Posted on 03/10/2011 11:59:33 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Evil. It has always been there, pushed back in the United States by American exceptionalism and the Judeo Christian traditions of what Ronald Reagan famously called -- borrowing from the Bible -- a "shining City on a hill." "God bless America," Reagan would say, emphatically and often. But God is not in fashion among our political and media elites and, with the presidency of Barack Obama, the lights of the city are dimming and evil has been drawn from the shadows.
Now we have a leader in the vanguard of a malevolence pushing into the mainstream through a thousand barely perceptible actions and words. It is tiptoeing into our culture, permeating our homes and institutions, shaping lives and expectations and quietly remaking our worldview in the radical, leftist image favored by our educated elites. Such is the evil of Barack Obama, an incredibly soft evil that threatens the future of a nation that, for all of its existence, has led the world in freedom and opportunity.
Take that, Jews. Shut up, Christians. Move over, strivers. Give it up, tradition. Individual choice, responsibility, honor -- simply words in a dictionary. All are relative, says the professor in the White House, as are your rights. We know best how to do your lives, comes the voice from a thousand of his appointees in hundreds of federal agencies. American exceptionalism? Fugedaboutit!
It is a soft evil that comes from quietly abandoning the values and traditions that naturally follow from a nation founded on the fact that God created humanity with "unalienable rights" -- so said our founders. From this flows an exceptionally American and Biblical worldview that understands the need to "act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Bible stuff, sure; but also the Judeo-Christian virtues that have guided our national and private lives, lived much in the breach but nevertheless honored as worthy characteristics.
Theologians tell us that it is typical of humanity to create evil by "missing the mark" in daily living. We miss the target of godly or righteous behavior in our relationships in innumerable and often minor ways: snubbing a neighbor, parking illegally, etc. But our saving grace is that we acknowledge that these transgressions, however small, are still wrong. But when we don't, when we miss the mark deliberately and as a matter of policy, then soft sin builds toward hard evil. And that is where we are with our federal government. Obama and his fellow Democrats, for example, push our children into debt, a soft evil that will grow hard when the bill comes due and whole generations are yoked to government. He promotes publically subsidized, racially selective abortions that target African-American women at three times the rate of the rest of the population, a soft evil that becomes hard when, as has happened, babies are born and then murdered, their spines snapped with scissors by a doctor paid by taxpayers.
Ironically, it was the ancient Jews who first warned that the soft evil of "mark-missing" results in the same kind of evil produced by in-your-face sin such as murder or rape. Jews have always been the canary in the coal mine, the first to take it on the chin by assuming the unenviable task of reminding the powerful that there is, indeed, a higher power -- and that evil is the inevitable result of human arrogance. Hitler and his jack-booted hordes pursued power through a hard evil that began with the Jews and continued on to eliminate significant chunks of the human race; in the Arab world, Jews were the first murdered, but recent attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt remind us that it won't stop there.
Obama and his allies offer a softer version, one easier to ignore but heading in the same direction. The Obama leftists don't wear jackboots; instead, they shuffle in on slippers, using the power of government to softly challenge and redefine right thinking and behavior. This quiet evil is most apparent in his treatment of the Jews. As Jackie Mason put it, in this life "three things are certain: Death, taxes, and anti-Semitism." And so we have the soft anti-Semitism of Barack Obama, who says it is okay to not like the Jews...oh, I mean Israel. "Take the Jews -- please," says the Obama White House, putting a Henny Youngman face on the ugly façade of an ancient hate.
The symbolism is hard to miss. Quietly, surreptitiously, a hundred little acts of soft evil put us on the path to the hard evils of the tyrannies that plague other parts of the world. Palestinian government thugs murder both Jews and Arabs in territories littered with poverty and brutality. But it is Israel -- the prosperous and free Jewish state which welcomes Arabs -- that stands condemned as the administration unleashes what the New York Post called "a vile attack on Israel, using language far worse than anything" the notoriously anti-Semitic United Nations can dream up. At the same time, Obama ignores the vow of the Muslim Brotherhood to "kill the Jews -- to the very last one" and, instead of decrying their murderous intent, pronounces them worthy of friendship. Hard evil hates Jews; soft evil embraces their murderers.
Soft evil inevitably leaches into public life. Harvard Law professor and liberal icon Alan Dershowitz, a frequent speaker on university campuses, traces the growing hate directed at Jewish students and faculty to the willingness of Obama to embrace and thereby legitimize the hard evil of those who hate, "thus blurring the line between legitimate political criticism and illegitimate bigotry."
Such is the nature of soft evil. In international affairs, in abortion, in healthcare, in millions of new regulations and taxes, in a thousand ways and relationships the lines between unalienable rights and illegitimate policy are blurred. Soft evil whispers "power" and Obama smiles.
Take a look around this country. Outside the Beltway, we are all Jews now.
+1.
Very well stated.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. About the time Obama got into Harvard Law and was named editor of the Review and did nothing, Saudi Arabia gave Harvard $350 million for a new building devoted to the study of Arabs or Arab culture/history. Whatever. A quid pro quo. They bought and paid for an American president. In fact they’ve gleefully boasted that they control America.
Even the O'Bunghole has to know that, if he pushes too hard, within a matter of hours, there could be over twenty-million partriots, armed to the teeth, gathering on The Mall. waiting for an excuse to let Fido hunt again. That old dawg has been a long time away from the real heat, but he remembers the adrenaline-gushing smell of it, and just how molten it can get.
For those among us who have known intimately such times, there's nothing back here in the world that comes close to making you feel so alive... so huge and important and necessary.
There's at least a small but yearning piece of that point man, that gold miner, that buckskin-clad gladiator coursing through the veins of almost all patriotic Americans. We all know, at at least some seemingly insignificant level, what has been the historical price-tag for the freedoms and comforts and pleasures we think of as life in these United States.
Very few are completely unwilling to do whatever is necessary to pass that on to our progeny. Many will never know what they are capable of until their lives hang in the balance.
Should we ever crest that wretchedly ignoble rise, I have all good faith in my neighbors and countrymen that enough will share our ideals that we will not stand alone on that great and terrible day, despite that surely we would were naught else left to us.
Perhaps I have more faith in my fellows than you, but I think not. In your heart of hearts, you know what even O'Buttwad knows: They can only push just so far, and then their every step is but another into the abyss.
8^D
bflr
Good post; good piece. Most people do not think of evil as being in any way "soft", but it is like the fog that softens one's surroundings and causes us to lose our way.
“The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.”
Here’s another version of that, perhaps King James:
“The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men”
Both Psalm 12:8
Good post!
Personally, I don’t consider his support for abortion and infanticide “soft.” That’s hard-core evil.
If generations of American children are educated in government schools that are collectivist, socialist-funded, voter mob ( school board) managed, and godless in their worldview, then eventually American will learn:
** to think and reason GODLESSLY.
** be comfortable with collectivism.
** be comfortable with using government force to take money from a neighbor.
** to submit their souls to the voting mob that will rule their very thoughts, lives, and now, (with Death Panels), even how they die.
Yes, evil must be fought back in the legislatures,...but...if conservatives are serious about saving our nation, we MUST MUST MUST shut down the government schools. We MUST MUST MUST get our nation's children into **private** educational settings that will thoroughly integrate Judeo Christian values and our nation's founding principles into every minute of their school day.
Well?...Soft evil? How do we define it?
I have an example:
My husband and I like to ski. I noticed that this year there is a graphic on a popular brand of ski that shows a nearly naked woman across the length of the ski. It wasn't very long ago that such a photo would only have been found on the inside pages of Playboy.
There was a time in our nation that this ski would have never made it to the stores. Store owners would have informed the manufacturer that their store was a “family” store and the picture on the ski could not be displayed on their ski racks.
There was a time when the management of the ski resorts would have asked the owners of the skis to remove them from the slopes.
There was a time when the **men** in the lift lines would have stood together and would have told these guys using these skis to get away from their families and especially their children.
Today, these skis are considered “kool”.
What happened? Soft evil happened.
Whose hiding the evidence that will get him impeached? Who in DC knows?
If our university classrooms were filled to the brim with young people who could defend their Judeo-Christian faith and our nation's principles, their godless communist professors would **wither** before their righteousness!
If our nation's university campuses were filled to overflowing with righteous youth, there would be Judeo Christian based fraternities, sororities, service clubs, and political clubs dedicated to preserving our Constitution.
In a short 10 to 20 years these young adults would be taking their places in every area of our culture.
So?...How to get to this point?
Answer: SHUT DOWN the GODLESS, collectivist, socialist-funded, compulsory, comrade committee controlled (misnamed “school board”) GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS!
We MUST MUST MUST get our nation's children into private educational settings that thoroughly integrate the specific Judeo Christian belief of the child's family and our nation’ founding principles into every minute of their educational day.
We’re still in the stage of
“don’t have to use ‘em, because we have ‘em”.
Things get REAL ugly when you HAVE to use ‘em to show those who would enslave us that we won’t go without a fight.
Up till now, they understood that.
They’ve gotten real cocky, though, with the culmination of their agenda in the election of their pet Marxist to the most powerful office in the world.
who could defend their Judeo-Christian faith
You use the phrase repeatedly in your post, what exactly do you mean by "Judeo-Christian" particularly when you attach "faith"?
Excellent article!
Fog is a much better word than soft. Evil usually needs cover because it’s easily defeated by exposure. Most evil is of the subtype envy. It’s useful to call out envy when you see it because the shame from being exposed easily counters it.
Evil operates at full power constantly. The effect of evil at different times is greater or less but the violation is is a link in the chain that eventually drags us under.
Hitler. He became Evil when? Answer: Decades before he got anywhere near killing anyone. He set out on a road with Evil in his heart and, well, we all have heard the rest. We are in life intrinsically linked in Good and Evil and yet we can and will be judged INDIVIDUALLY because Evil is Evil. God will not say: “Well, Tal’s no Hitler, let him pass!” There will be no Adolph Hitler or Mother Theresa when I am before God. There will only be me and my deeds. And if I have in life decided for myself what is Evil and what is somehow something less I will find myself in a world of hurt. We are now discovering that in a free society we can do nothing to stop the degradations that are "small" or "harmless". But those degradations are neither small nor harmless in that they violate the order told to us by The Creator of Time and will take us to where He said they would.
( from the article)
It is a soft evil that comes from quietly abandoning the values and traditions that naturally follow from a nation founded on the fact that God created humanity with "unalienable rights" -- so said our founders. From this flows an exceptionally American and Biblical worldview that understands the need to "act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Bible stuff, sure; but also the Judeo-Christian virtues that have guided our national and private lives, lived much in the breach but nevertheless honored as worthy characteristics.
Evil. It has always been there, pushed back in the United States by American exceptionalism and the Judeo Christian traditions of what Ronald Reagan famously called -- borrowing from the Bible -- a "shining City on a hill." "God bless America," Reagan would say, emphatically and often.
Only a citizenry firm in their faith and our nation's founding principles and philosophically prepared to defend it can stare down and defeat Islam, fascism, or communism.
If conservatives love their country and wish to see this experiment in self-rule continue, we MUST MUST MUST shut down the godless government schools. We MUST MUST MUST work to see that every child has access to a private and conservative educational setting the upholds the Judeo/Christian belief taught in the home and our nation's founding principles.
I use the term, "educational setting", because prison-like schools should be abandoned. They teach children to be comfortable with being prisoners.
Instead we should return to the education settings enjoyed by our Founding Fathers: homeschool, dame schools, one room schools organized by parents, some private tutoring, home-based academies to prepare children for college entrance by their early to mid teens, and apprenticeships.
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