The Eleventh Hour On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the "war to end all wars" officially came to an end in 1918. Today is Armistice Day, which was implemented to pay respect to those who died and served the United States in World War I. After the Second World War, the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor veterans of all wars. Tradition dictates that, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, everyone takes a minute to have a moment of silence to remember and pray for those that have died in defending our country and protecting our way of life. While we should remember the past, we should also take the time to consider the present and future. There are many similarities between the political attitudes of the post World War I era and the situation today. Great faith was placed in the League of Nations to solve all international disputes. The U.S. military was cut drastically. Many within the United States wanted to forget the rest of the world and draw back into a shell. As a result, communism spread, unchecked, to form the Soviet Union’s vast empire, and fascism came to power in Italy and Germany. Twenty years later, World War II came upon us as people like British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had barely finished uttering the words, "Peace in Our Times." Americans, like Joseph Kennedy, expressed isolationist attitudes and sympathy for Hitler. Kennedy argued, "England is not fighting our battle. This is not our war." This led President Roosevelt to privately say this about Kennedy, who was his ambassador in England: "[Kennedy] has been an appeaser and always will be an appeaser...He’s just a pain in the neck to me." Although Roosevelt realized the danger of Hitler and had started a military buildup, the military was far from ready for war when the bombs started falling from the sky at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Roosevelt’s biggest fault in handling the war came from his own appeasement of Joseph Stalin, who was a worse murderer than Hitler. Early in the war, alliance with Stalin was expedient and necessary. However, even after it became evident that the Allies were going to win the war, Roosevelt quickly gave in to demands by Stalin that he was not in a position to deserve. Roosevelt ignored Winston Churchill's protests and warnings about the dangers of Stalin. The Cold War could not have been entirely avoided, but Roosevelt’s appeasement of Stalin gave the Soviet Union much more power and prestige than it deserved. Even prior to the war, Roosevelt had ignored the millions of people Stalin was murdering. These murders had already surpassed those later ordered by Hitler in the concentration camps. This was largely due to the advice of his socialist adviser, Henry Wallace, who served as Secretary of Agriculture and Vice-President before the Democratic party refused to re-nominate the extremist Wallace before the 1944 election. In the 90's, America declared victory in the Cold War. However, we have slashed the military by 25%, despite the Communist regimes in China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. More and more, under the Clinton/Gore administration, the United States defers its decisions about foreign policy to the United Nations. Many Americans want to forget the past and present situation in all four communist countries. We are committed to never forgetting fascism. This week, I just read the story of a former Nazi sympathizer from Lithuania. After the war, this man lied about his past in order to get into the United States. Fifty years later, his past has caught up to him. The United States is in the process of deporting the man, and his house is surrounded by protesters who are chanting, "We must never forget." Hitler and his murderous thugs killed six million Jews in the Holocaust. Communists murdered ten times that many. Even a third-rate, Communist dictator like Cambodia’s Pol Pot murdered seven million of his people in the mid-70's. I say we must never forget. Part of our success in defeating the Soviet Union was that Ronald Reagan built up the United States military and defined the Soviet Union for what it was, "An Evil Empire." Fortunately, communism collapsed without the new military being put to its greatest test. However, a third-rate thug by the name of Saddam Hussein did test this power. America showed its might in the Gulf War, when he crossed President Bush’s "line in the sand." Sadly, the Clinton/Gore administration has slashed defense spending to the point that many experts argue that, today, the Gulf War couldn’t be carried out with the same speed and efficiency. While still not as bad as the situation at the start of World War II, most experts feel that America is no longer capable of carrying on a war in two different theaters. For example, if Iraq or Iran invaded Kuwait while, in the Orient, China invaded Taiwan, the United States could not defend both fronts. Hussein is back in the headlines this week, thumbing his nose at the United States and United Nations. Saddam refuses to let U.N. inspectors see his latest secret military buildup and is threatening to shoot down American airplanes. At home, Al Gore and the Defense Department are proposing another huge military cut. In their defense, they claim the cuts are to get rid of waste and inefficiency. I am all in favor of getting rid of government waste, but these cuts have gone beyond bureaucratic waste and are limiting the United States' ability to adequately defend itself throughout the world. This is the same shortsighted planning that happened after World War I. This flawed thinking resulted in World War II and the Cold War, where 100,000+ American soldiers died in Korea and Vietnam. As America pauses today for that moment of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we need to say a prayer for both the past and future. We need to resolve to stop ignoring the mistakes of the past and realize that the world is still a dangerous place. Given the chance, there are many nations who would love to destroy America and its fundamental beliefs. We also need to be aware
that we have dangers just as great from within our
country. They act out of the same beliefs and motives of
communism and its cohorts -- fascism and socialism.
Whittaker Chambers described the lure of Communism as the
answer to the age-old question of whether man will choose
to serve God or himself. Communism fulfilled the need for
faith that the philosophers of the modern age of
industry, technology, and science had attempted to
destroy. Communism placed faith in mankind rather than in
God. Here is the former communist Chambers' description
of communism:
If man would just pass another law that would take more money away from one person and give it to another, man would solve all of mankind’s problems. When the problems still exist or get worse, further government control of our lives is "necessary" to "solve" problems. This results in the United States citizens having less and less freedom, except in areas that reject the moral constraints imposed by the belief in God. Chambers argued that, for
him and all ex-communists, the break began when they
started to hear the screams in the night of communism's
atrocities. Ultimately, communism is rejected because of
the desire for freedom. Chambers defines freedom as the
"need of the soul and nothing else." Chambers
eloquently describes the manifestation of the soul in
relationship to political freedom:
Despite the best efforts of some elitists to destroy belief in God, most Americans still believe in God's existence. However, we have suffered a lot from this assault, as demonstrated by many of our societal problems -- high rate of crime, illegitimate births, divorce, and sexually-transmitted diseases. The real danger is not in disbelief, but in apathy to our fundamental beliefs. Do we sit by while our beliefs are undermined? Or, do we reaffirm our fundamental beliefs in our own lives and fight to preserve them in our society as a whole? The death and destruction caused by the atheistic worship of man, in communism and other statist philosophies, should be ample evidence to make us reaffirm our fundamental beliefs. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, remember to say a prayer for a future based on the beliefs that so many of our fellow citizens gave their lives defending. I leave you with one more admonition from Whittaker Chambers, who first actively lived by the atheistic belief in man promised by communism. Then, he had his life transformed by the faith of freedom in God, which is the basis for Western civilization:
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