Posted on 01/14/2007 4:53:30 PM PST by freedomdefender
I am certainly not a Churchill. I am not even a Revel. I am having enough trouble just trying to be a Lapin. But I am issuing a very serious warning about deep consequences, just as they did. It is a warning about the earliest stages of what could become a cataract of disasters if not resisted now.
During the 1930s, Winston Churchill desperately tried to persuade the English people and their government to see that Hitler meant to end their way of life. The British ignored Churchill, which gave Hitler nearly 10 years to build up his military forces. It wasn't until Hitler actually drew blood that the British realized they had a war on their hands. It turned out to be a far longer and more destructive war than it needed to be had Churchill's early warning been heeded.
In 1983, a brave French writer, Jean-Francois Revel, wrote a book called "How Democracies Perish." In this remarkable volume, he described how communism's aim is world conquest. For decades he had been trying to warn of communism's very real threat. Yet in January 1982, a high State Department official said: "We Americans are not solving problems, we are the problem." (Some things never change.) A good portion of the planet fell to communism, which brought misery and death to millions because we failed to recognize in time that others meant to harm us.
Heaven knows there was enough warning during the 1980s of the intention of part of the Islamic world to take yet another crack at world domination. Yet instead of seeing each deadly assault on our interests around the world as a test of our resolve, we ignored it. We failed the test and lost 3,000 Americans in two unforgettable hours.
I am not going to argue that what is happening now is on the same scale as the examples I cite above, but a serious war is being waged against a group of Americans. I am certain that if we lose this war, the consequences for American civilization will be dire.
Phase one of this war I describe is a propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily reminiscent of how effectively the Goebbels propaganda machine softened up the German people for what was to come.
There is no better term than propaganda blitzkrieg to describe what has been unleashed against Christian conservatives recently.
Consider the long list of anti-Christian books that have been published in recent months. Here are just a few samples of more than 30 similar titles, all from mainstream publishers:
"American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America"
"The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us"
"The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason"
"Piety & Politics: The Right-wing Assault on Religious Freedom"
"Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism"
"Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America"
"Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right"
What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam. Does anyone seriously think America is more seriously jeopardized by Christian conservatives than by Islamic zealots? (Yep, that loonytunes loudmouth, Rosie O'DonnelI, said something to that effect on the popular TV show, "The View" - RJ) fear that many Americans believe just that in the same way that many pre-World War II Westerners considered Churchill a bigger threat than Hitler.
Some may say that today's proliferation of anti-Christian print propaganda is nothing to become worried about. To them I ask two questions:
First, would you be so sanguine if the target of this loathsome library were Jewish? Just try changing the titles in some of the books I mention above to reflect anti-Semitism instead of rampant anti-Christianism and you'll see what I mean.
Second, major movements that changed the way Americans felt and acted came about through books, often only one book. Think of Rachel Carson's 1962 error-filled "Silent Spring" that resulted in the pointless banning of the insecticide DDT and many unnecessary deaths. Other books that caused upheavals in our nation were Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," many of Ayn Rand's books and of course "Uncle Tom's Cabin." ("Population Bomb" by Paul Ehrlich is another...I confess reading it as student at university & being mightily impressed by it....but since I'm older & bit wiser, I know now it was a lot of propaganda & hot air & unproven assumptions....the truth is the opposite - RJ)
No, I would advise you not to underestimate the power of books to alter the behavior of the American public, and I fear for an America influenced to detest Christianity by this hate-filled catalog.
It is not just books but popular entertainment also that beams the most lurid anti-Christian propaganda into the hearts and minds of viewers. One need only think of who the real targets of the recent hit movie "Borat" are. The brilliant Jewish moviemaker Sacha Baron Cohen, as his title character, using borderline dishonest wiles, lures some innocent but unsophisticated country folk, obviously Christians, to join him in his outrageously anti-Semitic antics. Cohen then triumphantly claims to have exposed anti-Semitism. In fact, he has revealed nothing other than the latent anti-Christianism of America's social, economic and academic secular elites.
Even the recent PBS documentary, "Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence," managed to do more attacking Christianity than defending Judaism.
Richard Dawkins, an Oxford University professor, is one of the generals in the anti-Christian army of the secular left. American academia treats him with reverence and hangs on his every word when he insists that "religious myths ought not to be tolerated."
For those with a slightly more tolerant outlook, he asks, "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children?" He suggests that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs. Needless to say, he means Christian beliefs, of course. Muslim beliefs add to England's charmingly diverse cultural landscape.
The war is against those who regard the Bible to be God's revelation to humanity and the Ten Commandments to be His set of rules for all time. Phase one in this war is to make Christianity, well, sort of socially unacceptable. Something only foolish, poor and ugly people could turn to.
We have seen how a carefully constructed campaign pretty much made it socially unacceptable to drink and drive. For years, there had been stringent laws against drunk driving. They achieved little. In the end, the practice was all but eliminated by groups allied with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and their effective ways of changing the way Americans thought about it.
We have seen how a carefully constructed campaign has pretty much made it socially unacceptable to smoke. In the face of a relentless campaign (dare one call it propaganda?), Americans became docile and forfeited the right to make their own decisions. Nobody was willing to stand up to the no-smoking tyrants. Nobody even asked whether health was sufficient grounds for freedom to be reduced. Now, entire cities and even states have banned smoking, not only in public places but even in privately owned restaurants.
Tyranny comes when citizens are seduced into trading freedom for the promise of safety and security.
Considerably more intellectual energy is being pumped into the propaganda campaign against Christianity than was ever delivered to the anti-smoking or anti-drunk-driving campaigns. Fervent zealots of secularism are flinging themselves into this anti-Christian war with enormous fanaticism.
If they succeed, Christianity will be driven underground, and its benign influence on the character of America will be lost. In its place we shall see a sinister secularism that menaces Bible believers of all faiths. Once the voice of the Bible has been silenced, the war on Western Civilization can begin and we shall see a long night of barbarism descend on the West.
Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, the West is doomed.
Which is why I, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, devoted to Jewish survival, the Torah and Israel am so terrified of American Christianity caving in.
Many of us Jews are ready to stand with you. But you must lead. You must replace your timidity with nerve and your diffidence with daring and determination. You are under attack. Now is the time to resist it.
And he's really issuing a warning to the Christians in America, who way-outnumber Jews.
finished reading that book a few months ago. an excellent read from cover to cover.
First, the simple fact is that chr*stians cannot save America. Jews must save America and the world by returning to Torah and bringing mankind to the Noachide Laws. Even disregarding this, Jews still stand a better chance critiquing liberalism simply because chr*stians have been made the scapegoats and so many attacks on religion have been committed in the name of philo-Semitism. What would chr*tian bashers have to say when faced with a fully Theocratic Jewish People?
Secondly (and a much more minor point), I do wish conservatives would stop adopting "the right to smoke" as a cause. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people opposed to smoking not for health reasons but because it is a moral vice, and conservatives have no business opposing the outlawing of vices. Please don't misunderstand me--I'm not interested at all in the legislation of "public health." But I do resent the smoking issue being approached always and only as a "freedom" issue.
It wasn't that long ago, folks, that conservative Republicans advocated the total prohibition of alcoholic beverages. To this day there are religious people who regard "beverage alcohol" as the fountain of all sins and who would gladly see them banned once again (in fact, there is still a Prohibition Party). And please don't give me the "radical Unitarian Massachusetts do-gooders" speech; Billy Sunday and the Twenties incarnation of the Ku-Klux Klan were as much a part of the Prohibition movement as the leftist utopians.
While the drinking of alcohol is undeniably permitted by religious law (much to the disappointment of my puritanical heart), smoking has not been around that long, nor is it a natural form of consumption. When it was first introduced to the West it was highly controversial and in fact was at one time so scandalous that it was adopted by antinomians as a form of ritual sin.
How soon we forget!
These two caveats aside, yeyasher koach Rabbi Lapin!
ping
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
As this situation (i.e., Muslim encroachment on the Western world) develops, you just know that push will lead to shove. The wimps will give in, the non-wimps won't. And we will find ourselves living out the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
Excuse my ignorance but what are the Noachide Laws? I suppose I could google it up but since you're here...
Done replied. See my post #63 above, then bawl me out for still being an uptight puritanical small-town Twenties Protestant.
The basic laws given by HaShem to all non-Jews. They are fully explicated in Jewish tradition.
While it is true that most Jews vote Democrat, this is not the case with Rabbi Lapin, therefore, he need not "take the beam out of" his eye. Nor is it the case for ALL Jews, of course. Not all Christians vote GOP either. My next door neighbor is a case in point. He attends that cute little church that they use on the TV series "Seventh Heaven." I can almost completely guarantee you that the majority of those who attend that church vote Democrat.
Rabbi Lapin fought with us here in Los Angeles to KEEP the cross on the country seal.
And I thank you.
I think the rabbi is correct. AND history also shows that when Christianity is persecuted it spreads like wildfire. SHHH don't tell those oxford "historians"
I have believed this since I was able to reason. I figured out long ago that the absolute only reason that the world is relatively livable for most people is because of a small number of dedicated Christians. So.....I believe that Christianity not only made America possible, it has made most parts of the world "livable".
Of course there is misery and strife everywhere, but America is working on the problem....in spite of Pelosi et al.
The Rabbi is only partially right, however IMO....without America, the world will descend back into 6th century dirt ruled not by the smartest with great common sense, but the most vicious murderers.
When the lights go out in America, the lights go out everywhere.
--What does Bush "get?" He is stuck in a little war in Iraq while stringently ignoring the Adolph Stalin entity across the border in Iran.--
Dumbest post of the weekend.
Jeeze, do you and I see eye-to-eye about the world! Glad I am not along at looking at this country through rose colored glasses.
If the slave then accepts Islam will freedom be granted?
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