A sense of reality has deserted us. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t count all of us in that, only those who seem oblivious to the threats that continue to emanate from enemies. Yes, there are enemies; they aren’t all just a bunch of misunderstood people. Believe it or not—and some find this hard to believe—some people want to kill us. They don’t like the Judeo-Christian roots of our social order. They seek to set up a new law—Sharia—that will destroy the basis for all law in the Western world. Yet some just don’t get it.

Have you seen those bumper stickers? The message is that all religions are really the same; we all simply need to get along. This is the height of naiveté. Those who don’t recognize the danger, and who desire to avoid confrontation with evil, will eventually succumb to it. Neville Chamberlain, anyone?

There are those on the progressive/liberal wing of politics who are far more concerned for the welfare of enemies than their own fellow citizens. In some cases, it’s downright despicable:

How foolish we have become—and callous to the true moral horrors of the age.

King David, the psalmist, said it well:

Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. …

Let those be ashamed and dishonored who seek my life; let those be turned back and humiliated who devise evil against me.

Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the Lord driving them on. Let their way be slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them. …

Let destruction come upon him unawares, and let the net which he hid catch himself; into that very destruction let him fall.

Amen. May it be so.

Yousef Nadarkhani lives under a sentence of death. Iran plans to execute him for the crime of being a Christian pastor. It all  began in 2009 when Nadarkhani objected to his children being indoctrinated into Islam in the school they were required to attend. He was standing for parental rights as well as the Christian faith.

His outspoken views led to his arrest and the eventual death penalty sentence. This has created a furor in what could be called the remnant of the civilized world. In a rare moment of moral clarity, even the Obama administration has spoken against this unjust sentence. Republicans and Democrats alike unite in admonishing the Iranian regime and calling for Nadarkhani’s release.

Iran is under some pressure, therefore, to review the case. At one point this past week, his lawyer believed there was a 95% chance that the verdict would be overturned. Then, amazingly, the Iranian government changed its tactics—no, Nadarkhani was not being sentenced to death for being a Christian; rather, it was because he had raped someone and even ran a brothel.

That one doesn’t survive the laugh test. It is so transparently false that no one is buying it. These false accusations are reminiscent of the Stalin Show Trials of the 1930s or how Hitler got rid of his enemies: concoct a fantastic story without a shred of evidence and use it to advance the goals of the regime.

What’s going to happen to Pastor Nadarkhani? No one knows for sure yet, but it doesn’t look hopeful. In the midst of this, though, one thing is crystal clear—this man is a model of Christian steadfastness and devotion to the One who saved him from sin. His refusal to deny his Savior is a testimony to the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit. His life—and perhaps his death—will serve as a sobering reminder to Western Christians that we are not simply playing a religious game. We are eternal beings with either heaven or hell awaiting us, and we must answer the call to be faithful, even unto death.

Think of Yousef Nadarkhani; pray for him and for his family. Let his life be an inspiration to those of us who claim the name of Christ.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared some insights from Mark Steyn’s indispensable book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. Let me wrap up that sharing with some thoughts from his concluding chapter.

Steyn’s main thesis is that the West is losing its culture and is bowing before an ascendant Islam, which will destroy the West if it’s not challenged. At the root of the problem is the new devotion to multiculturalism. While it may sound nice on the surface, one need only peer just beneath that surface to see the rot on which this philosophy is built. Consider this historical example:

In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee”—the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Steyn declares that “non-judgmental multiculturalism is an obvious fraud,” and he is correct. From a Biblical understanding of the world, one must make moral judgments. If we don’t, we will face disaster:

But if you think you genuinely believe that suttee is just an example of the rich, vibrant tapestry of indigenous cultures, you ought to consider what your pleasant suburb would be like if 25, 30, 48 percent of the people around you really believed in it too. Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own: it is, thus, the real suicide bomb.

How does this apply to the Islamic threat? Steyn explains:

After September 11, the first reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, so did the Prince of Wales, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, the prime minister of Canada and many more. And, when the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died away, you couldn’t help feeling that this would strike almost any previous society as, well, bizarre. Pearl Harbor’s been attacked? Quick, order some sushi and get me into a matinee of Madam Butterfly! Seeking to reassure the co-religionists of those who attack you that you do not regard them all as the enemy is a worthy aim but a curious first priority. And, given that more than a few of the imams in those mosque photo-ops turned out to be at best equivocal on the matter of Islamic terrorism and at worst somewhat enthusiastic supporters of it, it involved way too much self-deception on our part.

Although the following comments are not Steyn’s final ones in the book, they serve admirably as final ones for this blog:

At the heart of multiculturalism is a lie: that all cultures are equally “valid.” To accept that proposition means denying reality—the reality of any objective measure of human freedom, societal health, and global population movement. Multiculturalism is not the first ideology founded on the denial of truth. You’ll recall Hermann Goering’s memorable assertion that “two plus two makes five if the Fuhrer wills it.” Likewise, we’re asked to accept that the United States Constitution was modeled on the principles of the Iroquois Confederation—if a generation of multiculti-theorists, the ethnic grievance lobby, and even a ludicrous resolution of the United States Congress so wills it.

Still, it’s harmless, isn’t it? What’s wrong with playing make-believe if it helps us all feel warm and fuzzy about each other?

Well, because it’s never helpful to put reality up for grabs. There may come a day when you need it.

If you haven’t read this book yet, you need to do so.

The Arab Spring, so beloved by the media, is closer to the Islamist Ascendancy. Western blindness, as I’ve noted before, keeps us from recognizing the reality. In Egypt, the crowds listen to an imam who calls for the killing of all Jews. The streets erupt with jubilant agreement. Where are the reports of this? What is taking place in the Islamic world is the rise of the jihadists who want to kill us all. If you don’t think that’s the case, you’re not paying attention.

That’s why I’ve written so many posts with quotes from Mark Steyn’s America Alone. He gets it. Steyn comments,

If this were World War One, with their fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western Civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.

What’s the nub of the problem?

Meanwhile, we fight the symptoms—the terror plots—but not the cause: the ideology. The self-imposed constraints of this war—legalistic, multilateral, politically correct—are clearer every day. “Know your enemy,” they say. They know us very well. Do we know them at all?

Steyn wrote those words in 2005, back when we had an administration that had a better handle on the problem [although Bush also gave too much credit to Islam as a "religion of peace"]. What do we face today with Barack Obama in the White House?

He may have made the final decision to take out Osama bin Laden, but that was merely one action against an individual responsible for running a terror network. Does he really understand the immensity of this network? Does he understand and not care? Where are his sympathies? Take a poll of the Israeli people, and you have your answer.

Blindness is one thing; empathy for those who seek to commit genocide is something else.

In 2008, most commentators treated Mike Huckabee as a fringe candidate who had no chance of winning anything. When he won the Iowa caucuses, they were stunned. He was the last candidate to stay in the race with McCain. He performed well above expectations. For that reason, he was considered one of the frontrunners this year until he decided not to make that run.

I mention the Huckabee example as a preface to writing about another such candidate this time around: Herman Cain. No one among the “official” punditry gives him any chance of winning the Republican nomination, yet he has shown surprising strength early on. In polls focusing on primary voters, he has consistently been in the lead or very close to it. At the mini-debate that took place recently among five of the contenders, the focus group at the end was virtually unanimous in declaring him the winner.

Just who is this man? Is he for real, or will he be no more than a footnote once this campaign ends?

Cain has never held public office. He tried once to receive the Republican nomination for senator from Georgia, but fell short. Why, then, does he think he can be successful in this quest?

Herman Cain says he is running because God wants him to do something significant with the rest of his life. He survived stage IV cancer, and shares a heartfelt testimony of how God led him through that ordeal and brought him out on the other side cancer free.

While that is great, and an inspirational story, what has he done with his life up to this point that makes him think he can be president?

Cain has a broad background in business. He began as a business analyst for Coca-Cola, then, with the Pillsbury company, rose to the level of vice president. Pillsbury owned Burger King at the time, and put Cain in charge of four hundred of those fast-food restaurants in the Philadelphia area, a region that was the least profitable in the country. In three years, he had made it into the most profitable.

Pillsbury was so pleased with his success that it gave him a new job—save another of its subsidiaries, Godfather’s Pizza, from going under. As CEO of that company, Cain worked his business magic again, making it profitable within fourteen months. He eventually left Godfather’s to become CEO of the National Restaurant Association. In addition to all of that business acumen, he was appointed to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, where he served as chairman one year.

In other words, Cain is not a nobody; he has a resumé of success in the business and financial world.

What about the issues? Where does he stand?

On economics, he is a Reagan-style Republican devoted to less regulation and lower taxes. In fact, as with Huckabee, he is a supporter of the Fair Tax proposal, which would do away with all income taxes and go to a consumption tax instead. Bottom line: you keep all your money and then pay taxes only on what you decide to buy.

As a dedicated Christian evangelical, Cain opposes abortion and seeks to defund Planned Parenthood. He opposes same-sex marriage and supports the Defense of Marriage Act.

He’s also vocal about his concerns that there are some in the Muslim community who desire to construct Sharia law in the United States.

Education? Performance incentives for teachers; charter schools; voucher systems.

Energy? Drill more on our own land, even in ANWR; allow the private sector to develop alternative sources without government interference.

Healthcare? Repeal Obamacare and let the free market rule.

Immigration? Secure the border; no amnesty.

Cain is pro-Israel, pro-Second Amendment, and says his favorite Supreme Court justices are Scalia and Thomas.

If he can communicate effectively, who knows what might happen? I am not at this time declaring my support for his nomination, but I do believe he deserves a closer look. Will he be able to withstand the pressure that comes from increased scrutiny? Will he avoid a major gaffe along the way?

He has developed some significant grassroots support. Is it enough? I’m going to be watching with great interest.

In 2005, Britain finally took one of the most incendiary imams in the country to court. Abu Hamza was well known in the UK due to stories about him in the tabloid newspapers. They called him “Hooky” because he had lost his hands in an “accident” while in Afghanistan in 1991. As Mark Steyn relates in America Alone,

On trial in London for nine counts of soliciting to murder plus various other charges, he retained the services of a prestigious Queen’s Counsel, who certainly came up with an ingenious legal strategy: “Edward Fitzgerald, QC, for the defence, said that Abu Hamza’s interpretation of the Koran was that it imposed an obligation on Muslims to do jihad and fight in the defence of their religion. He said that the Crown case against the former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque was ‘simplistic in the extreme.’ He added: ‘It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran itself.’”

If the Koran permit, you must acquit? Brilliant. To convict would be multiculturally disrespectful: if the holy book of the religion of peace recommends killing infidels, who are we to judge? SIAC, the United Kingdom’s anti-terrorist court, found in 2003 that a thirty-five-year-old Algerian male had “actively assisted terrorists who have links to Al Qaeda.” But he was released from Belmarsh Prison the following year because jail cases him to suffer a “depressive illness.”

By Western standards, every Islamic terrorist is “depressive”—for a start, as suicide bombers, they’re suicidal. What’s impressive about these “unassimilated” Islamists is the way the pick up on our weaknesses so quickly—the legalisms, the ethnic squeamishness, the bureaucratic inertia. The courtroom evens the playing field to the enemy’s advantage.

Is this what we’ve come to in our quest to make everyone feel good? Are we being multicultured to death—literally?

As commentators flail around in their attempt to explain what’s happening, most, even from the conservative side, miss the key ingredient in our demise: the loss of a Biblical Christian worldview to inform us of eternal right and wrong, of the distinction between righteousness and evil.

As a society, we are generally blind to the real problem; therefore, we don’t know the real solution. Only the reestablishment [not by the government, but by earnest persuasion/argumentation] of a Biblical foundation for our thinking can set us back on the path to genuine knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

If anyone still retained any doubt about where President Obama stands on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, that doubt should be gone now. In his speech yesterday, the president actually called for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders.

History reminder: in 1967, the nation of Israel fought the Six-Day War against its Arab “neighbors”—that term is more outlandish than descriptive. As a result of that war, this tiny country added more territory, which has caused great consternation in the Arab world ever since. Keep in mind, though, what Israel looked like prior to this war:

Notice that the width of Israel at one point was a grand total of nine miles. Tel Aviv was only eleven miles from its enemies, and Jerusalem was controlled by the Arabs, despite it being the ancient capital of the Jews.

The problem? The radicals who currently control the Palestinian territories want to kill every last Israeli. Even if Israel would agree to go back to those ludicrous borders that would wreak havoc with their defense, the radicals would not be satisfied. They are on record as saying nothing will satisfy them but the elimination of every Jew in the land.

We’re talking Hitler-style elimination here. We’re talking pure evil.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rightly rejected Obama’s call to return to those borders. It will be interesting to see what comes of the meeting between the two today. Israel has reason to worry. It does not have a friend in the White House.

What is the source of this animus toward Israel by Obama? Keep in mind his twenty-plus years of attendance at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “church” in Chicago, a “church” that preaches a combination of unhistorical Afrocentrism and Marxist-inspired liberation theology. This is a “church” that has put declarations from Hamas in its bulletins on Sunday mornings. What does Hamas seek to do? Annihilate Israel.

Obama sees the Israelis as occupiers, and the Palestinians as the oppressed. Well, they certainly are oppressed, but I counter that the source of their oppression is their own so-called leadership.

Obama will mouth the right words about the right of Israel to defend itself, but his actions continually undermine any soothing words he may utter.

As an evangelical Christian, I support Israel because I believe Biblical history: God used this nation as His conduit for bringing the Truth and the Light of the gospel into this world. I also don’t believe He’s done working with this people.

But even if I weren’t an evangelical supporter—even if I were assessing this situation as a confirmed secularist—I would be alarmed at the attempt to undercut the one ally we have in the Middle East, and the only one that allows its people a real voice in their government. A Middle East without Israel would be a complete cesspool of radical Islamist tyranny.

We abandon Israel at the risk of turning the entire Middle East over to our worst enemies. When they are done with Israel, they will turn on us with an even greater invective than we have witnessed thus far.

We must stand by Israel at all costs.