Barack Obama, Billy Graham And God
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Don Feder
10/22/2012
"When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen," proclaimed a memorable advertising campaign.
When Billy Graham speaks, evangelical Christians listen with rapt attention. The 93-year-old’s words are a gold standard among born-agains. And the Reverend Graham is doing a lot of talking these days. For the first time in his long and distinguished career, he’s speaking publicly about politics.
In full-page ads that ran in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today late last week (others will follow), the renowned preacher asked Americans to "vote Biblical values this November 6," and "pray with me that America will remain one nation under God" – which would preclude one nation under Saul Alinsky’s disciple.
Graham left no room for doubt about how Bible-believers should be guided in casting their ballots: "I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and the Biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman," and candidates who "support the nation of Israel."
Earlier in October, Mitt Romney visited Graham’s home in the mountains of North Carolina. In a widely published statement, the preacher reportedly promised the governor: "I’ll do all I can to help you."
Romney is pro-life; Obama is pro-choice. Romney is pro-natural marriage; Obama is pro-unnatural marriage. Romney likes Israel. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton calls our 44th president "the most anti-Israel president in the history of the state, without any question."
For America to "remain one nation under God," America must first acknowledge God.
In the 2008 campaign, the future president compared Christian residents of Main Street America to gun-nuts, bigots and xenophobes. At this year’s Democratic nominating convention, delegates booed putting God back in their party’s platform.
Barack Obama has, at various times, said "Americans do not consider themselves a Christian nation," and "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation."
He left God out of his 2011 Thanksgiving Day declaration. (Reading between the lines, the president seemed to say we should be grateful to an entity called community.) In 2010, he misquoted the Declaration of Independence by leaving out "their Creator" as the source of "unalienable rights."
On one of his apologizing-to-Muslims tours, he told the Turks that our national motto is "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one). It’s really "One nation under God," but it’s easy to understand how the president would be uncomfortable with that. Last year, he opposed the inclusion of FDR’s D-Day Prayer in the World War II memorial. I miss the days when Democrats believed in God – and in America.
There hasn’t been a White House event for National Day of Prayer since 2008. But a delegation of atheists and agnostics was welcomed there in 2010, and met with the president’s staff.
While dissing Christianity and America’s Judeo-Christian tradition, Obama slobbers over Islam, including some of its more radical elements.
In the same speech in which he said Christianity had nothing to do with America (past or present), the president also observed: "We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including my own country."
That’s correct, in a sense. Think of scimitar-wielding hordes sweeping out of the Arabian Peninsula and overrunning the Middle East, North Africa and much of Europe. Think of the 700-year occupation of Spain and the Balkans, and the destruction of the Christian Byzantine Empire.
If by "my own country" Obama means America (and not Kenya or Indonesia), think of planes being flown into Manhattan skyscrapers on an otherwise beautiful Autumn day. Think of more than 3,000 dead – not to mention all of the acts of terrorism (actual and aborted) in America since then.
For Obama, Islamophilia includes strenuous efforts to deny reality. Thus, the Ft. Hood massacre – 13 dead at the hands of an Islamist shouting "Allahu Akbar!" – becomes "workplace violence" in the Pentagon report.
A week after he knew the truth about Benghazi (that our ambassador and three other Americans were murdered by heavily armed elements of al-Qaeda), in a speech at the United Nations, the president was still pushing the fantasy that the attack was the result of a spontaneous demonstration over an obscure video. ("The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.")
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, try to imagine Franklin Delano Roosevelt attributing the attack to stressed-out Japanese pilots, and pledging: "The future must not belong to those who slander Shintoism and the Emperor Hirohito."
Regarding this administration’s policies on family issues, the phrase "Biblical values" does not leap to mind.
In the second presidential debate, the man who voted against a partial-birth abortion ban as an Illinois state senator informed us that Planned Parenthood is a humanitarian organization – Big Bird with a scalpel. "There are millions of women all over the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for mammograms," the president thundered, and Mitt Romney wants to remove its funding – so millions of women will die.
Except, Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms. But it does do abortions – 332,278 in 2009, making it the nation’s biggest abortion provider. In fact, 37% of its income comes from terminating pregnancies (with extreme prejudice).
As an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against parental notification. As a United States Senator, he co-sponsored the euphemistically named Freedom of Choice Act (which declared a "fundamental right to abortion" and would have nullified any restrictions, no matter how modest, anywhere in the United States).
As president, he lifted the Mexico City Policy (thereby forcing taxpayers to fund overseas groups which commit abortions) and appointed a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and a Secretary of Health and Human Services who are rabidly pro-abortion. As Kansas governor, HHS head Kathleen Sebelius threw a private party for a partial-birth abortionist.
As a law professor, Illinois Senator, U.S. Senator and president, Barack Obama never met an abortion he didn’t like. And Obamacare will force the public to pay for abortions now and forever more.
While there is no right to life (in the president’s estimation), gay marriage is a fundamental human right. Supposedly, his thinking evolved here to an embrace of the anti-Biblical absurdity this past May – just in time for North Carolinians to reject it by a vote of 61% – becoming the 31st state to do so.
Actually, Obama supported gay marriage before he opposed it before he supported it. He was pro-same-sex marriage as a state senator, anti- when he ran for president, and changed his mind again in 2012, to shore up his leftwing base.
Prior to his latest change of heart, last year, Obama said he would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure duly passed by Congress in 1996, and signed into law by a Democratic president.
Besides ramming repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell through a lame duck Congress in 2010, the administration has ordered our diplomats to be as supportive as possible of the human right to unnatural relations.
Thus, in August, Norman Eisen, U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, took part in Prague’s gay pride parade, which included "Gay Speed Dating" (the mind recoils) and a man marching in a cowboy hat and jockstrap.
Regarding Obama and Israel, where to start – ordering Israel not to build housing in Israel (including East Jerusalem), the first president not to visit Israel in the past 50 years, the "Arab Spring" (which put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt), humiliating Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu during a memorable White House visit (the president stormed out of the meeting to "have dinner," then refused official photographs), and never making demands of the Palestinians (like stopping the killing of Jewish children and ceasing anti-Semitic agitation).
But in terms of putting Israel in mortal danger, nothing compares with his reversal of decades of U.S. policy, on May 19, 2011, when the president drew the borders of a future Palestinian state (Hamas-istan) – "the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps."
The president isn’t losing sleep over the fact that this will put even coastal Israel in range of even primitive Qassam rockets (forget heavy weapons), any more than he’s concerned about this settlement-from-hell making an in-depth defense of Israel impossible.
If Obama survives this election, the long-term survival of Israel is doubtful.
What a refreshing change was Romney’s July 29 speech in Jerusalem: "For an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel. …. We speak the same language of freedom and justice, and the right of every person to live in peace. We serve the same cause and provoke the same hatreds in the same enemies of civilization."
When Romney wins, those words should be engraved above the portals of every building in Foggy Bottom.
According to Americans of Faith for Romney/Ryan, the next president believes "marriage is more than a personally rewarding social custom. It is also critical for the well-being of a civilization." Romney not only will defend DOMA "but will champion a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution."
The governor believes "life begins at conception" and that the logical next step is "for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade."
So, who is Dr. Graham referring to in those full-page ads? Who will "protect the sanctity of life and the Biblical definition of marriage" and support the nation of Israel?
Billy Graham will celebrate his 94th. birthday on November 7. I’ll turn not quite that old not quite three weeks later. Dr. Graham launched his first crusade not quite a year after I was born. He’s a minister of the Gospel. I believe in the Torah.
And on November 6, we’ll be casting our ballots for the same presidential candidate – based on the same criteria.
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