On Saturday, April 13, Iran launched at Israel a salvo of 120 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, 170 drones, and 30 cruise missiles, intending to cause devastating damage, mass casualties, and potentially escalating hostilities and retaliation from the Israel Defense Forces.1
Tehran’s aggression, however, exposed Iran’s intrinsic weakness as 99% of the 300-plus ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles were intercepted. While this was by any measure a stunning success for air and missile defenses, so-called experts and defense analysts not that long ago scoffed at President Ronald Reagan’s idea of a Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI] in a speech to the nation from the Oval Office on March 23, 1983.
In a smug response to the concept of SDI, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy [D-MA] ridiculed President Reagan’s proposal at the time as a “reckless Star Wars scheme,” scorning the idea and soon-to-be reliable futuristic technology. As recently as 2018, Leftist scoffers once more denounced Reagan’s space frontier defense strategy as loony.
Daniel Henninger, the deputy editorial page director of The Wall Street Journal and Fox News contributor, pointed out the progression in his recent column titled Ronald Reagan Just Saved Israel From Iran’s Attack.2 He wrote: “Allow me to identify who saved the people of Israel last weekend from Iran’s missile barrage: Ronald Reagan.
“In 1983, President Reagan, in a televised speech, proposed what he called the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its core idea was that the U.S. would build defense systems that could shoot down nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, then expected to be fired by the Soviet Union at the U.S. mainland.
“Democrats and much of the defense establishment mocked the idea, with Sen. Ted Kennedy naming it ‘Star Wars’. [Not to be outdone] Sen. Joe Biden summed up the opposition in a 1986 speech to the National Press Club:
“‘Star Wars represents a fundamental assault on the concepts, alliances, and arms-control agreements that have buttressed American security for several decades, and the president’s continued adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.’”
President Biden’s 50-year political career is fraught with reckless conclusions, bumbling comments, and crusading pomposity. One will remember the bewildering dissimulation of our present Commander-in-Chief’s pledge on Election Night, Tuesday, November 8, 2020: “I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but to unify; who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States.”3
A look at what happened over just the last 30 days will show how steeply the lofty promises have descended into a selective agency for a barefaced divorce from reality.
• Biden makes the Sign of the Cross [which Catholics make before and after prayer] while listening to pro-abortion remarks.4
• Biden exalts homosexuals on Transgender Day on Easter Sunday.5
• Biden unveils Title IX ‘special rights’ for men competing in women’s sports.6
Catholic Cardinal Robert Sarah’s [born 1945] repartee to the loss of Judeo-Christian heritage and Biblically based culture is worth noting: “A West that denies its faith, its history, its roots, and its identity is destined for contempt, for death, and disappearance.”
Ecclesiastes 10:1 appears to succinctly summarize the presidential tenure of Joseph Robinette Biden [born 1942]: “As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.” [NIV] A little foolishness can degrade a lot of wisdom.
Fortunately, religious awakening has been an integral part of America’s history. Spiritual awakening is in her DNA.7 Harvard College, the nation’s first college established in 1636, declared in 1640 in its Rules and Precepts:
“The main end of life and study is to know God and His Son Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him.”
America was not settled by lily-livered Christians, tepid in their faith and reserved on arriving on the Easter Shores in the early 17th century. Instead, they were men of a radical stripe, zealous in their Christian convictions, who codified Biblical values into law throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in the 13 Original Colonies’ charters and constitutions, which included Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, North and South Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island.
Over the last 200 years, however, radical change has overtaken the nation, resulting in benumbing paganism now being America’s official religion. Both as individuals and the nation, we have lapsed and transgressed.
Joseph Boot observes in his 2022 book Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government that all cultural and political thought inescapably rests on a given foundation. One religious worldview or another is the unacknowledged basis for all forms of political philosophy. Either Christ and His word revelation provide that foundation, or else the thinking of elites and their revolutionary ideals will assume the role of biblical authority.
To turn the tables again, every church in America should have a pastor, elder, deacon, or congregant running for local office in 2026, 2028, 2030, and thereafter.
Raymond Moley [1886-1975], Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most trusted adviser, presented his view on those whose values rule in the culture: “Politics is not something to avoid, abolish, or destroy. It is a condition like the atmosphere we breathe. It is something to live with, to influence if we wish, and to control if we can. We must master its ways, or we shall be mastered by those who do.”
Evangelical and Pro-Life Catholic Christians will have to take their game to the next level if America is to make it through as the nation it once was. Religious liberty will solely be reestablished by organizing rather than by periodic Sunday sermons on politics or policy powwows in Washington, DC.
Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand.
David Lane
American Renewal Project
1. www.csis.org/analysis/iran-israel-air-conflict-one-week
2. www.wsj.com/articles/ronald-reagan-just-saved-israel-iran-missile-defense-7c6847d1
3. economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/president-elect-joe-biden-pledges-to-unite-america-calls-it-a-time-to-heal-in-america/articleshow/79107735.cms?from=mdr
4. nypost.com/2024/04/24/us-news/biden-makes-catholic-sign-of-the-cross-during-democrats-pro-abortion-speech-in-florida/
5. www.politico.com/news/2024/03/30/easter-transgender-day-of-visibility-culture-war-00149841
6. www.datalounge.com/thread/30563586-white-house-announces-new-actions-to-protect-transgender-americans-from-state-level-discriminatory-laws
7. Eddie L. Hyatt, America’s Revival Heritage: How Christian Reformation & Spiritual Awakening Led to the Formation of the United States of America; 2012.
