WorldNetDaily CEO Says It's Time for a Radical New Agenda

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

This quote from Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican presidential candidate, pretty well describes, in a nutshell, the concept behind Joseph Farah's book, Taking America Back (WND Publishers). In fact, Farah, founder and editor of WorldNetDaily.com, the Internet's largest independent news site, uses the quote in rebuttal to a Publishers Weekly review that labels his new book's "positions and rhetoric" as "uncomfortably extreme."

The fact is, Farah's book will be considered extreme, or even radical, by some who read it. Farah admits that. But he upholds that truth in light of Goldwater's reminder.

Written in hard-hitting and often caustic language, Taking America Back challenges the status quo in our nation today. Farah laments that America no longer remembers the two concepts that made her special as a nation. First, the founding fathers wrote a constitution that expressly limits the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. And second, the framers of the Constitution held firmly to the idea that only a nation made up of godly people with common spiritual and social values is capable of self-government.

Modern-day America smacks of failure on both counts, according to Farah. The federal government has long surpassed the amount of power and authority the founding fathers intended it to have. Worse, the failure of 20th Century Americans to uphold and defend the religious values and freedom principles held sacred by the founding fathers has resulted in a national downslide into immorality and licentiousness that seems to know no bounds.

Farah provides example after example, along with a wealth of background information and statistics, of how and why America has come to its present state. He hammers hard at the importance of the Constitution in the life of America and mourns the fact that it has become "little more than a historical relic."

"It's time for a radical new agenda," Farah declares ... "to move the nation away from the idea that the federal government represents some large feeding trough through which we can all better ourselves materially. The only way Americans can reestablish their freedom ... is to break the hammerlock of statism and the notion that morally relativistic secular humanism holds the answers to controlling men's passions and behavior."

And how to go about doing that? First and foremost, Farah says Americans must repent and humbly seek God's help. In addition, he urges a "second American Revolution," through which the "people must once again take control of their government -- not beginning with their elected representatives in Washington, but right in their own backyards" (through involvement on town councils, county commissions, etc.).

He also advocates, among a long list of actions, withdrawing from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and other "globalist traps;" eliminating all foreign aid; privatizing all federal lands; and abolishing the income tax and the IRS.

For fighting back and restoring liberty to America, Farah suggests twelve steps that include home-schooling children, using local power to resist federal intrusion and mandates, and insulating children from the effects of the popular culture.

On the moral front, Farah says it is imperative that the church come out of its protective shell and become involved once again in civic activities and politics. He acknowledges that the government discourages civic involvement by pastors, priests and rabbis.

But Farah told the AFA Journal that the clergy who have bought into the concept of "separation of church and state" and the idea of "rendering unto Caesar" should read the writings of the pastors who led the revival before America's Revolutionary War.

"The War of Independence was really a battle for freedom whose birthplace was the pulpits of America," he remarked.

"I wonder about clergy today who cite the 'render unto Caesar' verse as if it's the only thing the Bible says about dealing with evil," he continued. "If we truly had a self-governing society today, we wouldn't have a Caesar, of course. ... And that's what the founders believed was necessary -- not to have a Caesar. Remember, they only knew about kings and rulers at that time, but our nation's founders changed all that. We need to keep that in mind."

Farah added that he hopes pastors and other religious clergy will read Taking America Back because he believes America's greatest hope lies with them. "But if they see their only responsibility as being limited to the spiritual lives of their flock," he reflected, "we're in big trouble. Because when things have gone well in the culture, the church has been involved."

He offered the example of the Golden Age of Hollywood from 1933 to 1966. During those years, Protestant and Catholic clergy, at Hollywood's urging, read every script before the production of a movie.

"You can still let your kids watch any movie, practically, that was made in that time period," Farah stated, "because the church was involved.

"To put this book in the hands of every pastor in this country," he concluded, "would be my greatest goal."

Paine Regarding the Age of Reason, If men are so wicked with religion,what would they be if without it?

Morality Without God? Our founders also recognized that only a virtuous people would deserve the continued blessings of liberty that had been bestowed upon them. Moreover, virtually all of our nation's founders believed that a virtuous people was a necessary pre-condition for self-government, and that virtue could not be had or sustained without religion. President Washington, for example, noted in his Farewell Address that "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." Benjamin Rush was even more blunt: "Where there is no religion, there will be no morals."

Authors Most Frequently Cited By The Founders Of The United States

The following chart enumerates European and Biblical contributions to the founders' political thought. These are the people and sources that the founders quoted most often. The political literature included in this study was literature written by the founders of the United States between 1760 and 1805 (approximately one third of the significant secular literature and about ten percent of the significant sermons).

GOV : The Faith of the Founding

Only Judaism and Christianity have a doctrine of God as Spirit and Truth, Who created the world in order to invite these creatures endowed with intelligence and conscience to enter into friendship with Him. Only the Jewish and Christian God made human beings free, halts the power of Caesar at the boundaries of the human soul, and has commissioned human beings to build civilizations worthy of the liberty He has endowed in them. So high is this God’s valuation of human liberty of conscience that, even though He has launched a divinely commissioned religion in history (in two Covenants, Jewish and Christian), He would not have either of these religions imposed by force on anyone. So devoted were the American founders to this understanding of religious liberty that, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography (1821), the authors of the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom refrained from mentioning the exact name of the "holy author of our religion." Here is Jefferson’s explanation for the omission:

Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion"; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

WORLD Sept. 2, 2000: Remarkable Providences: Fear of the Lord…Rabbi Lapin's fearless statement makes sense: "Those of us who venerate freedom, be we Jewish or Christian, be we religious or secularized, have no option but to pray for the health of Christianity in America. No other group possesses both the faith and the numbers sufficient to hold back the ever-encroaching, sometimes sinister, power of the state."

You don't have to agree with the "exclusivity" of that statement, but what he said is most certainly true. While others were "tolerated"* in their decision not to be Christian, it was expected by its founders and framers that America would most certainly continue to be a Christian nation and be governed by Christians. A thorough reading of the founding documents, writings of the founders and a knowledge of the kind of men they were will reveal insight as to the kind of government they meant for us to have and it was not based on "diversity". Embracing "diversity" is what caused the downfall of Rome and Greece and it's where we're headed if we don't take America back to her roots of one nation under God.

*Note that I use tolerance in the traditional meaning - to accept, to allow; I do not use it in the new politically correct meaning - to embrance and adopt.

>it was expected by its founders and framers that America would most certainly continue to be a Christian nation and be governed by Christians

I respectfully disagree. Writings by the Framers indicates they were wary of mixing Church and State, having learned that lesson from the bitter wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics. If the Framers were so adamant about Christian rule, wouldn't they have made their intentions clear in the Constitution? Diversity is destabilizing to the effect that liberals encourage us to emphasize our differences rather than the commonality between our religions and cultures. The melting pot works because we have differences but are willing to "melt" and celebrate our common values and pride in being American.

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