Political parties will vehemently disagree on the precise tactics and funding levels required to address this horrific disease. But in a refreshingly bipartisan event this morning, President Barack Obama made the following comment:

As we go forward, we need to keep refining our strategy so that we’re saving as many lives as possible. We need to listen when the scientific community focuses on prevention.

My good friend Suzanne Taylor just released a film that tells the moving story of the treacherous AIDS epidemic in the African country of Botswana. The Road We Know documents what a small group of college students are doing to encourage prevention.

In Botswana, 1 in 4 people adults has HIV/AIDS. But while the government has done everything the Western world has encouraged—like handing out condoms and offering free testing—the formula has clearly failed.

Desperate for a solution, the government invited a small group of college students to help save their generation with a message of hope and behavior change.

In the film’s trailer, the student leaders share an upbeat message across the country–a message that sex is good and that abstinence isn’t only possible, it’s life-saving. As President George W. Bush remarked in his 2004 State of the Union Address, “Abstinence … is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.”

In a 2010 report, UNAIDS could point to a 25 percent drop or more in new infections for young adults ages 15 to 24 in 15 of the most infected nations–primarily due to sexual behavior change. This confirmed that story documented in Botswana was not an isolated trend.

Now that’s a message of hope and change. The kind we should all believe in.

To watch the film or host a screening, visit www.theroadweknow.com.

To connect with Evangelical or Catholic AIDS ministries, check out FRC’s Real Compassion website at www.realcompassion.org.

I was, frankly, embarrassed by the mess on the Mall.   Not just the trash left over, but the torn-up, boarded-up, barricaded mess that they’ve made of this great public space.

Everywhere there are Jersey walls, chain-link fences, ugly signs, plastic orange cones.

Is it the fault of this administration?   Frankly, yes, it is. I know, I know. People will say that President Obama is hard-pressed. He’s busy driving the unemployment from 9.1% to 9.2%.   He’s got three wars where he’s trying to “lead from behind” [their phrase].   He’s heavily engaged in evolving on marriage.   Apparently, a 41% out-of-wedlock birthrate is not high enough to produce enough low-income voters who will “share the wealth around,” so he’s working hard to repeal welfare reform and make marriage a total irrelevance.

Can’t you conservatives give the poor man a break? Aren’t you being too partisan?

Not really.   It was Democrat Harry Truman, after all, who kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office: The Buck Stops Here.   After 800 days of this administration, however, it is the President of China who keeps a sign on his desk:  Your Bucks Stop Here.

When President Reagan took office, the economy was in shambles, too.   Fifty-two Americans had been held for 444 days, released only on the day he took the oath. The Soviets were running amok in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.   Reagan delivered his Inaugural Address from the West Portico of the Capitol, looking out over the magnificent Mall.   It was clear and clean, as stern as those days were.

Ronald Reagan made a point of sprucing up our national parks, restoring our sense of civic pride in being Americans.   He never bowed to foreign despots.   Jimmy Carter had ordered our military not to wear their uniforms in the nation’s capital. Ronald Reagan required them.   The Statue of Liberty was completely refurbished on Reagan’s watch.   He was proud to preside in 1986 over the re-lighting of the torch held high by the Lady in the Harbor.

Once you get past the Jersey walls, there is still a lot to appreciate on the Mall.   At the World War II Memorial, Julia Bloore shared with me stories of her grandfathers. One, a Hollander, had to endure Nazi occupation.   The other, one of New Zealand’s always brave solders, became a prisoner of war of the Germans. The experience broke his health.   I told these young friends about my dad, how he survived being torpedoed by a German U-boat.   These family experiences—these tributes to our fathers—bring us together.

The World War II Memorial has a somber but beautiful display of 4,300 bronze stars arrayed above a reflecting pool.   There, my Kiwi friends delicately asked me why it was the United States had waited so long—until December 7, 1941—to enter the Second World War.   New Zealand, like Australia, Canada, and South Africa, had declared war on Germany when Britain did, in September, 1939.

I pointed out those stars. Each one represents one hundred American fighting men who laid down their lives in the war. That is mute testimony to why Americans hate war and why we honor those who sacrifice so much for our freedom.   Today, hundreds of World War II veterans come to the WWII Memorial, many of them moved to tears.   There were twelve million of them then.   They are passing on to the last muster at the rate of thousands each day.

At the Jefferson Memorial, we took time actually to read the words engraved on the wall “God who gave us life gave us liberty.  And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?  That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?  Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

The full quote goes on: “gave us liberty at the same time.”  Jefferson did not think it was “above his pay grade” when life and liberty are endowed.  Maybe that’s why President Obama keeps saying we are all “born equal” with inalienable rights, but never mentions Who it is who endows us with those rights.   Jefferson had no trouble acknowledging the divine Author of our liberties.

You can get to the Lincoln Memorial from the Jefferson only with difficulty.   But it’s worth the effort.  I read the familiar words carved into the stone wall with new solemnity this year:  Our Fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation… Will the assault on marriage, the merciless attack on the very notion of fatherhood, make this sentence from the Gettysburg Address incomprehensible to future generations?

The Washington Monument should be first in any tour of the Mall.  It was for us.  We could not go up to the 555-foot summit.  You had to wait until 8 pm for a ticket to ride.

That’s an encouraging note. Washington still commands our respect.  I pointed out an aluminum pyramid that tops the Washington Monument.  On its East front is engraved Laus Deo. Praise the Lord!

By law, no building in the capital can be as tall as the Washington Monument.  That means that the first rays of each morning’s sun strike the words “Praise the Lord.”

I told the New Zealanders about Christopher Hitchens. He’s the British Marxist who became a naturalized American citizen. Ann Coulter points out that liberals loved “Hitch” when he wrote a book attacking Mother Teresa, hated him when he wrote a book attacking Bill Clinton.  But now, all is forgiven.  Hitch wrote a book attacking God.

Standing beneath the Washington Monument, you know this is the wrong country to come to if you want a career as an atheizer.  A day’s tour of the monuments reinforces your belief that this country has been blessed by God, and has sought His protection from the beginning.  Laus Deo!

Washington, D.C. – Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement in response to President Obama’s second State of the Union Address:

“Tonight President Obama recognized the important role of parents in the educational achievement of their children. President Obama himself has set an example as a father and husband. However, the agenda he has pursued and articulated tonight does not strengthen the kind of family children need: one with a Mom and Dad.

“The intact married family is the core strength of the United States, and public policy should encourage formation of such families. Social science clearly demonstrates that children do best when raised by their own mother and father who are committed to one another in a lifelong marriage, and that adults also thrive when in such a marriage. Sadly, only 45 percent of American children grow up in an intact family.

“Broken homes often result in such social ills as crime, a higher school dropout rate, and drug abuse, themselves leading to enormous costs for state, local and our federal governments. Cutting government spending is imperative, but policies that foster healthy families are even more important – and, interestingly, there is no question that intact families are the most economically productive.

“Unfortunately, many of the Administration’s policies have undermined strong families by affirming sexual behavior that is unhealthy and destructive to individuals, families , the military, and society.

“Tonight President Obama appropriately paid tribute to the victims of the Tucson shooting. However, he did not mention the recent indictment of abortionist Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia for the murder of a mother and seven live-born infants. The Philadelphia tragedy serves as a ghastly reminder of the moral toll abortion has taken on America’s sense of justice. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), in his official Republican response, deserves praise for reminding the President it is the role of the government ‘to protect innocent life,’ not to encourage the taking of it.

“The President’s policies that promote abortion also undermine family formation. Abortion does this by contributing to infant mortality, victimizing women, and encouraging the abdication of responsibility by men. He is even opposed to commonsense parental notification laws. These laws reaffirm the unique role that a mother and father have in the life of a child.

“Regrettably, Mr. Obama’s health care law allows our hard earned dollars to pay for abortion coverage. The American people should not be forced to pay for abortion, which is why it’s necessary for this Congress to pass the ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act’ and restore neutrality on government funding of abortion,” concluded Perkins.

-30-

Before we had President’s Day, and gave equal billing to Jimmy Carter and James Buchanan, we had Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday. Little children in grade school would cut out hatchets to remember the boy George Washington and the legend of the cherry tree. For Abraham Lincoln, a tall, black stove pipe hat would be our introduction to the tallest of our Presidents.

A new book, a best-seller by James Swanson, tells the story of the “death pageant” for President Lincoln as his body was taken back to Springfield, Illinois, following his assassination on April 14, 1865. More than a million Americans lined the tracks and brushed quickly past the open casket to pay their last respects to the man they called Father Abraham. It was an unprecedented outpouring of grief. Author James Swanson’s Bloody Crimes contrasts the Lincoln funeral train with the hunt for Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

One of the things we learn from Swanson’s wonderful book is that the funeral train was a tribute not only to Abraham Lincoln, but also to his people, all of his people, and to all the blood that had been shed to preserve the Constitution he called “the last best hope of earth.”

Swanson includes a remarkable account from journalist George Alfred Townsend. Townsend had been permitted to enter the dead President’s office as his effects were  being packed up, a month after he was shot.

I am sitting in the President’s Office. He was here very lately, but he will not return to dispossess me of this high-backed chair he filled so long, nor resume his daily work at the table where I am writing.

A bright-faced boy runs in and out, darkly attired, so that his fob-chain of gold is the only relief to his mourning garb. This is little Tad, the pet of the White House…He will live to be a man pointed out everywhere, for his father’s sake, and as folks look at him, the tableau of the murder will seem to encircle him…

They are taking Mr. Lincoln’s private effects, to deposit them wherever his family may abide, and the emptiness of the place, on this sunny Sunday, revives that feeling of desolation from which the land has scarce recovered. I rise from my seat and examine the maps…[they] exhibit all the contested grounds of the war; there are pencil lines upon them where some one has traced the route of armies…was it the dead President?

Jim Swanson describes the passage of the great funeral train along a 1,625-mile route that re-traced Lincoln’s Inaugural journey of 1861. It was “an unspooling” of a ribbon of fire across this broad land as people from all walks of life came to offer their prayers, their flowers, their salutes.

Another Townsend, General Edward D. Townsend, has charge of the funeral train. It is his duty to make sure the remains of the dead Emancipator suffer no indignity along the route.

In Baltimore, for example, there is some fear that Lincoln haters might try to break through the cordon of guards and spit on the corpse. Nothing like that happens. In fact, Baltimore’s nobility shines through her tears. Black and white Baltimoreans gather to show their deep affection for the slain leader. They shuffle quietly past the catafalque in what may have been the South’s first great integrated event.

Gen. Townsend performs his function with great honor. But he is nearly dismissed when a wrathful Sec. of War, Edwin M. Stanton, learns that Townsend has permitted a photographer in New York City to make an image of Lincoln in his casket.

Stanton had wept, but then had taken brisk command during that terrible night of April 14-15, when fear ruled the nation’s capital and it seemed an assassin lurked behind every lamppost. “Now, he belongs to the Ages,” Stanton said as Lincoln breathed his last.

Stanton could not imagine anyone being allowed to hawk ghoulish souvenirs of the President’s face frozen in death. He need not have worried, the photograph is distant, ever so respectful, and gives us the only image we have of Lincoln in repose. It’s a national treasure.

Lincoln would have been the last one to stand on his own dignity. He was an awkward man whose rumpled clothing and giant boots gave no hint of elegance. When a visitor once expressed his surprise that the President was blacking his own boots, Lincoln disarmed him: “Whose boots should I black?”

His dignity came from his own soul, his integrity, his great mission. It was Lincoln who said “right makes might.” It was Lincoln who appealed to “the better angels of our nature.”

Not every President can be a Lincoln. We can thank God we have not had another Civil War to tear us apart. But even during the Civil War, Lincoln did not refer to the people of the South as his enemy. Yet, that is how President Obama refers to his domestic political opponents in an appearance on Univision.

When you allow the Presidency to be degraded, Mr. President, when you willingly lower the dignity of the high office to which we have raised you, you degrade us all.

Every President who comes into office has to look to Washington and Lincoln as models. All the great ones did.

Nobody looks to Andrew Johnson for a guide. President Johnson took a train trip out of Washington for “a swing around the circle” in the 1866 mid-term elections. He harangued drunken crowds from the back of the train. He called for his political foes in Congress to be hanged. His performance was so rancid that Gen. Grant left the Presidential train in disgust. Johnson suffered a landslide vote against him and his policies in those congressional elections.

President Obama came to Washington invoking Lincoln. It’s not too late for him to return to that high road.

This is admirable, in that Lincoln represents the very definition of American greatness.  Perhaps, though, Mr. Obama might take some time to ponder something the 16^th President wrote in an 1862 message to Congress: “We cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.”

That was true during the Civil War, and it remains true today, which is why the image Mr. Obama used last night – that we have now “turned a page” in Iraq – is unsettling.

In the sense that our combat operations have been completed, he is right.  And as the President said, our Armed Forces have fought with valor and tenacity, and deserve the gratitude and honor of a proud and thankful nation.

However, it is noteworthy that President Obama opposed the war in Iraq from its inception and, as a Senator, voted against the “surge” that enabled American forces to quell the rising militancy of Iraq’s Islamist terrorists.

This should be said, not to encourage contempt for the Commander in Chief but because it calls into question his strategic judgment.  No one is right all the time, and Mr. Obama’s placement of a major new combat force in Afghanistan under General Petraeus was a brave choice, one opposed by the President’s left-wing base.

It is when his judgment is driven by his statist impulses that our eyebrows should raise.  Mine did when, last night, Mr. Obama called upon America to “tackle (our) challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.”

This calling is wholly unrealistic – domestic needs never animate national will with the same intensity as does a military crisis.  Part of the reason is that we presume prosperity; for most Americans, it’s always just around the corner, and thus fighting for “energy independence,” as Mr. Obama called for last evening, will never produce a martial spirit.

Another reason is that a military adversary is tangible and visible.  Our enemies have faces.  Things like deflation, unemployment, energy production, and technological innovation do not.  They are concepts, not targets.

No national calling can ever be created similar to that inspired by immediate and serious threats to our survival as a people – threats like al-Qaeda and Nazism.

As troubling, if not more, was the President’s inference that we can now afford the luxury of turning inward, as if the cessation of American combat operations in Iraq means we can shift our gaze more exclusively to our own economic needs.

Mr. Obama’s penchant is to “transform America,” as he said repeatedly during his presidential campaign.  Mr. Obama and his colleagues on the Left view the national landscape as a gigantic machine with which they can tinker and to which they can make whatever “improvements” they wish in some sort of domestic bubble.  “Make the World Go Away” is, for them, less an Elvis Pressley anthem than a political demand.

Mr. Obama is bright and sophisticated.  He is mindful of the realities of a grim world.  Still, he seems dragged into global leadership with a grudging sense of duty, not a mature understanding that to be the American President is to lead freedom’s march, not merely walk with it.  He must remember, as Lincoln did, that “we cannot escape history.”

Another young President understood this well.  “Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities.”

Theodore Roosevelt saw international leadership not as a burden to be born but an opportunity to be greeted with resolve and optimism.  May Barack Obama learn from his example.

I thought about that poster today as word of President Obama’s most recent misery spread. It seems he has folks in Los Angeles in a fury about his recent fund-raising trip to the City of Angels. His motorcade held up traffic for hours—the one thing you definitely do not want to do to harried California commuters.

This great city ought to be Obama’s oyster. After all, he carried California by three million votes in 2008. But the president is increasingly getting raspberries wherever he goes.

Just last Friday night, he was speaking at an iftar dinner in the White House to a group of his Muslim admirers. I didn’t even know they had iftar dinners in the White House. But he began his remarks in that deep and resonant tobacco baritone of his: “Let me be clear…” He proceeded to offer a very clear endorsement of building a mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. His dinner guests applauded enthusiastically.

Next morning, the president began backpedaling furiously. He was not commenting on the “wisdom” of putting the mosque near the place where 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11, only on the Muslims’ constitutional right to build it. In other words: “Let me be less clear. Let me try to lay down a smokescreen and beat a hasty retreat.”

I can imagine Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) burning up the wires to the White House political operation after hearing that one. He is his party’s campaign chairman for this fall. “Are you trying to lose control of the House of Representatives,” Van Hollen might have said.

The mosque at Ground Zero issue is a 70%-30% split. By a commanding margin, Americans do not want a mosque built near the site of the bloodiest attack yet on our homeland. Public officials who defy the people so heedlessly can expect to feel their wrath in the voting booths come November.

I have a recommendation for our beleaguered president: Do what FDR did. Show less of yourself. Yes, I know that was before the TV era. But Roosevelt knew that the mystery and aura of the presidency was enhanced by making presidential speeches and appearances less frequent. President Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, cannot resist being in our faces 24/7. Hasn’t he ever heard the old saw “familiarity breeds contempt?”

One of my favorite political photographs is on sale at the store of the New York Times. Notice how the people are gathered on the train platform in Warm Springs, Georgia. Franklin D. Roosevelt is nowhere to be seen in this classic black and white picture. But his presence is felt.

Those hopeful, expectant Americans are excited at the prospect of seeing their elected chief.

Like all conservatives, I have serious questions about FDR’s economic policies. And detailed study has shown me how seriously Roosevelt misjudged the threat of Communism. Still, as a political actor, he had no rivals.

An unapologetic Christian, Roosevelt never neglected religious minorities in this country. He faced down the bigots of his day who said his New Deal was actually a “Jew Deal.”  FDR regularly worshiped in his Episcopal Church and his administration was not afraid to express an openly religious sentiment when fighting the Nazi menace.

The U.S. Government published this poster showing Nazis trying to destroy the Christian Bible. The Obama administration is afraid even to mention jihadist terrorists or speak of Muslim extremists.

The hope for change expressed by that Obama-as-FDR poster at the National Portrait Gallery seems to have faded. Now, the only common tie between our 32^nd and  44^th presidents is the cigarette smoke. And, tragically, that smoke probably killed Franklin Roosevelt.

And we can visit the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. There, we will have a chance to smile, perhaps to laugh, at the parody magazine cover they’ve displayed. It shows President Barack Obama riding in an open car, a battered fedora atop his head, his head thrown back, and his dazzling smile radiating throughout the room. In his brilliant teeth is clenched a cigarette holder, held at a jaunty angle.

It’s a sight gag. It’s a throwback. It’s a pose so familiar to older Americans that it’s instantly recognizable.

Franklin D. Roosevelt died when I was still in my mother’s womb. Still, I grew up with stories about him. His voice was familiar in our home–if not on records, certainly from TV documentaries of World War II. My relatives would delightedly mimic his head-tossing delivery and his stentorian eloquence.

Now, you can hear him, too. The Miller Center at the University of Virginia has archived many original recordings. Included in their collection is President Roosevelt’s great speech from June 10, 1940, delivered seventy years ago this week to the graduating class at U.Va.

For context, you must realize that the British Expeditionary Force, the main British army, had just been evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk, France. The French army was in a state of stunned collapse, reeling from the powerful blows of German panzers rolling swiftly through Northeastern France and strafed from above by Nazi Stukas. Hitler’s Luftwaffe chief, the hugely menacing Marshal Goering, had fitted sirens to the wings of his dive bombers for the express purpose of terrifying the women and children upon whom their wicked fury was wreaked.

The peoples of the Americas looked on as newsreels and newspaper photos showed fleeing refugees. These refugees–old men and women and little children crowded the roads and market squares of quiet Belgian, Dutch, and French villages. French reinforcements couldn’t get to the scene of the battle.

It would not have been surprising if young people in America–those like the U.Va. Class of 1940 –felt that the world was just too threatening a place and retreated from it.. But that is not how they reacted. Despite the terrors of war–in the air, on the seas, under the oceans–the reaction of President Roosevelt’s audience that day was strong, thunderous, and like Roosevelt himself, confident.

He had the gift of putting the great conflicts of his day into the perspective of America’s long struggle for freedom. He summoned the heroes of the past to give courage to the people of his own time. Soon, all too soon, they would be called upon to prove themselves heroic. And led by FDR, they would.

The President’s words of scorn for the duplicity, the treachery, of Italy’s self-annointed Duce, Benito Mussolini, are unforgettable. On that very morning–June 10, 1940, despite his protestations of peace, and only when he saw that Hitler had struck the killing blow, the jackal Mussolini attacked France from the South. “The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.” In FDR’s Hyde Park accent, that came out nay-bah. Stirring stuff.

Our current President has a young speech writer, Jon Favreau, who is not yet thirty.

Mr. Favreau has no sense of America’s storied past, no feeling for what the National Archives calls “the glory and romance of our history.” He does not reach back to Jamestown or Plymouth Rock. Nor does he evoke the trials of Valley Forge, the “landscape turned red” at Antietam, or the sands of Iwo Jima.

Does Jon Favreau even know that Americans walked on the Moon and through the Brandenburg Gate? He churns out words for President Obama that are sonorous and silky, but which evaporate upon contact with the hard and cold reality of the world.

Here’s a challenge: Try to recall even one line from President Obama’s Normandy speech of just one year ago. Can even Jon Favreau do it?

If the President is really convening a committee of experts to tell him “whose a– to kick,” I have a suggestion: Jon Favreau.

If President Obama really wants to connect with the American people, it’s time he learned something of how we got here. It is this failure to form a bond of the heart with Americans past, present, and future, that led the Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz to call him the “Alien in the White House.”

No one–no matter how much they “hated his gaudy guts”–could ever have said that about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Unless President Obama learns–and learns quickly–how to make this vital connection with the people he hopes to change, that failure will  doom his presidency.

There are stout affirmations of America’s need for a strong defense extensively qualified by even more dogmatic commitments to a new “international order.”  According to the President, we must “(renew) American leadership so that we can more effectively advance our interests in the 21st century” while  “shaping an international order that can meet the challenges of our time.” 

So … is there ever a time when American leadership means standing alone?  Is that not, by definition, what leadership sometimes is?

Mr. Obama says, within two paragraphs, that “military force, at times may be necessary to defend our country” and that “the use of force is sometimes necessary” (emphasis mine).  Maybe, is, could be, sometimes – there might be a certain trumpet in there somewhere, but I have yet to find it.

Mr. Obama then lurches into Wilsonian utopianism: His new “strategy” “reaffirms America’s commitment to pursue our interests through an international system in which all nations have certain rights and responsibilities.”  This rings of Wilson’s infantile Fourteen Points, through which an arrogant American president tried to impose a new international order on a world that didn’t want one. 

Then: “When force is necessary, we will continue to do so in a way that reflects our values and strengthens our legitimacy, and we will seek broad international support, working with such institutions as NATO and the U.N. Security Council.”

You tell ‘em, Mr. President.  I’m sure the world’s dictators are trembling with terror.  No doubt Kim Jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have by now jettisoned their nuclear arms programs, Vladimir Putin is relaxing his authoritarian grip on Russia, and China will allow representative democracy – all in light of your vacuous commitment to international bloviation.

Just to be sure there’s no confusion, the President then says: “The United States must reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests, yet we will also seek to adhere to standards that govern the use of force.”

Got that?  First, he has so qualified this assurance through the repetitive emphasis on international order, cooperation and making nice with friends and enemies alike that it is little more than a throw-away line.  Still, one inference is clear – that at times, we have violated our own principles. 

In a fallen world – and yes, Mr. President, it really is imperfectable – no nation constantly lives up to every one of its principles all the time.  America has done so better than any other, and rather than continuously if tacitly admitting our failures, perhaps a word about all we have done to better the life of the world, at great sacrifice of blood and treasure, might be advised.  But that’s just me.

In a preview of today’s statement, the President spoke at West Point this past weekend.  There, he said:

So we have to shape an international order that can meet the challenges of our generation.  We will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well, including those who will serve by your side in Afghanistan and around the globe.  As influence extends to more countries and capitals, we also have to build new partnerships, and shape stronger international standards and institutions. 

Insulting Israel and her Prime Minister, treating Poland and the Czech Republic with contempt by suddenly canceling long-negotiated anti-missile system agreements, giving the Queen of England recordings of one’s own speeches – is this what Mr. Obama means by “strengthening old alliances?”  Playing-up to the autocratic (and ruthless) bully Vladimir Putin, apologizing to China – CHINA! – for Arizona’s new immigration law, failing to approve the Columbia free trade agreement: Are these and similar misadventures what Mr. Obama would call “shaping stronger international standards and institutions?”

This engagement is not an end in itself.  The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times –- countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing wounds. 

Well might Mr. Obama seek this kind of international order, but he will never find it.  Such an “order” implies an overarching international governmental regime to which to belong intrinsically would compromise the independence and security of the United States.  And an informal “order” of this type will never work, because it presupposes that regulatory constraints (e.g., economic sanctions) and enlightened self-interest will drive policy.  Consider the United Nations, which has been such a roaring success.  Just ask the victims of Pol Pot, the residents of Darfur and the brutalized people of the Congo.

These assumptions are so naïve as to evoke visions of sugar-plums.  Dictators, totalitarians, oligarchs, and corrupt, venal and creatively evil leaders of all types understand consistency and force, nothing more.  The threat of military intervention must always lurk behind any effort to negotiate agreements favorable to the vital security interests of the United States.  For such a veiled threat to be realistic, it must also be understood that America will act alone, for its own sake, whenever necessary.

Mr. Obama has taken this option substantially off the table and thereby hobbled the United States with the imponderable burden of international approval for future military engagement.   

During his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Mr. Obama said, “As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation … I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people … To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Amen.  But to this should be added, “Thus, while we will never act cavalierly, when necessary America will act unilaterally to protect itself from any form of aggression against its people and vital interests.”

Mr. Obama has now subsumed America’s compelling and sometimes urgent need for solitary action under the broad umbrella of an amorphous “international order” composed of who knows what and whom.  While he professes to understand the need for force and the intransigence of evil, he fails to grasp something unique and essential: He is the President of the United States, the sole exceptional nation that alone can animate just alliances and confront regional and international evil. 

The irony is that for any sustained and honorable “order” to exist, America must always be willing to stand apart and act alone.  Without this underlying commitment, our enemies will not tremble nor our friends be at rest.  In denying this principle, Mr. Obama has set in motion the very disorder of which he warns.

George Washington wrote that “There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.” 

A reputation for exactly that is being hard-won by a President and Administration that disregard our allies, caustically attack our friends and obsequiously fawns over our adversaries. 

The rank of which President Washington spoke is diminished.  We are at risk of losing it altogether.

In a series of interviews the next day, I emphasized that the Family Research Council does not have any objection to such visitation in principle, as long as it is premised on the patient’s personal choice rather than on a redefinition of family or marriage. However, I also pointed out that the main reason this is even a topic of discussion is because it is used as a political talking point by the advocates of same-sex “marriage,” who see it as a golden opportunity to tug at people’s heartstrings and generate emotional sympathy for their cause.

I further asserted my belief that the frequency with which homosexuals are barred from visiting their partners in the hospital is grossly exaggerated. As I pointed out in an online chat on the Washington Post website,

The idea that homosexuals are regularly denied the right to visit their partners in the hospital is one that has only one source–homosexual activists who want to change the definition of marriage. Where are the media surveys of hospital administrators to determine how many hospitals actually have such restrictive policies?

In the reporting on the Obama memorandum, however, many media outlets cited the case of Janice Langbehn, a lesbian who sued a Florida hospital claiming that she was denied the right to visit her partner Lisa Pond when Pond was dying from an aneurysm. Langbehn’s story is apparently a familiar one in the homosexual activist community, thanks in large part to a sympathetic New York Times article last year.

In fact, Langbehn’s story was instrumental in moving Obama to act. According to the Washington Post:

Officials said Obama had been moved by the story of a lesbian couple in Florida, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, who were kept apart when Pond collapsed of a cerebral aneurysm in February 2007, dying hours later at a hospital without her partner and children by her side. Obama called Langbehn on Thursday evening from Air Force One as he flew to Miami, White House officials said.

The New York Times story last year did report that the hospital disputes some of Langbehn’s charges, but media reports on the Obama memo last week, like that in the Post, did not even bother mentioning that. They were content to repeat the storyline of the homosexual activists verbatim, without even stopping to ask if there was another side.

There is, however, another side. On the website of the Miami Herald, I discovered that the hospital which Langbehn accused of mistreating her has sent its own letter to President Obama. Here is part of what the hospital said:

We would also like to take this opportunity to provide you with some clarification on the allegations being made by Janice Langbehn, whose partner was treated at Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center in 2007. From the beginning, JHS has vehemently denied that Ms. Langbehn was denied visitation due to her sexual orientation. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed Ms. Langbehn’s lawsuit against Jackson Memorial Hospital in September 2009.

Ms. Langbehn’s allegations and those made by published articles, blogs, etc., are inaccurate and have damaged the reputations and deeply hurt the feelings of the personnel in our trauma center. They have devoted their careers to all who come through our doors, from all walks of life.

JHS grants hospital visitation to all individuals equally, regardless of their relationship to the patient, as long as doing so does not interfere with the care being given to the patient or other patients in the area. With that said, our first priority when a patient is brought to our trauma center is always to stabilize the patient and save their life. As the only adult and pediatric Level 1 trauma center in Miami-Dade County to support a population of more than 2.3 million people, our facility is one of the busiest – and most renowned – in the nation.

The Trauma Resuscitation Unit in Ryder Trauma Center, where Lisa Pond was treated when airlifted to Jackson, is more like a large operating room with multiple beds separated by glass partitions rather than a traditional hospital floor. Sometimes, visitors are not able to see a loved one in the trauma bay as quickly as they would like or they may have to wait until the patient is moved to the ICU or to another area of the hospital that is better suited for visitation. This all depends on the circumstances of the situation, how busy the unit is at the time and the medical conditions of the patients in the unit at the time. The patients in this area are facing life-threatening injuries or illnesses and are extremely vulnerable.

The most important piece of information to consider from our side of this story is that the charge nurse on duty the night Ms. Pond was in our care – and the person who made all visitation access decisions that evening – is herself a lesbian with a life partner. In addition, numerous members of the medical team working in our trauma unit are openly homosexual. We can assure you that Ms. Langbehn was not treated differently because of her sexual orientation.

When homosexuals complain that they are “denied the right to visit their partners in the hospital,” they may give some people the impression (I suspect deliberately) that in some hospitals they are never able to visit their partners, simply because they are not legally recognized as family members. I pointed out that for ordinary patients in ordinary hospital rooms (the vast majority of hospital patients), there are few if any restrictions on visitation. You don’t go through security, no one checks your ID—you just walk up to the room and visit. Some hospitals have even done away with the tradition of “visiting hours,” and instead allow visitors to come in at any hour of the day or night.

I did acknowledge that there might be exceptions to these liberal visitation policies, such as when a patient is in intensive care. But there was one point so obvious that I did not bother making it (until now)—and that is that in situations of emergency, trauma, or intensive care, hospitals may sometimes keep away all visitors from a patient for medical reasons—not for reasons of “discrimination.” If the hospital’s account is accurate, that is what happened to Janice Langbehn.

Is the thought of a person “dying without their loved ones at their bedside” an agonizing one? Of course. But it is an agony that is probably experienced by many people, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status, every day, for one simple reason—their beds are surrounded by doctors and nurses fighting to save their lives.