A new American apologetics: American suicide

By Phill Kline

President Obama's established protocol of bowing to foreign heads of state reflects the desired apologetics of the left and is an expression of apology, rather than respect. For to the left, America has committed the gravest of sins in the post modern world — America has believed in Truth with a capital T.

Apologetics is defined as the act of defending one's faith. The effort is to persuade through reason to one's point of view. For generations America believed its founding principles were supported by reason and, therefore, worth defending and promoting. This, not the Obama apology, is true apologetics.

The New American Apologetics, however, apologizes for America and assumes that American principles are suspect or, at most, on par with the views of the rest of the world. President Obama's actions reflect the belief of America's cultural elite — that America is stale and out of touch.

The American promise has fired the human spirit for the past two and a quarter centuries. Self-evident truths writ large by the highest moral authority — God, have compelled civil action to respect the integrity and value of human life and liberty.

The promise of our Declaration of Independence given structure in a Constitution has stood the test of time. The American experiment still stands in defiance to the dominant historical trend of government's tyranny against man.

The most dramatic reflection of America's commitment to oppose such tyranny is found in our Bill of Rights — the most anti-democratic document in human history.

The Bill of Rights rests on our societal recognition that a higher moral authority than government gave value to humankind at the moment of creation. Government, therefore, is morally compelled to respect that inherent value through just and righteous laws.

This belief arose from Judeo/Christian values and specifically from the Old Testament of the Bible which gave birth to Western legal thinking. This thinking over time developed a method of synthesis that allowed man's conflicts to be resolved by reason. Reason was used to identify larger applicable principles all of which pointed towards the fixed truths that emanate from faith in God.

The first expression of such thinking found publication at the hands of the Monk Gracian who wrote the "Concordance of Discordant Cannons" in 1140 A.D. The Concordance took apparently competing pronouncements of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the only Christian church of the time, and reconciled those pronouncements by applying reason in search of truth. This "synthesis" is the beginning point of the true "tolerance" we so value today, a tolerance founded on the Truth that all persons are created equal. The foundation of such tolerance rests on the search for truth.

The ability to reconcile conflicts with a focus on truth, however, requires a common faith in the author of that truth. America's founding reflected faith in these capital "T" truths and the author. Such true tolerance is not possible without truth. In contrast, the modern "tolerance" promoted by the left supports the proposition that all ideas, not people, are created equal. Such leaves those who oppose injustice without recourse to reason but only to physical power.

As America rolled through the last two centuries it confronted a world that challenged the true American faith — Marxism, Totalitarianism, Nazism and Socialism. Each responded to America's values with the a challenging question: says who?

Facing the Soviet bloc America proclaimed that you cannot enslave a population to serve the state! Says who, the Soviets replied. America challenged Hitler's genocide and Japanese aggression by speaking of human liberty and dignity, to which the Axis powers asked — says who.

America responded with the Truth for America had faith in the author of that Truth. Such response still inspires tens of thousands to leave all and risk all to come to these shores. America did not bow, it led.

The current assault on America is nothing new. Our enemies still point to our hypocrisies in an effort to invalidate our founding truths. And our hypocrisies exist.

Yet, hypocrisy will always exist if there is a measure of truth for we are of a fallen nature. The fact that Truth beyond man exists provides us the measuring stick for man's actions and accordingly allows us to identify and condemn hypocrisy and untruth. Without Truth, there is not a measuring stick and therefore, the absence of hypocrisy and more significantly there is no wrong and no way to condemn wrong.

Hitler was not hypocritical, he was evil! And evil must be confronted with Truth, not tolerance.

Hypocrisy does not defeat the truth, it, if allowed, reveals the truth. We must always be willing to self examine but self examination requires a comparison to a standard. This is how we learn from our mistakes without abandoning our principles.

At times such lessons come with a high cost. Thus, the American hypocrisy of slavery was fully revealed in a dramatic and costly war. Yet, the American promise withstood this challenge.

When in the conflict, the question of slavery came to its full illumination, Abraham Lincoln was left without any answer but to invoke the Author of Truth.

Who says that slavery should be abolished from the land? Not the Constitution, it expressly allowed slavery. Not Congress, for it had failed to promote abolition while the nation was united. Not Mr. Lincoln, for he had once pledged to preserve slavery where it then existed in order to preserve the union. President Lincoln was left with only one source of authority — says God, that's who!

And so, in his Second Inaugural address, in the midst of war, Lincoln spoke of the war stating "if God wills that (war) continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

And so has America responded. To communism, with resolve. To Nazism with sacrifice. And to tyranny, with promise. Our nation's strength is not our diversity, but rather those truths that bring people of a diverse background to a common understanding.

Yet, now, instead of leading the world by revealing those truths through "apologetics" we are sacrificing those truths through apology. For to modernists like our President, America has committed sin writ large — it has been intolerant to a world which largely thinks contrary to American ideals. In other words, America has been intolerant of injustice and intolerant of exploitation.

In the past, we recognized that "tolerance" meant that all persons were created equal by a higher moral authority who instilled value in human life at creation. Today, our cheap form of tolerance means that all ideas are created equal since there is not any higher moral authority than man.

And so our dilemma. How shall we accommodate modern man's belief that all truth emanates from man, if it exists at all, with a demand that people follow our truth expressed through liberty and a representative democracy? We can't. And so we bow.

Now the President and the American left call for diversity and acceptance of cultures and peoples who seek our destruction, who believe women should be silenced, owned and exploited and many that worship collectivism and the state.

This is not done as a show of respect, but rather a seeking of forgiveness. For the President is sending the message that we have not had the right to try to forward our own truth, for we must be "tolerant" of world views, even those that promote intolerance.

For herein lies the rub for post-modern man. If God is dead, who shall fill the void? Democracy? Simply two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner, if virtue is not in the equation. Nine justices in robes? They once protected slavery. Our guns, tanks and bombers? Is not this the American "imperialism" so often pilloried by the left. Thomas Jefferson? Mr. Jefferson is dead.

And so President Obama, when bowing to those who would enslave us, diminishes the promise of America to merely an American demand backed by brute power — expressing the American arrogance he claims to want to change. Or, in an act of unmeasured arrogance and naivety, the President believes his "charm" can direct the policies of foreign nations.

This shall not lead the world to a new hope but rather the tyranny of the perception of reasonableness. In a world without truth the appearance of reasonableness is given greater value than standing on principles.

And now, America is faced with its greatest challenge. The internal doubt about those truths that give meaning to the American promise. Those doubts are eroding our national respect for a rule of law that reflects those values. For if truth is merely pronounced by man-made law then truth is ever changeable and malleable. And if we agree that the majority can oppress the minority through the operation of law, as we do believe, then law can be merely a reflection of oppression and therefore, we are morally justified in defying law.

And so what compels the powerful to write just laws and what compels us to obey law? Nothing but power, for man unleashed from truth is a "godlet" and man as god has been tyrannical indeed.

© Phill Kline