High Horse, Hobby Horse, or Stalking Horse?

By William L. Garvin

“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.  In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”  President Barack Obama

Seasoned citizens were often queried as whether it was “live or Memorex.”  Today it’s a question of whether it’s April Fools or whether someone’s getting punked or whether it’s just a “Saturday Night Live” spoof.  In any event, nearly everyone who is paying attention is channeling their inner John McEnroe and screaming “you can’t possibly be serious!”  Even die-hard democrats are bowing their heads, not in reverence but in shame and chagrin, because of the president’s perplexing performance at the National Prayer Breakfast.  It was devastatingly wrong on so many levels.  Furthermore, this event raises significant concern as to whether or not there have been “high crimes” against logic, “misdemeanors” against optics and common decency, and “treason” against historical accuracy, all committed by President Obama.  As a result, anyone other than low information voters must be disturbed as to why our Commander-in-Chief has morphed into the Islamapoligist-in-Chief.  Elections do indeed have consequences that are “coming home to roost!”

As Lou Dobbs noted: “… the president seems to constantly be mounting his high horse.  It’s a wonder that he doesn’t suffer chronic nose bleeds.”  It is usually this president who sits astride the “high horse” with nothing more than a hobby horse foundation.  He’s quick to condemn police for “acting stupidly” without gathering necessary facts but equally quick to caution others not to “rush to judgment” when Nidal Hasan is shouting “allahu Akbar” and slaughtering American soldiers.  He’s quick to perpetuate the Ferguson myth of “hands up, don’t shoot” before the United Nations general assembly but slow to retract or correct his error.  He’s quick to establish red lines and deadlines but they are all sound and fury, signifying nothing as they impotently fade into memory.  He’s slow to defend but quick to condemn the country he was chosen to lead.

 “Crusades’ was not a term that was used until the seventeenth century though the Christian military actions against Muslims started in the late eleventh century.  Muslim military actions, incursions and conquests into Christendom started four centuries before that.   Indeed, Muslims had subjugated nearly two-thirds of the Christian world at the time the Pope initiated the first crusade.  Another significant observation about Islam and Christianity is that Mohammed personally led military actions whereas Jesus the Christ did not.  The early sections of the Quran read more peacefully but the later verses became more aggressive corresponding to the faith’s growth in numbers and strength.  Quran (8:12)—“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.  Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”  There is no similar verse in the New Testament of the Bible.  Nor are there any Christian equivalents for “fatwas” or “jihads.”

Christians do not burn people alive, behead babies, bury people alive, shoot children for watching soccer matches, stone women, keep women from school or driving cars, throw homosexuals off rooftops, or kidnap and rape young girls as a matter of contemporary faith or culture.  Anyone doing so would become an instant pariah and would be vehemently repudiated by the entire Christian community.  Christianity has embraced reform.  Such is not the case in countries under Islamic rule.  We are told that 99.9% of Muslims are moderate.  Where did that number come from?  If so, why are they powerless to eliminate the one-tenth of one percent of violent extremists that is “perverting” their faith?  It’s up to them to clean up their own act.

As for Jim Crow and slavery, the abolitionist movement was fueled from Christian ranks, not from the worlds of academia or government.  Christian leaders such as John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Charles Finney, and Theodore Weld through Martin Luther King labored tirelessly and spearheaded slavery’s demise often at great personal risk.  In his labored invocation of Jim Crow laws, note that those activities and those of the Ku Klux Klan stemmed from his own Democrat party!

This president seems to like to wade into waters even though his knowledge has no depth.  He thinks climate change is more dangerous than terrorism.  He thinks Islamaphobia is more dangerous than Muslim extremism.  He refuses to even say the words “Islamic terrorist!”  He would rather fabricate moral equivalencies from a thousand years ago than effectively challenge the evil of global Islamic extremism.  Sins of yore deserve more condemnation than the barbaric savagery of today.  Until his world view changes, it will represent an “existential threat” to this country.