Politics

“You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16)

On September 8, 2008 I shared with you one hundred reasons I would not vote for Barack Obama. That article brought wide-spread response from around the world–some of it very critical of my views.

I had studied the career of then Senator Obama for nearly two years and and concluded he was a radical,  ambitious far left politician who would lead America away from its Christian moorings. I warned you to look past the warm smile, soaring eloquence, and big crowds and take a measure of the man’s true worldview, values and beliefs.

In my heart, I hoped and prayed that I was wrong. Though Barack Obama appeared to be a committed secular liberal (with a smile), I hoped at the least, that he would be somewhat restrained like Bill Clinton and govern from the center-left. Because he was our first elected African American president, I wanted him to succeed by doing what is right for our nation.

Now his first one hundred days are history–and they have been disastrous. Yes, disaster , meaning “an unforeseen mischance bringing with it destruction of life or property or utter defeat” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary).  Barack Obama’s leadership has been far worse than even I imagined–denigrating faith and our Christian heritage, undermining the family values we hold dear,  devastating the economy with Big Government centralized control, weakening and slashing our military forces, and cozying up to tyrants and terrorists–all at a warp speed pace that has been astonishing to behold. He has certainly not let a “good crisis go to waste.”

There’s no more need to wonder about Barack Obama. It was Jesus who said “You will know them by their fruits.” The fruits of his first one hundred days in office reveal that Barack Obama is the most anti-Christian president in the history of the United States. If you voted for him, it’s time to take off the rose-colored glasses, repent of your lack of judgment, and join the cause of real American restoration. We have sinned–put our trust in wrong things and poor leaders–and could face a disastrous or terminal societal judgment if we proceed down our current path.

When I ran for public office in 2006, I based my campaign on the three biblical and historically American values that brought incredible blessing to our nation for the past two-hundred and thirty-three years. They are faith, family and freedom. How can I honestly say that Barack Obama is an anti-Christ leader? Because in these three vital areas, the vast majority of the bills he’s signed and policies he’s promoted since January 20th have been strongly anti-faith, anti-family, and anti-freedom. Here’s the record.

Anti-Faith

Our new president calls himself a Christian and knows how to use religious language in certain settings. I will not profess to judge his heart. Only God knows whether he has saving faith or not. But as Jimmy Carter before him, Barack Obama does not possess a Christian worldview that guides his decision-making and governmental policies. In worldview, Obama is a secularist. That is why he has stated that “we are not a Christian nation.” He does not want us to be a Christian-based society. He believes we are bigoted, narrow, intolerant and backward. He wants us to be a secular nation with secular values. His demand to cover up the Christian symbols at Notre Dame University before giving the commencement address was the clearest evidence of his disrespect for our faith foundations.

Barack Obama does not want us to be one nation under God. He wants us to become a secular and spiritually diverse nation under men (Big Government). Under his watch, Christianity will shrink and be persecuted, and atheism will grow. That’s the “real change” he offers. Is that what you want?

Anti-Family

On April 28, 2009, Focus on the Family chronicled for us just a few of the Obama Administration anti-family policies of the first one hundred days. Barack Obama has:

• Signed an executive order allowing taxpayer funding to go to international groups that promote or provide abortions. The “Mexico City Policy,” as it’s known, also was rescinded by President Bill Clinton and then reinstated by President George W. Bush.
• Opened the door for more human embryos to be destroyed for unethical stem-cell research despite science showing that adult stem cells provide cures; to date, embryonic stem cells have not.
• Begun the process of rescinding the Bush health care provider conscience regulations. This move comes at a time when the U.S. is experiencing a shortage of practicing physicians, a drop one senator described as reaching “crisis proportions.” Making it easier for hospitals and medical schools to discriminate against physicians based on their moral or religious beliefs will only drive more of them out of the profession.
• Lifted a seven-year ban on taxpayer funding of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is linked to forced abortion programs.
• Nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of State. Clinton is an ardent pro-abortion politician who recently accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger award. During her acceptance speech, Clinton praised the eugenicist Sanger as a great Americans.
• Nominated Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services. She has accepted campaign contributions from notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller and welcomed him into the governor’s mansion. Sebelius is one of the most pro-abortion governors in the country.
• Nominated Dawn Johnsen, former legal director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. Johnsen has called motherhood “involuntary servitude” and has said that restrictions on abortion make women nothing more than “fetal containers.”
• Attacked charitable giving by proposing a reduced tax deduction for gifts to nonprofits. If it becomes law, it will have a major impact on faith-based ministry giving and other nonprofits.
• Signed a bill that kills the District of Columbia’s successful school-choice program. The program benefits low-income families by providing private-school scholarships. Approximately 3,500 students have benefited from this program.
• Nominated David Hamilton to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  Hamilton has been a board member for the ACLU and a fundraiser for ACORN. He has ordered the Indiana legislature to end its historic practice of beginning each session with a prayer, and has written an opinion in opposition to abortion clinics providing information to women about alternatives.
• Appointed Ellen Moran to a major communications post at the White House. Moran is the former executive director of the pro-abortion EMILY’s List.
• Nominated David Ogden, Tom Perrelli, Elena Kagan and Harold Koh to top Department of Justice and State Department posts. Ogden has been a legal advocate for pornography producers; Perelli helped lead the legal fight to remove the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo; Kagan supported denying military recruiters access to law schools; and Koh strongly advocates mixing foreign law into important U.S. constitutional debates.
• Expressed support for hate-crimes legislation and will sign if it reaches his desk. The House will vote on the measure April 29. The legislation creates a special class of crime based on the victim’s sexual orientation. Those accused of “inducing” a federal hate crime could be held responsible for the actions of another person. For example, pastors preaching against homosexuality could be charged with a crime if someone listening committed a “hate crime” against a gay individual.
• Ordered a legal review of hiring-and-firing standards instituted by faith-based groups that receive federal funding.
• Released a Department of Homeland Security “watch list” that included pro-life Americans.

Barack Obama is the most anti-life president in history. He even favors infanticide. Think about that. He doesn’t mind medical professionals killing eight-month old “accidentally born” babies as a result of botched abortions. That type of thinking is Nazi-like. He is also stridently pro-homosexual and trans-sexual rights. When homosexual marriage is legal in enough states, the open persecution of pastors and Bible-believing churches could begin under this president. It would be cloaked in the language of tolerance and being anti-discriminatory–but it would send parents who object in the schools and pastors who condemn homosexuality from the pulpits to jail. This is the next wave of anti-Christ persecution.

Anti-Freedom

The biblical concept of freedom is greatly under attack by the current administration. For hundreds of years, true liberty has meant freedom from sin, strong moral foundations, self-government, limited civil government, low taxation, good stewardship of resources, and little debt (which is slavery). Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17).  As Barack Obama speeds up the purging of Christianity from our culture, freedom is evaporating on every side.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gives this sober assessment of the Barack Obama’s assault on freedom in a recent Newt Gingrich Letter:

“At home, in everything from his economic policy to his energy policy to his just-announced science policy, President Obama has successfully moved the country from a traditional American model of entrepreneurship and private initiative to a European model of regulation and government control. Abroad, he has succeeded in his apparent goal to be the un-George W. Bush; replacing aggressive, if sometimes flawed, American leadership with a humbled, weakened America on the world stage.”

“The Obama record in the first 100 days includes three instances of spectacular political impunity:
Under the guise of “economic stimulus” he was able to pass a $787 billion gift for his liberal special interest base. And he did it so quickly that no member of Congress was able to read it before they voted.After campaigning on a pledge to end earmarks, he signed an appropriations bill loaded with 8,000 earmarks – and paid no political penalty.President Obama has kept congressional Democrats marching with him in lockstep. House Democrats tow the party line an amazing 94 percent of the time and Senate Democrats vote Democratic 91 percent of the time.”

“In these first 100 days, the Obama Administration has achieved two historic bureaucratic power grabs:
President Obama has transformed the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) into giant engines of unsupervised spending. Together, they’ve spent the equivalent of the entire federal budget for 2007, without having to disclose where the money went.”

“Just two weeks ago, the President presided over an unprecedented bureaucratic power grab when his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. This seemingly innocuous decision opens the door to wholesale regulation of American life by government. The threat is so great that politicians and activists are using the specter of an out-of-control EPA to force Congress to pass a $1 trillion to $2 trillion energy tax in the form of cap-and-trade legislation.”

“The Obama 100 days record also includes remarkable weakness and self-delusion overseas:
In an attempt to overcome anti-Americanism abroad by agreeing with it, President Obama has gone on a global apology tour, labeling America as “arrogant, dismissive and derisive” in front of foreign audiences. President Obama has unleashed a domestic war over the meaning of guilt by caving in to the anti-American left and leaving the door open to prosecuting Bush Administration officials over the interrogation of terrorists who plotted to kill Americans.”

“But all these successful expansions of government at home and retractions of American leadership abroad are merely a prelude to President Obama’s looming crowning achievement: His 2010 budget which remakes our health care system, remakes our energy system, raises taxes and forecasts an amazing $9 trillion increase in the national debt. As I write this, Democrats in Congress are fashioning a deal to pass the budget’s provisions on health care by preventing Republicans and moderate Democrats from having a voice in the debate.”

“Think about that. The Obama-Reid-Pelosi political machine is going to pass legislation that fundamentally affects every single American – as well as 17 percent of our economy – by cutting the elected representatives of half of all Americans out of the process. If they succeed, the budget will be President Obama’s most enduring – and devastating – accomplishment.”

Faith, family & freedom are now under the greatest attack since the founding of the United States. A fearful one-day hundred day anti-Christ, anti-morality, anti-free enterprise tidal wave has been unleashed on America through the presidency of Barack Obama.

In the 1940s Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer tried to awaken the German Church out of its slumber and vigorously oppose the policies of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. He gave his life fighting for the freedom of Germany and the entire world. Many German Christians never saw the forest for the trees.

I pray that your eyes will be opened. A disastrous first one hundred days of the Obama Administration threatens the future of our children, grandchildren, and the world as a whole. We need to pray, fast, get involved, work for revival in the Church and reformation in our culture, and vote for a desperately needed change of direction in 2010 and 2012.

May God turn disaster into deliverance.

“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

President Barack Obama’s first week in office is history. Because he is a relative unknown with a thin resume for the US presidency, there’s been a question in many minds whether he is really a centrist-pragmatist politician or an ultra-left ideologue. The early verdict is in–and the results are discouraging. Far-left ideologue fits the bill so far. Three first-week directives given by the new president bode badly for America’s safety, the struggling economy, and for the most vulnerable among us–little children.

THE WAR ON TERROR

President Obama’s first presidential oder set in motion the closing of the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison within a year. This was a promise he’d made to his radical anti-war base, and he wasted no time in fulfilling it. Essentially the Obama administration is taking us back to the pre-9-11 days where enemy combatants are treated as domestic instead of terrorists. It was the policy of the former Clinton administration that encouraged the first Trade Center bombings, the attack on the US Cole, and ultimately set the table for the devastating attacks on September 11, 2001. In closing Gitmo, the new administration has no plan where the terrorists will go–they’ve just decided to give them rights and privileges that will probably bring them to our shores and assure that some make their way back to the theaters of the world where they can kill more people. Robert Gibbs, the administration’s new press secretary, was careful in his first press conference to not use the words “war on terror.” They either think the war is over or that there is a more humane way to prosecute it. Obama is not being very FDR-like here. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans who were even suspected of being at war with the US. President Obama is giving privileges to those who killed three thousand of our fellow countrymen.

The president also moved quickly to disband the effective interrogation tactics that the Bush administration used to prevent another attack on American soil for the past seven years. Interrogation sites in Europe will be closed, water-boarding banned, and our military will now have to ask our enemies “Please” and “Thank you” in obtaining important information that could save lives. If one of the priorities of the US president is to “protect and defend” the people of America, then President Obama’s first week was a failure. We are now more vulnerable to attack, our enemies have been emboldened, and if–God-forbid–another 9-11 comes to our nation, there will be one person who is responsible: Barack Hussein Obama.

Some willing accomplices, who should also be held in contempt, are the New York Times, Washington Post, and other liberal media outlets who have cried foul against “torture” for years. They say we need to live out our values–take the high moral ground–treat people humanely. Well, we do. We’re Americans–and we believe in human life and its special creation in the image of God. The left has co-opted the torture issue simply because no one can clearly define it. Let me give it a try: Torture is inflicting permanent or long-term physical or psychological pain to a human being for the purpose of gaining their cooperation. We can all imagine, thanks to Hollywood, what this might entail including cutting, burning or tearing the body, or afflicting the mind to the point of mental damage or long-term affects. The US does none of these. We have used strong, but humane forms of persuasion to get our enemies to divulge secrets that have saved many lives. But no more. Obama’s first acts have gutted these necessary defenses. We are now less safe.

THE WAR ON THE ECONOMY

President Obama also continues to pursue a 850 billion to 1.2 trillion “stimulus package” to try and get the American economy back on track. But the approach is wrong and will only prolong and deepen the pain that is spreading through our financial markets and businesses. Obama’s economic team–supposedly very bright people (except one who cheated on his taxes)–want the federal government to “spend us” out of the recession. But as history shows, this is the wrong path to take. To get America going again we don’t need more federal fiat dollars. We need government, banks, businesses, and individuals to correct their debt-laden ways–and we need Uncle Sam to slash taxes and regulations that are  throttling both recovery and economic growth.

I’m reading a fascinating book right now called The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy If We Let It Happen. It’s written by three economists, one of which is Dr. Arthur Laffer, the famous originator of the Laffer Curveand the brains behind supply side economics. It was Laffer’s advice to Ronald Reagan on tax cuts in the early 80s that led to an unprecedented twenty-five year boom in the American economy from 1982-2007. During those years “America, Inc. climbed in real terms from $25 trillion in 1980 to $57 trillion in 2007. More wealth was created in the United States over the past twenty-five years than in the previous two hundred years.” This low-tax engine of growth included:

• Between 2001 and 2007  the number of Americans with a net worth of $1 million quadrupled  from 2.1 million to 8.9 million. The rich expanded their ranks.
• In 1967 only one in 25 families earned an income of $100,000, whereas today over one in four families do. The percentage of families with an income of more than $75,000 a year has more than tripled from 9 percent in 1967 to almost 33 percent from 1967 to 2005. The middle class grew.
• The percentage of families in income groups between $5000 and $50,000 has dropped 19% since 1967. The number of poor people is shrinking. (All figures above are adjusted for inflation.)

Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter Tanous applaud both Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Ronald Reagan for understanding the keys to economic growth. Both cut tax rates that hindered entrepreneurs and capital investment. They also take to task Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter–two Ds and two Rs–whom they call the “Four Stooges.” These presidents didn’t understand economic principles and caused America to flounder during the sixties and seventies (the last major recession). The authors say that Bill Clinton eventually got it right with the help of Newt Gingrich and Co. and George Bush did the right thing on taxes, but not on spending.

They’re greatly concerned about Barack Obama and team: “If Washington turns all the policy dials in the wrong direction, just as sure as the sun rises in the morning, the US economic growth machine will grind to a halt. That is, in fact, the central premise of this book: Economic policy matters. Incentives matter (lowering taxes). Prosperity doesn’t happen by accident, and growth is not the natural course of events; it has to be nurtured and rewarded.” Their advice to President Obama: “Lower taxes–better yet, abolish the IRS, enact a 12% flat tax and champion free trade.” As of his first week, the president is acting like the fifth Stooge. He wants to secure his political base by distributing government pork all over the countryside–increasing government and its tentacles. It’s a recipe for another Depression.

THE WAR ON CHILDREN

Probably the saddest event of President Obama’s first week was expanding the death grip of abortion in American culture. Gone from the presidential web-site was George Bush’s encouragement on the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday or any other pro-life information.  In its place was language supporting abortion rights, including this passage:

“President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Administration.  He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in that case.”

Thus, one of first presidential orders signed by President Obama was allowing federal tax dollars to be used for abortions and “family planning services” around the world. Though a clear majority in this nation are opposed to abortion on demand, your tax dollars will now be used to kill unborn babies in the womb. This is something that should lead us to weep for our children. I also encourage you to write President Obama and ask him to rescind the evil order. (Click HERE to send an e-mail.) Maybe we need to start another tax revolt to let our government know that  the Declaration of Independence asserts a God-given right to life and that we refuse to let our tax monies be used without “representation.”

It’s been a bad week for America.

• The nation’s less safe
• The economy’s less safe
• And the children are less safe.

Let’s pray for forgiveness, repentance, faith in God and his ways, and a change of direction. Otherwise, all we’re left holding is a change you can fear.