Posted on 02/26/2003 7:32:09 PM PST by Warhammer
Picture Profile Putting Faith in the Founding Fathers
Posted Feb. 26, 2003
By Stephen Goode and Rick Kozak
Media Credit: Rick Kozak/Insight
Joseph Farah is chief executive officer and cofounder of WorldNetDaily.com, "the Internet's largest independent news site," in Farah's words. He's also a veteran journalist, having served such newspapers as the Sacramento Union and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and is author of a new book, Taking America Back, the subtitle of which is, A Radical Plan to Revive Freedom, Morality and Justice.
It is indeed a "radical plan." In his book, Farah advocates repealing all national gun laws and doing away with the minimum wage. He wants all presidential directives and executive orders repealed and the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. He would end all limits on federal campaign spending, but would enforce bans on foreign contributions. Above all, he wants Americans to recognize that their nation's greatness depends on moral and responsible citizens who live according to the laws and commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition, something he believes has been forgotten in what he calls our "degraded culture."
Farah argues that his agenda isn't new. It's based on the vision the Founding Fathers had for this country when they brought it into being more than 200 years ago, he says. It is time for a new American Revolution, Farah tells Insight. "It's all about freedom."
Insight: When did you come up with your title, Taking America Back? Hasn't that been a battle cry and a challenge in the culture wars that have been raging in this country for at least three decades?
Joseph Farah: Many times when you begin writing a book you don't have a title. In this case, it was the title that came to me first. I've run WorldNetDaily.com now for almost seven years. Generally, it is bad stuff we're telling people about. We get a lot of feedback -- about 2,000 e-mails a day. The biggest question I get on a daily basis is, "Okay, you've told us about this or that problem. What is the solution?"
Unfortunately, there's no way you can get into substantive issues in the context of a daily-news Website. All you can deal with are the specifics. So it occurred to me that if I were going to answer their question it would have to be in a book, and it would have to be a book that had a broad view. Writing a book of this kind is what God put me here to do. This is what my whole life up to this point has prepared me to do.
Q: What do you mean by Taking America Back? Back from whom?
A: Another thing that the people who e-mail us say is, "Don't tell me to write to my congressman because I've done that and I've gotten back form letters -- letters by auto-responders." Clearly I would have to get beyond clichés in my book, clichés like "Vote for the best person." These are not authentic solutions, and anybody who suggests otherwise is lying to themselves.
My idea was to refocus people's attention and draw them back to the spirit and vision that the Founding Fathers had for this country. The biggest problem I try to address is the centralization of power. That's totally at odds with the Founders' vision.
How do you tackle such a problem? My solution is to forget about change coming from Washington these days. People think about voting for presidents -- that this is the way to change things! They don't even think about Congress because there are so few congressional races that truly are competitive.
What I recommend to people is that they look much closer to home, they look in their own families, they look in their own communities. There are lots of things we can do in our own lives to be more responsible citizens -- the kind of self-governing individuals that our Founders knew we need to be in order to have a great country.
This book is only a beginning. We've now developed a Website, takingamericaback.com, which has an open forum where I hope to develop a lively debate about what we should do next.
Q: Our schools are one of the problems you address at length in the book?
A: The one on which I spend most time. Sending our children off to government institutions is sending them off not only to be indoctrinated politically, but to be insulted and conditioned culturally and spiritually in a thousand different ways that parents may not approve. In this way our kids literally are taken away from us -- their parents -- by the state.
The problem isn't just bad schools. It's not just that our kids don't get an education. It's that they're miseducated. They're conditioned from being good, moral young people responsive to their parents' wishes. In effect, they become wards of the state.
Q: What about Christian or other private schools?
A: We've done the whole Christian-school thing. The culture outside of such schools to which youngsters are subjected seven or eight hours a day is the same culture to which kids in the government schools are subjected. It's the MTV culture, and you can't escape it.
You may be able to shelter your own children, but you can't protect them outside the home. We found we were losing our kids, that we weren't the authority in their lives anymore.
So we homeschool our children. The reason that this is so important to the whole concept of taking America back is that it requires you to say "No" to what the state expects of you, and saying no is the first step. It didn't take a violent revolution to bring down the Soviet Union. When enough people said "No," the whole system imploded.
I may be soaked by property taxes and federal income taxes to pay for the monstrosity that the school system has become, but I'm not going to submit my kids to it. When enough people do that, there will be a point at which we reach critical mass and the whole thing will cave in upon itself.
Q: Aren't there good teachers in public schools?
A: There are good people with good skills and good intentions trying to teach kids in public schools. My father was a schoolteacher; my brother, too. The problem is what is above them. They're part of a huge, centralized system that's under the control of the National Education Association and the increasingly large federal bureaucracy. It is getting worse all the time.
Q: In your opinion, to what else must Americans say "No" in order to take back their country?
A: The first step I call for is actually an affirmation, one that I notice the Founders did every time they were in trouble -- pray. Whether it was George Washington at Valley Forge or the Continental Congress getting stuck on some great issue of freedom and governance, they got down on their knees and they prayed for God's intervention and providence in what they were doing.
If you go through the list of the Founders you will be reminded that, to a man, they believed we needed to be a spiritually awake and moral people in order to be self-governing individuals. Even Thomas Jefferson, to whom people look as the most skeptical of the Founders, believed that we need to be moral and that without religion in our lives it would be impossible for us to be the kind of people who could keep this great system going.
Over and over again we see the role played in our nation's history by prayer. So the very first step that I recommend to take back our country is that good people pray. I honestly believe that it would have a profound impact on our land if our people would begin by turning to God and asking, "God, what do we need to do to turn this country around?"
Q: So we should begin with prayer, affirming traditional values, as we say "No" to the MTV culture. You school your five daughters at home, but how do you protect them from the hedonistic culture that surrounds them? They could hear most anything, say, on the car radio while going for a drive.
A: Don't scan the radio. Don't even turn on the television. The whole culture has become so degraded that there's no escaping it outside the home. So we work at home, we school at home, we do everything at home. We still have to go get the groceries and go to the bank, that sort of thing. If you follow our example you will be insulted from time to time, but at least you will minimize the consequences of cultural poisoning for your children.
Q: Is there any other antidote?
A: We try to teach our children to be rebels. That is what Christian, moral people are in our society today, like it or not. Most Christians and other moral people don't like it. Most of them don't think of themselves in that way and few truly are rebels. But I think we need to be. That's one of the things I advocate in this book: a whole new orientation of mind.
And forget this idea of being conservative. It's too late to be conservative. To be conservative in a society that's become as degraded as ours has become means settling for what we see all around us. I don't want to settle for that. That's not good enough for my kids. I want better. I want to go on the offensive.
Q: This is a very radical agenda, isn't it?
A: We've got to take back the turf we've lost over the last 25 or 30 years, and to do that requires a truly revolutionary agenda. We are very antiestablishment. George Washington, who is one of my heroes, was a man who put everything on the line, as many of his contemporaries did, in order to change things. On the line were "their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor."
Q: Don't you think it is unlikely that so revolutionary an agenda would attract large numbers of Americans today? Aren't you talking about preserving a remnant rather than actually taking back America?
A: It is always a remnant. It was a remnant in 1776. It wasn't a majority of the colonists who chose to resist the British Empire. Life was actually pretty good under the Crown, relatively speaking. A lot of people in the colonies recognized that fact and didn't want to risk being thrown into worse conditions. But there was a remnant who recognized that freedom could be greatly expanded here, that maybe for the first time in the history of the world we could have something really, really great.
It was a remnant that led the American Revolution. It will always be a remnant that preserves and protects. It is certainly going to be a remnant now, because I don't believe there's anything close to 50 percent of the American people who are ready for what I'm talking about, not even close. If it is 5 or 10 percent, I'll be very happy. But that's enough.
Think about the forces in our society today that, though they represent a lot less than 10 percent of our population, nonetheless are having a profound effect on the society.
Q: Is, say, 5 percent really enough to make big changes?
A: It's already happening without organization. Fifty percent of the people don't vote and commentators say that's bad. If so, I think it is going to be much worse. One of the things I advocate is that people stop voting for the lesser of two evils -- stop doing that, because the lesser of two evils is still evil. Stop, because as long as you settle for a bad choice, that's all you're going to get.
I say absolutely never vote for a candidate who does not support the U.S. Constitution 100 percent. There are not many times you get a choice like that, and if it means not voting, that's okay. In fact, it is a good thing not to vote when any potential choice is a bad one. That way, elections will have less and less significance until, ultimately, political parties and their analysts take notice and better choices are provided. What is needed is to create a market for better candidates.
If we accept the poor quality of candidates that we get now, the consequences are that we will be drawn further and further from our roots. And remember that the political system is just one part of the problem.
The fact is that if we were to elect 435 great people to the House of Representatives, and 100 great senators, and a truly great president of the United States, there are only a few things they can do legitimately under the Constitution to make the country better. Those things are not necessarily enough to turn around our culture. So let's not put all our eggs in one basket.
I do think that for every problem that we're encountering now, there is a solution that is waiting to happen. We have to reorient ourselves and stop being naysayers. Things are always changing. Why not change them for the good?
Q: Okay, if the problem is the culture, what can be done to turn around popular entertainment? The influence of Hollywood is enormous, even though the number of people actually involved in making films and television programming is very small.
A: That's an area I know very well. As a journalist, I have had two specialties, two beats. One was Hollywood and the other is the Middle East. I spent 10 years covering Hollywood and have seen firsthand the impact it has had on our country.
One of the problems we have with Hollywood is that it doesn't respond to the free-enterprise system the way you'd think it would. If it did, we wouldn't have two-thirds of the movies now being rated R, because R-rated movies don't take in as much money as do the films rated PG, PG-13 and G.
One of the problems is that creative people who are attracted to an industry like Hollywood tend not to be those with strong Judeo-Christian values. Rather they tend to be on the fringe, on the outskirts of traditional moral convictions, and they want the rest of us to join them.
Hollywood worked better from 1933 to 1967 when the churches had a lot of impact on what was being produced. Basically, you didn't make a mainstream picture between 1933 and 1967 unless it got the blessing of the Catholic Church and Protestant film office.
That was the golden age of Hollywood, with the biggest box office, when the whole family went to the movies and paid a nickel and up to 75 cents. I think we need to mobilize the churches again. It may not be like it was from 1933 to 1967, but that's the way to get Hollywood back on track and producing entertainment that will be well-received by the American public. And it will be more creative entertainment because Hollywood no longer will confuse being vulgar and obscene with being creative and daring.
Stephen Goode is a senior writer for Insight.
He hits the nail on the head more then Clinton hit on females in the 90s in the Oval Office.
That's a complement to Mr. Farah and a sad commentary on Clinton the commie.
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