Barack Obama: Has America Gone Mad?

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Did those of you who are old enough thrill to these words of President John F. Kennedy: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Alas, they are unknown or forgotten by Kennedy’s Democratic Party, now headed by Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House majority leader Nancy Pelosi, who, in the midst of our war in Iraq, have vilified America’s commander-in-chief. Does this treacherous attitude trouble Americans?

It troubles the present writer, a former officer in the United States Air Force. I am dismayed by the new and unpatriotic Democratic Party that has arisen in America. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when America’s new Democrats compare Barack Obama with John F. Kennedy—Obama, so anxious for the United States to turn tail and withdraw American forces from Iraq. This is the same Obama that regards Iran, a nation of 70 million people, as a mere “nuisance.”

(This play-actor does not know that Iran is well-positioned to annex Iraq. He does not know that the combination of Iran’s current production of 4.21 million barrels of oil a day with Iraq’s 6 mullion would enable Iran to out-produce Saudi Arabia. He does not know that a 50 percent cutback of this oil would utterly collapse America’s shaky economy for which his party is primarily responsible. Goodbye Oprah!)

But what most disturbs me is the appalling number of Americans who adore this political Elvis Presley. These Americans are oblivious of their country’s heritage. I have especially in mind the teachings of the American Declaration of Independence, which speaks of man’s unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, rights derived from the laws of nature and of nature’s God.

The Declaration is a Christian document signed by 56 Christians who said “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

My fellow-Americans: know well what your professors and politicians and judges have never told you, that the American Constitution was designed to implement the universal principles of the Declaration of Independence, Know well that the Constitution concludes with these words: “Done in Convention … in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven.” Know well that America is nothing if it is not a Christian nation. I say this as a Jew who has written books on the Constitution as well as on the Declaration.

Nevertheless, Barack Obama has the audacity to say. “America is no longer a Christian nation.” He writes in The Audacity of Hope, “I will stand with [Arab and Pakistani Americans] should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." What “ugly direction”? There are hundreds of mosques in the United States that preach Jihad and hatred of Americans and Jews. With whom would Obama stand if the American government prosecuted Arabs or Muslims charged with incitement or hate crimes?

Obama’s father was a Muslim, and under Islamic law a person’s faith is patrilineal. Would Obama stand on the side of America of which he claims to be a citizen? Did he not refrain from placing his hand on his heart during a public recital of the American Pledge of Allegiance? For twenty years he attended a church whose pastor preached “God damn America,” the same pastor who embraced the Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan, Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam and a pronounced anti-Semite and anti-American.

How can this subversive state of affairs happen in America, the country in which I was born and where I so often proudly said: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all." This is the teaching underlying the American Constitution.

How is it, then, that Obama, a candidate for president of the United States, can openly scorn this Constitution to the extent of calling it a barrier to justice? Like others of his ilk, he reduces justice to equality, by which he means not equality of opportunity—not the elevating equality of the Declaration—but the leveling equality of results—an equality demanded by the Marxist redistribution of wealth preached by his mentors.

How is it that this stage player is not be rejected by an overwhelming majority of the American people? Has America gone mad?