An Open Letter to the Romney Skeptics

December 31, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Dear Mitt Romney skeptics, and especially my fellow evangelicals,

Do you remember how it felt when the economy began to implode in those anxious, waning months of 2008?  We were coming down to the wire in the election contest, and the candidates we had to choose between were Barack Obama and John McCain.  Given the choices, of course, I supported McCain.  I still think he would have made a far better President than Obama has proven to be.

But as the very foundations of the American economy were shaking and falling away beneath our feet, and we faced the very real possibility of a Second Great Depression, how desperately I wished that Mitt Romney had emerged from the primary as the champion of the GOP.  The presiding President and his party took the heat for the financial crisis, and McCain worsened the situation when his actions and statements inspired no confidence in his stability and expertise on economic matters.  The election turned in Obama’s favor when he gave the impression of solidity and strength in the economic crisis.

Romney, however, had something Obama couldn’t even begin to claim: a brilliantly successful career in the private sector, and a world of experience specifically in the financial sector, where our most intractable problems lay.  Between McCain and Romney, Romney was touted by the conservative commentariat as the conservative option, and I remember feeling as though the liberal media, independents and even some Democrats who were able to vote in primaries had shoehorned John McCain onto the GOP ticket.  If Romney had been at the top of the ticket instead, I still believe we would have avoided the lamentable Obama Presidency; compared to a business titan, Obama would have looked like the inexperienced pretender that he was, and he could not have stood up to Romney’s economic expertise in the debates.

Well, we’re still in the midst of an incredible mess as a country.  Our financial house is in shambles.  Tax reform, regulatory reform, streamlining government, changes to our energy and immigration policies, will all help.  But the character of the American people, the moral substructure that provides the necessary, nurturing environment for our democratic free market, has also disintegrated.  Our problem is not merely political; it is also cultural.  We need to rediscover the virtues of the free market, and we also need to rediscover the economic virtues.  That is, on the one hand, we need a President who understands how companies grow and flourish, who understands how the economy works and what provides the predictability and clarity and the space for innovation that the market demands; and on the other hand, we need someone whose personal integrity and whose socio-political principles will strengthen the family, enrich the workforce, and restore our collective commitment to responsibility and initiative, stewardship and thrift, diligence and creativity.

Yesterday I wrote a response to some common misconceptions about Romney and his candidacy.  Next week, I’ll address at greater length some other objections to Romney in greater detail.  Please subscribe or follow on Facebook or Twitter.  I cannot, in this one letter, get too far into the weeds, parse everything Romney has said on the environment, or etc.  The purpose of this letter is simply to set forth, in broad outlines, why I think Romney’s the right guy for America.  The Presidency is a position of enormously important economic, global and moral leadership.  In all three of those areas, I firmly believe that Mitt Romney is the leader we need.  He also, not coincidentally, stands the best chance of defeating Barack Obama — and if there’s one thing conservatives agree upon right now, it’s the profound importance of installing new leadership.  As the country staggers toward decline, we need someone who can pick us up, rally the American people behind a positive and hopeful vision, and deploy all of his intelligence and experience and skill to move us toward a better future.

Mitt Romney Part 1: Economic and Global Leadership

Those who know him personally attest, without exception, that Romney is an extraordinarily intelligent, boundlessly competent, and thoroughly hard-working man.  He built a towering reputation in the business world, accomplished a near-miraculous turnaround of the Salt Lake City Olympics (which was mired in scandal and red ink and on the verge of collapsing), and took an extremely liberal state (Massachusetts) that was deeply in debt and restored it to fiscal health and a budget surplus in the course of four years.

In the business world, Romney specialized in turning around failing companies, and he did so with great success.  Sometimes, yes, that means eliminating jobs — but you eliminate jobs in order to avoid eliminating entire companies and all the jobs they provide.  You make companies more profitable, more competitive, and thus more sustainable.  You eliminate jobs now so that you can keep paying the salaries of those who remain, and ideally add more jobs again later.  In other words, sometimes the most pro-jobs thing you can do is cut a job that allows a company to survive.  Romney’s experience in executive management, and in the financial and investment sector, are precisely what we need right now, when we are faced with enormous managerial challenges in reforming the government and its entitlement programs and enormous economic challenges in rebuilding a thriving private sector and restoring the millions of new jobs it should be producing each year.

36 economists, recently asked to rate Obama’s performance on the economy, rated him mostly “poor” and “fair.”  Asked which of the Republican candidates would be best, two-thirds chose Romney, one chose Gingrich, and the others gave no response.  In other words, of the leading economists who offered their thoughts on who could best turn around the American economy, 24 out of 25 chose Romney.  This is not just happenstance.  Romney knows the economy through and through — and everything our government offers, from the most basic services and social safety nets all the way to military and national defense, depends upon a thriving economy.  The business community will welcome the news of a Romney presidency, and it’s easy to see why when you take a look at Romney’s economic plan — a marvel of creative, pro-growth economic conservatism.  If you haven’t read it, you really should.   I’m particularly encouraged that we could have a President who understands the financial sector, since so much of our fate is now tied together with the financial giants.  Romney is the best prepared to rebuild a thriving, job-producing economy.

On matters of foreign policy, Romney’s positions are consistently conservative, consistently show a solid appreciation of America’s unique role in the world, and consistently support our allies and promote a strong national defense.  On what I consider some of the most important matters facing the next President: Romney believes that a strong America that sets the international agenda and promotes the interests of democracy and the free market are in the best interest of the world; he favors a stronger, more multi-layered national missile defense system than Obama; he favors a stronger military, increasing the Navy’s ship-building rate and replacing the aging equipment of the Army, Air Force and Marines.  His positions with regard to Russia and China, rogue nations, and the threat of radical Islamic Jihadism are clear, smart, and, again, consistently conservative.  Romney, I’m convinced, will establish an excellent team and represent us well on the international stage.

Mitt Romney Part 2: Moral Leadership

This weekend there are articles — fed by opposing campaigns — meant to slime Romney’s record for Iowa evangelicals.  I can’t address every criticism, but let me deal with abortion in particular to show how many conservatives have accepted a false impression of Romney’s positions.

It’s true, as he has explained many times, that Romney’s views on abortion have changed.  I really don’t care in the slightest what his views were 17 years ago, or even 10 years ago.  Sometimes the most passionate advocates are converts to the cause (Reagan and Henry Hyde come to mind).  The question, of course, is whether we can trust that he is, right now, honestly representing his stances.  But if his convictions were feigned, if he were adopting positions for political convenience, why in the world — it makes no sense whatsoever — would he have changed those positions when he did?  Romney was Governor of one of the most liberal states in the union from 2003 to 2007.  Essentially, the first time that he was confronted with a “life” issue as Governor, in 2004, he did his research (as he always does) and came to the conclusion that his earlier support for abortion access was ill-considered.  Having come to this viewpoint, he has acted in a pro-life manner consistently ever since.

Now, if you were actually, secretly pro-choice, and wanted to be an effective Governor of a blue state, and then change your views on abortion in order to situate yourself for an eventual Presidential run, wouldn’t you wait until later in your Governorship?  Wouldn’t you wait until after you’ve dealt with some of the most nettlesome life issues?  Remember that this was not 2010 or 2011, when conservatives were on the ascendant, and when Romney needs to appeal to the Hard Right.  This was 2004, when any person in Romney’s situation, if he wanted to run for President, would be thinking more of moderation and nuance.  Remember, too, that Romney’s wife Ann has multiple sclerosis, which many people were saying embryonic stem cell research could address.  So, wouldn’t you proclaim yourself pro-life but open to stem-cell research and the morning-after pill?

That’s not what Romney did.  Against the roaring outrage of the liberal establishment in Massachusetts, and against the will of the very powerful research universities in Boston and Cambridge, Romney vetoed a bill that would have expanded support for embryonic stem cell research.  He could not condone “embryo farming” that treated “innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited.”

Yet this issue has been thoroughly demagogued.  Let me give an example.  Yesterday I mentioned the superficial caricaturing of Erick Erickson, and he just gave us a great example of the genre.  The title was: “Mitt Romney Didn’t Just Give Planned Parenthood Money, He Gave Them Extra Power.”  Erickson makes a non sequitur reference to $150 Romney gave Planned Parenthood seventeen years ago, when everyone acknowledges he supported access to abortion (and of course Planned Parenthood does other things too, so there may be more to the story here.)  But the real smoking gun, for Erickson, comes in three parts:

  1. Romney appointed “to the Massachusetts bench” a fellow named Matthew Nestor, who once touted himself as pro-choice.  But really, Nestor was appointed to the Cambridge District Court, where he would deal with low-level misdemeanors, and would have nothing whatsoever to do with abortion law.  Romney sought judges who would be tough on crime, and Nestor recently made news for sending a Democratic State Senator to jail.
  2. After vetoing a law that would have expanded access to the morning-after pill, Romney “slid back and signed a bill that expanded state subsidized access to the morning after pill.”  But, again, not really.  The report Erickson cites says the measure “could expand the number of people who get access to family planning services.”  For legal analysis, I turn to David French: ”The bill he signed was merely a request for Massachusetts to get federal reimbursement for services it was already providing at cost to the state — the state was paying $5 million per year already and had a chance at a 90% federal reimbursement.  This is no change in Mass law but an attempt at cost-shifting to the feds.  It did not pay for abortions.”
  3. And third, the coup de grace for Erickson: Romney, two years after his conversion in 2004, “expanded access to abortion and gave Planned Parenthood new rights under state law.”  But again, this is so defiantly superficial that it’s outright misleading.  Romney’s health care law only made abortion more accessible in the same sense that it made all health care more accessible; but since there was already a court ruling in Massachusetts requiring taxpayer funding of abortions, the expansion of state provision of health care arguably did nothing to make abortion more accessible.  Moreover, in the midst of crafting a very complicated law that required a lot of compromise across the aisle, Planned Parenthood was actually given 1 of 14 slots on a payment rate advisory board.  They were not given “new rights”; their power was merely advisory, and it had no authority over abortion-related matters.

Again, there are areas for legitimate disagreement here.  Some conservatives think Romney should have defied the court ruling that mandates taxpayer funding of abortions — but Romney, with great justification, believes that Governors are executives who execute the laws that are passed by the legislature and interpreted by the courts.  But this latest piece from Erickson is just another in a long line of weak-sauce attack articles that prop up one-sided Potempkin-Mitts in order to knock them over and benefit other candidates.

Romney has been very clear throughout the debates and countless interviews: he believes life begins at conception, opposes Roe v. Wade, will nominate pro-life judges, would overturn the Mexico City policy, and will oppose embryonic stem cell research.  Most importantly, he supports the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which may be the best approach presently available to protecting the lives of a great swath of the unborn.  See Romney’s own statement on his pro-life views.

I’ll write about same-sex marriage later next week (where the case against him is even weaker), but the sum of the matter is this.  I lived in Massachusetts for the whole of his governorship, and Romney consistently stood up for social conservative causes against enormous pressure from the Far-Left legislature and the Far-Left Boston Brahmins on Beacon Hill and Harvard Yard.  Which shows greater courage and greater conviction?  Holding thoroughly conservative views in a conservative state, or fighting for conservative values in a blue state?  Which is a better predictor that a candidate will maintain his social-conservative positions when he gets into the left-leaning Beltway?  And which candidate will be more sure to keep his word once in office: one who was never really questioned on the sincerity of his views, or one who still has to prove himself to supporters?

But personal morality should not be overlooked here, either.  I cannot tell you how many stories I’ve heard from Romney’s friends and acquaintances about his integrity, his compassion, his selflessness and generosity, and his excellent family values.  These mean a great deal to me.  If we would restore the moral underpinnings of our society, we need someone who represents those virtues.  I also value — let’s call it what it is — all the pastoral experience Romney gained as a major leader in Boston Mormon circles.  I grew up watching my (elder and pastor) father deal with all the same issues Romney would have dealt with: crumbling marriages, wayward children, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual infidelity, depression, and the like.  I’ll add Mormonism at greater length in another post, but I’m actually very glad that his experience in the Mormon church has given Romney this experience speaking wisdom and healing into broken lives and broken relationships.

Mitt Romney Part 3: The Power to Beat Obama

Finally, don’t fool yourself.  Obama is a formidable campaigner.  He will have a massive war chest at his disposal and a media, entertainment, academic and labor establishments that will still much prefer him to a Republican.  The Left Wing will get fired up over Obama again, and we’re going to need all of the eloquence and intellectual firepower and presidential gravitas that we can get.

I know conservatives differ on this, but Romney is the only candidate that I’m confident can beat Obama.  Look at the latest numbers from Rasmussen, where Romney beats Obama by 6 points among likely voters (45% to 39%) while Gingrich and Santorum are 10 points behind the President (37% to 47%).  That’s a 16-point swing.  Remember: Barack Obama has not really begun to campaign yet.  This is going to be a hard-fought, tooth-and-nail electoral contest, and only Romney has the resources, the organization, the skills and the credibility to be a clear favorite over Obama.

I respect conservatives who support other candidates, but I firmly believe that Mitt’s the right guy at the right time.  We need to get past the superficialities, get past the misinformation, and see that we have in Mitt Romney an excellent candidate for this particular historical moment.  Is he perfect?  Of course not.  Do I defend what he has said and done in every particular?  Not at all.  But it gives me great comfort to know that the leading candidate right now is the one with the best chance of turning our economy around, the one who will represent us well on the international stage, the one who stands for the right values, and the same one who has the best chance of beating Obama.

This is a rare confluence of fortune.  Let’s not steal defeat from the jaws of victory here.  Sincerely,

Timothy Dalrymple

 

Filed Under: Election 2012, Mitt Romney

Don’t Fall For “Myth Romney”

December 30, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

This morning I sat down to write a letter to the Mitt skeptics, especially my fellow evangelicals.  Yet it proved a nettlesome task.  There are so many misconceptions about Mitt, the field is so littered with attacks and misinformation, that one has to clear the field of the falsehoods before one can forge ahead and show Mitt Romney as he actually is.  So I’ll publish the open letter tomorrow.

For today, let’s distinguish between Myth Romney and Mitt Romney.  Myth Romney is a co-creation of a peculiar coalition of media and political liberals who fear that Romney would beat Obama and conservative activists and commentators who support other primary candidates.  According to them, Myth Romney is a closet liberal pretending to be a conservative; the things he said in an election contest against Ted Kennedy in 1994 are more revealing of his true opinions than the things he’s done and said in the 17 years since.  Ergo, Myth Romney is not a conservative, and not acceptable to conservatives.  He would not bring strong conservative leadership to Washington; he would bring, at best, a lukewarm commitment to center-center-right mushiness and a milquetoast commitment to moderation and compromise.  Also, as a Mormon, and as a moderate, he can never evoke the passions of the Right, and the enthusiasm gap would kill him against Obama.

Myth Romney Part 1: Romney is Unacceptable to Conservatives.

Whenever you hear this slogan, you’re being manipulated.  Don’t believe the lie.

With “Mitt Romney is unacceptable to conservatives,” Right-Wing rabble rousers like Red State’s Erick Erickson — who have shamed themselves this primary cycle with their relentlessly superficial caricaturing of Romney and their equally superficial cheerleading for a parade of Not-Mitt candidates — have attempted to tell a demonstrable falsehood so repeatedly that it becomes a part of the mental landscape of social conservatism.

If I’m not a conservative, then the category of “conservative” has so contracted that it means nothing more than “Erick Erickson and the people he likes.”  I’ve written in defense of the pro-life movement (here and here), in defense of traditional marriage (here and here), in defense of the Tea Party movement (here, here and here), in defense of Sarah Palin, in defense of fiscal conservatism, in defense of moral and social conservatism — and so on and on.  Yet I not only accept Mitt.  I admire him, support him wholeheartedly, and thank God we have a candidate of his quality, character and expertise at this extraordinarily important moment in our nation’s history.  So here’s one conservative who finds Mitt Romney more than “acceptable” — and the only folks in my circle of friends who are more conservative than myself, people who have dedicated their lives to activism on behalf of (mostly social) conservative causes, are the founders and supporters of Evangelicals for Mitt.

Still not impressed?  Fine.  How about people we all know?  Are you honestly telling me that John Thune, Chris Christie, Norm Coleman, Jim Talent, and Mike Leavitt — all of whom are criss-crossing Iowa on Romney’s behalf right now — are not conservatives?  Seriously? How about columnist and radio talk show hosts Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved?  Or John Hinderaker of the hugely respected Powerline blog (like the now-retired Paul Mirengoff in the last cycle)?  Or Ramesh Ponnuru from the National Review?  Or how about the editorial board of the National Review (read: Rich Lowry), which endorsed Romney last time and still makes his case?  Or the editorial board of the Washington Examiner?  Or how about Governors and former Governors, Presidents and former nominees like Tim Pawlenty, John Sununu, George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole?  Or Senators Mark Kirk, Richard Burr, Elizabeth Dole, and Mike Johanns?

Granted, some of those figures are “establishment conservatives” and not “movement conservatives,” but this is like complaining that it’s only the conservatives who have won national and statewide offices, and who have gained actual government experience at a high level, who support Mitt Romney — a strange complaint indeed.  And movement conservatives were awful excited about Nikki Haley and Christine O’Donnell and Chris Christie, all of whom have endorsed Romney.  Or how about this one?  Ann Coulter.  Coulter argues that Mitt is the best candidate to beat Obama and the best candidate to confront our biggest and most urgent challenges.  Is Ann Coulter — friggin’ Ann Coulter, for goodness’ sake — not conservative now?  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Let’s put this meme to bed.

Myth Romney Part 2: We Need to Send a Bull into the Beltway China Shop.

I understand the frustration.  For those on the outside, it’s tempting to look at our elected representatives in Washington and think the whole Beltway bureaucracy is so diseased that we need someone who will lop off the seventy gangrenous limbs of the federal government and then, somehow (this is never quite clear), preserve or recreate a new system that is still effective in discharging the true constitutional duties of the federal government but leaves a much smaller footprint on the American economy and our liberties.

This was a part of the appeal of Rick Perry.  He was a two-fisted political brawler who would topple the old order — while Romney seemed more likely to challenge the old order to a game of Scrabble.  Mitt just looks establishment.  He’s tall and handsome, fit and, well, presidential.  He speaks as though he received an exquisite education, which in fact he did.  He’s always pressed and perfectly coiffed.  Romney’s a technocrat, and after the last five years we have a justified fear of technocrats.

But, for one thing, I’m not convinced our elected leaders are so much feckless and corrupt as they are merely bogged down by the complications of real-world responsibility and the slow process of compromise and checks-and-balances that our Constitution enshrines.  For another, this is identity politics at its worst.  Don’t hate Mitt because he’s beautiful.  (That’s a joke, folks.)  Don’t oppose Mitt because he seems less like the guy you’d share a beer with and more like the CEO of the beer company.  We might just need the CEO right now.  The conservative predilection for an ordinary guy, a common man of common sense, has not returned dividends.  Romney is an uncommon man of common sense — yes, a technocrat, but with all his competence and expertise pointed in the right direction by the right ideology.  And while his policy proposals are sometimes wonkish, they would make dramatic changes to the federal government in orderly and pragmatic ways.

There’s nothing conservative, nothing at all, about burning the old order to the ground.  We don’t need an arsonist.  We need a turnaround artist, someone who will have the experience, the wisdom, and the people skills to coordinate a thousand incremental changes into a dramatic transformation for the better.  Setting off explosives are more likely to sink the Ship of State than they are to turn it around.

Myth Romney Part 3: Conservatives, Especially Evangelicals, will not Support Mitt with Enthusiasm

After all, haven’t 15 percent of evangelicals said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon?  The answer to this question is: no.  Fifteen percent of evangelicals have said that a candidate’s Mormonism makes them less likely to vote for him.  In the primary, that could make a difference, especially in states like Iowa and South Carolina.  But in the general election, it has virtually no effect.

The reason is simple: According to Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center, “The people for whom [Romney's] faith is a potential sticking point are so anti-Obama that that’s the bigger factor.  The very same people for whom Mormonism is maybe of some concern are the same people who most vigorously oppose Obama.”  Pew found that 91% of white evangelicals who are Republican or lean-Republican would vote for Mitt Romney over Obama.  8 out of 10 said they would support Romney “strongly.”  And that’s before the inevitable consolidation behind the GOP candidate, before the convention coronation, and before all the ads attacking Obama’s record.  Romney is more conservative than McCain, and more conservative than George W. Bush.  Conservatives lined up behind both, and faced with the prospect of a second Obama term they would support Romney with considerable vim and vigor.

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I’ll address some of the other misconceptions when I build the positive case, tomorrow, for why I think Mitt Romney is precisely the right person for this moment in our national story.  Check back tomorrow.

Filed Under: Election 2012, Mitt Romney

Guest Post: Ravi Zacharias on “Evicting the Sacred” at Christmas

December 24, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

I’d like to feature more guest posts at Philosophical Fragments, and here on the eve of Christmas I get to start that off with a bang.  Chuck Colson has called Dr. Zacharias “the great evangelist of our time.”  He’s the founder and CEO of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries; he has preached the gospel and lectured on apologetics before millions of listeners around the world; he hosts the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking, and he’s visiting professor at Wycliffe Hall of Oxford.  The author of many books, his latest effort, Why Jesus?: Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality, hits bookshelves in January.  Many thanks to Dr. Zacharias for this original piece:

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Evicting The Sacred

by Dr. Ravi Zacharias, founder and CEO of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

To repress worship is to repress the irrepressible.

Everyone is a worshipper. Every person has his or her God: The only difference is that some can defend what they believe with sound reasons while others do so in a vacuum. Not only individuals but nations have their gods.

I am an Indian, born and raised in India. Before I moved to the West I readily accepted the fact that during Hindu festivals the nation would be celebrating the occasion. This was understood, even though technically India is a secular democracy. But there is an underlying worldview behind the culture. Whether it was Ganesh puja or Diwali, India celebrates its festivals based in a Hindu worldview.

I am not a Hindu, but I respect the Hindu’s right to express the foundational ideas of the nation. The same applies to a Buddhist nation or to an Islamic nation. I am neither a Buddhist nor a Muslim. But I respect the right of those in these countries to express their faith during their festivals and am not offended by them.

I am a Christian. When I came to America decades ago, I was thrilled to see Christmas celebrated and the reason for the season so obvious: the birth of Jesus Christ. Did I assume that every American was thus a Christian? Certainly not. But I expected the charitable heart of even the dissenter to allow that which has been practiced in this country historically and traditionally to continue.

But alas, it is not so. In Thailand and Indonesia Christmas carols are sung in shopping centers and Christmas trees adorn airports. But in America the anti-Christian bias of silly advertisements like Bloomingdales’ “Merry, Happy, Love, Peace” reflect ideas firmly planted in midair and proclaim no reason for the season.

Who is offended by a public celebration of Christmas?  The anti-Christian secularist who lives under the illusion that values are cradled in a vacuum. Peace and love for what? What do these terms really mean? Are they self-evident? Not by any means.

America may not be a Christian nation per se, but only the Judeo-Christian worldview could have framed such a nation’s ideas and values: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” No other religion or secular assumption can affirm such a statement except the Judeo-Christian worldview. But today that very worldview, on which our systems of government and law are based, is expelled from the marketplace.

Democracies that are unhinged from all sacred moorings ultimately sink under the brute weight of conflicting egos.  Freedom is destroyed not just by its retraction, but more often by its abuse.

Is it not odd that whenever it has power, liberalism is anything but liberal, both in the area of religion and politics? We now have something called “spirituality” because people don’t like the word “religion.” What does spirituality mean?  It means you may believe anything you wish to believe but regarding ultimate things, “No absolutes, please.” The relativism and spirituality with which our society lives have one thing in common: they are both sophisticated ways of self-worship.

It is not accidental that even as Christian values have been jettisoned, the world is economically and morally on the verge of bankruptcy. Oh, but Jesus’ name still surfaces in the West. Maybe more often than any other name. Why? Because profanity still reigns. Oh yes, and God still figures in our philosophy: even when “Mother Earth” quakes and thousands die, we still blame “Father God.” The banishment of Christmas may be the anti-theists’ great longing. But they still want the gifts of Christmas—love, joy, peace and reason. Malcolm Muggeridge once opined that we have educated ourselves into imbecility.

What are we celebrating at Christmas? What is the message of Christmas? It is the birth of the One who promised peace, joy and love. Try as we will, we cannot realize such values without acknowledging the point of reference for these absolutes: the very person of God and his gift to us of a changed heart and will. That message needs to be heard around our world that is reeling with problems and rife with hate. For we have proven we are not fit to be God.

G.K. Chesterton was right: “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.”

Some years ago, I walked into the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was a cold and grey January.  I paused as I saw deep inside its walls a shop with the banner still fluttering, “Merry Christmas.” That which was happily displayed in the Forbidden City is now all but forbidden in our cities.  A Chinese professor once remarked to me, “You Christians need to thank God for Communism, because we left the souls of our people empty, making room for the gospel.”

Maybe someday we will thank the rabid secularists as well, when Merry Christmas will no longer be forbidden in our cities. Exhausted and disappointed in self-worship, we may turn to God again and hear his story afresh.

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Dr. Ravi Zacharias is the president and CEO of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, a speaker and author of the upcoming book Why Jesus?

Filed Under: Christmas, Ravi Zacharias Tagged With: , , , ,

WAR HORSE: The Best Film About a Horse That Does More Than Run in Circles?

December 23, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

In War Horse, a sweeping epic that follows an extraordinary stallion from rural England across a mortar-strewn Europe in the midst of the Great War, Steven Spielberg reminds us once again why we love to go to the movies. While other films are filled with dehumanizing special effects and desperately hip editorial gimmickry, Spielberg delivers a grand story expertly told by a master of the craft.

For all that, however, it was not quite the masterpiece I wanted it to be.

Lovers of the Michael Morpurgo book, or the Tony-award-winning play, will know the outlines of the story.  (See my feature article on the film here.)  A bond is forged between a horse named Joey and a young man named Albert (played by newcomer Jeremy Irvine) in the midst of the harsh realities of turnip farming in Devon, England, in the early twentieth century.  It’s Albert and Joey’s bond that enables the Naracott family to survive the contingencies of farming and weather and overbearing landlords — until Joey is sold to an honorable captain (played by Tom Hiddleston, a rising star) headed off to war.

When the captain rides straight into the brutal realities of modern warfare, Joey becomes the property of the Germans, and from there he passes hands and serves the soldiers on both sides in various ways.  He is, poignantly, an escape horse for two young deserters who do not make it far — then a source of joy and escape for a young girl surrounded by the terrors of war — then a beast of burden who saves the life of an equine friend — and so on.  The most powerful scenes take place between the trenches of the Allies and the Central Powers, and Joey finds himself caught in the wire in No Man’s Land.  I won’t reveal the story from there, but Joey — who takes no side in a war that we’re now inclined to view as pointless — becomes an agent of peace, and there’s little suspense over the central question of whether Joey and Albert will find their back to one another.

While I marveled once again at Steven Spielberg’s storytelling powers, and while the movie presents an awesome spectacle and an interesting, peculiar serial quality to its succession of mini stories, I did not find myself moved in quite the way I had anticipated.  Perhaps it’s because the central character was a horse.  I’ve been moved by animal stories before like Lassie and Old Yeller and Marley and Me — but I find horses less expressive, less emotive, less loving than dogs.  It made me wonder whether the problem was that I had never really developed a relationship before with a horse, and never really learned how tender and intelligent they could be.  But I’m also quite certain that another reason for the curious detachment I felt was the very serial nature of the story that made it unique and interesting.  Most of the characters are simply not on screen long enough for one to develop an emotional attachment.  Jeremy Irvine is a fine young actor, but since his is the only human character that persists through the whole story, the viewer requires a deeper emotional connection with Albert than Irvine seemed able to deliver.

There is violence aplenty, but none of it gory or excessive.  Religious elements were curiously absent both from the farmers in rural England and from the soldiers in the foxholes, except for one moment when an English soldier recites the 23rd Psalm as he moves forward into No Man’s Land.  I continue to find this bracketing of religiosity inaccurate, unnecessary, and irritating, but Spielberg is hardly alone in the practice.

On the whole, War Horse makes for — if not quite the emotionally and spiritually profound experience it might have been — at least a very enjoyable trip to the movie theater.  A younger generation that grew up with Seabiscuit and Secretariat, and an older generation that grew up with The Black Stallion and Black Beauty, or even National Velvet, will enjoy the film in equal measure.  In fact, with a fascinating story and strong performances and sumptuously beautiful landscapes, War Horse may displace The Black Stallion as the best film about a horse doing something more significant than running in circles.

STARS: 4 out of 5

FAMILY: 5-10 million horses died in World War 1, and youngsters will find themselves disturbed by the plight of horses in the Great War.  Otherwise, and apart from some kinetic and frightening scenes of trench warfare, this is a family-friendly movie if your children are over 10 years of age.

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Bush Hatred Prevails Over Obama Love

December 22, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

A presidency that began with such hope and optimism, and such astronomical approval and support, may well end in the utter collapse of the modern liberal program.

I’m sure that sounds like an overstatement, and perhaps it is.  2012 will be no cakewalk for Republicans, and they’re fully capable of bungling the opportunity history has given them.  But if Obama is defeated, then it will be one of the most stunning turnarounds in the history of modern politics.  Consider: George W. Bush entered his first term with a roughly 55% approval rating (averaging the various polls) and left it with about a 47.5% approval rating — a drop of 7.5% over the course of four years full of dissension, accusation and mockery.  Obama began his first term with 65% approval ratings and has stood below 45% for the majority of the past four months — a drop of 20%, nearly three times the Bush figure.

Yet Bush, whatever his virtues, was not an effective spokesperson for modern conservatism.  If a handsome, eloquent, highly intelligent and charismatic African-American Democrat with a charming family, who came to office with both houses of Congress and a historic groundswell of public support and abundant permission to blame his early struggles on the financial crisis and the Bush administration, cannot achieve more than this, then modern American liberalism will need resuscitation.  It should be sobering to progressives that the consummate representation of modern American liberalism is neither effective nor loved.  More Americans (7 out of 10) believe America is on the wrong track now than they did at the time of his inauguration.

Ironically, the roots of Obama’s failure do lay in the Bush administration — but not in the way progressives think.  It was not so much the Bush administration, as it was liberal hatred of the Bush administration, that set Obama up for failure.

Throughout the eight years of the Bush administration, it was almost an article of faith on the Hard Left that anything the dreaded “King George” decreed was not only unwise and unnecessary, but immoral, irrational, and probably illegal, motivated not by cold facts and prudence but by cowboy-ish jingoism, the profits of the military-industrial complex and an enduring theocratic impulse.  With foreign policy, military actions, homeland security, and the economy, there was precious little need for careful examination of the rationale for Bush administration decisions.  If Bush did it, it was foolish and probably criminal, because Bush was not motivated by reason and love for country but by greed and war-lust and a crude evangelical superstitions.

So what do you do when your liberal savior extends and even expands the great majority of those policies?

Consider all the ways in which the Obama administration has continued the policies of the Bush administration, even policies that liberals, including Obama himself, excoriated when Bush was President.  Obama sought to repeat the success of the Iraq Surge with an Afghanistan Surge, and ramped up the kind of drone strikes (not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but even in places like Yemen) that liberals once lamented.  Where the Left once mocked Bush’s Freedom Agenda in the Middle East, the Arab Spring has indeed blossomed, and the Obama administration has been no less interventionist that their predecessors, though they’ve been able to stand behind national rebels in a manner similar to the initial Bush incursion into Afghanistan (with similarly ambiguous results so far).  And for all the talk of a “reset” in diplomatic relations, the early Obama overtures to our enemies produced no significant results — the kumbaya strategy got us nowhere — and the same tensions and disputes have reasserted themselves with Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and many other nations.  Thus writers at The Nation claim “the Bush-Obama presidency has sufficient self-coherence to be considered a historical entity with a life of its own.”

On homeland defense and civil freedoms, the Obama administration has defended warrantless wiretapping and continued extraordinary renditions.  In spite of the campaign promises, Guantanamo is still open.  The most severe of the Enhanced Interrogation techniques had already been discontinued, and as one CIA official says, “the incoming Obama administration changed virtually nothing with respect to existing CIA programs and operations.”  The same programs that the Obama campaign had once attacked where “all picked up, reviewed and endorsed by the Obama administration.”  The Obama administration not only endorsed the once-reviled Patriot Act, but they’ve extended the national surveillance apparatus and increased government power to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial.  So progressives complain that “Obama has maintained or expanded all civil rights violations Bush started.”

Even on the economy, Bush cut taxes in the midst of an economic slowdown, and Obama has essentially done the same — ont only extending the Bush tax cuts but adding other, non-income-tax cuts (payroll tax cuts, Making Work Pay tax cuts, etc.).  Obamacare will bring tax increases in 2018, but thus far Obama speaks of raising taxes on the rich while in fact he’s not yet done so.  All rhetoric aside, even Obama recognizes that raising taxes in the midst of a recession, at least in most tax brackets, is a bad idea.  And there are other examples.  Much though Obama likes to take credit for pulling the economy back from the precipice, the economy had already drawn back from the precipice by the time he came to office, and Obama not only continued many of the policies from the Bush economic team, he kept much of the team in place.  The corporate, capital gains and dividend rates have all remained the same.  And the same banks and trading houses that were discovered to be dangerously large in the 2008 financial meltdown are now larger than ever and turning massive profits again.

There are exceptions, of course, with Obamacare being the biggest.  Yet even Obamacare is not the single-payer, nationalized plan that liberals (including Obama himself) had publicly pined for — and Obamacare or large portions of it may very well be dismantled or ruled un-Constitutional.  Obama’s stimulus directed massive amounts of funds to the Democrat’s favored constituencies, but it proved so contentious and ineffective that the word “stimulus” is now radioactive.  Obama’s treatment of GM was shameful, the Democrat’s mis-regulation of the financial sector has slowed the recovery, and the Obama Justice Department has been negligent on matters of religious freedoms.  More exceptions come on issues like abortion, gay rights, unemployment benefits (it’s unlikely the Bush administration would have favored two years of unemployment payments), and of course Supreme Court appointments.  It does matter whether there is a Democrat or a Republican in the White House.  But there’s no question that the Obama administration has been far less different from the Bush administration than was promised during the campaign.

What’s so astonishing, though, is not that Obama has extended so many controversial Bush administration policies but the way in which his erstwhile supporters have responded.  They face (at least) two options:

  1. Barack Obama is a sellout, “just Bush with a tan,” subservient to the same malevolent political and economic forces that Bush was.
  2. OR the Bush administration was actually pretty reasonable to adopt these policies in the first place, and the Obama administration has been reasonable enough to recognize the fact.

Both options require the liberal to admit a mistake: either he was wrong about Obama, or he was wrong about Bush.  But the first option requires the liberal to sacrifice his love for Obama, while the second option requires him to sacrifice his hatred of Bush.  Either Obama was dishonest in the campaign or overwhelmed by baleful influences once he came to the Oval Office — or Obama, once he came to the White House and had the same information and responsibility that Bush had, came to more or less the same conclusions as Bush had.

Unsurprisingly, Option #1 comes out the huge winner here.  So powerful is the partisan mindset that I haven’t seen a single prominent liberal writer take Option #2.  They puzzle through the “mystery” of “George W. Obama” and conclude that the contradictions between Obama’s ideals and actions compose “a subtle disaster for all those whose hopes once rested with him.”  They would rather abandon their love of Obama than their hatred of Bush.  To put it more sharply: they are so deeply committed to the nefariousness and malfeasance of the Bush administration that they would rather believe Barack Obama a failure, a liar or a dupe than believe that George W. Bush took reasonable actions in light of the circumstances.

For instance, when the Bush administration signaled its intention to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) in a military tribunal instead of a criminal court, the liberal commentariat cried havoc and accused Bush of destroying the American Constitution.  Senator Obama voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and frequently spoke against military commissions and in favor of federal courts of a military courts-martial.  Yet the Obama team quickly abandoned its flirtation with the criminal courts idea and eventually resumed the very same military commissions he had once decried.  Rather than reexamine her view that the military commissions approach was idiotic, immoral and unnecessary, Dahlia Lithwick insisted that the administration had “revers[ed] one of its last principled positions” and “surrendered to the bullying, fear-mongering, and demagoguery of those seeking to create two separate kinds of American law.”

The same story could be told with dozens of other examples.  Progressives could have concluded that their earlier opposition to Bush administration policies was misguided.  Instead they’ve consistently concluded that “Obama and the Democrats have completely sold out by any measure.”

What the consistencies between the Bush and Obama administrations mean, of course, is that there are broad swaths of consensus in the foreign policy establishment and in the economic policy establishment regarding what best serves the interests of the United States internationally and economically.  There is a hyper-partisan paralysis on some matters, but on many matters, in spite of claims to the contrary, there is a general consensus (which is not to say that it’s right) on the course to take.  And while it’s easy to inveigh against a President from the opposite party when you’re trying to get elected, when you are the decider, when you face the same intelligence and the same responsibilities as your predecessor, you may find that your former criticisms fade away and your predecessor’s course of action begins to look mighty reasonable.

The legacy of the Left’s extreme Bush hatred, which led them to caricature Bush and scorn and misrepresent the great majority of his policies, policies they otherwise might have found reasonable, has had profound consequences for Obama.  First, when he takes the same course of action that Bush took, however pragmatic it might be, he looks like a sellout to his most ardent supporters and he looks spineless or unprincipled to moderates.  They begin to ask: What does Obama really stand for?  Thus, second, Obama lost, quite early in his administration, a President’s most precious commodity: the trust of the American people.  They no longer knew whether he said what he meant and meant what he said.  And third, this puts him in a tough position entering the election contest.  Obama can deliver the same soaring speeches, but soaring speeches swiftly turn sour when the speaker’s actions contradict his words.

As I’ve written before, the problem with the Obama administration is not the salesmanship; it’s that America no longer trusts that the salesman really believes in what he’s selling.  When hope and change was your mantra the first time around, I really mean it this time is not an inspiring followup.

Filed Under: politics, Politics and Economics, The Obama Presidency Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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