Post's chief art critic
for a decade calls "wonderful art." But he hates Norman Rockwell
because of the image of America his art portrays - namely, love,
affection and respect for this nation.
The ants-on-Jesus video, with its mocking, demented soundtrack, is so
incredibly creepy that it makes normal people want to run screaming
from the room. But to some people, "art" from the pit of hell, a
creation that is repulsive, disgusting and nausea-inducing ... is
"wonderful."
People, what we're looking at is nothing more nor less than a radical
spiritual polarization of Americans - citizens literally of opposite
polarities. It's a spiritual battle between darkness and light,
playing out in all our lives, and also dramatically on the national
stage. And, as has always been the case, darkness cannot stand the
light - so it curses it.
How did we get to the point that many of us are comfortable with
perversion and corruption and death - but threatened by brightness
and virtue and life? (For the whole answer, you'll have to read
"The Marketing of Evil.")
In a nutshell: All of us are shaped and influenced by other people -
first parents and family, later on friends, school, college, work
and of course our wildly immoral culture. And the truth is, we human
beings - just like Pinocchio on the way to school when he meets up
with the fox ("Honest John") and the cat - are pretty easily led
astray from our common sense and corrupted.
We are tempted first and foremost into becoming upset all the time
by other broken, thoughtless and cruel people around us. Then, once
we're living in an upset and confused state, we're easily suckered
into every other area - into giving up our modesty and our purity,
and embracing garbage philosophies diametrically opposed to reality,
and so on.
A perfect place for losing your common sense and innocence is school.
The government ("public") school system and colleges today are
a disgrace. One of the dominant features of a modern university
campus, something leveraged across every area - from curriculum
to campus culture - is the mainstreaming and forced acceptance of
sexual perversion, literally the elevation of everything degrading and
perverse. The darkness worldview is taught and glorified as something
"wonderful" - and all for only $35,000 per year.
Unfortunately, once we have had our innocence and integrity ripped off
and have oozed into becoming a darker, more conflicted version of our
former self, now when somebody comes along who simply radiates the
wholesome qualities we left behind, we feel uncomfortable. In fact,
we feel positively threatened, as though there's something seriously
wrong with that person.
This is want we're witnessing daily - people who are broken
and seduced to the dark side, shrieking like a vampire when they
encounter a bright, wholesome, outspoken person like Sarah Palin, or
the tea party, or Oliver North, or millions of normal, law-abiding,
traditionally minded Americans.
Likewise, this syndrome plays out daily in the Middle East between the
Arab-Muslim world and Israel. Though in spiritual terms Israel may be
the center of the universe, in worldly terms it's just a little strip
of desert the size of New Jersey with no oil and no unusual riches.
Yet the Jewish people, with a special blessing of God on them, have
made it bloom. And people living in darkness and oppression cannot
stand that - they feel persecuted by the light. So their minds invent
all sorts of truly insane conspiracy theories to demonize Jews -
Jews eat children, Jews never lived in Israel, Jews caused 9-11.
What's it really all about? Envy - blinding, all-consuming envy. The
Islamic world is obsessed, for example, with Al-Aqsa Mosque, supposedly
the third holiest place in Islam, which just happens to be located
directly on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest
of all places in the world.
There is no mention of Jerusalem in the entire Quran. Mecca,
the holiest place to Muslims, and Medina, the second holiest, are
mentioned dozens of times. But Jerusalem? Not a single reference,
nor is there any historical evidence Muhammad ever went there.
Here's how I see it: The Islamic world's obsession with the Temple
Mount - which is exceedingly precious to Jews - is like the desire
an angry, jealous sibling has for a toy that his brother is happily
playing with. The jealous kid never cared about that toy before,
but now that his brother has it and is happily playing with it,
the angry boy feels compelled to take it away, because he hates his
brother. Of course, the only "happiness" he would obtain by getting
the toy is the perverse satisfaction of depriving his brother of it.
Another example: The Turks degraded and killed 1.5 million Armenians,
including my grandfather and many other members of my extended
family, all because of envy and a need to scapegoat. Like the Jews,
the Armenians in Turkey tended to be more successful and prosperous
than the Turks. The Armenians were accomplished and civilized people
- merchants, tradesmen, intellectuals - because of their Christian
religion and the values and disciplines it imparted. The Turks, a
repressed, fear-based tribal culture, hated the Armenians because of
their brightness, and so they degraded and killed them. By the way,
to this day, the Turkish government denies that the Armenian Genocide
ever even took place, which is why Turkey will never be blessed until
it repents and admits its great national sin, as Germany did after
the Nazi Holocaust.
Now, let's bring this back home to America and Obama. He's got a
bad case of this syndrome of sympathizing with bad guys and being
mysteriously repelled by goodness. If you've ever seen him at events
with subversive groups like ACORN and SEIU, and especially if you've
watched him closely in front of a group of homosexual activists at one
of their big fundraising events, his smile is broader, wider and more
animated than any smile I've seen on him - almost an uncontrollable
smile like a little boy would have at his birthday party when the
pony ride arrives. Obama feels deeply at home with weird, perverse,
radically dysfunctional people - after all, that's who he grew up
with and was shaped by. But get him around normal people - Israeli
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or Gordon Brown, the former British
prime minister - and there's this mystifying coldness, aversion and
incomprehension.
This growth of spiritual darkness in America is the result of
decades of assault by the political and moral left - a two-front
war consisting of confrontation and simultaneous infiltration of
almost every major institution in America: our government, our public
schools and colleges, our news and entertainment media, the arts,
the foundations and philanthropies, psychiatry and psychology at the
highest levels, and even our churches.
Thus, tens of millions of us have been indoctrinated and infected over
decades with philosophies and worldviews that glorify everything wrong
with human nature and attack America's Judeo-Christian foundation. At
the same time, we've been tempted to cross the sacred moral boundary
into sexual anarchy, which locks us into the realm of sin and all the
irrational philosophies and phony experts we need to justify our sin.
I'd say some significant portion, but less than half, of Americans have
been thus corrupted - not all irredeemably, of course, but right now
they're siding with the enemy. Once that percentage passes 50 percent,
that's the end of America.
In closing, let me say I believe God is being very kind to America
right now. He still loves us.
Why do I say that?
Europe is just a few years ahead of America in all the bad things
plaguing the West - Islamic subversion, godless secularism, stupid
socialism, multiculturalism and bankruptcy. So we can easily see our
future by just peering over the Atlantic. Ironically, just as Obama
is intent on "fundamentally transforming" America into a socialist
utopia like Europe, socialist Europe is melting down, country after
country - Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy. And the smaller
countries are threatening to bring down the bigger countries, because
of the interconnectedness of the European state economies.
If we in America cannot manage to heed such an obvious and mercifully
clear message from God - "Stop. This Is Not The Way To Utopia" -
then we deserve the very hard fall awaiting us.
Our fall, actually, will be harder than Europe's - because the Bible
says, "To whom much is given, much will be required." And nobody's
been given more than America.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=352225
by David Kupelian
WND.com
Oct 5 2011
For just a few minutes, clear your mind of the endless political
analysis and intrigue that fill the news media, talk radio and
Internet. Let it all go, and take a deep breath.
Now, let's consider together the extraordinary spectacle we see
unfolding before our eyes in America today.
Sarah Palin, who just announced she will not run for the presidency
in 2012, is a good place to start. Consider the following Twitter
comments made by young Americans earlier this year about the former
Alaska governor:
~U"Join us in praying to God that Sarah Palin contracts cancer
and dies."
~U"My hatred for Sarah Palin continues to grow. I think this woman
should be assassinated."
~U"I hope Sarah Palin dies a slow and painful death."
~U"I hope she dies gnashing her teeth."
~U"Sarah Palin is the single most dangerous threat to the future of the
human race. Thick venomous cretin she is. Someone bloody shoot her."
These are only five out of dozens of similar Twitter messages, all
equally horrendous, all calling for a torturous death for Sarah Palin.
They came after a deranged man named Jared Loughner tried to
assassinate Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in downtown
Tucson - and many people, for some utterly incomprehensible reason,
decided to blame Palin.
The irrational hatred toward Sarah Palin cannot be explained in
the usual terms of politics and ideology. The traditional divide of
"liberal versus conservative" or "Democrat versus Republican" cannot
explain such dark, almost other-worldly expressions as "I hope she
dies gnashing her teeth" or death threats against the Palins' children.
As we all know, ever since John McCain chose Palin as his VP
running mate three years ago, the left - including the entire elite
media - have been pathologically obsessed with her. During the
2008 presidential campaign, the big media couldn't be bothered to
investigate Barack Obama, whose background was chock full of Marxists,
terrorists, pornographers, criminals and rabid anti-American racists.
Nothing of interest there. But they sent platoons of journalists
to Wasilla, Alaska, dumpster-diving for dirt on Palin - including,
for example, their investigation into who paid for the tanning bed
she had installed in the governor's mansion. (She did.)
Since then, there have been continual attacks and dirt-hunting, most
recently with both the Washington Post and New York Times begging
readers to join in the witch hunt to find something incriminating in
24,000 Palin emails. Once again, they found nothing of consequence.
Many pundits have opined as to why there's so much hatred toward Palin:
She's too conservative; she's too good-looking; her voice irritates
them; she shoots wolves from a helicopter.
Early on, I took a passing stab at this question in "How Evil Works":
Haven't you ever wondered why, when someone on the public stage
radiates noble character, common sense and natural grace - like Ronald
Reagan did, or more recently Sarah Palin - he or she is regarded by the
"big media" with an inexplicable revulsion? Hatred is almost too soft
a word. It's because Reagan and Palin manifest the very qualities of
character that the jaded media elite lost long ago, and since being
thus reminded of their lost innocence is painful and unwelcome,
they feel compelled to attack the "reminder."
Since then, "Robin of Berkley" - pseudonym for a Berkeley, Calif.,
psychotherapist - wrote a poignant and meaningful column along these
same lines in American Thinker. Here's what she concluded: "Leftists
loathe Palin because she has retained something that was stripped
from them years ago: a wholesomeness, a purity of heart. People on
the left despise Palin because she shines a bright light on their
shame and unworthiness, which they try desperately to deny."
Of course, this syndrome goes way beyond Sarah Palin. In fact, if you
look carefully, this is actually the defining phenomenon of modern
American life.
We're talking about literally a war between light and darkness. I
don't mean that as a metaphor, but as hard reality.
Michele Bachmann caught some of this recently as a presidential
candidate, when Newsweek did a hit piece on her, plastering a maniacal
"evil eye" photo of her on the cover and headlining it "The Queen of
Rage." Bachmann is one of the most gracious and genuinely caring ladies
I've ever met. Indeed, caring for a couple dozen foster children, as
she and husband Marcus have done (not to mention five of their own)
takes love - not rage.
Of course, the so-called "rage" Newsweek accused Bachmann of being
"queen" of is the "rage" of the tea party, for which both Bachmann
and Palin are icons.
Allow me to digress here and point out that leftists are masters of
what psychologists call projection - meaning, you literally accuse
innocent people of the very faults of which you yourself are guilty.
So the left, which is fueled entirely by rage and envy, accuses
the tea party, which is fueled by love of country and concern over
Obama's "fundamental transformation of America," of being full of
"rage." If you've ever been to a tea party event, this notion is seen
as laughable delusion.
Do you remember in the early months of Obama's presidency, the
Department of Homeland Security produced a report warning about the
threat of homegrown, radicalized, militant and potentially violent
"right-wing extremists"? And who exactly were these scary people? If
you were pro-life, had an NRA bumper sticker, were concerned about
illegal immigration or government debt, and especially if you were
a returning military veteran - just home after having defended your
beloved country with your very life - you were potentially a dangerous
"extremist" and threat to the country, according to the government.
Ollie North wrote a great piece in response, called "I am an
extremist," in which he explained:
According to the U.S. government, I am an extremist.
I am a Christian and meet regularly with other Christians to study
God's word. My faith convinces me the prophesies in the Holy Bible
are true. I believe in the sanctity of human life, oppose abortion
and want to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
I am a veteran with skills and knowledge derived from military
training and combat. I own several firearms, frequently shoot them,
buy ammunition and consider efforts to infringe on my Second Amendment
rights to be wrong and unconstitutional.
I fervently support the sovereignty of the United States, am deeply
concerned about our economy, increasingly higher taxes, illegal
immigration, soaring unemployment and actions by our government that
will bury my children beneath a mountain of debt.
Apparently, all this makes me a "right-wing extremist." At least that's
what it says in the April 7, 2009 "assessment" issued by the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.
Fast-forward to August 2011. After the debt-ceiling melodrama in
Washington, in which the tea party demonstrated the most sanity
of any of the characters, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -
in a column titled "Washington Chain Saw Massacre" - described tea
partiers as "cannibals" "zombies" and "vampires." She wrote:
They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive.
They were like vampires, draining the country's reputation, credit
rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and
mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved
victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic
beasts in "Alien" flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of
teeth, bursting out of Boehner's stomach every time he came to a
bouquet of microphones.
Again, let's be crystal clear who is being talked about here. "Tea
party" is just a contemporary cultural label for what used to be
called normal.
Normal people - regular, fair-minded, live-and-let-live, law-abiding
citizens with traditional values: work hard, save your money, play by
the rules, help other people, don't spend more than you have. These
are the people being called "cannibals," "vampires" and "terrorists."
On this video of Bernie Goldberg on "The O'Reilly Factor," pundit
after lefty pundit can be seen passionately comparing tea party folk
with terrorists:
~UMSNBC's Steven Rattner: "It's a form of economic terrorism. These
tea party guys are like strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle
of Times Square at rush hour, and saying, 'You do it my way or we'll
blow you up.'"
~UBloomberg's Margaret Carlson: "They strapped explosives to the
capitol."
~UMSNBC's Chris Matthews: "The GOP has become the Wahhabis of American
government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the
service of their anti-tax ideology."
Ironically, noted Goldberg, "these are people who don't call real
terrorists 'terrorists.'"
And of course, before tea party people were maligned as "terrorists,"
"zombies," "cannibals" and "vampires," they were "racists." And
before that - before the name "tea party" even came into use - the
same normal American people were maligned as "right-wing extremists,"
as noted above courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security.
Do you understand what we're looking at here?
There is a growing and highly influential segment of our society
that thinks normal, "Ozzie and Harriet," traditional-minded Americans
are evil.
The picture of 'normal'
When I see a tea party scene with a patriot dressed up as George
Washington, or a soccer mom with her kids holding homemade signs
saying "God bless America," or a grandmother thoughtfully picking
up litter after the rally so the city's maintenance crew won't have
much to do, I like to think of these good folks as characters right
out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
Rockwell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for painting
"vivid and affectionate portraits of our country" - like the man
standing up at a town hall meeting to exercise his freedom of speech
and the crowd pledging allegiance to the flag and Thanksgiving
dinner and Boy Scouts and saying grace before a meal and Christmas
and baseball and hunting and fishing and ... Well, you get the idea.
Norman Rockwell painted the America normal people love.
But did you know there are influential people in America who hate
Norman Rockwell paintings?
Blake Gopnik, until just recently, was the chief art critic for the
Washington Post for the past decade.
Gopnik says he is "offended" by and even "hates" Norman Rockwell's
art. "I can't stand the view of America that he presents, which I
feel insults a huge number of us non-mainstream folks."
Hmm. "Non-mainstream" - wonder what that means. If Gopnik hates Norman
Rockwell's vision of America, what does he love?
Here's a clue: He came to the defense recently of a taxpayer-funded
exhibit at Washington's National Portrait Gallery by homosexual artist
David Wojnarowicz of a film featuring a crucifix with ants crawling
on Jesus' body. You paid for this.
The Wojnarowicz exhibit also featured male sex organs, naked brothers
kissing, men in chains and other stuff I'm sure you're delighted to
have paid for. This is what the Washington Post's chief art critic
for a decade calls "wonderful art." But he hates Norman Rockwell
because of the image of America his art portrays - namely, love,
affection and respect for this nation.
The ants-on-Jesus video, with its mocking, demented soundtrack, is so
incredibly creepy that it makes normal people want to run screaming
from the room. But to some people, "art" from the pit of hell, a
creation that is repulsive, disgusting and nausea-inducing ... is
"wonderful."
People, what we're looking at is nothing more nor less than a radical
spiritual polarization of Americans - citizens literally of opposite
polarities. It's a spiritual battle between darkness and light,
playing out in all our lives, and also dramatically on the national
stage. And, as has always been the case, darkness cannot stand the
light - so it curses it.
How did we get to the point that many of us are comfortable with
perversion and corruption and death - but threatened by brightness
and virtue and life? (For the whole answer, you'll have to read
"The Marketing of Evil.")
In a nutshell: All of us are shaped and influenced by other people -
first parents and family, later on friends, school, college, work
and of course our wildly immoral culture. And the truth is, we human
beings - just like Pinocchio on the way to school when he meets up
with the fox ("Honest John") and the cat - are pretty easily led
astray from our common sense and corrupted.
We are tempted first and foremost into becoming upset all the time
by other broken, thoughtless and cruel people around us. Then, once
we're living in an upset and confused state, we're easily suckered
into every other area - into giving up our modesty and our purity,
and embracing garbage philosophies diametrically opposed to reality,
and so on.
A perfect place for losing your common sense and innocence is school.
The government ("public") school system and colleges today are
a disgrace. One of the dominant features of a modern university
campus, something leveraged across every area - from curriculum
to campus culture - is the mainstreaming and forced acceptance of
sexual perversion, literally the elevation of everything degrading and
perverse. The darkness worldview is taught and glorified as something
"wonderful" - and all for only $35,000 per year.
Unfortunately, once we have had our innocence and integrity ripped off
and have oozed into becoming a darker, more conflicted version of our
former self, now when somebody comes along who simply radiates the
wholesome qualities we left behind, we feel uncomfortable. In fact,
we feel positively threatened, as though there's something seriously
wrong with that person.
This is want we're witnessing daily - people who are broken
and seduced to the dark side, shrieking like a vampire when they
encounter a bright, wholesome, outspoken person like Sarah Palin, or
the tea party, or Oliver North, or millions of normal, law-abiding,
traditionally minded Americans.
Likewise, this syndrome plays out daily in the Middle East between the
Arab-Muslim world and Israel. Though in spiritual terms Israel may be
the center of the universe, in worldly terms it's just a little strip
of desert the size of New Jersey with no oil and no unusual riches.
Yet the Jewish people, with a special blessing of God on them, have
made it bloom. And people living in darkness and oppression cannot
stand that - they feel persecuted by the light. So their minds invent
all sorts of truly insane conspiracy theories to demonize Jews -
Jews eat children, Jews never lived in Israel, Jews caused 9-11.
What's it really all about? Envy - blinding, all-consuming envy. The
Islamic world is obsessed, for example, with Al-Aqsa Mosque, supposedly
the third holiest place in Islam, which just happens to be located
directly on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest
of all places in the world.
There is no mention of Jerusalem in the entire Quran. Mecca,
the holiest place to Muslims, and Medina, the second holiest, are
mentioned dozens of times. But Jerusalem? Not a single reference,
nor is there any historical evidence Muhammad ever went there.
Here's how I see it: The Islamic world's obsession with the Temple
Mount - which is exceedingly precious to Jews - is like the desire
an angry, jealous sibling has for a toy that his brother is happily
playing with. The jealous kid never cared about that toy before,
but now that his brother has it and is happily playing with it,
the angry boy feels compelled to take it away, because he hates his
brother. Of course, the only "happiness" he would obtain by getting
the toy is the perverse satisfaction of depriving his brother of it.
Another example: The Turks degraded and killed 1.5 million Armenians,
including my grandfather and many other members of my extended
family, all because of envy and a need to scapegoat. Like the Jews,
the Armenians in Turkey tended to be more successful and prosperous
than the Turks. The Armenians were accomplished and civilized people
- merchants, tradesmen, intellectuals - because of their Christian
religion and the values and disciplines it imparted. The Turks, a
repressed, fear-based tribal culture, hated the Armenians because of
their brightness, and so they degraded and killed them. By the way,
to this day, the Turkish government denies that the Armenian Genocide
ever even took place, which is why Turkey will never be blessed until
it repents and admits its great national sin, as Germany did after
the Nazi Holocaust.
Now, let's bring this back home to America and Obama. He's got a
bad case of this syndrome of sympathizing with bad guys and being
mysteriously repelled by goodness. If you've ever seen him at events
with subversive groups like ACORN and SEIU, and especially if you've
watched him closely in front of a group of homosexual activists at one
of their big fundraising events, his smile is broader, wider and more
animated than any smile I've seen on him - almost an uncontrollable
smile like a little boy would have at his birthday party when the
pony ride arrives. Obama feels deeply at home with weird, perverse,
radically dysfunctional people - after all, that's who he grew up
with and was shaped by. But get him around normal people - Israeli
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or Gordon Brown, the former British
prime minister - and there's this mystifying coldness, aversion and
incomprehension.
This growth of spiritual darkness in America is the result of
decades of assault by the political and moral left - a two-front
war consisting of confrontation and simultaneous infiltration of
almost every major institution in America: our government, our public
schools and colleges, our news and entertainment media, the arts,
the foundations and philanthropies, psychiatry and psychology at the
highest levels, and even our churches.
Thus, tens of millions of us have been indoctrinated and infected over
decades with philosophies and worldviews that glorify everything wrong
with human nature and attack America's Judeo-Christian foundation. At
the same time, we've been tempted to cross the sacred moral boundary
into sexual anarchy, which locks us into the realm of sin and all the
irrational philosophies and phony experts we need to justify our sin.
I'd say some significant portion, but less than half, of Americans have
been thus corrupted - not all irredeemably, of course, but right now
they're siding with the enemy. Once that percentage passes 50 percent,
that's the end of America.
In closing, let me say I believe God is being very kind to America
right now. He still loves us.
Why do I say that?
Europe is just a few years ahead of America in all the bad things
plaguing the West - Islamic subversion, godless secularism, stupid
socialism, multiculturalism and bankruptcy. So we can easily see our
future by just peering over the Atlantic. Ironically, just as Obama
is intent on "fundamentally transforming" America into a socialist
utopia like Europe, socialist Europe is melting down, country after
country - Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy. And the smaller
countries are threatening to bring down the bigger countries, because
of the interconnectedness of the European state economies.
If we in America cannot manage to heed such an obvious and mercifully
clear message from God - "Stop. This Is Not The Way To Utopia" -
then we deserve the very hard fall awaiting us.
Our fall, actually, will be harder than Europe's - because the Bible
says, "To whom much is given, much will be required." And nobody's
been given more than America.
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