Right Minded Online

President Bush was in Israel recently to celebrate that nation’s 60th birthday. While addressing the Israeli parliament, the President made the irrefutable observation that:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

President Bush had Jimmy Carter in mind, as the former president recently met with Hamas leaders and routinely sympathizes with the Palestinians.

But Barack Obama, who has been treated as a messiah and has a messiah-sized ego, thought the remark was about him, and issued the following statement:

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

Again, President Bush didn’t have Obama on his mind, but since the presumptive Democrat nominee for president injected himself into the crossfire, let’s look at what Obama has actually said.

During last year’s CNN/YouTube debate, when asked whether he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea “without precondition” during his first year as president, the Illinois senator quickly answered “I would. And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”

Senator Obama is really a novice when it comes to foreign policy. During a recent political rally in Oregon, the Democrat frontrunner asserted that rogue states such as Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela “don’t pose a serious threat to the U.S.” Iran, he tells us, spends so little on defense relative to the U.S. that if Iran “tried to pose a serious threat to us they wouldn’t…they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Maybe not, but Obama has glossed over Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to wipe Israel off the map, and its role in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq.

It’s no wonder that Hamas has endorsed Barack Obama for president. It’s also no wonder that Al-Jazeera recently ran a news segment showing young Palestinians in Gaza manning a phone bank, calling American voters asking them to vote for Obama.

“It all started at the time of the U.S. primaries,” says one pro-Obama Palestinian organizer. “After studying Obama’s electro campaign manifesto I thought this is a man that’s capable of change inside of America. As for potential change in the Middle East, he can also do that if he can bring peace to the area. At least this is what we hope.”

And that’s the empty rhetoric of the Obama campaign: change and hope. Unfortunately, the appeasement embraced by Barack Obama will bring neither hope nor peace. The only way to bring about true peace is through the aggressive use of force, as President Bush has brilliantly shown us.

According to a recent Reuters article, “global terrorism fatalities declined by 40 percent between July and September 2007, driven by a 55 percent decline in the ‘terrorism’ death toll in Iraq after the so-called surge of new U.S. troops and a cease-fire by the Shi’ite militant Mehdi Army.”

While Democrats continue to denounce the war in Iraq while promising to undo all the so-called damage done by the Bush administration, it is the war in Iraq that has actually brought about the results we Americans have wanted. Never mind that, though. Rather than seeking to defeat our enemies, Obama would embolden them by meeting with terror-friendly nations without precondition, granting them stature they do not deserve. So if it’s change you’re looking for, go ahead and vote for Obama, but if you’re a freedom-loving American, it won’t be the kind of change you want.

Last week, the world mourned the loss of Irena Sendler, a 98-year-old Polish woman who helped smuggle some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust.

Sendler was employed by the city’s Social Welfare Department during that time, and she began helping Jews before the ghetto was established in the Polish capital — a crime that was punishable by death.

In December, 1942, she was nominated to head the children’s department of the Council for Aid to Jews (a.k.a. the Zegota organization), when her most prolific work began. As a social worker, Sendler had a special permit to enter the ghetto to check for signs of typhus, which the Nazis feared would spread beyond the ghetto.

The Nazis created the Warsaw ghetto in 1940 to house the city’s 440,000 Jews. Although Jews made up 38% of the city’s population, the ghetto comprised just 4.5% of the land area. During the next year-and-a-half, thousands of additional Jews were imported from areas outside Warsaw. More than 100,000 ghetto dwellers died from starvation, disease, and random killings. During the summer of 1942, some 254,000 Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, one of the Nazis’ most notorious concentration camps. By 1943, the population of the ghetto had dwindled to 71,000, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began.

During her visits to the ghetto, Sendler wore the Star of David both as a sign of solidarity with the Jews, and so as not to call attention to herself. Sendler organized the smuggling of Jewish children from the ghetto, carrying them out in boxes, suitcases, and trolleys. The children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, Roman Catholic convents, or to priests in parish rectories where they could be further hidden. She kept lists of their names, hidden in jars, in order to keep track of their original and new identities.

In 1943, Irena Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death. Members of the Zegota organization saved her by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. She was left in the woods unconscious, with broken limbs. Sendler was listed on public bulletin boards as having been executed. Even in hiding, she continued to work for the Jewish children.

Irena Sendler received numerous awards and honors in the years following World War II. Last year, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In one of her final interviews, Sendler remarked “The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.”

The Holocaust is a captivating study in world history for two reasons. First, it is remarkable the evil of which man is capable if left unchecked, and it is crucial that details of the Holocaust be taught to future generations. Second, the Holocaust is filled with rescue-and-survival stories, and we learn from people such as Irena Sendler that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary deeds, even in the face of danger and evil.

Few places were worse for Jews than to be in Warsaw after September 1, 1939, which is the day World War II began with the Nazi invasion of Poland. The fate of Warsaw’s Jews was brilliantly chronicled in the 2002 movie “The Pianist,” which is based on the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Warsaw Jew who survived the Holocaust after a long, harrowing experience hiding from place-to-place.

Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said the following upon Irena Sendler’s death: “People who stand up for others, for the weak, are very rare. The world would have been a better place if there were more of them.”

Indeed, a common sentiment that weaves through the myriad stories of rescue and survival around Europe during the Holocaust is that he who saves one life saves the entire world.

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democrat nominee for president, is demanding that the rest of us reduce our lifestyles because, well, that’s what the rest of the world wants us to do.

Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

I don’t even know where to begin with this other than to say this is the whole motive behind the global warming movement — government telling the rest of us how to live. But then, the whole motive behind liberalism in general is telling the rest of us how to live. I’ll be impressed when the Obamas reduce their own lifestyle and lead by example rather than lead by force of government.

We recently celebrated Earth Day 2008, which it wouldn’t surprise me if the Democrats tried to turn into a federal holiday. Really, the left uses Thanksgiving to paint the Pilgrims as a bunch of Indian killers, Christmas gives the separation of church and state crowd something to do for a month or so, and Easter gives us the annual Jesus-didn’t-really-rise-from-the-dead archaeological discovery from the news media. But Earth Day. There’s something the left can wrap its arms around.

Nancy Pelosi celebrated this year by quoting Scripture, which is not something liberal Democrats normally do, so it certainly was an attention-grabber. On her own speaker.gov website, Speaker Pelosi wrote “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ On this Earth Day, and every day, let us honor the earth and our future generations with a commitment to fight climate change.”

Ah, no. The Bible doesn’t say that, in either the Old or New Testament. Not even close. This isn’t even a misquote. It is an entire fabrication. The Speaker is putting words in God’s mouth. The closest Scripture verse to this comes from Romans 1:25, where the Apostle Paul warns us of worshipping the created instead of the Creator. Yet the entire agenda of the environmental left is Earth first, and people get in line.

First, Speaker Pelosi has used her fabricated Scripture verse before, in official statements on global warming, the budget, Martin Luther King Day, Christmas, and why she’s a Democrat.

Second, Speaker Pelosi’s attempted use of the Bible to justify the global warming hoax is more proof that global warming is nothing more than a religion.

Third, what happened to the separation of church and state crowd?

Fourth, is it not strange that a liberal Democrat would make an effort to quote favorably from the Old Testament. After all, mention the book of Leviticus, and homosexual activists recoil. Mention that part about “In the beginning, God created…,” and Darwinists go nuts. And showing a Ten Commandments plaque to the ACLU will get you the same reaction as showing Dracula the Cross.

I’m not sure, but Speaker Pelosi quoting fake Scripture is probably aimed at evangelical Christians. Whenever a conservative attempts to justify a political position by quoting Scripture, the left will sneer “Oh, stop trying to force your religion on everybody else. Do you believe in God or something?”

So one would have to assume that the Speaker has designs on bringing us evangelicals on board the global warming hoax by convincing us that it’s what God would have us do. But we evangelicals know our Bible pretty well, and it’s not hard to tell that Nancy Pelosi’s Bible verse doesn’t sound quite right. It’s sort of like when Howard Dean claimed Job was his favorite book in the New Testament. We caught that one, too.

Back to the book of Romans, Paul wrote “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.”

The Apostle Paul was writing of the hedonism he had witnessed in his own culture, the same hedonism that has existed since the beginning right up until the present, the same hedonism, come to think of it, that is unabashedly advocated by activists on the left.