America: Don't Lose Your Focus

Focus is the key to just about any successful endeavor. Life, in general takes focus, or we continually lose our way. So it is with great struggles, too. Had Hercules lost focus, his god-like virility would not have been enough to sustain him during his labors. Had Mozart, or da Vinci, or Galileo lacked focus, our world would have had its store of beauty and knowledge incomprehensibly diminished. And had Moses or Christ lost their focus during their trials, what then?
The same is true for politics. There is no doubt that Pastor Jones, the self-proclaimed defender of Christianity and Constitutionalism, is a fool, a whack-job, a nut-case, an extremist (pick your appropriate pejorative). I do not condone his intentions, belief system, or actions. He is a disgrace to mankind in general and Christianity in particular. I stand with true peace-loving Muslims in their outright condemnation of his intent and character.
However, let’s not lose our focus as a country. The assertion that Jones and his ilk are responsible for the animus directed at the U.S. is a pathetic and weak argument. While his action would no doubt stir up animosity and resentment in the Muslim world (and possibly put our troops in peril), the hatred itself was already there, and has been for a very long time. Nor should we take our eyes off Imam Rauf, the controversial Imam of the proposed Park51 project. In comparison to Rauf, an extremist disguised as a “moderate,” Jones is insignificant, a proverbial “blip” on the radar screen of history. Rauf, with his ties to the Moslem Brotherhood and The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is part of a larger stealth network of extremists who underhandedly promote political Islam while simultaneously pretending to be interested in peace and the advancement of democracy. In this context, Jones merely plays a hapless puppet Islamic extremists can use as an excuse to foment terror. However, they would do this regardless of Jones, or Bush, or anyone, in reality, because this is their belief system and their commandment to do so. By preying on our need to undeniably demonstrate tolerance, people such as Rauf and his underground associates create the synergy and façade needed to dupe both their Muslim counterparts as well as liberal Americans bent on proving their need to pay penance for being descendants of “oppressors.”
Unfortunately, you only get the surface level from the media. Radicals, again posing “compassionate moderates” now rule this country, and their figurehead is Obama. If this sound far fetched, consider this: When was the last time we as a country passed nearly 5,000 pages of legislation, but didn’t know its contents, or spent nearly one trillion dollars with absolute no ability to pay for it without enslaving our children and grandchildren with crushing debt? When was the last time we openly prosecuted a state for enforcing border security while turning our back on citizens whose very lives are in danger? Is that radical enough, or do we need more evidence?
Here is the reality:
We are at war with two ideas: one, based on the principles of individual freedom as enshrined in the Constitution, and the other on collective salvation, as enshrined in Das Kapital. There is little compromise here; they are incompatible for the most part.
One path leads to liberty and prosperity, the other to tyranny and oppression. Democracy and capitalism are by no means a perfect system, but therein lies the folly of those who espouse a utopian view of mankind, for neither mankind, nor the political structures he creates, are perfectible, and attempts to fashion such perfection lead to corruption, depravity, and untold suffering. The road of history is littered with the detritus of failed utopian attempts and paved with the bones of its subjects. From Marx and Lenin, to Mao and Castro, to Chavez, how many innocent people must give their lives and liberties to assuage the appetite of dictators promoting "social justice" and "equality" while perpetrating death and mayhem before we understand this system, no matter how noble its aim, is inherently evil in its consequences?
Rauf will gladly trod this path to supremacy, and use our institutions of democracy to achieve his ultimate objective. Jones’s skull and the skeletons of the academic elite will serve as stepping stones to this altar, though they are too blind to see how they are being used. Ironically, Muslim extremists, who have hijacked a religion and are using it to propel their own nightmarish vision, are incompatible with the liberal networks they are manipulating. Religion by its essence is about God and his relationship to his people, and God is antithetical to those who believe government should fill this void. So in the end, those who are bending over backwards to accommodate will put the nails in their own coffins. This is what happens when you focus on the wrong things.