So the answer to my question turned out to be yes, America really was going to do this. A historic moment indeed. The hyperbole for once is not exaggerated: this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today.
America has voted for change, apparently. Change from what, precisely? From Bush? But in the second term, Bush stopped being Bush. His foreign policy lurched from paralysis to appeasement (redeemed only by the strategic genius of Gen Petraeus – and what price Petraeus now?) As Frank Gaffney wrote in the Washington Times yesterday, Bush’s Treasury is about to open the way for sharia law to be imposed upon America’s banking system. And it was a Democrat-controlled Congress that helped provoke the sub-prime lending crisis that triggered the current financial meltdown.
What this election tells us is that America voted for change because America is in the process of changing – not just demographically by becoming less white and more diverse, but as the result of a culture war in which western civilisation is losing out to a far-left agenda which has become mainstream, teaching American children to despise the founding values of their country and hijacking discourse by the minority power-grab of victim-culture.
The reaction of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to this undoubted change – not just in the US but in Britain too – shows the intellectual disarray caused by these profound developments. They say politicians must stop trying to hold the cultural line and go instead with the flow of change. In Britain, the Tory party has adopted this strategy. Now there are Republicans saying the same thing.
But John McCain is a Republican who does not fit the old template, who does subscribe to some of this ‘change’ agenda on a number of issues. As a result, he was incapable of attacking Obama on the most important grounds of all: that he stood for values inimical to America’s founding principles. When he did venture into this territory, it was half-cocked and far too late, appearing merely like the desperate throw of a loser. The reason he couldn’t do it earlier was that he had no coherent platform of his own. So why vote for a muddled and erratic quasi-'progressive' when the real thing is a rock star? It cannot be said too emphatically -- the Republicans lost this election. Obama ran a superbly disciplined campaign and he was an impressive candidate, particularly in his calm and stately demeanour throughout. The Republicans screwed up in government, they selected a hopelessly frail and erratic candidate, he ran a shambolic campaign. They deserved to lose.
So now we are promised a change in America’s fundamental values. And they really will be changed. Obama has said in terms that he thinks the US constitution is flawed. America’s belief in itself as defending individual liberty, truth and justice on behalf of the free world will now be expiated instead as its original sin. Those who have for the past eight years worked to bring down the America that defends and protects life and liberty are today ecstatic. They have stormed the very citadel on Pennsylvania Avenue itself.
Millions of Americans remain lion-hearted, decent, rational and sturdy. They find themselves today abandoned, horrified, deeply apprehensive for the future of their country and the free world. No longer the land of the free and the home of the brave; they must now look elsewhere.
I have written many times about concerns over Obama’s links to the Nation of Islam. Now here it is from the horse’s mouth. Ken Timmerman reports:
A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan [Dr Vibert White Jr] tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had ‘an open line between them’ to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.
... In addition to the ideological affinity Obama expressed for the black nationalist movement, White believes that Obama owes much of his success as a public orator to speaking techniques that Farrakhan developed over the years, and exploited for years to great success...As a former minister of the Nation of Islam, I know how they speak,’ White told Newsmax. ‘I don’t know who was training Obama. But that style is not a ministerial style like in the Christian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.’
Daniel Pipes, who has written about Obama’s links to the Nation of Islam, expresses his amazement that a man who tomorrow may become President of the United States should have so many questionable links in the arena of Islam and the Middle East:
Other than Obama's lies about his childhood religion, which cast doubt about his character, all the other connections establish the radical circles he frequented during his Chicago years, associations he is trying hard – and with apparent success - to keep from the attention of just enough voters until after election day.
The response of the Obamanics is to dismiss every such piece of evidence as a ‘smear’. They should consider this. A smear is a lie, or a gross distortion of some kind. You cannot smear someone by telling the truth. None of Obama’s revealed radical connections, deeds or words has been refuted or disproved. Given the volume of them, their consistency throughout his life and political career, the way they chime with what he himself has said and written – including his Philadelphia race speech which, when read carefully, is far more troubling than his enthusiasts have recognised – and the demonstrable lies he has told and evasions he has made about these connections and his early life, it is eminently reasonable to conclude that such information tells us something very important and alarming indeed about his character and world-view.
To believe otherwise is to be irrational. To vote on that basis is to be reckless in the extreme.
The Islamisation of the west is proceeding according to plan, as the Times reports:
Gordon Brown claimed success yesterday in his attempt to persuade Saudi Arabia to help stricken economies by pumping more money into the International Monetary Fund... Lord Mandelson, who was also at the dinner at the Royal Palace, said Mr Brown wanted to ensure that the Saudi King was ‘on the same page’ over the causes of the financial problems and the solutions. ‘We are seeking “buy-in” from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to the necessary response that we all need to make to the turmoil of the international financial system. If we don’t get that money we will fail,’ Lord Mandelson said...
Lord Mandelson said that the Saudis and other Gulf states would now expect a bigger role in global institutions in return for their investment.
You bet they will. Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson are delivering Britain and the west into dhimmitude.*
Dhimmis, ‘protected people,’ are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur’an’s command that they ‘feel themselves subdued’ (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, is part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race.
The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a
panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over
God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
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