Memo to BHO: Enemies aren't 'just like us'

For months I've tried to show why Obama is unfit to be president. I have recently focused on his "spread the wealth" socialist economic plan, his years in church listening to a hate-spewing pastor and his time at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge with William Ayers -- but my first and biggest concern with Obama has always been in the area of foreign policy. Barack Obama's foreign policy is typical among the left's "internationalist" wing -- those who see themselves as "citizens of the world", and who come to look at international cooperation as not simply a means but an end in itself. Obama has worked during the campaign to sharpen his edge and give the voters a sense that he will not hesitate to use force to protect America -- something any candidate in this day and age must say. But his inclinations are toward multilateralism, and he has said clearly that as president one of his first orders of business will be to bring "humility" to U.S. foreign policy -- principally by listening to the ideas and needs of other nations. My sense is that Barack Obama will return the U.S. to a "U.N./EU first" kind of foreign policy, where we are careful not to offend while trying to protect our interests both here and home and abroad. It won't work.

My concerns about Obama and foreign policy have been heightened (if that is possible) over the past few days by two events.

First, I was extremely troubled reading an interview given to the New Yorker's Nicholas Lehman by senior Obama military adviser Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Ret.). This interview reinforces Obama's internationalism, but it does so in a very dangerous way:

"Gration was impatient with the idea that conflict is the natural state of the world, to be managed rather than resolved. “People are more alike than their cultures and religions,” he said. “When Obama talks about global citizens, it’s the same framework. You see, religion and culture - they’re the way people communicate their values. They want stability, order, education. This is just humanness. Then you add on your religion, your culture - that’s how you execute it.” His implication was that if we can get past the religious and cultural identities that serve as host organisms for conflict, and deal with people at the level of their humanity and their basic needs, then we can make real progress - especially if Obama personally holds an office that permits him to set the tone and lead the effort (emphasis added)."

The "level of their humanity"? What humanity is that? You mean the humanity that beheads prisoners and blows up buildings?  Or straps explosives on the bodies of children in martyrdom operations?   Oh, but of course, this is another extension of "the One" using his cult of personality to sit down with radical jihadists and find a "common ground".  This is udoubtedly one of the more dangerous statements I have heard since 9/11.  It is also typical of the left which does not wish to admit that radical Islam exists and is fundamentally an extension of the teaching of Islam itself. 

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised by this, for it is prototypical idealism at work -- the notion that people's values are essentially the same, and that it is some external factor (poverty, oppression, imperialism) that makes people violent. Forget the fact that the perpetrators of 9/11 and the suicide bombers in London on 7/7/2005 were all educated, middle class Muslims who were indoctrinated with hatred. They were not poor or oppressed. They were, however, evil. This is something that the Obama team apparently can't get their minds around.

We should all be very afraid of this.

Second is the statement that Joe Biden made yesterday in Seattle before a liberal audience that he expects that in the first six months of an Obama administration, the U.S. will be attacked. He fears that our enemies will test the young president, much like the Soviets did Kennedy in 1961-1962. Here's what Biden said (courtesy of the The Weekly Standard):

"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right."

This is troubling on several levels. It seems to be an acknowledgement that Obama represents a weak, inexperienced leader who invites an attack -- and that from what Biden is saying that Obama is going to flub the response -- at least initially -- and will need support and understanding. This is not confidence inspiring coming from the #2 spot on the Democratic ticket.

But it is not the 1960s anymore -- and while the stakes during the Berlin blockade and the Cuban missile crisis could hardly have been higher, our enemy was operating within the same rationality model that we were. It is clear that Khruschev and the Soviets backed down from Cuba because they understood that they could not survive a nuclear confrontation with the U.S. In other words, rationality prevailed. We don't have such a luxury today -- when we face an enemy who seeks suicidal martyrdom in their evil deeds. There is no rational basis (at least Western-style) where deterrence works with Islamic jihadists.

So if we are attacked, the devastation could be enormous -- and our response will be less far less important than the initial attack against us.  

Can we really afford this kind of on-the-job-training in the era of suicide bombing?

Enough with the Euro-smugness

From east to west, living room to board room, Americans are watching a slew of disturbing TV news stories . The focus of the citizen is overwhelmingly on the economy and his or her own, modest and hard earned treasure pile. This is not surprising, after all the Dow is behaving like a drunken clam and the finance sector is as chaotic as a college department meeting. The media is constantly rattling everyone’s cages and our commercial breaks are now plagued with the most annoying ads known to man: those of the goldbug.

In the depths of an election the worry meter on many Americans is high. We all want answers to our economic question and, in general, want to see this country restored to a place of prosperity, power, and might. But across the eastern ocean, in the world-weary lands of Western Europe, a strange and different dialogue is bubbling to the surface. In it, the cause for America’s troubles is not practical or function but moral and the feeling is not of despair but strangely, of glee.

As the United States hits a rather large bump in the road, many in Europe’s chattering class are taking up a rather despicable tone. This tone, in the forefront hammers home the idea that America’s Economic woes derive somehow from moral failing, that her age of dominance is over, and that both are happy occasions to root onward.

Moral supremacy and the role as judge has always been a part of the European tradition. Since 2000, this proclivity has been primarily focused against the United States and Israel in discussions that usually, either, apologize for Islamic terrorism, lift up the European ‘way’ as just, or simply scapegoat America for a host of domestic European problems. Recently, full and front page articles have popped up in major European papers claiming that the age of American dominance is over.

Strangely these articles and comments come with, not just a statement of fact, but a moral judgment and indictment of American and her way of life. Quite often the words ‘redneck’ ‘bubba’ and ‘empire’ appear when authors mention America and her apparently lost power.

Moreover, in these periodicals there is also an obvious bit of smug cheer. That is to say, that Americans current crisis is not just mentioned it is cheered on with a form of moiling academic demonology. In these circles, somehow, the financial troubles of America and Americans is actually a good thing.

Such feelings and statements are as uninformed as they are vile. To state things as they are and point out fault is one thing; but to actually root for calamity and chaos is quite another. Moreover, it is quite self-destructive. An important fact seems to escape most European chatterers, that is, if America ‘goes down’ that Europe will not be far behind.

We have already seen this as European markets have tumbled in the wake of U.S. financial problems. In a more abstract sense, a removal of U.S. power abroad would force Europe to actually grow up. Specifically, they would have to actually spend money on national defense and foreign policy as opposed to simply relying on the ample subsidy provided by both the United States and NATO.

The historian or more mature reader can attest to the fact that such disruptions from Europe are not exactly new. For years, on many European College Campuses, it has been both fashionable and convenient to viciously assail the United States. Such criticism usually comes in the form of vaguely defined critiques of U.S. policies and or a bizarrely styled bit of political wishful thinking that is not founded in the realities of America or Europe.

Even further back it should be remembered that in the 19th century it was the keen desire of many European Nations to subjugated American foreign policy and behavior to their will and call. Happily this did not happen and it is important that it does not happen now. Listening to friends is fine, but doing whatever they say while they slap you in the face is not.

Unfortunately, it is likely that these academic and anemic voices will continue to blame the United States with the smug liberal tone of Maddow, Mahr, Obama and Pelosi. This blame game will probably disparage the United States for the global economic crisis without the responsibility of say acknowledging that Europe readily invested in America and made economic blunders of its own. This is a shame and will only hinder Europe’s own recovery.

Relations between Europe and America have always been complex and full of recrimination. I like Europe, I like their food, silly accents and women, and I also share their desire for close relations. But I don’t appreciate their chattering classes smug back biting and moral judgment. I’d also say that if Europe wants closer relations and wants to influence U.S. policy, it would help if they don’t constantly attack the U.S. with puerile name calling and instead replace it with a real dialogue.

Early Debate Returns: Bad for McCain

I watched the debate tonight with growing frustration at John McCain's failure to attack Obama squarely on his confiscatory economic policies. I've finally come to the conclusion that John McCain is unable (or unwilling) to promote the kind of conservative economic message that I think much of this country is wanting to hear.  Instead, he's splitting hairs with Barack Obama on the economy -- and losing in the process. I'm always interested in the views of Steven Hayes at the Weekly Standard -- he's a smart, reasonable writer who I read frequently.  His review of the debate is that Obama won. Here's part of what he had to say:

"John McCain had a very strong debate tonight. It’s too bad for him that it came on a night when Barack Obama was nearly flawless.

The debate began with questions on the economy and for thirty minutes Obama answered those questions with the kind of substance that I suspect anxious voters wanted to hear and with exactly the right tone – empathic, aggravated and determined. Most important, he spoke to voters in their own language. In his first answer, in response to a question about things the government can do to help average Americans through these tough economic times, Obama spoke of a $400,000 junket that AIG executives took after the government bailed them out. “Treasury should get that money back,” he said, “and those executives should be fired.” Sure, a little demagoguery. But it’s exactly the kind of story – in a debate that included back-and-forth accusations and lots of statistics – that voters will remember and talk about tomorrow with their neighbors.

McCain took that first question and he turned immediately to energy. “Americans are angry, they’re upset and they’re a little fearful. And it’s our job to fix the problem. Now, I have a plan to fix this problem and it’s got to do with energy independence.  It didn’t work. Two months ago, when gas prices were nearing $5 and the cost of oil dominated the headlines, the McCain campaign deftly used anxieties about energy as a proxy for anxieties about the economy. So when McCain proposed to lift the ban on offshore drilling, voters responded positively and the polling reflected their enthusiasm."

This is what I was afraid of: McCain being unable to clearly articulate why Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress is a danger to our economy. The reflexive return of McCain and Palin to the energy issue is a comfort zone and understandable -- but not good enough in this economy. McCain seems unable to explain to the American people that Obama's tax policies and his liberal record will be a poison pill to an economy that needs liquidity. It needs low taxes to fuel growth -- something that simply isn't possible with Obama's tax-and-spend plan.

Even worse, McCain's populist instincts are taking him down the wrong path. Rather than returning to a free-market solution to what should be a free market problem, his instinct is to increase regulation and government control -- exactly what Obama and the Democrats want to do. He again misses a chance at differentiation. Here's Hayes again:

"But while energy issues remain important and cannot be separated from the broader economic picture, the convulsions in world markets over the past two weeks and the need for a $700 billion federal bailout have rendered worries about gas prices and energy independence to second-tier status. It’s not that these issues don’t matter, it’s just that they matter less now than they did over the summer. He later broadened his answer to include spending, tax cuts and his jaw-dropping plan to have the federal government buy up “the bad home loan mortgages in America” to “let people make those payments and stay in their homes.” So bigger government is bad, quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “ignited” the current economic crisis, too much government spending is leaving us broke and we want the U.S. Treasury to renegotiate individual home mortgages? Seriously? No thanks."

No thanks is right. The correct and powerful answer here is to reignite the economy through lower taxes to stimulate jobs and growth so people can pay their mortgages -- NOT to have the government take over that role. This mess in the housing market is partly an issue of personal behavior -- not simply predatory lending. I, for one, am not interested in my tax dollars going to bail out people who made bad decisions. I think many Americans would agree with that. Unfortunately, McCain's instincts don't lead him down that path. He's still in the "Wall Street greed" mode.

I hate to throw in the towel here, but...it is now clear that the issues that many conservatives have with McCain are legitimate and real. That despite his great personal story, his maverick personality often betrays a message that would greatly appeal to a great swath of America. He's actually give people less of a choice by co-opting the position of Obama on so many issues.

My guess is that the polls are not going to be good for McCain after this performance tonight. In a debate where he really needed to help himself, I'm afraid he's come up short.

We'll see.

Words worthless to halt aggression

(London, Oct. 6) The mistaken belief that clever diplomacy was a substitute for force of arms led to Athens’ defeat by Sparta, according to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Two thousand years later the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu- himself a master diplomatist- observed that diplomacy was useful only when it was the “velvet glove adorning the mailed fist.” Finally we recall the 19th century German Chancellor Bismark who famously stated that “ the great questions of the day are decided not by speeches in the Diet but on the battlefield by Blood and Iron.”

These ideas may sound harsh to some contemporary ears but they remain highly applicable in our very imperfect modern world, as the Russian invasion of Georgia reminds us yet again.

Russia’s aggression has rudely shattered illusions and highlighted unpleasant truths worldwide.

Prominently revealed in the wreckage is the terminal disunity of the European Union. While French President Nicholas Sarkozy flew to Moscow to appease Vladimir Putin- reminding many of Neville Chamberlain’s infamous flight to Munich to appease Adolf Hitler- the Presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine flew to Tbilsi to support the embattled President of Georgia.

Besides revealing the stark divide between “Old” and “New” Europe this sad scenario puts a final end to EU dreams of being a coherent diplomatic and military power on a par with Russia, China, and the United States.

Thoughtful commentary across Europe is now realizing the EU is trapped between its ongoing hostility to its nominal American ally and its newly revived fear of Russia’s imperial ambitions. Equally clear is the fact that answers to these challenges are different in virtually every member state and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The major lesson here is that diplomacy and the attendant speeches in the U.N., European Parliament and U.S. Congress are utterly useless absent a credible determination to impose serious consequences on aggressors.

Just as Hitler correctly perceived the flabbiness of the Western democracies at the time of Munich, so too did Putin calculate that he would face no serious consequences for his invasion of Georgia. Also like Hitler, no one should believe that he sees Georgia as Russia’s final territorial acquisition.

The hard lessons that Europe is relearning have considerable implications elsewhere in the world and are highly relevant to the choice Americans will make in the upcoming Presidential election.

Within the coming year the United States will face important decisions regarding the next chapter in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similarly the nuclear confrontation with Iran may reach critical mass.

As their first debate illustrated, Senators McCain and Obama have starkly differing worldviews and approaches to the projection of American power around the globe.

While Obama ritually insists that “all options are on the table” and casually repeats a willingness to send U.S. troops across the Pakistan border, absolutely everything we know about him and the Democratic Party he now leads strongly suggests that the preferred options favor talk over action. These include deference to the U.N., the World Court, the E.U., and “world opinion” generally. He worries that the U.S, is not “liked” and believes this should be corrected by a multilateral approach to just about everything.

When asked how he would handle Russia, Iran or other tyrannies Obama’s usual response is “tough, direct diplomacy." As Hillary Clinton pointed out he has a “naïve belief in the efficacy of sitting down face to face with dictators."

What exactly would he say to them? Does he really believe that his breathtaking eloquence would persuade Putin to leave Georgia, Ahmadinejad not to exterminate Israel, or Kim Il-Jong to cease his nuclear program? Would he be willing to actually threaten them with consequences, even if he lacked the full backing of the U.N., E.U. etc.?

McCain is much more like Truman or Reagan: Utilize diplomacy when helpful, but always be willing to take forceful action when needed. Seek allies whenever possible, but be prepared to go it alone when vital American interests are at stake. McCain’s motto as he noted in the debate is that of his hero Theodore Roosevelt who said “Speak softly and carry a big stick."

The worldview, policy inclinations, and attitude toward their country of these two men is as divergent as their life experiences. Not within living memory has a Presidential election presented Americans with a clearer choice. ---------------- William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.

Echoes of history at 2008 Olympics

The Beijing Olympic Games have replayed not only the international political and cultural story of our generation, but the ultimate, age-old story of heaven and earth themselves. The top three medal-winning countries stand in fascinating relation to one another. Russia, led by Soviet throwback Vladimir Putin who is even now in the process of a hostile occupation of independent Georgia: 36 medals.

China, led by an old-world Communist Politburo which systematically abuses the basic human rights of its people while attempting to project an image of justice and prosperity to the world: 67 medals.

United States, far from perfect but still a beacon of liberty, justice, strength, and real human rights for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the tempest-tossed of the earth, and with one-seventh the population of China: 72 medals.

No mere jingoism or Olympic-week enthusiasm, this synopsis reveals that these Beijing Games are what every Olympic replay is: a microcosm of both the recent and ancient past that produced the athletes and international relations involved in them.

In our case, the recent past is the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. Adolf Hitler attempted to use the 1936 Berlin Games in much the same way China is attempting to use the 2008 Beijing Games: as a demonstration and tour de force of his nation's political, social, and economic advancement, and thereby of his own ideology. Unlike China, he also intended to use the games to display German athletes' physical prowess and genetic superiority over people groups such as ethnic Africans.

The delicious irony was not lost on the world, least of all the United States - my mother told me the story with relish in the suburbs of American Georgia when I was but a lad - when James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens, grandson of a slave and son of a sharecropper, collected four gold medals in track and field events in Berlin while Hitler watched: the 100m dash, the long jump, the 200m dash, and the 4x100m relay. This feat would not be repeated until another American, Carl Lewis, did it in the 2004 Games in Los Angeles, long after Hitler had been swept from the world stage in due ignominy.

Hitler, in the stands on the first day of the Owens events, came down to congratulate German event winners but declined to congratulate any others, including Owens. Owens responded with the same kind of grace American athletes have demonstrated at the 2008 games: "I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany."

Even at home, two Democratic Party presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, neither invited Owens to the White House nor bestowed on him any honors in the wake of his accomplishment. Owens would have to wait for his proper national recognition until the election of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, who heralded Owens as an "ambassador of sports."

Yet while Stalin was enslaving and slaughtering his own countrymen and Hitler was on the verge of enslaving all of Europe, America had shed its own sons' blood to abolish domestic slavery, and despite remaining cultural prejudice at home the descendants of her former slaves had now risen to international acclaim. Nine years after the Owens games the United States would be the main power responsible for defeating Hitler, and for holding Stalin and his ideological heirs in check for another half century until they could be decisely defeated without firing a shot in direct warfare, under the steadfast American leadership of a man for whom, when he died a mere four years ago, Lady Margaret Thatcher suggested that "all the trumpets sounded on the other side," Ronald Reagan.

There is a litany of American Olympic stories as long as the litany of the general international triumphs of the United States. The unlikely conquest by the U.S. national hockey team of the heavily favored Soviet team in 1980 at Lake Placid matches the unlikely conquest of the United States of the technology, logistics, national determination, and financial investment required to put a starred and striped flag - the only such flag to this day - on the moon, or a scientific lander - the only such lander - on the distant planet of Mars, with plans for a manned mission to Mars to come in the near future.

There is the 1972 collection of seven gold medals - an Olympic record until another American surpassed him in 2008 - by swimmer Mark Spitz, or the repeated domination of both springboard and tower diving events by Greg Louganis between 1980 and 1988, to match the American invention of the telephone, the electric light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, the transistor, the Internet, satellite navigation, and many more core technologies that define what it means to live anywhere on earth in the 21st century.

Louganis was of Samoan and Swedish descent and was raised by Greek-American adoptive parents in California. Like Albert Einstein and the other German scientists who fled Hitler's Germany following World War II to establish nuclear technology in the United States, Louganis' adoptive ancestors came to America to be free and to give their descendants the opportunity to prosper.

From every corner of the world during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, they came to America. They replayed, wittingly or not, the coming of the Mayflower and the desire of its passengers to build a nation that was a lighthouse. Even beyond the immigration of Louganis' adoptive family, the symptoms of this mass migration to the land of the free are everywhere to be seen in every Olympic Games, and 2008 is no exception.

The personal coach of lead American women's gymnast Shawn Johnson is Liang Chow, who once competed on the Chinese national gymnastics team then came to America in 1990 to study and coach at the University of Iowa. Johnson is from west Des Moines. The father of American men's gymnast Alexander Artemev is Vladimir Artemev, the former Soviet all-around world gymnastics champion in 1984 before he came to America in 1994 when Alexander was 9. Both became American citizens in 2002.

One searches the Russian and Chinese Olympic teams in vain for any sign of an American who migrated to those countries to achieve athletic greatness or any other kind of greatness not offered in better timber in his native land.

The greatest athletes competing for other nations at the 2008 games, if they have not migrated permanently to the United States, have come to the U.S. to train, compete, and to get an education. Premier Chinese basketball player Yao Ming plays professionally in the American National Basketball Association (NBA), as do Spain's Pao Gasol, Germany's Dirk Nowitzki, Argentina's Manu Ginobili, and every other international basketball great.

The University of Auburn swimming program alone boasts members from Australia, Brazil, Estonia, Denmark, France, Croatia, and Trinidad and Tobago. Arizona State University boasts athletes from Brazil, Canada, Finland, Italy, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Kuwait, and Sweden. At the University of Alabama, swimmers from Ecuador share the pool with ones from Greece, Kazakhstan, Romania, Hungary, and South Africa. In swimming as in so many other international sports, the road to Olympic glory for one's home country usually passes through an American league or university.

They not only came to America to live free, but they came to bring glory back to the land of their ethnic heritage. They came, they worked, they learned, they trained, they sent money home, and with their help America not only mounted athletic conquests to match her economic, social, political, and military conquests - military not in aggression against free, independent states like Putin in Georgia, but military in defense of free, independent states, like Eisenhower in Normandy or Reagan in Nicaragua or Bush in Iraq - and in the process America became a blessing to the nations.

Her 23-year-olds become Olympic legends by winning more gold medals than any other Olympian in history. Her 41-year-old mothers become Olympic legends by winning medals two years after giving birth at the age of 39. Games of size and speed such as basketball are not simply won but dominated by the United States, and her basketball players are celebrated around the world as icons of athletic genius.

Her athletes, in turn, educate the world on why it is at least as cool to love the United States as it is for anyone else to love his or her country, despite widespread international media and political prejudice to the contrary, a prejudice born of too great a sympathy for Russian and Chinese visions of political wisdom. Kobe Bryant, American basketball great, in an interview with NBC's Chris Collinsworth, said a few days ago that when he first received his Team USA basketball jersey he laid it on the bed and "just stared at it." This exchange followed between Collinsworth and Bryant:

Collinsworth: "Where does the patriotism come from inside of you? Historically, what is it?"

Bryant: "Well, you know it's just our country, it's... we believe is the greatest country in the world. It has given us so many great opportunities, and it's just a sense of pride that you have; that you say 'You know what? Our country is the best!'"

Collinsworth: "Is that a 'cool' thing to say, in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you're fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by."

Kobe: "No, it's a cool thing for me to say. I feel great about it, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I mean, this is a tremendous honor."

Bryant may not understand exactly where American greatness comes from, or how the exceptional opportunities he rightly appreciates first developed, but like so many normal, everyday Americans from Bryant's Los Angeles to Shawn Johnson's Des Moines to Michael Phelps' Baltimore, he senses at a deep level that the greatness is real and the greatness is unequaled by another nation.

Americans do not compete at the highest levels in every world sport, to be sure, but the 2008 games have shown once again that they compete at the highest levels on a wider and deeper athletic scale, and across a wider range of ethnicities and people groups producing athletes who call themselves Americans, than any other political entity recognized by the world, past or present.

And American athletes accomplish their feats with the same kind of grace, charity, and universal concern for all nations with which President George W. Bush carries and expresses himself, notwithstanding foolish caricatures everywhere to the contrary.

It is as difficult to pinpoint the source of this grace and charity in American athletes as it is for Kobe Bryant to pinpoint the source of his patriotism, but the question leads beyond the immediate history of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in which the United States has stood at the center of the international epic, back to...

... Plymouth Rock and into the Middle Ages; to the fall of Rome; to the birth and death of Jesus Christ; to the ancient mystery of the Jewish people group that produced both Him and His chief disciple, the Apostle Paul, who compared his efforts to be like Christ to the efforts of an Olympic athlete preparing for his games; and further back still...

...to the vicious world of the ancient Near East out of which the Jews were first called - a world where Everyman was nothing and the king was Everyman, a world of nothing if not one of universal slavery before the Jewish presence illuminated it with the message, the commandments, and the very presence of Yahweh.

The question of grace and charity takes us to these places because the question of grace and charity is, as America has shown the world better than any other nation in the modern era, the real center of history. In the end the Olympic games are only games. They will pass, the glory will fade, the medals will lose their luster, and the records will be broken.

But the presence of grace and charity on the international scene beneath, behind, and in the midst of an unrelenting drive toward victory - the reality of virtue and humility in the face of evil and slight, of national health, endurance, determination, and stability in the face of the rise and fall of international despots, of the promise such national strength represents of a Kingdom yet to be revealed in which grace and charity will find their complete fulfillment and manifestation among every tribe, tongue, and nation - this is the stuff of lasting legends, the story of Earth, and the meaning of the cosmos: that grace and charity, and the God who is their ultimate source, and the peoples who worship that God, become and remain triumphant, though charlatans and derelicts give battle to the end.