This is a great article written prior to the 2004 Presidential Election. The highlighted points I would make is more on the morality of the article. Enjoy!
(AgapePress) – Most everyone remembers the phrase made famous by James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.” In order to keep everyone “on message,” Carville, a brilliant political strategist, hung it on a sign in Bill Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters. Despite President Bush’s high approval ratings in the polls after a war with Iraq, the mantra resonated with the nation and Bush lost to Clinton in 1992 because most people were concerned with their pocketbooks.
No one can rightly deny the importance of economic matters to the country. However, when a culture measures and considers everything in terms of dollars and cents, it’s subject to lose its soul.
Bill Clinton is a case in point. No president ever did more to assault American ideals. His administration was rift with scandals, habitual lying and abuse of power. He defiled the presidency. Yet given the opportunity, the American people would likely re-elect him today because of his record on the economy.
Are we selling out? I think this is exactly the case. In fact, I will go so far as to suggest that God was rebuking our covetous ways, when on 9/11 — the World Trade Center, America’s great monument to materialism — was the object of a terrorist attack. In chapter 5 of his epistle, the apostle James solemnly warns the nation that makes money its God: “Come now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days” (Ja. 5:1-3). Wealth can so easily eat away like a malignancy, and make us lose our sense of priorities.
Never before has America’s temptation to supplant core values with a trust in money been more glaringly obvious than in the 2004 presidential election. And never before has our nation’s future been more at risk.
Presidential candidate John Kerry supports abortion rights. He opposed a partial-birth abortion ban as undermining a woman’s so-called right to choose. President George W. Bush signed a partial-birth abortion ban into law. Concerning abortion in general, Kerry says: “We Democrats want to protect the constitutional right of privacy and make clear that at the center of this struggle is our commitment to have a Supreme Court that will protect … the right to choose in this nation.” Since being elected president, Bush has vigorously sought to keep his campaign promise “that every child, born and unborn, ought to be protected in law and welcomed into life.”
According to WorldNetDaily, John Kerry has “declared opposition to same-sex marriage, but two years ago he signed a letter issued by homosexual Rep. Barney Frank urging Massachusetts state lawmakers to drop an amendment limiting nuptials to a man and a woman.” In 1996, Kerry opposed similar legislation saying it was akin to efforts of the 1960s to prohibit interracial marriages. He was one of only 14 Senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act. President Bush, however, has boldly come out against gay marriage in support of a Constitutional amendment clarifying the sacred institution as being between one man and one woman.
Kerry also boasts of being strong on national security by pointing to his support for $200 billion in intelligence funding in the last seven years. But just two years after the first attack on the World Trade Center, Kerry proposed cuts in intelligence spending. He has also voted against weapons programs such as the B-1 and B-2 bombers, F-15 Eagle and Tomcat fighters, Apache helicopter, and the Patriot and Trident missiles. Plus, he sought to cut funding for programs including the M-1 Abrams tank, Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Tomahawk Cruise Missile, and the F-16 Falcon fighter jet. Two decades ago, Kerry called for an end to President Reagan’s military buildup that was responsible for winning the Cold War. A few years later, he opposed the first Gulf War. These are not the actions of a leader genuinely committed to a strong national defense.
No doubt this is why North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Il, recently called a press conference announcing his preference for Kerry over President Bush. According to an excellent editorial by The Times News (Burlington, NC), the North Korean “media relentlessly excoriates Bush, it plays up polls showing Kerry could defeat the president, spotlights Kerry’s claims that Bush deceived the world on Iraqi weapons programs, broadcasts Kerry speeches and replays the Senator’s pledge to adopt a ‘sincere attitude’ toward North Korea if elected — all music to the ears of a regime that has an estimated 150,000 Koreans in forced labor camps created to punish alleged political dissidents and their family members, as well as North Koreans who fled to China but were forced back by the Chinese government. The Timesspeculates this is because the North Koreans believe a President Kerry — an avowed internationalist not known as a hard-liner on national security — would be easier to deal with on nuclear proliferation and other issues than the more hawkish Bush Administration.” Indeed, and what does this tell us about the way the rest of the “world’s tyrants, aggressors and nuclear proliferators are sizing up the two candidates”?
Except for the State’s right to acknowledge God, nothing is more fundamental to our nation’s character than its commitment to protect the most innocent and helpless among us (unborn babies), the sanctity of marriage and the homeland. Nevertheless, Kerry’s campaign insists most Americans are concerned about jobs and the economy, not values-based issues. That may certainly be true, if a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll is correct that says voters would likely choose Kerry over Bush by a 53 to 46 percent margin.
I’m not one for insulting people’s intelligence, but this overemphasis on economics makes me want to shout from the rooftops: “It’s not the economy, stupid!!!” Instead, it’s our nation’s soul that’s at stake. What shall it profit if everyone has a job and the economy is booming, yet we forfeit our future in the aborted masses, lose marriage and the family through redefinition, and our freedoms are taken by despots unrelentingly plotting our demise. Though the economy is currently improving with every passing day — it shouldn’t matter even if it wasn’t — when it’s a choice between economics and principles essential to the nation’s survival, values are what matter most!!!
