Family Research Council

The Nidal Hasan Case: Justice Delayed

by Robert Morrison

May 23, 2013

It could hardly be more of what we used to call an “open and shut” case. Nidal Hasan, an active duty Army major and psychiatrist, walked into a room at Fort Hood, Texas, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” and shot thirty people, killing fourteen. One of his victims, Francheska Velez, was pregnant at the time.

She cried out “My baby! My baby!” but Hasan killed her and her unborn child anyway. The Obama administration has elected not to charge Hasan with violation of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, even though the law was passed explicitly to cover such instances.

The Fort Hood shootings occurred in November 2009. Hasan is only now slated to be brought before a court martial. The proceedings are scheduled to begin by July 1^st, three and a half years after the killings. The old maxim is: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” The foot-dragging on the part of the Obama administration in this case is unconscionable.

Because of these interminable delays, Hasan has been allowed to accumulate some $278,000 in pay and benefits as he awaits his court martial. Army spokesmen say Hasan has “earned” that much because he has not yet been convicted of anything and we must presume his innocence.

Must we presume it for three and a half years? It’s useful to compare the Obama administration’s treatment of Nidal Hasan with the Roosevelt administration’s actions toward captured Nazi saboteurs in World War II.

Eight German and German-American fighters in two squads were landed in June 1942, by U-boats on the beaches of Florida and Long Island. The Long Island group was spotted by a young U.S. Coast Guardsman. Seaman John C. Cullen refused a bribe from the Nazis and alerted his superiors back at his station. Because they had changed into civilian clothes, the saboteurs would be regarded as spies if apprehended.

Apprehended they soon were, as one of their number, George Dash, ratted out his cohorts. They had orders from their Nazi superiors to blow up war industries and military installations. By order of President Roosevelt, they were tried before a secret military tribunal on July 2, 1942.

The National Archives tells the story:

Matters moved quickly for [Army Judge Advocate General Myron C.] Cramer since he and [U.S. Attorney General Francis] Biddle began presenting evidence to the tribunal on July 8. Preliminary arguments and the taking of testimony took 16 days—an average of two days for each accused. The military commission completed its work on August 1, when it found all eight defendants guilty of “attempting to commit sabotage, espionage, and other hostile acts” and “conspiracy” to commit these same offenses. Cramer and Biddle argued that the Germans must be sentenced to death, and the commission agreed. Roosevelt approved the death sentence for six of the eight men, and those six were electrocuted on August 8, 1942. The other two were imprisoned and later deported to Germany after the war. The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld the jurisdiction of the military commission, and the lawfulness of its proceedings, in the case of Ex parte Quirin, which continues to be cited with approval by today’s Supreme Court.

Cramer’s work as co-prosecutor was praised by his superior as “historic evidence of his legal ability and sound judgment.” He and Biddle had successfully completed the first military commission convened by a President and had achieved the best possible results for the government.

I am not necessarily endorsing capital punishment in this column. FRC has not taken a position on that question. But clearly this was no drumhead court martial. Instead, it was a serious and expeditious judicial proceeding. Our government was then able to act with speed and justice in prosecuting our enemies in wartime “to the full extent of the law.”

Nidal Hasan was known to federal investigators. He had been under surveillance for some time. As a medical graduate student, he had openly advocated jihad and justified killing “infidels.” And still he was allowed to continue in uniform as a major in the Army.

Even after his murderous spree in 2009, political correctness was not furloughed. The Army’s Chief of Staff, General George Casey, rushed to the Sunday TV talk shows and said: “As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” What the general seems not to have understood is that it is only by enforcing the Oath of Office that all service members voluntarily take that we can have the level of trust for all our troops that a vigorous national defense requires.

While Nidal Hasan continues to accrue pay and benefits, this administration has classified his killings as “workplace violence.” Thus, his injured victims have been denied Purple Hearts and the status of combat-wounded veterans. A bi-partisan group of congressmen, including Reps. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Chaka Fattah (D-Penn.) have written to Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel urging him to re-classify theFortHood killings as “combat-related.”

This would seem to be the bare minimum this administration could do to show it is serious about the defense of theUnited States. And it could also benefit from reading how their great liberal Democratic model, Franklin D. Roosevelt, acted in time of war.

“Try to Discourage Her From Seeing the Baby”

by Robert Morrison

May 14, 2013

Pro-abortion groups are reacting to the Gosnell verdict with predictable spin. It’s all the fault of those anti-choice people, they say. If more women had greater access to free abortion, things like Gosnell’s abattoir would never have happened, they claim.

Brenda Pratt Shafer is a nurse who once worked in a facility that does late-term abortions. In 1996, she testified under oath before Congress about what a day is like in one of those well-appointed, well-lighted, clean, approved centers, the kind that are being offered to Americans today as the answer to Kermit Gosnell’s filthy house of horrors.

The abortionist in Nurse Shafer’s story did not want his patient to see what he had done to her unborn child. “Try to discourage her from seeing the baby,” he said.

The what? Didn’t he let his mask slip here? Isn’t he supposed to maintain the fiction that it is just a fetus? A mass of cells? A clump of tissue? Or is it alright to call it a baby after the unborn child’s dead body has been removed from the womb and thrown in a cold metal pan?

The late ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings once reminded us of how you are supposed to talk about such stories. In one of his evening broadcasts, Jenningsdescribed a new advance in pre-natal surgery. Through ultra-sound, it was determined that an unborn child had a condition known as hydrocephaly, water on the brain. Mr. Jennings said the fetus was surgically removed from the mother’s womb. A shunt was placed in the skull of the unborn child, relieving the pressure on that child’s developing brain. The unborn child was replaced in its mother’s womb. And the woman carried the fetus to term.

Fetus—Unborn child—Fetus, it all depends on where this baby is at the specific moment we are talking about him. In the following testimony, Nurse Brenda Shafer takes us inside a late-term abortion center, just like one of those facilities operated and approved by Planned Barrenhood and blessed by President Obama.

Nurse Shafer’s sworn testimony:

…This one particular lady didn’t want the abortion. She had this Downs Syndrome baby, she was unmarried, her boyfriend didn’t want the baby, and her parents didn’t want the baby. She cried the whole three days she was in there. So we did her first to get her over with. We brought her in, prepped her, started an I.V. of Valium to calm her down. We did not use a general anesthesia and knock her out. …We brought the ultrasound machine in and hooked it up to her stomach.
  

I could see the baby…

I could see the baby. I could see the heartbeat. And the doctor wanted me to stand right beside him, because he wanted me to see everything there was about partial-birth abortion. So I stood there. He went in, guided by ultrasound. He took a pair of forceps and went in and turned the baby because it wasn’t in this position at the time. He found a foot and he pulled the baby’s foot down through the birth canal, bringing it down and grabbed another foot, and literally started pulling the baby out, breech position, feet first. And he kept pulling it down, and I’m seeing this baby come pulled out of the mommy, his butt, his chest, and then, he delivered both these arms. And the lady’s in stirrups, just like you have a baby or just like you’re having an ob/gyn examination. And the baby, the only thing that was supporting the baby was the doctor was holding it in with his two fingers, holding the neck so the head was just inside the mommy.

And the baby was kicking his feet, hanging there, moving his little fingers and his little arms. I couldn’t believe — I don’t know what I thought killed it in three days, but he was moving and I kept watching that baby move. And I kept thinking to myself, this isn’t happening and I thought I was going to pass out. And I kept telling myself, I’m a professional, I can handle this, you know, this is right, this is supposed to be, and I supposed to handle this, I’m a nurse. He then took a pair of scissors and jammed them into the back of the baby’s head. And the baby jerked out, like a startle reflex, like a baby does if you throw him up a little bit and he jumps. And then the baby was real rigid. The doctor then opened up the scissors to make a hole. He took a high powered suction machine with a catheter and stuck it in that hole and suctioned the baby’s brains out. And the baby went completely limp.

I’ve seen that in my mind a thousand or more times…

And I have seen that in my mind a thousand or more times, of that baby, watching the life just drain out of it. And like I said before, I’ve seen babies die in my hands, I had people die in my hands. But it wasn’t anything like seeing that vision of watching this abortion. And I almost threw up all over the floor. I was literally just breathing and saying, “Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, you’re gonna be embarrassed if you do this.” So I tried not to.

He pulled the head out, he cut the umbilical cord and threw it in a pan, and delivered the placenta and threw it in the same pan, he covered it up and took it out. Well, this mommy wanted to see her baby. And the doctor told us ahead of time, he said, “Try to discourage her from seeing the baby.” He doesn’t like that. But she had the right to see it. So they cleaned it up and we cleaned her up, and we walked her out of the operating room, and took her to a room and handed her the baby.

The mother held her dead baby in her arms…

…She held that baby in her arms and she screamed and prayed to God…to forgive her, and for that baby to forgive her, and she held it and rocked it, and told him that she loved him. And I looked in that baby’s face, and he had the most angelic perfect face I’ve ever seen, and I just kept thinking, he’s an angel now, he’s in heaven. And I couldn’t take it. In all the years I’ve been a nurse, [for the first time] I lost it. And I pardoned myself and excused myself and I ran to the bathroom and I cried and prayed.

…I saw two more that day, about 25 weeks. But I was in shock. I stood there and I knew what was happening but I didn’t want to be there. I was walking on a beach in Hawaii somewhere, trying to get myself out of that room. …The other ones were perfectly healthy mothers with perfectly healthy babies. One was a 40 year old woman who had a 19 year old son and she was getting a divorce so she didn’t want the baby. The other was a teenage mom who hid the pregnancy from her parents…

The abortion technique described by Nurse Shafer in the above passages was outlawed by the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress in 2003 and signed by President George W. Bush. That law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 on a 5-4 vote.

That law was strongly supported by Family Research Council and the vast majority of Americans. Now, the law relies for its enforcement on the administration of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. The president is required by the Constitution to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” We will see if there are any prosecutions under that law.

When he spoke to Planned Parenthood recently, President Obama did not see the baby. Or any of the 334,000 unborn children these traffickers tell us they killed in 2011. They went unmentioned and unseen in his lavish praise for the group.

Even now—especially now—the abortion forces and their liberal cohorts are trying to discourage all Americans from seeing the baby. What the Gosnell verdict does is to lift the bloody curtain and let us see.

May 10, 1940: Walking with Destiny

by Robert Morrison

May 10, 2013

Dateline: Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

Yes, Sir Winston Churchill was here, too. He actually came to see the Falls at least twice, in 1900 as a rising journalist, and again in 1943, when he was Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. On that latter occasion, he was prodded by pesky reporters who wanted to know if he’d ever seen the Falls before and what he thought of them.

“I have seen them before, before you were born,” he ribbed the self-important young journos, “and I see the principle remains the same.”

The reason everyone wanted to know what Churchill thought is because of what happened on this day – May 10, 1940. It was on that day when, despite all odds, Churchill became Prime Minister of an embattled Great Britain.

On this day, too, Adolph Hitler ended the phony war in the West that many had taken to calling a “Sitzkrieg.” Hitler had left Berlin in the early hours of May 10th. He rode over velvet-smooth tracks in his private train, oddly named “Amerika.” He wanted to be there for the jumping off of his powerful army, his Wehrmacht.

Within weeks of this date, France would collapse. The French army, which had borne the brunt of German wrath for four long years in World War I, losing 1.2 million young men, was undermined by a deadly combination of pro-Communist and pro-Nazi extremists in the French polity.

Churchill was widely distrusted at home and abroad, even when he finally became Prime Minister. His constant calls for preparedness in the House of Commons had led many in Britain, in Europe, and even in the U.S. to call him a bloody old war-monger.

Don’t you realize, he pleaded with his countrymen, that being armed, being prepared for war is the best way to avoid war. They would not listen. Instead, men like Joe Kennedy, were far more popular. Kennedy, who would live to see one son become president and two more sons elected to the Senate, cheerfully pleaded guilty to being an appeaser of Adolf Hitler.

Old Churchill certainly was on this date in 1940. He was 65. He had not expected to live past 40. And he had held virtually every important office in British politics. But the top spot – the premiership – had long eluded him.

Still, when he entered the Prime Minister’s office at Number 10 Downing Street, it was as if “a jolt of electricity” had gone through the old edifice. Senior civil servants were seen running down the corridors of Whitehall, where Britain’s government offices are housed. They were scrambling to meet Winston’s demands for Action this Day.

He would memorably write of this day and hour. It seemed to millions around the world that Britain was doomed, that she was being led by an old used-up man.

He proved them all wrong. As President Kennedy would say in making Churchill an honorary American citizen, “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

“I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my previous life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” To his ever-faithful bodyguard, Inspector “Tommy” Thompson, he confessed, “I only pray it’s not too late.”

It wasn’t. Churchill would live to walk over the ruins of the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, where the man who promised a Thousand-year Reich shot himself after only 12.

When he turned 80, a grateful Parliament voted him 50,000 pounds. He and his family had a wonderful time planning what to do with the money.

The man hated as a bloody warmonger decided to endow a Butterfly Conservancy. My wife and I visited one of these near Niagara Falls today. You cannot imagine a more peaceful place. These beautiful creatures light on your shoulders. They rest on the warm stones beneath your feet. I must take care with my Size 12 boots to avoid harming one of God’s loveliest creations.

Winston eventually turned down the 50,000 pounds. It was enough for him that England remembered him. And that Americans do, too.

He said to the British people: “We are fighting by ourselves alone, but we are not fighting for ourselves alone.” And he was the first to recognize the heroic contributions of the Canadians and other Commonwealth nations to the fight against Nazi tyranny. But they also fought for Americans’ Freedom. And every May 10th, it’s good to remember.

Tredegar Iron Works

by Robert Morrison

May 6, 2013

I had a chance last week, for just a morning, to get away from Washington. For the first time, I saw the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. Tredegar was the major foundry of the Confederacy. For four long years, this installation supplied the Army of Northern Virginia with artillery, cannonballs, and rifles. As we learned there, the location of the Tredegar Iron Works was a major factor in the Confederates choosing Richmond as their capital.

The events of April 2-4, 1865 are well documented and memorialized at the restored Tredegar Iron Works. There is a statue there—dedicated there in 2003—that features President Lincoln seated on a bench with his son, Tad. It commemorates the wartime visit of just one day of Lincoln to Richmond after the Confederate capital fell to Union forces. (The seated Lincoln is wearing not a bowtie, but a standard necktie. I’ve never seen Lincoln so attired. I’m sure that’s why there were scattered protests when the statue was unveiled.)

The original Mayo Bridge had burned on the night Richmond fell. Today, you can walk out over the James River on a partially restored structure that has an amazing series of quotes from people who were in Richmond during the terrible fire and drunken looting that accompanied the Confederate evacuation of the city.

Today, you can read what Mary Custis Lee, Mary Chesnut, and even Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee had to say on that historic occasion. You can read the exclamations of joy and thanksgiving from ex-slaves as they blessed the Lord and thanked Father Abraham for their liberation.

I was struck by one quote in particular: Written on the planks of the river walkway were these words of Abraham Lincoln to a jubilant crowd of freedmen:

‘My poor friends,’ he said, ‘you are free - free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it; it will come to you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years…

This past week was the one hundred fiftieth anniversary not of Lincoln’s victorious one day visit to Richmond, but of his deepest dejection. The Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Chancellorsville (May 1-3, 1863) should not pass without notice from us. It was Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory.

Lincoln had issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation the previous September because he was advised to wait until he had a Union victory. Antietam had given him that opportunity. When the time came actually to sign the historic document, however, the Union had just suffered a grievous loss in December under commanding Gen. Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg. Wave after wave of bluecoats were mown down on December 13, 1862 by Gen. Lee’s troops secure behind stone defenses on Marye’s Heights. Lee memorably said then: “It is well that war is so terrible lest we grow too fond of it.”

After yet another futile effort—the infamous “Mud March” where his Union Army of the Potomac was bogged down in freezing rains, Burnside withdrew and Lincoln replaced him with Gen. Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Hooker had rashly called for a military dictatorship to remove the civilian leadership of the country. When he chose Hooker to lead the demoralized army, President Lincoln sternly told Hooker it was “in spite of this and not because of it that I have given you command.” Lincoln sagely told Hooker that only successful generals get to set up dictatorships. He asked of Hooker only one thing—victory—“and I will risk the dictatorship.”

Lincoln didn’t have to risk it long. Gen. Hooker was leaning on a column outside his Chancellorsville headquarters when a rebel artillery shot hit the column—stunning Hooker. He failed to relinquish command and led the Union to its second straight catastrophe.

Lee’s brilliant victory at Chancellorsville is still studied in military colleges around the world. He put the federals to flight. Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s corps formed the spear point that sowed panic amid the breakfasting Union soldiers, bursting out of the woodsand giving the rebel yell as many of the Yankees were still drinking their coffee.

But Lee’s greatest victory came with his most terrible loss. Stonewall Jackson was hit by friendly fire on the night of May 2, 1863 as he went out to inspect his lines. Jackson’s brother-in-law, Lt. Joseph Morrison, tried to stop the North Carolina troops from firing on their own men, to no avail. When Gen. Lee first heard that Stonewall Jackson was wounded, he knew only that the dour Presbyterian’s left arm was amputated. Even so, he said, “he has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm.”

At the Battle of Chancellorsville, one of the Union chaplains, Thomas L. Ambrose, stayed behind with the wounded and dying men of his regiment. In his book While God is Marching On, author Steven E. Woodworth tells us how Ambrose allowed himself to be taken prisoner by Gen. Lee’s forces so that he could pray for his men.

Chaplain Ambrose walked two and a half miles to the headquarters tent of the famous cavalry Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, begging for cornmeal for his wounded. Stuart sent him on to Gen. Lee’s tent.  Lee promised Chaplain Ambrose a wagonload of cornmeal. Knowing some of his boys wouldn’t last that long, the Union chaplain hefted a fifty-pound bag of meal on his back and walked back to his camp. Another Union prisoner of war wrote of him: “He was one of God’s Saints and I regard him as one of the heroes of Chancellorsville.”

The Obama administration recently welcomed a group of atheizers who want to court martial officers and enlisted personnel who share the Gospel with others. We can only imagine the reaction of these brave, faithful Civil War soldiers on both sides to such anti-American notions. This is certainly not the freedom that Abraham Lincoln defended and for which he laid down his life.

Thou Shalt Not—Abandon Israel!

by Robert Morrison

May 3, 2013

South Africa’s parliamentarian, Kenneth Meshoe, rose to contradict former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at an Israeli Embassy event this morning. “Israelis no apartheid regime,” said the deputy who lived decades under the racist policies of his home country. The head of that nation’s African Christian Democrats said “any Christian who doesn’t align with Israel “should be prayed for.”

And that’s what Liberty University Law School Dean Mat Staver did in his remarks. Dean Staver called on Christians to support embattled Israel and then cited the presence of Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (Ret.-USA), FRC’s Executive Vice President in the crowded Jerusalem Hall.

“Floyd Corkins wanted to kill everyone at FRC,” Staver said of the confessed domestic terrorist who shot FRC’s Building Manager Leo Johnson last August, “and that’s another reason why Christians and Jews must stand together.” Dean Staver reminded his hearers that the Holocaust “didn’t happen overnight. It was the result of an accumulation of policies” all of which tended to place the Jews outside the protection of law and incite resentment of them.

One after another, Christian speakers reasserted their support for Israel. Their words brought to mind a similar gathering I attended in Washington more than twenty years ago. Israel’s Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, was expressing his thanks to American Christians and Jews for their staunch support of his surrounded country. One attendee rose to question him. “Mr. Prime Minister, I run a large public relations firm here in Washington. I give generously to Israel, but I have to say, you are always portrayed in the media as saying no. I know in public relations it always helps to put your case in more positive terms.”

We in the pro-life, pro-family movements are often told the same thing. Don’t say you’re anti-abortion; don’t say you oppose abolishing mothers and fathers in our laws.

Prime Minister Begin stroked his chin and looked out thoughtfully from behind his thick glasses. “I thank you for your support for the Jewish state,” he said in a courtly European manner. “And I will consult my Cabinet colleagues about your helpful suggestion of a more positive way to state our necessary positions.”

Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: “But Mr. Public Relations man, I hope you will grant us this much: In our region, there are certain honorable precedents for Thou Shalt Not!”

Indeed there are. Ambassador Michael Oren arrived to a standing ovation. One of my Christian friends had been confused about this learned man who speaks American-accented English. Is he Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. or America’s ambassador to Israel, my friend wanted to know. “Just listen to him,” I said, “he’s pro-America and pro-Israel. He can’t be an Obama appointee!”

The ambassador gave a quick and stunning tour d’horizon of Israel’s perilous position. He most diplomatically avoided saying that this new and deadly danger for Israel was the result of the Obama administration’s policies. He has to work with them.

Iran, he said, could have nuclear weapons and delivery means that could hit New York—or Galveston, Texas. Europe would not be safe. Even worse than North Korea with nukes, Iran’s mullahs are the world’s leading exporter of terror. Syria. No one knows what may happen there. “Jerusalem is to prophesy what Hershey, Pennsylvania is to chocolate. And we just don’t know!” But we may see a vast stash of chemical weapons fall into the hands of Hezbollah in South Lebanon—“Hezbollah, that has 70,000 rockets trained on Israel.”

He spoke of the stalled “peace process.” Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah faction, dares not hold an election because he knows Hamas—which ousted him and his corrupt gang from power in Gaza—would win that election. Abbas is trying to effect reconciliation not withIsrael—but with Hamas. And Hamas, Amb. Oren reminds us, does not simply want to wipe out all Jews in Israel; they want to wipe out all the Jews on earth.

Again, Amb. Oren is too diplomatic to point out that U.S. taxpayers are getting hit for hundreds of millions of dollars to line the pockets of Mahmoud Abbas and his thugs while he makes nice with Hamas.

Egypt is of great concern for Israel. Amb. Oren notes that all their hopes in the Mideast were based on a stable and more democratic Egypt. Well, that was then. Today, Egypt is spinning out of control. Famine is a possibility. The Muslim Brotherhood breathes hostility to Israel and the Jews. He tells us that the Salafists in Egypt are, if anything, even worse. Eilat, Israel’s port city on the Gulf of Aqaba, has been hit by rocket attacks for the first time. Now, Egyptian control over the Sinai—a vast region Israel gave back to Egypt more than thirty years ago—is slipping and the desert area is home to terrorist gangs. A recent Israeli raid into Sinai killed two terrorists—one from Saudi Arabia, the other from Yemen.

A nuclear Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Ambassador doesn’t need any notes. He only has to look at the map.

He didn’t mention the Mediterranean Sea, the one place where Israel seems not to be menaced. Oh, wait. I forgot. The Turks sent a flotilla to arm Hamas in Gaza from the sea in 2010. On his recent trip to Israel, President Obama twisted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arm to get him to apologize for the loss of life on the Turkish peace ship. [Maybe President Lincoln should have apologized to the Confederacy for attacking the Merrimac, the South’s ironclad blockade breaker?] Israel’s satiric group, Latma, explained the Turkish flotilla better than the Obama’s spokesmen at the State Department have done.

Despite this world of woe, despite dangers as great for the Jewish state as those of May, 1948, and May, 1967, the Ambassador is smiling, upbeat, confident.

This is our 61^st anniversary, he says. “There are more people who speak Hebrew today than speak Danish or Finnish, and we will soon overtake Swedish speakers. We have more Nobel Prize winners than most countries have Olympic gold medalists. We have the second most highly educated population (after Canada) and our Israeli Defense Force is larger than France and Britain combined.”

He concludes with remarkable words of faith. America is the most religiously observant country of any developed nation. And Israel exists because of faith. Israel will not go down. Israel will live, he says, as the audience rises to their feet, cheering.

For Americans, and especially for us as Christians, we have only one ally in the Mideast. And the Israeli people are the only genuine friends America has there. We’re constantly being told that if we would only abandon Israel, we would have peace and friendship with everyone the world over. Then why did Chechens bomb us in Boston?

Abandon Israel? Menachem Begin was right: Thou Shalt Not!

Deep-Six the Rubin “Tear Down” Message

by Robert Morrison

May 2, 2013

In a play on one of the Gipper’s greatest lines, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin urges us to “Tear Down this Icon.” The highly touted “From the Right” columnist urges conservatives and Republicans to get over the Reagan legacy.

By the recent showings of the party’s presidential nominees, one would think the GOP has certainly gotten over Ronald Reagan. When was the last time the Beltway campaign consultants, those high-priced hirelings, even attempted to win the whole country? Besotted by Red State/Blue State calculations, and armed with their white boards, the big domes never have come close to Reagan’s generous inclusiveness. Reagan thought of all the states as Red, White & Blue. He wanted to win them all, and twice nearly did.

Can anyone seriously claim that Bush, McCain, or Romney ran Reagan-style campaigns? Let’s start with the way the nominees got their gold rings. Ronald Reagan refused to attack his fellow Republicans. He invoked the Eleventh Commandment. What? Yes, he said: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” No one had ever heard of that before. No one has heard of it since.

But Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment worked brilliantly. By not attacking his GOP rivals, he could genially ignore them. Thus, their backers never got mad at Reagan. And he never had to get into that tit-for-tat ugliness that independent voters abhor. Even more ingenious: By not getting into the gutter with his Republican opponents, Reagan let millions of Democrats overlook the fact that he was a Republican.

By these methods, Reagan won 96% of Republicans and 24% of Democrats. The Reagan Democrats have been left without a political home since he left the scene. Where are the Dole/Bush/McCain/Romney Democrats? There are none.

For that matter, where are the Dole/Bush/McCain/Romney Republicans? Not one of those candidates who sought national office in the Republican Party in 2008 or 2012 wanted to claim the mantle of any of recent Republican nominees. They were all Reagan wannabes. Not one was a Reagan might-a-been.

It’s certainly reasonable for Rubin to suggest we examine the Republican performance and offer ideas for improvement. One nice thing we can say for the McCain and Romney campaigns—they left plenty of room for improvement.

Rubin cites Reince Priebus, who recently attracted notice by conducting an “autopsy” on his own shaky tenure:

“We’re winning everything imaginable in off-years,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told me recently. “The governors are still going strong. We’re winning the war in issue-driven races.” However, he conceded that Republicans have lost their ability to connect with average Americans in the wider electorate: “We are not relating to people at an emotional level.”

So, Jennifer Rubin’s advice to us would be ditch the one great Republican in our lifetime who never failed to relate to people at an emotional level? What Chairman Priebus is saying in this tribute to the Republicans’ off-year performance is that his party is doing fine so long as not too many people show up to vote.

Republican leaders today behave, in Lincoln’s fine phrase, “like a duck hit on the head.” They find it incomprehensible that voters could shun a wonderful candidate who regarded 47% of Americans as irretrievable slackers, who thought of himself as “severely conservative,” and who wanted to involve us in Syriaas soon as he could figure out “who are friends are there.” (Hint, Governor: our only friends in Syria are the Christians. You weren’t thinking of arming them were you?)

Ronald Reagan gained some fame by speaking of an Evil Empire. But he never said it was Russia. He let Pravda howl in rage, thereby admitting it. In speaking truth fearlessly, Reagan inspired those in the Gulag and helped mightily to loosen the shackles of hundreds of millions in the Captive Nations.

Mitt Romney stumbled badly by naming Russia as “our number one strategic enemy.” Thus, he showed himself not a credible alternative to the failed policies of Barack Obama. Chris Matthews called the Republicans the “Daddy Party,” but today’s post-Reagan Republicans cannot convince a majority of Americans that Father Knows Best.

Thanks to Ronald Reagan, foreign policy was the Republicans’ strong suit for a generation. And Reagan brought us victory in the Cold War without invading any Communist country. Or at least, no country larger than that dot-on-the—map, Grenada. And that was over in a blink.

The GOP has yet to live down George W. Bush’s failed attempt to bring democracy to Muslim-majority countries where 84% of the people think anyone who leaves Islam should be murdered. Such countries are not democracies. Nor was Germany a democracy when Germans voted 89% to make Hitler their Fuhrer. Purple fingers can vote, but they can also slit throats and place bombs in churches.

There’s a lot to learn from Ronald Reagan. His common-sense conservatism and his uncommon ability to touch the hearts of the American people are nothing to be ashamed of. They are something to strive for.

Millions of our fellow Americans remember him with love and respect. So do their kids. Pollsters tell us even today, he would beat Obama 58% to 42% in an imaginary match-up.

We don’t need to idolize Ronald Reagan, or make an icon of him. But, it wouldn’t hurt to study how he built his winning coalition.

French Resistance Determined, Undeterred

by Robert Morrison

April 29, 2013

Despite the action of the French Senate that redefined marriage last week, the advocates of true marriage remain determined and undeterred. Calling themselves La Manif pour Tous (Demonstration for All), these champions are taking their case to the French people.  They have scheduled another mass demonstration for Paris on May 26^th. The international media—as always—is on the other side. Last week, they reported scattered clashes with police following the French legislature’s cave-in as a violent reaction.

France has a long history of street protests. And the French are well aware of the agents provocateurs—those who seek to use any scuffle as a pretext to bring violence to the streets. In this case, they could use such claims of violent protests to try to de-legitimize the genuinely popular uprising for marriage.

Part of this new movement is Les Veilleurs. These are French youth who gather nightly to share their love for literature, poetry, and music. These, in turn, have inspired Les Meres Veilleuses. These are mothers holding vigil for children’s rights to a mother and father and they are taking their case to the people. Les Veilleurs are described as a kind of “anti-Mai 68” movement.

This is very important. It was in May 1968, that the left staged a nationwide uprising that sought to bring down the government of President Charles de Gaulle. They very nearly succeeded. De Gaulle rallied the people of France to save the Fifth Republic—and in reality to save French democracy itself.

Still, those street radicals—especially Communist theorists and their sympathizers in the media—have had a huge influence in French life ever since. As in the U.S., street radicals took baths, donned coats and ties, and began their long march through the institutions.

Thus, we see soixante huitards (“sixty-eighters”) applauding this latest assault on the family and the future of France. They realize that the greatest barriers to Marxism have always been the family, the church, and small private firms. Thus, they need to crush all these mediating institutions. They seek to suppress resistance, using law and intimidation and their dominance in the media to achieve their results.

As in the U.S., with certain Republicans losing heart and throwing up their hands in fear or resignation, we saw some members of the conservative UMP opposition party cave in to pressures and vote for the end of marriage. There will be no opportunity for a French version of the TEA Party to make its will known in national legislative elections until 2017.

In the meantime, though, the Manif can look to the constitutional council to disallow some portions of the faux marriage law. And they can seek support in the 2014 municipal elections. Already, many mayors are announcing their refusal to bend to this latest assault on the families and future of France. They need our support (and our prayers).

Why should we Americans take such an interest in France? It was in 1979 that Pope John Paul II returned to his captive homeland. We saw then a million Poles crying out “We want God!” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and presidential candidate Ronald Reagan paid careful attention to what the Poles were saying. Together with the Pope, they began the long-overdue process of liberation of hundreds of millions of people shackled to Communism behind the Iron Curtain.

The left also took note. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, they realize they cannot achieve Marxism through the secret police and the obvious oppression of a one-party dictatorship. But they believe they can achieve Socialism democratically by breaking down family, church, and family-owned businesses. This is the real objective of the left in America. It is what President Hollande seeks to do in France.

In France, however, President Hollande’s economic performance is yielding sparse results. His approval ratings have sunk to record lows in just one year. As the French economy stagnates, discontent rises.

We have everything to learn from the French, from their courage and conviction on the marriage issue. We should pay careful attention to how they frame this issue, too.

The French put children at the center of the debate. Everyone deserves a mother and a father, they say. It is a human right and a child’s greatest need.

The French have recognized that “womb prostitution” (called surrogacy here) is a form of exploitation of poor and vulnerable women. They have made this illegal in France. And one of their strongest arguments against ending marriage is that it will lead to more of this womb prostitution.

If the French resistance succeeds, it will give great inspiration to Americans. At our best, Americans were not ashamed to learn from such brilliant French thinkers as Montesquieu and Tocqueville. Today, we can take lessons from the Manif pour Tous!

Marchons, Concitoyens! Fellow citizens, let’s march!

Question: Are Peter, Paul, and Mary Bigots, Too?

by Robert Morrison

April 29, 2013

One of the reasons I have confidence in the eventual success of our defense of true marriage is that the left must overreach. They cannot help themselves. In order to end marriage in America, in the world, they have to brand anyone who opposes them a bigot. They have to label and libel. It’s what they do.

This spring, they have been on a roll. Some politicians and some talking heads throw up their hands as they throw in the towel. “It’s inevitable,” they sigh.

Well, I take inspiration from those saints of the past—Peter, Paul, and Mary. Relax, O’Reilly, I’m not thumping my Bible at you. I don’t mean Saints Peter and Paul and the Blessed Virgin Mary, I mean that amazing folk music trio.

Peter, Paul, and Mary got their start in New York’s Greenwich Village and proceeded from there to become a national sensation in the early 1960s. Their greatest moment may have been when they performed their hit song, “If I had a hammer” live at Dr. Martin Luther King’s great Civil Rights March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

That was a great event, to be sure. And it was some years before the American left started singing “if I had a hammer and sickle.” But my favorite Peter, Paul, and Mary song remains “The Wedding Song.”

It’s an amazing song that must have been played at a million weddings since those halcyon days when this folk rock phenomenon hit the pop music scene. It’s wonderful just to consider the lyrics. “What shall be the meaning of becoming man and wife?”

For nearly fifty years, until her untimely death in 2009, Mary Travers teamed up with Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow. They performed at every peace rally, every anti-nuke, pro-McGovern rally. They were an indispensable part of the political and social left.

I’m not unaware of the spectrum colors in this Paul Stookey YouTube recording of the Wedding Song. That adds a note of irony to his performance.

Question for the left: Are Peter, Paul, and Mary bigots, too? Is the mere fact that they knew what marriage was for fifty years enough to brand them as hate-filled?

Didn’t we all know what marriage was before some of us evolved? And here’s another delicious irony: If we had all evolved as President Obama has evolved, there might be no conflict at all. We might not be here.

Of course, even the most enthusiastic backers of punctuated equilibrium would find it hard to imagine an evolution in Nature as rapid as that of Barack Obama. In 2008, he said: “Marriage is between a man and a woman, and God is in the mix.” Who moved?

Reagan 58% Obama 42%

by Robert Morrison

April 24, 2013

Producers of a forthcoming National Geographic TV special polled Americans, today’s Americans, in one of those fantasy fights that are so popular with boxing fans. This time, though, the pollsters asked Americans whom they would vote for in a matchup between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.

The poll produced some stunning results: Reagan would win another landslide, defeating Obama 58% to 42%. Could that be accurate? Would President Obama, with all his famous political skills, really only outpoll the famously inept Walter “Fritz” Mondale by a single point? Recall, Reagan bested Mondale in 1984 by 59% to 41%.

What’s the purpose of such fanciful exercises? It is not a pointless diversion into wishful thinking. It’s a key indicator. It tells us something very important about our fellow citizens.

Americans did respond to clear leadership, to a strong figure who had a strong message. Here’s a little thought experiment: It’s only been one year. Try to recall a single line of Mitt Romney’s that was not a gaffe much exploited by the liberal media. In all seriousness, can we remember a single memorable phrase? I cannot.

I was on the road last year on the FRC/Heritage Foundation Values Voters Bus for nearly six months. By law, I could not endorse any candidates. I found it wiser not to mention any. But that did not prevent anyone from talking up their favorite candidate to me.

I remember stopping at the Minnesota Republican State Convention in St. Cloud. It’s a beautiful state, especially in springtime. We were at the convention center early to set up. Mitt Romney had already wrapped up the GOP nomination by that time. But there were no bumper stickers, no buttons, no posters in evidence for Mitt. I talked to a lot of delegates and backers of various candidates for the U.S. Senate and the House. Not one of these political activists mentioned Gov. Romney.

I remember thinking at the time: this could spell trouble for Romney. I was aware that some parties had elected unloved candidates to the presidency. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, none of these men exuded warmth or elicited the love and esteem of their supporters. But they won nonetheless. What I had never seen in a winning campaign in more than forty years was a winning candidate who was not even mentioned by his own grassroots.

The fact that such a stunning percentage of Americans today say they would vote for Ronald Reagan in a modern election should be a source of greatest encouragement to us. It shows that a strong leader who lays out a clear program could win. Could have won.

In the aftermath of last November, the usual talking heads ran to the cable shows with their white boards and tried to prove that they hadn’t miscalculated. There was just an entirely different electorate out there. Demographics! Even Reagan couldn’t have won in this forbidding environment, they claimed.

Those political consultants—which is our twenty-first century title for flim-flam men, card sharps, and Ponzi schemers—were trying to explain away their disastrous strategizing, their deeply flawed campaign advice. Have you noticed that they are still making the rounds on TV and on talk radio, these architects of failure?

The first fatal flaw in their schemes is red state/blue state. The theory behind red state/blue state says you turn the Electoral College upside down and shoot for 270 Electoral Votes. You identify the states absolutely required to achieve this bare minimum for election. And you squeeze those states like lemons to get every last drop of voting power out of them.

A truly terrible idea, red state/blue state dangerously divides the nation. Barack Obama’s campaign in Virginia in 2008 had 84 local headquarters, staffed largely by volunteers. McCain’s campaign that year in Virginia had one national headquarters and one state campaign office—both located in the same Northern Virginia office building and both equally chaotic. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama became the first Democrat since LBJ in 1964 to carry the Old Dominion. And he did it again in 2012.

Last month, I attended the March for Marriage on the Mall. Four hundred Korean-Americans came to the event. They had all come from one church in Flushing, Queens.

That’s in New York State. The architects of failure haven’t put an ad on TV for a Republican in New York for decades. New York is not a part of the bare minimum number of 270 Electoral Votes they need for their grand strategy. So they write off the Empire State.

These architects abandoned California, too, and New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington and Oregon. By micro-targeting their appeals to specific groups—right to lifers, gun owners, home schoolers, NASCAR fans, etc., they lost the ability to move the country.

I still remember lines from Reagan’s 1980 campaign, and not just because I took part in it. “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.

And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job.” It was a light jab, not mean at all.

Jimmy Carter was so weak, he could be knocked over with a feather. Best of all, Ronald Reagan said America should be “a shining city on a hill.”

What today’s poll shows us in the fictional contest between Reagan and Obama is that the American people remember that shining city on a hill. Now, all we need is the leader to take us there.

Cherry Blossoming

by Robert Morrison

April 23, 2013

I rarely disagree with my bride of 413 months. Not more than two or three times a week, I’m sure. So it was only under my breath that I questioned her idea of driving into Washington, D.C. recently to see the Cherry Blossoms. The Cherry Blossoms attract visitors from all over the world to our beautiful capital city. Now, there are cherry blossoms on the Yard of the Naval Academy, and we live in Annapolis, so why the push to go to Washington? Well, because Washington’s Cherry Blossoms are so very beautiful, surrounding the Tidal Basin and framing the Jefferson Memorial, as they do.

They were a gift a hundred years ago from the people of Japan. Part of the allure of the Cherry Blossoms, certainly, is their evanescence. They last but a few days. If we have a windstorm, a hailstorm, even a heavy rain, the Cherry Blossoms can be gone in a flash.

Of course, the fact that they are here such a brief moment in time is what draws the tourists from around the country and around the world.

My point, exactly. Any other time, my beloved is hard to draw into Washington. We live only thirty-two miles away, but I say it’s like scraping barnacles off a ship’s hull to get that dear lady into the District.

So which day, of all days in the year, might she choose for a family excursion into the Capital? The peak day of the Cherry Blossoms! It was the very day when much of the rest of the world wants to see them, too!

I rode in the van with my son-in-law and the grandchildren, as we led my wife and daughter in a second car. I muttered “This day of all days!” He has grown used to these expressions of patience and forbearance from me. After all, he’s family now.

As we came up on Capitol Hill, however, my smile through gritted teeth turned into something more genuine.

“What’s that big round thing, GranDad” our four year-old grandson asks. “Why, it’s the Capitol of the United States; it’s where Congress meets to make our laws.” For once, I forget about Obamacare and a lot of the other bad things happening under that Dome. I point out the lady standing on top. That’s the Statue of Freedom.”

“Oh, GranDad, what’s that big pencil,” he wants to know.

That’s the Washington Monument, I tell him. “Do you work in there,” he asks.

I cannot tell a lie. No, but I’ll take you to the building where I do work.

He and his twin sisters are taking it all in.

Even though we have to drive into Virginia to come around the Lincoln Memorial and get in line to see the Cherry Blossoms, I am by this time in a much better frame of mind.

Maybe the Missus idea wasn’t such a bad one, after all.

And yes, those thirty-six columns on the Big White Box are for all the states we had when President Lincoln lived here. No, he didn’t live in the Big White Box. But I’ll show you the house where he did live.

We slowly make the circuit of the Tidal Basin, in line with approximately 1 in 7 of the seven billion others on Earth.

Parking finally at my office, we dash across the street for a picnic in the Atrium of the National Portrait Gallery. Now, the grandchildren can be unstrapped from their car seats. They were amazingly content to see the Cherry Blossoms and all the monuments. Shouldn’t I be?

They find that stone rectangle on the floor of Atrium, the one with 1/8 inch of water constantly flowing over it. It seems to have been created for no other purpose than for children to splash in it. And they don’t even get other diners wet.

Splish, splash.. Joining them on the rectangle is a boy of about eight. He runs through the water. He wears a yarmulke. This boy has a serious birth defect, but his bearded young dad is teaching him how to take photographs with one finger.

I am thinking how grateful I should be to have witnessed such tender scenes. I was taught the shechechanu, a Hebrew prayer for such moments.

Blessed be Thou, O L_rd, Master of the Universe, that Thou hast preserved us in life to savor this experience for the first time.

And I also thank God for my wife. She has this maddening quality: Even when she’s wrong, she’s right!