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Obama’s ‘Root Causes’ Crusade
And you thought Nationwide’s Super Bowl ad was depressing. The President spoke at Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, but instead of focusing on faith, hope and love, he dwelt on violence, anti-Semitism and the Crusades.
Obama cataloged an impressive list of Islamist terror attacks, oddly never mentioning Islam. But he wasn’t so careful when it came to calling out those dastardly Christians.
http://youtu.be/CcPSLgXr1vQ
We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion…
And lest 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.
Ah yes, the Crusades; the ne plus ultra of root causes. Whenever a terror attack is perpetrated by Al Qaeda, Boko Haram or ISIS, a flock of secularists will mutter, “to be fair, Sir Godfrey of Bouillon got a little chippy with the Antiochians in 1097.”
We’ve all heard radicals like Jeremiah Wright excuse Islamist violence as “chickens coming home to roost,” but even President Clinton named the Crusades as the root cause of the West’s conflict with Muslims.
Contra Edward Said, the Crusades were primarily defensive campaigns which sought to liberate once-Christian lands from their Muslim conquerors. Expansionist Islam had overrun heavily Christian Palestine, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. Once Mohammed’s heirs took Asia Minor, the emperor in Constantinople begged western Christendom for help.
Once the Crusades were launched, awful things happened on both sides; war is indeed hell. But to claim 800 years later that malcontents flew airplanes into towers half the world away to protest their brusque treatment at the siege of Acre is tough to swallow.
The second most popular root cause is the mere existence of the state of Israel. So provocative is the presence of Jews in their ancestral homeland that zealots from Paris to Sydney to Ottawa are forced to shoot up markets and chocolate shops.
The funny thing about root causes is that they always stop precisely when the West can be blamed. Israeli independence is considered a root cause, but not the Arab attacks on Jews that helped motivate that independence. The Crusades are the root cause, not the capture of Christian Jerusalem by the Caliph Umar. If you follow any historical path back far enough, you can always pin the blame on the out group. So why do Western leftists always stop at the incident where they can blame their own culture?
Ultimately every root cause winds up at Adam and Eve, so maybe Obama can focus on them at next year’s prayer breakfast.
Published in General
Ha. The next thing you’re going to try to tell us is that chattel slavery wasn’t invented by the American Colonists.
The word you’re looking for is “treason.”
Perfect. You said it perfectly. Well done.
Thank God that Obama is here, reminding us of sin. Did he bend down and write on the ground with his finger? (John 8:3-11)
I imagine this tactic would work equally against President Obama.
Um…let’s see…who ruled Spain for 900 years? Ah, so that’s why those Spaniards are always truck-bombing mosques in Algeria, and blowing up subway systems in Cairo. Oh, wait…never mind.
He always plays it as a word game. It is not surprising, however, that he would avoid mentioning the name of the deity worshiped by one group of perpetrators, and yet manage to state by name (the holy and revered name, not just the casual version) the deity worshiped by the group he loves to blame for everything bad.
Mr Obama is insulting. Couldn’t watch the whole thing but I get his message loud and clear. Today’s atrocities vs yesterday’s atrocities, what’s the difference? He among you who is without sin may you cast the first stone.
I am fed up with this, don’t lump us with those monsters. Who writes this crap for him? And come on, his delivery is awful.
The missing link here is: the only reason we — you, me, the president, anyone —are talking about Islam (Christianity, history, the Crusades, etc.) is that Islam, in its most extreme version, is generating murderous terror all over the world. That is the only reason we are even discussing it. Otherwise we would not bother to think about a medieval, woman oppressing, music hating, wine-hating, retro-looking religion. So let Obama bring up his little leftoidal, graduate-student bromides of moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam. You can’t get around this fact: the actions of Christians today are not prompting these discussions about Islam and Christianity.
For the exact same reason that adolescents blame their parents for the all world’s ills: it’s easy, they’re lazy, they have (as they see it, rightly or not) little-to-no stake in the status quo, and it’s fun.
The blame game is usually good for a laugh and there are few-to-no negative consequences for Western Civ blamers in schools.
Go ahead and try to address the barbarism of 18th-21st century Western Hemisphere stone age cultures and see where that gets you.
FWIW, this same dynamic is visible in the inter-generational “the Boomers screwed me” angsty threads.
It never struck me as a substantive argument that the reason slavery persisted in the Southern states was due to religion. It seems much more likely that slavery kept on because, well, it existed. Some people don’t like disruptive changes to the status quo, especially when such a change would likely be economically ruinous. It’s been my experience that the purse matters more than the pulpit to most people.
Also, I think this speech (or at least that clip) was delivered much better than his usual amateurish style. It sounded more conciliatory. His sincerity when speaking utter nonsense, though, tends to be more concerning than reassuring. Or maybe he’s just reading his audience.
Jon,
First, what is required I call revisionist revisionist history. The Christians should be seen as reacting to the aggression of Islam not the other way around.
Jihad was being practiced by Islam from its conception in the 7th century. Crusade was a creation of the 11th century, 1000 years from the conception of Christianity, in direct response to the endlessly aggressive attack of Islam’s Jihad.
Conversion by the Sword and Death for Apostates were part of Islam from its conception in the 7th century. The Inquisition was a 14th century innovation in Christianity in specific to defend against the subtle new Ottoman political Jihad which employed Conversion by the Sword and Death for Apostates to mercilessly enforce compliance in its rapidly expanding empire.
The modern black African slave trade was created by Islam in the 9th century. They sailed down the east coast of Africa and conquered port cities. From the ports they raided local tribes for their transnational slave trade.
All of this, although relevant and important to Western Civilization’s overall world view, is not really the point in response to Obama’s specific comments. Obama’s comments are insane. He harps about events of 500 to 1000 years ago while in this last decade and just this week atrocities are being freely committed by Jihadists. He is not a professor of History he is the President of the United States that the world looks to for executive leadership. These are grotesque and unacceptable comments given the context of immediate events. He insults Christianity in general and ignores the current plight of Christians being brutally murdered in the middle east as we speak.
One last touch of total hypocrisy was to publicly use the Dali Lama to reinforce his disgusting comments. For six years he has ignored the plight of the Buddhists of China and rebuffed the Dali Lama so he can curry favor with the Chinese Marxists. This repulsive hypocrite has reached a new low and disgraced a prayer breakfast.
I didn’t think I could be more nauseated by Obama but with him one just continues to explore the depths of sickness.
Regards,
Jim
Steyn’s timing is impeccable. Jeepers, I miss him on the podcasts.
Christians should stop apologizing for the Crusades.
It is like Britain apologizing for WWII or Rome apologizing for the Punic Wars.
Good grief. Slavery doesn’t just predate Christianity, it probably predates every religion any of us have ever heard of. People with greater historical knowledge than myself can correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t Christian countries the first to outlaw slavery? In the U.S. and England, I believe most of the fervent abolitionists were Christians.
A far better (and more current) example of Christians gone wild would be the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. This is a terrorist organization that kidnaps children, forces them to become soldiers, and often forces them to murder their own parents.
Amen, Benjamin!
The Inquisition is similarly misunderstood, its actual history being distorted almost beyond hope of correction. Here’s an excellent piece by historian Thomas Madden that appeared in National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/211193/real-inquisition/thomas-f-madden
He’ll probably blame them for being portrayed as “White” in a post Ferguson Missouri World full of racists who are obviously from “Fly-Over Country”, that cling to their bibles and their guns. Damn the Christians for causing all the turmoils in the World that have forced Obama to leave the golf course.
If Christians would all just pay more taxes, eat more fruit and condemn Israel, the problems of the World would recede. As would the oceans, if his “Climate Change” agenda was realized by the “Unwashed”.
Stupid Americans.
To quote Monty Python, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition”… except for when some lazy leftist is about to offer up a moral equivalency argument.
Aaron, the Steyn clip is priceless. I hope everyone can spare the 8 minutes to watch it.
I’m glad you mentioned Jeremiah Wright. He is no more a radical than his former church member Obama. This is pure “the chickens have come home to roost” ideology. That “high horse” comment is f#$&% ridiculous. From releasing terrorists to this refusal to even identify our enemies, if this isn’t treason it is at the minimum a dereliction of duty
Two things are abundantly clear:
1. Obama thinks the American ideal is seriously flawed.
2. At heart, Obama is still a Muslim.
My 15 year old daughter heard his comments on the radio this AM during the drive to school. She merely said, “doesn’t he know what the Crusades were?”.
Unfortunately, most Americans truly think the Crusades were Christian wars of aggression. At a recent PTA meeting, one parent proposed changing our high school mascot from “the crusaders” (Catholic school, even if it’s just nominal) to something “less offensive to Muslims”. Is it even possible to find a name less offensive than to be named after a bunch of soldiers who fought a defensive war and lost?
The most damaging thing about the Obama presidency is that it is making it near impossible to have any respect for 51% of my fellow citizens.
NASCAR Champion Darrell Waltrip was the keynote speaker at that prayer breakfast. He spoke just before President Obama and, because of the outrageous remarks by Obama, few people have noted what Waltrip said to the group of nearly 4,000 people including the Dalai Lama.
He recounted how his wife had tried to get him to go to church with her for years and he had always refused. Then a wreck at Daytona that nearly cost him his life became a life-changing experience.
“I realized that wreck knocked me conscience. It scared the hell out of me. I mean that literally. I realized, what if I had lost my life that day at Daytona? Would I have gone to heaven or would I have gone to hell? I thought I was a good guy, but folks, let me tell you something… good guys go to hell.
If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, if you don’t have a relationship, if he’s not the master of your life, if you’ve never gotten on your knees and asked him to forgive you of your sins, or if you are just a pretty good guy or a pretty good gal, you’re going to go to hell.”
After that, President Obama gave his speech which, in part, blamed the followers of Christ for many of the world’s ills for thousands of years.
I don’t think Darrell Waltrip thinks he needs to come down off his high horse.
While we’re talking about dumping on Christians, allow me to relate something I saw on Instagram today. My niece had posted a picture with the words, “We serve a God who designs our deliverance before man can begin to devise our destruction.” Coincidentally, on my timeline it was immediately adjacent to a picture posted by Dana Gould, a comedian who used to be writer for The Simpsons. He posted a picture of the Good Book, with the following words superimposed: “The Bible: Because a book written by a bunch of guys that [sic] didn’t know where the sun went at night must have all the answers.”
In the comments, I wrote, “The Constitution: Because a document written by guys who believed the Bible and based their principles of natural law on their belief in God must have all the answers.” For good measure, I added, “I wouldn’t be so quick to disdain something that was so integral to the rise of Western civilization.”
Addendum: A magician named Dezrah the Strange wrote in the comments, “Yeah, because Western Civilization is doing such a bang-up job these days.” I wrote, “Is there a country and/or time period in which you would prefer to live? Christianity and Western civilization created a world where you could make a living doing illusions instead of trying to scratch out a living in the dirt.”
There is something so adolescent about criticizing Western culture while benefiting from its bounty. Like the teenager railing against his parents before asking what’s for dinner.
He’s railing because his parents followed the senseless advice of the First Lady, who told them to feed him cardboard. It’s the third night this week that they will be dining on White House suggested cuisine.
My teenagers don’t get away with spitting in the nest. They’ve been told there’s nothing as unattractive (and angering) to their parents as ingratitude. If they were ever to make such loathsome, false remarks about us, they’d be repenting and seeking forgiveness — or they’d be looking for a new place to live.
I’d like the President to do the same. Perhaps he might choose one of those Muslim majority countries which he can’t bring himself to criticize.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
You know what should be offensive to Muslims? That (some) Westerners think it necessary to condescend to them by lying about our history and beliefs because they’re such precious little snowflakes.
Obama isn’t being very self-reflective if he criticizes Christianity. What he should have said:
I wouldn’t be too categorical about that. The 9/11 attack was deliberately scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when a Polish-Holy Roman Empire army relieved the (Turkish) Ottoman siege of the city.