IMHO this is an excellent op-ed piece. One sentence that really struck home and I myself have conveyed this exact sentence to others several times; "I felt no fear during Reagan's presidency." I do feel much fear now; I fear for the safety of my children and grandchildren, I fear our government, I fear ISIS, I fear Sharia law, I fear that we won't make it till the next election.
Reagan v. Obama: A Tale of Love and Fear in Time of War By: D.C. McAllister | December 7th, 2015In response to Barack Obama’s speech last night about San Bernardino and terrorism, I’m not going to pick apart his policy. I don't need to. Others will take care of that. I want to talk to you about something deeper, the root of it all. I want to talk to you about love. The kind of love that takes the arrows, the bullets, the slings, the stones, the cross for another. The kind of love that weeps with those who weep, binds up the broken-hearted, kisses the twisted lips, carries the dying, and fights on the last hill as the sun sets in a bloody sky.
Love. Did you see love in the speech Obama gave about the loss of 14 precious lives in California? Did you see a tear shed? A word waver with emotion, with passion? A hint of anger at the bastards who killed our loved ones?
He is the president of the United States. He sits in the same seat as George Washington who sacrificed his own livelihood to give birth to our nation. The same seat as Abraham Lincoln who lost his life to keep it together. The same seat as George W. Bush who said to America after 9/11, “I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
But Obama doesn't hear us. He sees only division, strife, and conflict--all to be exploited. He doesn't see a nation afraid of an enemy who lurks in shadows on our street corners, in our shopping malls, in our work places, in our schools. He doesn't hear us. He has no tears. No passion. Only the cold chiding of a community organizer talking about tolerance, not because it's an American ideal, but because it suits him. It serves to silence and distract, to divert and chill both the mind and the tongue. But this is not a time for distraction or diversion or chilling of passions. It's a time to defend what we love. And what do we love? We love America. We love our home. We love freedom.
I grew up as a high school and college student in the age of Ronald Reagan. I remember the day the Challenger exploded in 1986. I was walking down the hall in Granville Towers on the University of North Carolina campus. Several students were gathered in a room and I asked what was going on. "The shuttle exploded," one girl said in a shaky voice.
I went inside the room and stood there watching the television screen in stunned silence--a trail of smoke against a blue sky that split and twisted into a gruesome image of death. All of us gathered in the room--white, black, men, women, my lesbian suitemate with her arm around me weeping. There was no division, only grief. American lives lost. American exceptionalism, American hope, had taken a blow. We all felt it. We weren't attacked by an enemy, but it was a loss to the American family, the American spirit. We stood there together, as one, grieving.
Reagan was supposed to deliver a State of the Union speech, but he postponed it. Instead, he spoke to the American people about the loss of Challenger's seven crew members. In that speech, he addressed school children who were watching the coverage of the shuttle and the teacher who was going into space for the first time. "I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen," he said. "It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave."
It belongs to the brave. I remember so well the hope I felt when Reagan said those words, the encouragement, the optimism in the face of such heartache. We would be brave despite pain, suffering, and even death. We would not give up, and those who died would not be lost, for they had "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." I could feel the grief of the writers who crafted those words, and the love of the man who stood before a nation and delivered them. He refused to leave us broken-hearted. As always, he pointed us to God, to hope, to the source of our happiness and our freedom...
I was an idealistic college student who could have easily let fear consume me, bitterness control me, apathy weaken me, but my president saved me from that. He instilled in me hope. He challenged me to be brave. Most of all, he touched me with his tender words of compassion. In his face, I saw love.
I felt no fear during Reagan's presidency. It was a time of the Cold War. There were threats of nuclear Armageddon, but even as I traveled to other countries as a student, I wasn't afraid. I wasn't afraid because I knew my president loved America. I knew he would protect us no matter what. His love conquered fear as love always does. Obama, though, knows only fear, how to use it and manipulate it, and so the fear grows because there is no love to drive it away.
Unlike Obama, Reagan was strong because he loved his country. There's no better example of that strength than when he stood up to our enemies. He didn't shy away from calling the Soviet Union "the focus of evil in the modern world." In a 1983 speech in which he opposed the nuclear freeze that would weaken America, he said, "There is sin and evil in this world, and we're enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might."
He then humbly admitted to our nation's past failings, racism in particular, and said we must continue to speak out against bigotry--we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. But, he said--and this is the "but" that we don't hear from Obama--"But whatever sad episodes exist in our past, any objective observer must hold a positive view of American history, a history that has been the story of hopes fulfilled and dreams made into reality. Especially in this century, America has kept alight the torch of freedom, but not just for ourselves but for millions of others around the world."
A positive view of American history! What welcome relief it would be to hear such words again, such love. But we don't. Instead, we hear blame and accusation. Obama spends more time accusing us of intolerance than calling our enemies evil. Has he ever even used the word?
Instead, he downplays and distracts, turning our attention inward, to our own shortcomings. He instills in us doubt, not bravery. He makes us feel as if we're the problem, not the solution. He sows seeds of division, not unity.
Reagan did no such thing. He named the enemy. And he called it evil. He loved America so much that he never thought her capable of anything compared to the evils of the Soviet Union with its totalitarian control. His words were filled with compassion, strength, and wisdom...
....Reagan said we could rise to the challenge of defeating our enemies because "the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual." That is as true today as it was in 1983. Our struggle is against evil, against an enemy who wants to destroy us, enslave us, take away from us all we hold dear. We will find strength only when we rediscover love. Love for freedom, love for truth, love for God, love for one another, and love for America.
Did we hear anything like this in Obama's speech about terrorism? Did you hear passion in his voice? No, there was no love. There was only the soothing tones of "brotherhood and peace" delivered by a "quiet man" who has labeled both sides equally at fault and has blithely declared himself to be above it all.
Such a man is no leader. He has no strength to defend America because he has no love for America. And where there is no love, there is only fear...
- See more at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/12/reagan-obama-a-tale-of-love-and-feat-in-time-of-war#sthash.Cta1v2nz.dpuf
