Did I say thank you?

In her jaw-dropping article, “So what if abortion ends life?” Williams – a mainstream, though uncharacteristically honest pro-abort scribe for Salon.com – has inexplicably broken from the Orwellian left’s ministerial script. In so doing, she’s severally undermined the very cause for which she would gladly “sacrifice” (dismember alive that is) her very own daughter. A daughter, mind you, whom she coldly acknowledges to be “a human life.”

But enough with the pleasantries.

In his 1925 manifesto “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler wrote: “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal.” Though technically a human life, “the parasitic Jew is a human life without having the same rights as the Aryan.”

“Mother Germany is the boss,” he declared. “Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous Jew. Always.”

Ha! Just kidding. Actually, Ms. Williams wrote those things. She wrote them, not from Nazi Germany in 1925, but, rather, from America. Wednesday.

She wrote them, not about the Jewish people, but, instead, about the most vulnerable of all people: The child in her mother’s womb. (A holocaust by any other name …)

Yes, welcome to Feminist Funland, where the women are randy and the children are dead. In “So what if abortion ends life?” (I just love writing that), Williams, like some unintentionally creepy clown, guides us through the “pro-choice” house of mirrors, revealing, with crystal clarity, the true horror behind the left’s distorted reflections.

“While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as ‘pro-life,’” she writes, “the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like ‘choice’ and ‘reproductive freedom.’”

Here, Ms. Williams essentially admits what the life community has said for decades – that the euphemistic language of “choice” and “reproductive freedom,” long employed by the multi-billion-dollar abortion industry, is exactly that; euphemism – propaganda.

In so many words, she goes on to acknowledge that, rather than “pro-choice,” “pro-death” is indeed the appropriate moniker for her movement. “Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice,” she proclaims.

Nice. Wonder how many of the little Williams babies made the cut.

But the money line? “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live,” she declares. “All life is not equal.”

Get that, Thomas Jefferson? “All life is not equal.” Put that in your self-evident-truth-pipe and smoke it. We clear, MLK? Wrap that “I have a dream” up in a big wad of “All life is not equal” and get to the back of the Birmingham bus.

Indeed, Ms. Williams is a militant feminist and that’s adorable; but her line of reasoning here is anything but fresh and cute. It stems from the utilitarian rotgut Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger poured down the gullet of her power-drunk eugenicist fans – foremost of whom was the hypertensive fuhrer himself.

Still, to be fair, I’ll let Ms. Williams speak for herself: “Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides,” she finds. “She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”

In other words: “Me no likey? You die.” Or, as Hitler really did say: “We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew.” Old Adolf, of course, defined “health” to mean exactly what feminists mean by it. “Health: Any reason at all.”

Maybe I’ve been at this too long, but I love it when liberals mistake sociopathy for conviction – candor for courage. I revel in those rare moments when left-wing extremists, nestled warm inside the foul bowels of their “progressive” echo chamber – pull back the wizard’s curtain just far enough to expose, if only for an instant, the wicked sty in which they roll, splash and play.

Like this gem: “If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant,” Williams boasts, “you bet you’re a-s I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion. … I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.”

“The World’s Greatest Abortion.”

“A life worth sacrificing.”

As the world government ship of fools drifts unmanned amid a sea of unparalleled global volatility, we, her passengers, behold – brewing on the horizon – an economic and foreign relations “perfect storm.” 

As so often is the case, the hurricane swirls around the Middle East. 

Historically, the president of the United States has captained the ship. He has, heretofore, been duly regarded “leader of the free world.”

Not now. Not with Gilligan reaching for the helm. 

Indeed, the current occupant of the Oval Office spends more time with his feet on JFK’s Resolute desk than he does leading from behind it.

But “leading from behind” he does. 

More commonly known as “following,” President Obama’s follow-the-leader strategy in the Middle East represents, in my view, either inherent weakness on his part, sympathy toward the Islamic cause or both. 

I suspect both.

Indeed, during his first term, Mr. Obama betrayed both weakness personified and sympathy toward the goals of Islamic fundamentalism with his ongoing embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This extremist group, with Obama’s help, now controls much of the Arab world. It has sworn, in its own words, to “destroy” our “Western civilization from within … so that it is eliminated and God’s religion (Islam) is made victorious over all other religions.” 

Not surprisingly, today the Brotherhood rushes to the aid of both the terrorist group Hamas and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority. This, as terrorists ramp-up decades-long rocket attacks and suicide bombings against innocent Israeli women and children. 

Nonetheless – and clearly stemming from a cynical political calculus – Mr. Obama persists in paying shallow lip service to support for Israel. All the while he continues to play footsie with the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Recall that, just last year, the president touted the “Arab Spring” – which any high school history buff could have predicted would devolve into the utter chaos it has – as “an extraordinary change taking place,” wherein, “Square by square, town by town, country by country, the [Muslim] people have risen up to demand their basic human rights.” (You know, like the Quran-given right for Muslim men to beat or kill women and homosexuals with impunity; or like the human right for both Iran and the Palestinian Authority to “wipe Israel from the face of the earth.”) 

Whether due to naiveté, foolishness or pure dishonesty, President Obama’s bungling of the Middle East crisis – let alone his unprecedented attacks on our constitutional freedoms stateside – has disqualified him to lead the free world. 

And so, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped forward to answer the call. He has become de facto leader of the free world – chief defender of Western civilization.

As America’s light fades under the Obama regime, Israel has become – for now at least – “the shining city on the hill.”

With a nuclear Iran perhaps only months away, Western civilization needs defending now more than ever. Israel needs defending now more than ever. Consider these words from top Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita: “Annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine.” 

Thus, Israel defends herself. Israel defends the free world. 

To be sure, the worldwide Islamic juggernaut has become emboldened by the actions – by the inaction – of a sympathetic, do-nothing U.S. president. Muslim terrorists have, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently noted, “turned Gaza into a frontal base for Iran, terrorizing residents of Israel and forcing them to live under unbearable circumstances.” 

Yet, inexplicably, many in the West – people Vladimir Lenin might have called “useful idiots” (i.e., “progressives,” mainstream media and moderate American Muslims) – willfully suspend disbelief. They play directly into the blood-soaked hands of these terrorist cowards. 

Having time and again demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice their own innocent people (consider child suicide bombers), these monsters today both deliberately target Israeli neighborhoods with rockets and intentionally place their own military launch sites and terrorist headquarters next to mosques, playgrounds, factories and the like. 

This, as intended, has created a propagandist boon. Much of the world blames Israel when these human shields are tragically killed during pinpoint military strikes. Who needs missile defense when you have women and children to hide behind? 

To both the Israeli and the Arab victims of radical Islam, I say this: You are in our thoughts and our prayers. Our hearts break for you. We pray that God will cover and protect you during these dark days and nights. 

To Benjamin Netanyahu I pledge this: Mr. Prime Minister, Christian America thanks you for your bold leadership. We thank you for being the lone voice of freedom in the Middle East.

Sir, you, too, are in our thoughts and our prayers.

America stands with Israel.

We demand our president do the same.

What a time. There’s still room for improvement, but what a testimony to just how far we as a nation have come in terms of racial harmony, tolerance and diversity.

Only decades earlier a man like Barack Obama – a black man – couldn’t even drink from the same water fountain as a white man, let alone become president of the United States. A hundred years prior to that, and he may well have been counted another man’s property.

On Nov. 4, 2008, millions gathered at the ballot box to prove, once and for all, that, in large measure, we as a nation have healed from our disgraceful, self-inflicted wounds of racial abuse, bias and division.

That we could elect an African-American to lead the free world is indeed a very good thing.

We just happened to elect the wrong African-American.

In life, we sometimes find that the idea of a thing is far better than the thing itself. As a boy, I once ordered, from a comic book, a pair of X-ray glasses that promised to allow me to see the bones beneath my hand (my motives were a bit more ignoble). The two weeks it took for the glasses to arrive seemed like an eternity.

Once they did arrive, I ripped into the package and put them on, darting my head to-and-fro. It’s difficult to express my level of disappointment. As I quickly discovered, the glasses merely formed a halo effect around objects, creating the illusion of transparency. I felt embarrassed. I got took.

Barack Obama’s presidency has been a halo effect. Like I did so many years ago, in 2008 America fell victim to false advertising. As the past four years have demonstrated beyond any serious debate, the idea of President Obama was far better than the reality of President Obama. We were promised the world. We were promised transparency; but we were sold an illusion. We got took.

Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, a then-Sen. Barack Obama promised us that, if elected, we would look back upon the moment he took office and “tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

That was the idea of President Obama. That was what many good, well-meaning people voted for. That was the hope offered and the change promised.

That was not what we got.

Though it’s certainly not a comprehensive analysis, during the second presidential debate, Mitt Romney, in response to Mr. Obama’s attempts to gloss over his mounting leadership failures, summarized a few of the big ones. While addressing an audience member who, perhaps like you, voted for Obama in 2008, Romney observed, in part, the following:

I think you know better. I think you know that these last four years haven’t been so good as the president just described and that you don’t feel like you’re confident that the next four years are going to be much better either. …

He said that, by now, we’d have unemployment at 5.4 percent. The difference between where it is and 5.4 percent is 9 million Americans without work. …

He said he would have, by now, put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy. He would reform them. He’d get that done. He hasn’t even made a proposal on either one.

He said in his first year he’d put out an immigration plan that would deal with our immigration challenges. Didn’t even file it.

This is a president who has not been able to do what he said he’d do. He said that he’d cut in half the deficit. He hasn’t done that either. In fact, he doubled it.

He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year. And if Obamacare is … implemented fully, it’ll be another $2,500. …

The middle class is getting crushed under the policies of a president who has not understood what it takes to get the economy working again. … [T]he number of people who are still looking for work is still 23 million Americans.

There are more people in poverty, one out of six people in poverty.

How about food stamps? When he took office, 32 million people were on food stamps. Today, 47 million people are on food stamps. How about the growth of the economy? It’s growing more slowly this year than last year – and more slowly last year than the year before. …

The president has tried, but his policies haven’t worked.

Recently, my wife and I attended an outdoor festival in central Virginia. Although the event was not political, there were people from both the Obama and Romney camps handing out campaign stickers and other items. I suspect that if a poll were taken, liberals out-numbered conservatives by about two-to-one.

That’s why I was so taken aback. Although we saw dozens of people wearing Romney stickers, we only saw one man wearing an Obama sticker.

We walked up to a fellow with a gray pony tail, John Lennon glasses and Birkenstocks. He was wearing a Romney sticker.

“Mind if I ask why you’re voting for Mitt Romney?” I asked. “I assume you are.”

His reply – and these were his words, not mine – was short and to the point: “Because I refuse to be that stupid twice.”

Changing one’s mind doesn’t always reveal a tendency toward indecision. Sometimes, changing one’s mind reveals a tendency toward wisdom.

I think hyperbole is responsible for all of the world’s problems. Still, this time nobody’s exaggerating. What happens on Nov. 6 really is of critical importance. America’s future really does hang in the balance.

We’re in uncharted territories. We’re lost. We stand dazed at cliff’s edge – legs wobbling – with big government winds at our back. Under President Obama, the reasons for this election’s unparalleled significance are piling up like pink slips in the private sector, like credit rating downgrades, like zeros on the national debt.

Yet, as I see it, there are nine black-robed reasons in particular that reign supreme.

And those reasons never get a pink slip.

In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “The judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution. … [T]he judiciary is, beyond comparison, the weakest of the three departments of power … [and] the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter.”

I know. Settle down.

Alas, Alexander Hamilton was obviously no better with a crystal ball than he was with a dueling pistol. For better or for worse (hint: for worse), today’s judiciary – through the constitutionally erosive drip-drop of judicial attrition and congressional submission – has, instead, become the most powerful branch of government.

Today, rather than the properly balanced, decentralized constitutional republic our founders envisaged, we live, to a large degree, under a very much centralized judiciocracy. (That is, when President Obama’s not circumventing the Constitution via executive fiat.)

William Howard Taft, who served as both our 27th president and our 10th Supreme Court chief justice, had unique insight into the dichotomy between the framers’ intent, and today’s reality. He summed it up well: “Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.”

Indeed, due to the creeping misalignment of separation of powers, the function of appointing Supreme Court justices is almost certainly the most significant thing any president can do. Though it defies the High Court’s original construct, these nine unelected, well-meaning, yet very human, individuals profoundly steer law, public policy and our larger culture in perpetuity.

So much for the balance of powers.

Therein lies the problem. Conservative columnist Andrew McCarthy noted in March that four of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices are in their late 70s and early 80s.

“We wish them all well,” he wrote, “but the brute fact is that whoever we elect as president in November is almost certainly going to choose at least one and maybe more new members of the Supreme Court – in addition to hundreds of other life-tenured federal judges, all of whom will be making momentous decisions about our lives for decades to come.

“If you don’t think it matters whether the guy making those calls is Mitt Romney or Barack Obama,” concluded McCarthy, “I think you’re smokin’ something funky.”

Speaking of “smokin’ something funky,” during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate, Joe Biden touched on the Supreme Court. He agreed with McCarthy: “The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. … For Mr. Romney, who do you think he’s likely to appoint? Do you think he’s likely to appoint someone like Scalia … ? We picked two people. We pick people who are open-minded.”

And, of course, by “open-minded,” Biden means “not bound by those pesky constitutional limitations intended to avert government tyranny.” He means liberal “living constitutionalists.”

To be sure, the next president may well appoint one, two, three or even four new justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. As voters, this should be our most critical point of focus: ensuring an originalist, strict constructionist majority. If Mr. Obama is re-elected and appoints just one more Ruth Bader Ginsburg, forget it. America, as our founders envisioned her, is gone.

This is why, after the primary, I went from an outspoken Romney critic, to a cautiously optimistic Romney supporter. He has pledged: “I will appoint conservative, strict constructionists to the judiciary.”

Still not sold?

President Obama has already shown who he’ll appoint. In Justices Elena Kagan and Sonja Sotomayor – nice though they may be – he has stacked the Court with two radical counter-constitutionalists who share his belief that the Constitution “is not a static, but living document and must be read in the context of an ever changing world.”

Naturally, if the Constitution is “ever changing,” the Constitution is meaningless.

But it gets worse. Obama has also called this – the very founding document upon which our laws, public policy, indeed our very freedoms rest – an “imperfect document,” a “living document … that reflects some deep flaws in American culture.”

Yikes.

Moreover, during the 2008 campaign, Obama lamented that the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, failed to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.”

Let that sink in a moment. In his own words, this man – a man solemnly sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution – has betrayed utter disdain for it. He has, in essence, admitted that he views our most sacred founding document as a “constraint” against his thinly veiled efforts to “fundamentally transform” America into Greece.

Thank God our Founding Fathers predicted that men like Barack Obama would come and go. And thank God they had the wisdom to plan accordingly.

Patrick Henry once said, “[L]iberty ought to be the direct end of your government.” Today, we have it exactly backward. Four more years of Barack Obama, and government will be the direct end of your liberty.

Still thinking of sitting this one out?

I hope not.

Pat Buchanan called Romney’s “the finest debate performance” in 52 years “with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.”

Indeed, when all of CNN and MSNBC – to include Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow – hysterically admit that President Obama got smoked; he got smoked. Bad.

Liberal blogger and Obama sycophant Andrew Sullivan captured the universally shared “progressive” panic as the brutal mismatch came to a close: “How is Obama’s closing statement so f—ing sad, confused and lame? He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight.”

For those of us who have long recognized the messianic myth that is Barack Hussein Obama, the debate was especially gratifying.

The world had fallen prey to a cartoonish hoax. This media-crafted Iron Man has proven a mere mortal, a tin man, an international embarrassment.

The jig is up.

In just 90 minutes, Mitt Romney stripped away the Iron Man costume and exposed, naked beneath, a man more closely resembling Robert Downey Jr.

Recall the image, so often seen, of a young Robert, head downcast in shame, standing before the judge to rationalize why, yet again, he’d screwed up magnificently. Last Wednesday was Barack’s turn.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Robert Downey Jr. – I’m glad he turned his life around. But he’s an actor. He reads his lines. He’s not Iron Man. And he’s not qualified to be president.

Neither is Barack Obama.

And so, lost with no teleprompter binky, and, thus, suffering a debate trouncing unparalleled in history, it would seem that the president’s not so good, very bad week couldn’t get worse.

It got worse.

Just two days prior, the U.S. Supreme Court revived hope – long thought dead – that Obamacare, the president’s signature achievement, might yet be ruled unconstitutional. The High Court shocked the legal community by opening its new term with an order giving the Obama Justice Department just 30 days to respond to Liberty Counsel’s petition for rehearing. Liberty Counsel filed the petition on behalf of Liberty University and two private individuals.

An appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act, or AIA, barred the court from addressing the merits in Liberty Univ., Inc. v. Geithner, which challenged the individual mandate (Section 1501) and the employer insurance mandate (Section 1513) of Obamacare.

In addition to the constitutional arguments that Congress lacked authority to pass the law, the suit also raised the Free Exercise of religion claim because of the forced taxpayer funding of abortion.

You may recall that the first day of oral argument was dedicated to the AIA, the issue that Liberty University’s case placed before the High Court. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the AIA does not apply to Obamacare. Therefore, Liberty Counsel asked the Court to grant the petition (because Liberty University prevailed on the AIA claim), vacate the Court of Appeals ruling and remand (send back) the case to the Court of Appeals to consider the Free Exercise claim and the employer mandate, neither of which were decided by the High Court.

Long story short: If the Supreme Court ultimately hears the case on appeal – which is highly possible as the claims are unique – and rules that the employer mandate and Free Exercise claims are legit, Obamacare dies on the vine. It’s effectively overturned. It’s like a shiny new Chevy Volt without the exploding battery. It goes nowhere fast and is towed to the junkyard of really, really stupid ideas.

This means, among other things, that people who value human life won’t be made complicit in abortion homicide on the taxpayer dime.

“Obamacare is the biggest funding of abortion in American history,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law. “Under the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, Obamacare will, for the first time, require employers and individuals to directly fund abortion.

“This abortion mandate collides with religious freedom and the rights of conscience. I am very pleased with the Court’s decision today,” concluded Staver.

During the debate, Mitt Romney took Obama to task over Obamacare: “I just don’t know how the president could have come into office, facing 23 million people out of work, rising unemployment, an economic crisis at the – at the kitchen table and spent his energy and passion for two years fighting for Obamacare instead of fighting for jobs for the American people. It has killed jobs.”

Obama was left stuttering and stammering – sheepishly defending his grossly unaffordable, wholly unsustainable and wildly unpopular Obamacare monstrosity.

I was left encouraged.

Whether by legislative repeal, or through Liberty Counsel’s ongoing case, freedom-loving America should be confident. This freakish Frankenstein monster will, God willing, be soon laid to rest beneath the cold, clammy earth from which Democrats dug it up.

Obama’s shovel-ready debate performance was the groundbreaking.

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)  

November signifies nothing new. It’s a microcosm of a much greater struggle – one that predates mankind. These elections are about truth vs. lies; light vs. darkness; good vs. evil.

Ultimately, November represents a high point – or a low point if you prefer – in the epic clash between diametrically opposed and fundamentally incompatible worldviews.

On the one hand, we have the Judeo-Christian worldview. It is both informed by and fully acknowledges absolute truth as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. It holds that individuals and nations together are accountable to a sovereign, holy Creator who “does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth” (Daniel 4:35).

It was within the framework of this worldview that our great nation was formed. The historical record is undeniable. Our unique constitutional republic can operate harmoniously within the context of the Judeo-Christian tradition alone.

It declares that, rather than by man – than by government – we are “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
On the other hand, we have the secular-humanist worldview. It, too, represents a tradition old as the days of Noah. It holds that there is no absolute truth and imagines, absolutely, that, as theological giant Francis Schaeffer often described, “Man is the measure of all things.”

It is from this humanist perspective that Barack Obama views the world. He and other “progressives” who share his worldview willfully ignore that, as history proves, when man is the measure of all things, all things can, and usually do, go horribly wrong. Consider, for example, the hundreds of millions killed under the humanist regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, et al.
When man is the measure of all things, all things are necessarily relative. Relativism measures our deeds on a scale unbalanced, with no fixed lines of demarcation between right and wrong. It presumes that the only thing immoral is to presume that there are things immoral.

Schaeffer, writing in “The Christian Manifesto,” noted: “What we must understand is that the two worldviews really do bring forth with inevitable certainty not only personal differences, but total differences in regard to society, government, and law. There is no way to mix these two total worldviews. They are separate entities that cannot be synthesized.”

Indeed, we are at an impasse. We play a zero-sum game that is no game at all. Somebody must win, and somebody must lose.

“It is not too strong to say that we are at war,” wrote Schaeffer, “and there are no neutral parties in the struggle. One either confesses that God is the final authority, or one confesses that Caesar is Lord.”
Under the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the final authority. What God giveth, God taketh away. Under humanism, man – through government – is lord. What government giveth, government taketh away.
Evangelical luminary Dr. R.C. Sproul once observed: “Humanism was not invented by man, but by a snake who suggested that the quest for autonomy might be a good idea.”
That snake’s eggs have hatched, leaving us to contend with a nest of humanist vipers.

In the end, eternal Truth – the image of God in the person of Jesus Christ – will crush, underfoot, the heads of that snake and his viperous brood. Yet, until such time, believers must not tarry but, rather, faithfully join the struggle – no matter how rough the waters become.

And the waters are becoming rough.

Our Founding Fathers had the divinely inspired foresight to construct a constitutional levee against the humanist hurricane. Regrettably, in recent decades that levee has given way, resulting in a devastating secularist flood. Amid the debris and drifting out to sea are, among other things, the dismembered bodies of 55-plus million unborn babies, the tattered institutions of natural marriage and family and respect for sexual purity, virtue and morality.

Also drowning beneath humanism’s neo-Marxist undercurrent are individual liberty, American sovereignty, fiscal solvency and national security. Each of these indispensable items, within both public policy and our cultural at large, barely clings to life.

Ephesians 6:12 declares: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Indeed, we are at war. Our struggles are complicated by the reality that many of the aforementioned rulers and authorities – to include Barack Obama and the larger “progressive” establishment – embrace the humanist philosophy. As noted, this philosophy was first planted in the mind of man by the very garden snake who commands “the powers of this dark world” and the “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
But there is hope. Real hope. Not some nebulous, superficial hope fabricated to fuel a cult of personality.

There is hope in Christ.

Jesus commands His followers to be His hands and feet – to be salt and light in a rotting world that loves darkness.

True, salt preserves, but in an open wound, it also burns. Humanism is an open wound.

True, light’s bright glare can be illuminating to those eager to see. But it is also blinding to those whose eyes have become adjusted to darkness. When the light of Christ is shined, it sends lovers of evil scurrying for the shadows.

Indeed, we struggle to survive the humanist hurricane. America is keeping her head above water; but barely. The upcoming elections may determine whether we as a nation sink or swim – live or die.
Still, whatever happens in November, we must continue to faithfully tread the torrential waters. Although we have a profound opportunity to calm those waters on Nov. 6, humanist storms will always come.
We can once again gain solid footing on dry land, but to do so, we must first save ourselves.

Yet, not alone; we’ve been offered a hand up. We’ve been thrown a lifesaver.

And that Lifesaver walked on torrential waters.

Secular-humanism – that’s the ticket! We need more reliance on man and less on God.

At the time of this writing, I’m sitting just a few miles from a Century 16 theatre in Aurora, Colo., where, in the early morning hours of July 20, 2012, a deranged, fame-starved gunman shot dead at least 12 innocent people and wounded scores more at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” a Batman sequel.

One of the victims killed was a 3-month-old baby. Another was 6. I won’t even share the gutless dirt bag’s name because that’s exactly what he wants.

I had an entirely different column prepared for this week, but, in light of this horrific event, its subject matter seemed trivial and inappropriate.

Like most decent Americans, I am sickened today – mournful in a way words cannot describe. Please join me in the coming hours, days and weeks in, yes, praying for the victims, their families and the state of our lost union.

It’s times like this when we’re reminded that, when the smoke clears, we’re left with our relationships alone: family, friends, prayer and, most importantly, a deep, childlike need for God’s love, mercy and comfort.

Still, we shouldn’t be surprised by this mass murder. In fact, if we’re honest, we’re not surprised. We’ve become almost numb to such reports – desensitized to what only a few short decades ago would have been unimaginable. Although no one is to blame for this man’s objectively evil actions but he alone, those actions are, sadly, a dreadful sign of our desperate times.

Today, children are reared in a culture that glorifies – even worships – death and violence. But brutal crimes such as this are not the cause of our culture of death; they are merely a symptom.

In an opinion piece penned for the Telegraph in 2008, columnist Jenny McCartney used a prior Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” to illustrate, in a cursory way, our rising death-culture problem. In many ways her words were eerily prophetic and sickly ironic.

“But the greatest surprise of all – even for me, after eight years spent working as a film critic,” she wrote, “has been the sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film.”

McCartney went on to describe, in gory detail, the movie’s severely violent opening scene, lamenting that millions of parents would choose to expose their children to it. She concluded by chastising Hollywood for its complicity in an increasingly violent youth culture.

“Even since 2002, the public’s willingness to expose children to previously unthinkable levels of screen violence has soared,” she noted. “The poet WB Yeats once wrote, ‘In dreams begins responsibility,’ yet Hollywood will never take responsibility for its most brutal dreams so long as the paying public still flocks to the theatre of cruelty.”

I think McCartney was on to something but believe there’s plenty more responsibility to go around. I submit that our culture of death derives from somewhere far beyond just Hollywood. The “theatre of cruelty” spans from sea to shining sea.

Just one example, though a big one, is America’s ongoing capitulation to the horrific abortion violence carried out under cover of manmade law each day – an equally evil phenomenon.

Beneath the euphemistic banner of “reproductive choice,” hundreds of women elect to have their own babies slaughtered in the womb daily. Children – those who dodged the abortion bullet anyway – aren’t stupid; they’re just young. From this, they can only deduce that, according to our culture, human life is cheap and meaningless.

So why are we surprised when people like the “Batman killer” act accordingly?

Indeed, in our perverse society, a woman exercising her “right to choose” death for her innocent child represents “courage,” while the Batman shooter’s “choice” to kill innocent moviegoers represents cowardice. And it is. They are both acts of cowardice. The only relevant difference is the victims’ age.

Let me be clear: Am I comparing this incredibly wicked, illegal mass murder at Aurora’s Century Theatre to the incredibly wicked, legal mass murder committed at Planned Parenthoods across the country each day? Absolutely – and you can quote me on it.

But again, like the Batman murders, our nation’s 55-plus million abortion murders post Roe v. Wade are not the cause of our culture of death; they are merely a symptom. Ultimately, the cause stems from something much less complicated.

We as a nation – as a people – have turned our backs on God. We have rebelled against Him and have forgotten that it was He and He alone who gave us 200-plus years of prosperity, unprecedented in world history.

We have left Him, so why are we surprised He’s leaving us? We have said, “We don’t need you, leave us alone.”

And so He has.

Recently, Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack acknowledged at a White House briefing that he’s been praying for rain to alleviate the widespread drought plaguing our nation. “I get on my knees every day,” he admitted. “And I’m saying an extra prayer now.”

Predictably, godless “progressives” are up in arms over his statement. Tom Flynn, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, quickly pounced, saying that Vilsack’s mere mention of prayer “sends the wrong message to distraught farmers.”

“[Praying] for rain? That’s not just government entangling itself with religion, that’s government publicly practicing it, and wallowing in superstition,” he said.

Oh, please.

In the coming days and weeks, politicians, entertainers, media-types – public figures of every stripe – will call for prayer in response to the Batman shootings. But don’t expect to hear much from the aforementioned godless “progressives.” They generally know when to shut up.

Still, prayer is only the beginning. It can’t just be superficial prayer. It can’t just be an emotional response to this horrible tragedy.

For any real national healing to occur – in order to un-ring the culture-of-death bell – we must collectively surrender. We must recommit ourselves as “one nation, under God,” to the underlying culture of life that such a commitment presupposes.

If we don’t, we’re done.

2 Chronicles 7:14 gives us hope: “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”

Indeed, the restoration of our land begins with you and me.

It ends with Him.

Let’s begin.

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)  

On Wednesday the White House released President Obama’s detailed itinerary through October:

1. Worry

2. Lie

3. Obfuscate

4. Golf

5. Fundraise

6. Worry

Indeed, the president has much to worry about. No honest politico can deny that liberals’ Wisconsin debacle likely represents a shadow of things to come – a precursor to November.

Recall DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s admission on CNN. In a rare moment of candor, she said Wisconsin was a “dry run” – a “test run” for the 2012 election. (A bit like the Titanic’s test run, as it turns out.)

Tuesday night Sarah Palin took to Fox News where she said that Scott Walker’s humiliating defeat of Tom Barrett, the DNC and heretofore-excessively-coddled-labor-union-leaders spells big trouble for little Barry. “Obama’s goose is cooked,” she said. “It’s the union leaders who need to be recalled.”

Does this mean the Democratic Party is not long for the world? That our two-party system is on its way out?

Of course not.

As long as there are voters who really, really want lots of free stuff from other people, there will be Democrats and Democratic politicians.

Still, what it does mean is that beyond the short-term political reality that Wisconsin presents a bleak forecast for Democrats in 2012 – liberalism itself (or “progressivism,” as the left euphemistically prefers) is terminally ill.

On Tuesday night, blogger David Burge of the Iowa Hawk blog “tweeted: “The principal delusion of liberals is that liberalism is popular. The principal delusion of conservatives is that liberalism is popular.”

Simple, yet profound.

Liberals should be afraid. They should be very afraid. The jig is up. Polls consistently show that Americans identify as conservative over liberal by a two-to-one margin. Wisconsin was an earthshaking manifestation of this reality.

But it was only a tremor.

There’s a distinct probability a massive quake awaits liberals when, later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court releases its decision on Obamacare. If this, both Obama’s and Democrats’ signature accomplishment, goes down, so too do the obtusely utopian, neo-Marxist dreams of the Democratic Party’s progressive base.

And in November? The tsunami.

Indeed, the political tectonic plates are shifting. Unsurprisingly, so-called “progressives” pretend it ain’t so.

Problem is, so do conservatives.

Stop it, both of you!

This is about worldview. This is about an epic clash between two irreconcilable, diametrically opposed socio-political philosophies. It’s a zero-sum game. Somebody wins and somebody loses.

On the one hand, we have secular-socialism, a cultural and political philosophy embraced by labor unions, Barack Obama, the base of the Democratic Party, the mainstream media and many of those controlling the reins of our elitist institutions. It is “progressivism.”

This is a philosophy that, throughout history, has proven to be a serial failure. One need only look to Europe for the latest example. This secularist worldview is based loosely on the unattainable, redistributionist ramblings of Karl Marx, the father of communism.

It hates Christianity. It hates constitutionalism. It hates the precepts of individual liberty and responsibility codified throughout our nation’s founding documents. It embraces moral relativism and says there are no clear lines of demarcation between right and wrong.

It says that government is God and that as government giveth, government taketh away.

In sum: It’s garbage.

On the other hand we have the Judeo-Christian worldview. This is the socio-political philosophy embraced by our Founding Fathers. The historical record is unequivocal. It was within this framework that our U.S. Constitution was created. It is conservatism.

It says that we are endowed by our “Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It embraces the virtues of fiscal responsibility, individual liberty and personal charity. It says there is black and white – right and wrong. It strives for less government and more freedom.

It acknowledges that there is a sovereign God – to whom we are all accountable – including both government and those whom “we the people” place in government.

It holds that as God giveth, God taketh away, and that you lying, cheating, ungodly snakes in Washington, D.C., better just take a step back and quick.

In sum: It is truth.

On Tuesday night, as the election returns came in and it became clear that Scott Walker was landsliding liberals and their union thugocracy, some progressive nut broke down, sobbing on camera and cried: “Democracy died tonight!”

Progressives, get this straight: On Tuesday night democracy didn’t die. Democracy was fulfilled in a powerful and transformative way.

And it’s only the beginning.

Liberals went to Wisconsin for a recall vote and a revolution broke out. We the people have spoken. Tea party? Yes. “Occupy”? Not so much.

Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote, “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

On Tuesday America hit Wisconsin and did an about-turn.

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

The left’s disingenuous and intellectually lazy “war on women” talking points have blown up in its face. Most polls show Mitt Romney fast gaining on President Obama with female voters. Some polls even show him pulling ahead.

Still, it’s the multi-billion dollar abortion industry that may just give Romney the boost he needs to take a permanent lead. Just days after pro-life investigative group Live Action released devastating evidence that Planned Parenthood systemically engages in the grisly practice of sex-selection abortion – a charge to which it now admits – the cash-flush abortion Goliath has done Obama an ironic disservice by endorsing his re-election bid. The group has additionally launched a $1.4 million advertising campaign to smear Mitt Romney.

Let’s put aside for a moment the scandalous disclosure that while Planned Parenthood receives over 350 million per annum in your taxpayer dollars, it nonetheless spends millions engaging in partisan politicking for the DNC. Troubling as that may be, utterly horrific is the revelation that this extremist organization – which absurdly presumes to defend “women’s rights” – has been caught red-handed torturing little girls to death in mamma’s womb, simply because mamma wanted a boy.

This discovery – eerily reminiscent of Communist China’s forced one-child sex-selection policy – has shocked the conscience of an entire nation. So disturbing are the facts that on Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives voted on the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act (PRENDA), H.R. 354, introduced by Republicans in Congress. Unbelievably, because the bill required a two-thirds majority for passage, Democrats were able to narrowly abort the measure by a vote of 246-168.

The legislation, which would have outlawed sex-selection abortions altogether, was also opposed by President Obama. This comes as little surprise when you consider that, while a state senator, Obama repeatedly fought Illinois’ Born Alive Infant Protection Act. This law simply required that when a baby survives a botched abortion – when she is “born alive” – further attempts to kill her must immediately cease, and steps must be taken to save her life.

But according to our president – leader of the “civilized” world – a law preventing the abortionist from finishing her off is “really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.”

This, coupled with Democratic support for sex-selection abortion (now on record), represents the true “war on women.” This is misogyny at its deadly worst. Take note, America: Obama and Democrats have officially endorsed the Mengelian practice of explicitly targeting little girls – over boys – for live dismemberment.

Still, there is good news here. This entire saga has placed in the national spotlight the irreconcilable incongruities central to our nation’s ongoing policy of legalized abortion on demand.

Consider, for instance, that under current federal and state law, if an off-duty abortionist – if any man, for that matter – physically assaults a woman and her unborn daughter dies, that man has committed murder. Yet if mom walks into Planned Parenthood and authorizes that same man to rip her baby girl limb-from-limb, it’s her “choice.” First case: murder. Second case: “choice.” Both cases: dead baby girl.

Furthermore, consider that – as established by a 2006 Zogby International poll of over 30,000 Americans in 48 states – 86 percent support a law banning sex-selection abortion. Doesn’t it stand to reason, then, that since the vast majority recognize the objectively reprehensible nature of sex-selection abortion, they, too, might recognize that it’s equally reprehensible for mom to have baby killed for no reason at all? This is what current law allows, without restriction, through the ninth month.

Indeed, incongruities abound. Still, it is the indefensible nature of empty “pro-choice” rhetoric that, I believe, will ultimately end legalized abortion in America. Truth, even when buried for decades, eventually has a way of rising to the surface.

It’s inevitable. Roe v. Wade will, in time, be tossed, alongside the slavery-justifying Dred Scott decision, exactly where both shameful scars on Lady Liberty belong: in the trash heap of historical inhumanity.

Just as those who excused slavery are reviled by history, so, too, will be those who called themselves “pro-choice.”

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)