Where Will You Be When the Missiles Drop?

During his State of the Union address back in January of 2002, President George W. Bush famously called the nations of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "Axis of Evil", criticizing nations that sponsored terrorism and were seeking weapons of mass destruction. Liberals everywhere, and especially their cheer leading media, called Bush a war monger and a liar, among other choice names.

Sitting here over seven years later, we understand far better that President Bush was in actuality simply a truth teller.

At the time of Bush's speech, former Iraqi leader Sadaam Hussein was still in power. He had already shown his propensity for evil and terror by using weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He tortured political enemies, and his sons used 'rape rooms' to satisfy their own lusts and to further punish political enemies. Thankfully, the United States acted to rid the world of this evil power structure.

In Iran, a crazed President came to power under with the blessing of the Islamic religious leadership. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to assail the United States with threats of destruction and domination by Islam and accelerated Iranian efforts to develop or otherwise obtain nuclear weapons. A nuclear weapon in the hands of a fundamentalist Islamic regime will mean devastating war at some point in the near future. They are simply that crazy.

For years, as the U.S. took the first steps against that 'Axis of Evil' by destroying and dismantling the repressive Iraqi power structure and installing the beginnings of a nascent democracy, and while we kept up pressure on Iran to change course of its own volition, we pretty much turned a blind eye towards North Korea. Oh, there were statements made, and back channel discussions held, but nothing concrete.

So what have the North Koreans done during that time under the direction of their crazed, despotic ruler Kim Jong Il (pictured)? They have aggressively pursued a nuclear weapons and missile strategy, warning western nations not to interfere, and now have nuclear weapons and are developing the missile systems necessary to deliver them against their enemies.

For the past few days, the USS John McCain, a Navy destroyer, has been tailing a Korean ship named the Kang Nam, off the Chinese coast. The reason is that this ship has been found to transport illegal goods in the past. Korea stated on Wednesday that if the U.S. intercepted the ship, they would consider it an act of war: "If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will...wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all."

Very soon, the U.S. leadership under President Barack Obama is going to be faced with the choice of confronting North Korea militarily, or facing a world where a hostile dictatorial regime has nuclear weapons capable of wiping out American cities. Will Obama try to talk while the North Koreans build missiles and bombs? Will America become like Europe, issuing strongly worded statements, with nothing to back them up? Will he fiddle while Rome burns?

It turns out that President Bush was not lying about these aggressive regimes after all. Maybe we can just allow as many nations that wish to do so to build nuclear bombs and missiles, right? After all, who are we to tell other countries what they can and cannot do? How arrogant, right? As long as we are nice to them, they won't bother us, right? If only the world had been nicer to Adolf Hitler, right?

Peace comes through one thing, and one thing only: strength. If you have it, but show that you are unwilling to use it, then you may as well not have it at all. Now many have voted for Obama to get us out and keep us out of military conflict. So perhaps if you're a liberal who voted for him, the more important question that you should be asking yourself is, where will you be when the missiles drop?

Obama's 'Peace for Our Time'

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson

On 30 September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed his countrymen in regard to the Munich Agreement, which assured Adolf Hitler that Britain would "wink and nod" at Der Fuhrer's annexation of western Czechoslovakia to satiate Germany's need for additional "living space." (Six months earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria, without so much as a whimper from Britain and France.)

Chamberlain insisted, infamously, that appeasing Hitler with the Munich Agreement would provide "peace for our time." But on 1 September 1939, Herr Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II, the bloodiest conflict and genocide in history, was underway.

Fortunately, Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940, the same day Hitler invaded France and the Low Countries.

A month later, Churchill delivered his "finest hour" speech, to the House of Commons: "I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that ... if we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

This week, Barack Hussein Obama endeavored to appease the world's most dangerous fascist movement since the Third Reich. Islam has long provided safe haven for the Islamist movement of "Jihadistan," that borderless nation of countless jihadis devoted to the destruction of the West and the imposition of a worldwide caliphate and Shariah law. If we seek to appease this abominable movement rather than confront it, the world most certainly will, as Churchill warned, "sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age."

Last fall, Obama campaigned on a promise to mollify our Islamic foes and "re-set" the terms of understanding between American democracy and Middle Eastern tyranny -- to great applause from his legions of mesmerized peacenik sycophants.

In January, Obama recommitted to making peace with Islam, saying, "I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

Before his departure this week, a key Obama aide reiterated Obama's Muslim roots: "The president himself experienced Islam on three continents ... you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans are a key part of Illinois and Chicago."

Then Obama served up this gem: "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

Huh? There are currently some 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. Indonesia has 200 million, Pakistan has 165 million, dozens of other countries have tens of millions more, and the U.S. has less than 3 million.

Obama's "ignorance" of Muslim demographics is appalling. Yet he has the audacity to say, "We have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam."

Lest anyone doubt Obama's determination to appease Islam, consider the fact that on Monday, the day before his departure, American Islamic convert Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two young military recruiters in Arkansas, murdering Pvt. William Long -- and Obama initially offered no official comment.

Contrast that to the killing the previous day of George Tiller, infamous for murdering thousands of babies just prior to birth. Within hours of that incident, Obama served up an official statement of "shock and outrage." Obama's Attorney General also dispatched U.S. Marshals to protect "appropriate people and facilities around the nation."

But law enforcement resources have not been dispatched to protect recruiting centers (even though hundreds of those have been attacked in recent years), nor is Obama sending Marshals to protect synagogues, after last month's arrest of four Islamists who planned to bomb Jewish houses of worship in New York.

Ironically, the last time a sitting president attempted to appease his abortion constituency by mobilizing federal law enforcement resources was when Bill Clinton sent the FBI, ATF and U.S. Marshals to search for lone abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph -- ironic, I say, because at the same time thousands of agents were unsuccessfully attempting to apprehend Rudolph in North Carolina, al-Qa'ida terrorists were taking flight lessons a few hundred miles down the road in Florida, preparing to crash civilian airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol Building to the tune of "Allahu akbar."

In other words, Obama appeased his pro-abortion constituency with a show of force and appeased his Islamic constituency with inaction.

Under increasing pressure, Obama's handlers finally posted a comment late Wednesday on the murder of the military recruiter, indicating that he was "deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence." Personally, I am "shocked and outraged."

Suffice it to say that BHO didn't want to offend our Islamist enemy in the same week he is trying to appease them.

But I digress.

After stopping for another bow to Saudi King Abdullah, Obama crossed the Red Sea (perhaps he actually walked on it) to address his peace-loving brethren in Egypt -- accompanied by a security force of more than 3,000 agents, far exceeding the security detail accompanying George W. Bush for his visits to war zones in Iraq. That seemed a bit excessive, since there were more than 30,000 Egyptian security forces in, on and around Al Azhar University, where Obama delivered his version of Rodney King's "can't we all just get along" speech.

Perhaps someone recalled that on 6 October 1981, Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat was assassinated by his own Egyptian security forces acting on a fatwa issued by peace-loving Muslim cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman. Omar, a.k.a. "inmate 34892-054," is now serving a life sentence in a North Carolina federal prison after being convicted for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was an associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the 2001 attack. (Hey, maybe the Tar Heel State, which gave its electoral votes to Obama, will take those Gitmo detainees off his hands.)

Obama offered these olive branches to the Islamic masses from his teleprompters in Cairo: "[I have] unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things ... confidence in the rule of law; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. ... Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace. ... I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. As a boy, I heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. ... [Jerusalem should be] a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra [from the Koran], when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer. ... Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance."

While Israel was not on Obama's Middle Eastern itinerary, as some sort of atonement, his plans take him from Egypt to Germany for a visit to the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp and a token tribute to Holocaust victims.

Then Obama will proceed to Normandy for the 65th anniversary of the Allies' D-Day invasion of France, which ultimately brought the Third Reich to collapse.

In other words, BHO began his trip by appeasing fascists in the Middle East (at great peril to future generations of Americans), and will end his trip "honoring" tens of thousands of Americans who died as a direct result of the appeasement of fascists in Europe.

For the record, I don't mean to suggest that because Obama has a penchant for appeasing Islam, he is a Muslim. In one of his two autobiographies, "The Audacity of Hope," he noted that both of his parents were atheists and, "In our household, the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf." Just sat there...

Based on the rest of his book, I'm certain that he is not a Muslim, but a Socialist like William Ayers and the Marxist terrorists who launched his political career.

As the MSM talkingheads fawn over the Obama show abroad, the greatest peril to Americans remains the plethora of domestic Neo-Marxist economic programs now being implemented by the Obama regime.

Even the Russian newspaper Pravda, once the primary dezinfomatsia organ of the old Soviet Union, recently published an article by Stanislav Mishin entitled, "American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper," in which Mishin writes that Obama has pulled the plug on the American way of life.

Mishin observes: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hopeless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. ... First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in D.C. that directly affects their lives. ... The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in Americaâ??s short history, but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. ... Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster."

More to the point, Fidel Castro's understudy, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, in a lecture on Socialism this week, said, "Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right."

It is indeed a sad day for America when our president becomes the butt of Marxism jokes between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in the same week that he is appeasing Islam.

Short of some audacious "change" on the home front to dislodge these Leftists, future generations of Americans will look back upon ours and say, "This was not their finest hour."

WRITTEN by Mark Alexander and distributed in his Patriot Post newsletter essay on June 4th, 2009

Unserious Rhetoric on National Security

One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about “torturing” captured terrorists.

People’s actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn’t descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.

What if it were your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking bomb and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make waterboarding look like a picnic.

You wouldn’t care what the New York Times would say or what “world opinion” in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one’s life and tell those other people what they could do.

But if the United States behaves that way it is called “arrogance” — even by American citizens. Indeed, even by the American president.

There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the president of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are “other ways” of getting information from terrorists.

Maybe this is a step up from the previous talking point that “torture” had not gotten any important information out of terrorists. Only after this had been shown to be a flat-out lie did Barack Obama shift his rhetoric to the lame assertion that unspecified “other ways” could have been used.

From a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality, perhaps nothing better could have been expected. But that the media and the public would have become so mesmerized by the Obama cult that they could not see through this to think of their own survival, or that of this nation, is truly a chilling thought.

When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them. In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women, and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.

When historians of the future look back on our era, what will they think of our time? Our media too squeamish to call murderous and sadistic terrorists anything worse than “militants” or “insurgents”? Our president going abroad to denigrate the country that elected him, pandering to feckless allies and outright enemies, and literally bowing to a foreign tyrant ruling a country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came?

It is easy to make talking points about how Churchill did not torture German prisoners, even while London was being bombed. There was a very good reason for that: They were ordinary prisoners of war who were covered by the Geneva Convention and who didn’t know anything that would keep London from being bombed.

Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word “torture,” there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it — which is what our terrorist enemies do — and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.

The Left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.

WRITTEN by Thomas Sowell as 'Talking Points' at the National Review on May 12th, 2009. As always, the title of this posting is a link to the original article.

Remembering the Nazi Final Solution

The Nazi Party came to power under the guidance of Adolf Hitler during the 1930's, and early on they blamed the Jewish people for many of their problems. They then began to formulate a plan for what Hitler himself called the "final solution of the Jewish question." In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed that saw classification of German citizens by race. If all four of your grandparents were of German blood, then you were a good German. If 3 or 4 of them were Jewish, then you were Jewish. With 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents, you were considered a 'crossbreed'. The laws prohibited marriage and intercourse between Jews and Germans, as well as the employment of German females under age 45 in Jewish households. They also stripped those of the non-German blood of their German citizenship. Efforts to begin eliminating Jews from German society began even prior to World War II, as Jews were slaughtered in mass killings and became the victims of 'pogroms', which were systematic riots against and attacks on their population centers that included physical violence and murder against people, destruction of businesses, and destruction of their places of worship. Beginning in September of 1941, all Jews living in the lands under German control were required to wear yellow patches on their clothing for identification. Jews were not permitted to become doctors, lawyers, or journalists, could not use state hospitals, and would not be schooled by the state beyond age 14. By the time that 1942 rolled around, with WWII underway fully across the globe, one million Jews had already been killed by the Nazi regime. But this was only the beginning of the worst slaughter of one group of people in the history of mankind. On January 20th, 1942 at the Wannsee Villa in Berlin, a conference named after Hitler's statement of 'The Final Solution to the Jewish Question' was held by a group of Nazi officials. It was here that the idea was born to build actual 'extermination camps' at which mass extermination of Jewish people would occur. Many Jews would also be held at 'concentration camps' if deemed healthy enough and would be utilized as slave labor, until they either died of disease or exhaustion. As the Germans conquered new territories, they set up a system of mass warehousing of Jews, and their transportation on trains to the extermination camps. Built under the direction of Heimlich Himmler in Nazi-occupied Poland, this use of actual extermination or death camps was the beginning of the final phase of the Jewish mass murders that has become known as 'The Holocaust'. This coordinated genocide of mostly Jews, but also at places including Serbs and gypsies, was accomplished by herding those who survived the arduous train rides into the camps. Here they would be led one-by-one into gas chambers, with the bodies then being either cremated or buried in mass graves. Approximately 2-3 million people, most of them Jewish, were killed during the years that the death camps operated, and perhaps 10 million more Jews were killed by the Germans when you count in mass shootings and other murder victims. Today, April 21st, is 'Holocaust Remembrance Day', on which we call to mind all of those who were murdered by the German Nazis in that final racist solution. Still today, over six decades after their use, the death camps with their gas chambers and crematories are lasting symbols of the pure evil that existed within Germany during the years just prior to and during World War II. Evil is a very real force, a real entity in our world that exists still today. We need only do what today calls on us to do, remember the Holocaust in the Nazi final solution, to plant that knowledge of evil firmly in our consciousness, and we must always be willing to fight to overcome that evil.

Some Parents Should Be Smacked

The ShopRite supermarket in Easton, PA received a simple request. The store provides birthday cakes, as many major chain groceries do now, and the parents of a little 3-year old boy wanted simply to buy a cake and have the tots name put on top. You know, "Happy Birthday so-and-so." Very simple, right? How much controversy could there be?. There was just one teeny, weeny, little problem for the store employee in the bakery section: the little tots name is Adolf Hitler Campbell. These parents named their child after one of the worst human beings in the history of the planet. Perhaps the next will be Charles Manson Campbell? Nope, because they actually already have two other children. Two-year old JoyceLynn Arian Nation CampbellS, and one-year old Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell. I mean, what happened there? Why not go right out and have the guts to call the kid Heinrich Himmler Campbell? Seriously, some parents should be smacked upside the back of the head, at a minimum. Parents name their kids for these goofy-assed shock value reasons, never considering that the poor kid has to grow up and live with this name for the rest of their life. Now, I am all for naming your child after your favorite movie star, music star, politician, baseball player, what have you. But let's be reasonable here, folks. There is a line. That line of decency and normalcy has been pushed back and pushed back by our society, but there comes a time that you have to stand up and call an idiot an idiot, and these parents are quite simply idiots of the first magnitude. The story got out in the Easton community, and a local newspaper interviewed the dear old dad of young Adolf. Dad's response was indignance at society's reaction: "People need to...start focusing on the future and forget the past" said dad Heath Campbell. The guy even had the gall to invoke the Obama name as a defense: "There's a new President, and he says its time for a change...a name's a name, the kid isn't going to grow up and do what he did", dad meaning Adolf Hitler, not Barrack Obama, of course. Maybe mom is normal, and dad is maneuvering all this, right? Try again. Mommy placed the order for the cake, and shopped around until she found a Wal-Mart that was willing to do it. Daddy Campbell, of course of German ancestry, thinks we all just need to get over it. Well, I guess we don't have much choice, dad. But as little Adolf grows up and his name gets out, I am betting that he has a much harder time getting over it. And that is your fault, Heir Campbell.

Pearl Harbor Ignited Nation in Faith

I was trying to think of an appropriate way to blend my usual 'Sunday Sermon' article with a remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day. I could have just went with two separate articles, but there had to be many connections between faith and the events of December 7th, 1941 when the Japanese attacked the U.S. Naval forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This sneak attack, which directly ushered America into World War II, resulted in President Franklin D. Roosevelt calling that Sunday morning "A date which will live in infamy!" Hawaii was a U.S. territory at the time, it would not become a full state until 1959, and it was a major American naval outpost in the South Pacific. The United States had never been attacked directly from an outside enemy, considering the Civil War as a purely internal struggle. So as the 353 Japanese bombers continually descended over Pearl without warning on that peaceful, sunny Sunday morning and began their devastating bombing and strafing runs, the significant American forces stationed there were taken completely by surprise. The Japanese inflicted tremendous damage that morning in an attempt to keep America from influencing their plans to dominate Southeast Asia. Numerous American ships and aircraft were destroyed and damaged, while 2,402 Americans lost their lives at Pearl and another 1,282 were wounded. The Japanese were allies of the Germans, and Hitler and his Nazi regime was already engaged in overrunning Europe. The Americans had tried to stay out of the war to this point, but in the aftermath of the attack at Pearl, Hitler declared war on the United States as an ally of Japan. At that time the U.S. was not the most powerful nation on earth, it was a budding military power that was still trying to fully emerge from the internal struggle of its lengthy economic Depression of the 1930's. America's passions were enflamed by this attack and the deaths of so many young servicepersons, and the nation was rallied to open their eyes to the full scope of the danger in sitting back and not engaging the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists. When you look closely at the basic elements of the key nations in the titanic struggle that was WWII, one stands out above all to any person of faith. The Germans and the Japanese cultures were overrun by Nazis and Imperialists, and in Italy the Socialists were in charge. Combined they were known as the 'Axis' powers who wanted to spread their ideologies and power, and none had a place for God. The Americans and British and the rest of what became known as the 'Allies' were largely God-fearing nations who frequently called on their faith to sustain during difficult times. That faith should always be appreciated by anyone who analyzes the eventual victory of the Allies in this epic struggle. A victory by the Allies signified a victory for freedom, democracy, and religious faith over the purely secular Axis regimes. Americans flooded their churches during these periods, praying for the health and safety of their loved ones, and for victory for our side. At home, they drew strength from this faith and forged one of the greatest industrial responses that mankind has ever seen, turning America's manufacturing capabilities from civilian purposes to military, allowing us to eventually overtake what had been a military superiority for the Axis at the outset. On the battlefields, in the skies, and on the seas, American military personnel were overwhelmingly Christian, prayed regularly, and turned to their faith during the difficult battles and circumstances in which they found themselves. I have no doubt that the one true God hears the prayers of His faithful. He allows our free will and our human choices to lead events here on earth, but he will intervene at the worst times when the direction of humanity itself is at stake. I have no doubt that God Himself intervened at numerous key times to give an ultimate advantage to the Allied forces in World War II. He granted us this intervention because we did not turn our backs on Him, and in fact turned even more towards Him during this difficult time. The lesson that we can learn is that it is important to turn to the Lord during difficult times in both our national and personal experiences. But we should also not return to a spiritual malaise when things are going well. Man's nature has always been to drift away from God when things are going good, thinking that we are doing well without Him when the truth is that it is His very blessings that put us in such a good position. We all need to turn more to God, in good times and in bad. Pearl Harbor became a rallying cry for the 'greatest generation', but there is question as to whether today's America can possibly respond in the same way to an existential threat, such as that from Radical Islam. We have drifted steadily away from God as a society and a nation since the end of WWII. We need to remember on this Sunday, December 7th, that Sunday morning 67 years ago, and never forget the blessings that God has given our nation throughout its history. God bless the living Veteran survivors of that fateful day. Their work, their sacrifice, their faith lives on now in fame, not in infamy.

How Would Jesus Vote ?

'What Would Jesus Do?' is a popular saying sometimes shortened to the simple acronym 'WWJD' on bumper stickers. A new play on that might be 'HWJV', or 'How Would Jesus Vote?' Now some might say that it is more than a bit presumptuous for myself or anyone else to try and get inside the head of Jesus Christ and determine who he likely would vote for in Tuesday's U.S. Presidential election. But I definitely do not think that it is a question that should not be at least thought about and explored. Let's look at the issues, and see how one might interpret Christ's view of them. He was not against taxes, telling us directly that we should "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's." What Jesus was about on this issue was excessive taxation, and so we find that He understands the necessity of taxes to support public works, but is against over burdening the taxpayer. On the issue of taxation, Barack Obama claims that he will give a 'middle-class' tax cut, but will raise corporate taxes. Of course as has been proven time and time again, corporations who have their taxes raised will not take on this burden, they will pass it along to their customers in the price of the goods they sell. In addition, if their tax burden gets too high, it has often resulted in businesses laying off workers, even shutting down completely. So as we see, Obama's plan might give that middle-class a tax cut on one hand, and effectively take it away or even worsen the situation on the other hand. With John McCain, the 'Bush tax cuts' due to soon expire, tax cuts that stimulated our economy, will have an advocate to keep them going. Those are very real tax cuts that have already been given to the middle-class. If allowed to expire, as Obama wants, they will result in a tax increase to that middle-class. The fact of the matter is that on taxes, in my opinion, Jesus would be squarely in the McCain camp. Let's move on to the important issues of judicial appointments and the key issue of abortion. This one is almost a no-brainer. Obama supports a woman's perceived 'right' to 'choose' to kill her baby as a method of birth control, even up to the point of not providing medical care to a child that survives the abortion procedure. That is not an exaggeration, that is his actual position. John McCain believes that the abortion procedure should only be a last resort for medical reasons, and would appoint justices who would hopefully overturn the 'Roe vs. Wade' decision that has resulted in a holocaust of millions of American babies begin killed over the past 30+ years. The fact is that without the 'Roe' decision, tens of millions of Americans would have lived, and had their own children. Just imagine what some of these young people might have accomplished had their parents chosen simply to allow them the most basic gift of the life that those parents got to live. Let's move on to the recent issue of war and national protection. Clearly, Jesus would have been against war as an action, because by it's very nature it involves the taking of human life. Just as clearly, Obama would like to end the current war actions in the Middle East and 'bring home the troops'. McCain would just as clearly continue the actions of our military in battling Islamofascism. The fact is that Jesus certainly would not have taken his 'turn the other cheek' teaching, one that he directed towards individuals to seek reconciliation rather than retribution, to apply to nations trying to defend the existence of Christianity. If you don't understand that the radical Islamists in the Middle East fully intend to destroy Western civilization, Judaism, Christianity, and every other 'ism' that stand in the way of their world dominance, then you simply are not educated enough on this issue. If the U.S. pulls its troops out of the Middle East before strong, stable democracies are formed there that can stand up for themselves, then the Islamofascists will overrun the region. If you say 'Who cares?' to that, then you are extremely naive. Jesus Christ was far from naive, and would understand that a war to stop Adolf Hitler from dominating the world and spreading racial and religious hatred, a 'Cold War' to stop Soviet socialism from dominating the world and destroying individual freedoms, and a war to stop Islamofascism from dominating the world and destroying His message would need to be fought. Sometimes making the hard decision in life, and having to roll up your sleeves and fight, is the only way to defend freedom and even life itself. War to save lives? That is exactly right. The Church has always supported the idea of a 'Just' war, and so would Christ. He thus would not support us coming home, turning our back on world responsibilities, and allowing the systematic ethnic and religious cleansing, death, regional conflict, and destruction that would result from our leaving the Middle East. Finally, on the issue of health care for all, would Jesus support the government giving away a poor quality of health care at a burdensome cost to everyone in massive tax increases, or would he support continuing to allow the greatest medical and health care system in the history of the planet to remain the way it is? My belief is that he would keep the current system that allows freedom of choice, opportunities and incentives for research into further advances, advanced care like none other in the world, and that still finds a way to give basic care to the most indigent who walk through emergency room doors. He certainly would not support a socialized system such as the all-inclusive government health care of Canada, where citizens literally die while on a waiting list for operations, and where in desperation they cross the borders to partake of the current American health care system. Jesus certainly would be attracted to the idea that Obama is part African-American, and thus would take that social aspect into consideration. Of course, he would also be attracted to Sarah Palin's candidacy as Vice-President on the Republican side, and the fact that she very well could end up as the first female President. My guess is that Jesus would not in the end be swayed by race, sex, religion, ethnicity, or anything other than who would be better at guiding the nation under a Christian ideal. No matter what campaign rhetoric might say, both candidates would support aid to the truly poor and needy in our country. This election's 'Choice' has perhaps been clearer than any in history. You can choose to vote for Obama: raise taxes, spend ourselves further into debt, embolden terror regimes, kill more babies, trash our Constitution. Or you can choose to vote for McCain: controlled taxation, reduced spending, strong military defense, supportive of traditional American values, and perhaps most importantly an administration that will value human life. Many opinion polls, broadcast news shows, entertainers, and liberal print media are trying to sell the public that this election is already over. Republicans, conservatives, traditional Americans, just stay home because you can't win anyway. I say this election is going to shock the liberal elements with its closeness, and two nights from now they will be wondering what could have happened to those big leads that they were being sold. I also say that, if he were alive today and a U.S. citizen, the answer to the acronym 'WHJV' is that Jesus Christ would be voting for John McCain for President.