Posted on 11/07/2004 11:21:16 PM PST by goldstategop
Any observer of last week's American elections would have to conclude that it is the United States that has now taken upon itself the role of being God's chosen people.
Although they have become the most hated nation on earth for doing so, Americans chose another four years of a faith-based presidency, dedicated to exporting freedom and democracy – by military force if necessary – and were happy to continue with their pariah president, even if that meant being rejected by the international community for their commitment to a moral foreign policy.
If only Israel would follow their close ally's example and behave more like a chosen nation themselves! Unfortunately, the United States and Israel could not be headed in more different directions.
President Bush's stunning victory was a mandate from the people for a more moral nation. Pollsters were shocked to discover that the No 1 issue for American voters – more important that security or the economy – was moral values. Even John Kerry went from church to church talking about God and reminding voters that he had been an altar boy. In modern-day America, a man cannot become president unless he shows an authentic commitment to God, and since 80 percent of the morality voters did not discern that in John Kerry, he lost the election.
The contrast with Israel could not be more stark, where an Israeli prime minister speaking about God is the certain kiss of electoral death. Most Americans would find it shocking that the political leaders of the Jewish nation, who gifted the Creator to the world, would never consider mentioning God for fear of alienating a majority secular electorate who are deeply distrustful of faith. In this respect, Israeli leaders are more like European leaders who are about as likely to invoke the name of God as they are the name of Zeus.
Then there is the fact that the majority of Americans don't care about being cut off from the rest of the world. In this election, the American people made a resounding judgment: If America is right and the world is wrong, we will show them our contempt. John Kerry's central campaign platform was the need to rebuild frayed alliances with Europe and the United Nations that he said were damaged by Bush administration arrogance.
In the end, Americans decided that their strength lay not in being popular but in being moral. An America that finds Europe and the United Nations arrogant, dishonorable and condescending is content to live in splendid isolation. Kofi Annan can stick up for Saddam, and Jacques Chirac can visit Arafat in the hospital. We'd rather not be invited to those parties.
Yet Israel continues to grovel before the Europeans for acceptance and has always been a supplicant for U.N. approval. I am well aware of the old argument, that America is a superpower that can go it alone, but Israel is a tiny country in need of friends. But that argument is unpersuasive – first, because Israel has a phenomenal friend in the United States and can easily be strong and secure with that friendship alone. And second, because Israelis should have learned by now that no matter how many concessions they make to the Arabs, they will forever be rejected by the international community in favor of the Palestinians. Since that is the case, better to build your walls, protect your people, and proclaim your contempt for the world's amorality, just as Americans have.
Finally, there is the colossal discrepancy between how the United States and Israel have decided to deal with a terrorist insurgency. American soldiers are being attacked and killed in greater number in Iraq than even Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The pundits were convinced for this reason the American people would choose John Kerry's "wrong war" philosophy over George Bush's "no retreat" pledge. In the end, the American people decided they would not be pushed out of Iraq by a bunch of murderous thugs because that would only produce more murderous thugs.
But Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza under fire is sure to vastly increase terrorist pressure on Israel in every corner of its land. Any terrorist leader who sees the shrinking borders of Israel that began with the Camp David accords 25 years ago can only conclude that the once glorious goal of pushing Israel into the sea is slowly becoming a reality. Nobody wants to see Israeli soldiers die in Gaza, just as no one wants to see American soldiers die in Iraq.
But while the Americans understand that withdrawing the troops will lead to more American deaths at home, Sharon mistakenly believes that withdrawing the troops will lead to international acceptance of Israel's claim to most of the West Bank and partial pacification of the Palestinians. By retreating under fire, Ariel Sharon has proven himself to be the John Kerry of Israeli politics when what Israel really needs is its own George Bush.
From the earliest days of the American republic, the patriots who built this nation – devout Christians all – drew upon the biblical idea of a chosen nation as the inspiration behind the struggle against British tyranny. In the same way that ancient Israel was heralded by the prophets as "a light unto the Nations," American visionaries spoke in strongly spiritual terms of a country with a "manifest destiny" that was to serve as a refuge for the world's "teeming masses yearning to be free."
Yet, since its founding, Israel's leaders have totally missed the universality of Israel's chosenness to the rest of the world. Every week, hundreds of American Christians write to me about how much they love Israel and see in its founding the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy for the Jews to bring blessing to the world from their ancient homeland.
How ironic that while 70 million born-again Christians believe that with all their heart, the average secular Israeli would scoff at such a notion.
"Arguments that are not based in reality is the hallmark of liberals. I don't think we should engage in such folly."
So very true. It's a waste of time and energy because liberals just don't "see."
I'd hazard a guess God is more with America than against it. That doesn't make America or Americans "Chosen" at all or even, particularly, "God's Country"... We're greatly blessed and attempt to spread free exercise of the Creator's gifts of unalienable rights to the oppressed and butchered by fellow humans.
We're flawed, like all humanity, but continue to do good works. God can be seen in good works but we must remember humility.
This article's assertions are perverse and dangerously prideful.
Indeed. America for Americans not for Europhilia.
God chooses who his people are, not people else they would be called "People's chosen people." Hello?! Duh!
Well said. We are indeed blessed by God. But we must repent or forfeit that blessing.
The promised land is the land of Israel.
Open the bible and read :)
This article is simple a big joke, and compare betwin Israel or Europe is a joke.
Exactly. G-d's covenant is forever.
If you check the most unwanted nation on earth then it would be Israel.
Israel's opinion about europe and especially UN is wrose than the american opinion... in our view UN is nothing than a terror supporter organization and must be cancelled.
America voted for her security- and what do you think Israel is doing since 1948? voting for the enviornment? lol
Israel looks like USA or better to say that USA looks like Israel those days. Betwin Israel and the europians there is a major hateness those days.
I feel ashamed when being compared to the europian nations who murdered 6 million of my poeple, and supporting this till this day.
If anyone here was the first to ignore all the world and do whats the best for its poeple, then its the state of Israel.
Otherwise state of Israel was today a desert full of religious fanatics riding on camels, with 5 million jews less on earth.
I have some inside information that Israel(Jews) will once again acknowledge that they are the chosen people and that G-d does indeed consider them a shining light.All in due time.:)
Don't be too quick to proclaim your self "God's chosen people." Once you do so, a kind of hubris sets in, the kind that bit Newt Gingrich in the butt after mis-reading the '94 election results.
Quoth the Einstein:
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
--Albert Einstein
I think claiming to know what God thinks is akin to hubris and hubris causes one to become unbalanced, therefore hubris is immoral.
We may only be specially blessed since we look out for Israel, as well as the rest of the world. But if we allow hubris to take root, how long may we count on that blessing?
Maybe God wants the occupied territories cleared out so there can be a final cleansing of suicide bombers and such?
If you trust that Dubya is God's chosen leader for the U.S. at this time then you must accept that Sharon is the chosen leader for Israel at this time.
At any rate, I don't believe God's Chosen People ought to conduct themselves as a bunch of undisciplined braggarts, whoever they might be. Set yourself upon too high a pedestal and you risk suffering from hypoxia.
=== Guess what nation is now God's Country and who is now God's Chosen People?
Sure as hell ain't gonna be the Potential People for whom the State of California will be paying in the billions nor the embryos used to confect the 72 lines (and counting..) of our pro-life President's taxpayer funded human experimentation on the Excess Manufacture where "God's blessings" are concerned.
God bless you, Duke!
So, we're not to know what God thinks? How do you support that claim?
This much I can agree with. We're the self-annointed, on a mission to save the world on our own terms. The pelagian presuppositions of the American myth are working themselves out now.
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