THINGS THE CANDIDATES DIDN’T TELL YOU
By Avi Davis

As we enter the final days of the American presidential campaign, voters should feel entitled to have their issues addressed by the men who would lead us.   Certainly the two candidates have clocked thousands of hours and spent millions of dollars in addressing health plans, economic stewardship, energy policy, the Iranian nuclear threat, border control and the pursuit of al Qaeda. To be sure, they are all vital to the future of the United States and the safety and welfare of its citizens.    

 But I have been compiling my own list of issues, that neither candidate, nor their many opponents in the primaries, have dared to broach:

• No candidate in this electoral season  mentioned the cauterizing affect of multiculturalism and its impact on social cohesion 

• None mentioned the continued penetration of  Jihadist  influence into our key governmental and academic institutions

• None observed the gravity of  the civil war(s) raging in  Mexico between the government and massive drug cartels –and, of course, the struggles between the cartels themselves-  which have already spilled onto American soil, threatening to embroil the border states in prolonged urban warfare 

• Not one candidate mentioned the infusion of international humanitarian law into the American legal system  and its manipulation by  special interests to hamper American sovereignty  

• No candidate has had the courage to declare that global warming doomsayers might have a political agenda other than saving the world and  that  some of the radical environmentalists whom the movement has embraced, are far  more concerned with constraining capitalism and free markets than with addressing man made climate change  

• Little attention was paid to the rise of  rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia –  which is beginning its own migration to  the United States

• No one targeted  the culture of denial in government, particularly in the ranks of  the State Department and the CIA, where obfuscation and obliviousness, have facilitated a  willingness to embrace enemies committed to this country’s destruction

• Very little reference was made to  the collapse of  civic education and the failure of most Americans to recognize that a democracy is not just a grab bag of rights and privileges but  a place where fulfillment of  duties and responsibilities should  be both  expected and required 

• No mention  was made of  the cultural depravity  that comes from unfettered entertainment industry celebrations of mobsters, prostitutes and porno stars  - a low threshold  of acceptability which is represented by the recent hit,  Zack and Miri Make a Porno

The first years of the 21st Century have brought new and unexpected threats to liberal democracy and the survival of the West.  But you would not know this from any of  the statements of the candidates.  That is largely because both candidates seem to currently view the American presidency as an office that operates  solely in the service of the American people.  That is a mistake. The American presidency also stands as the most powerful  international symbol of freedom  and the key defender of Western values and principles.  The defense of those ideals necessitates a recognition that the greatest threats to our survival do not presently come from beyond our borders but from within them.   Recent polls reveal that nearly 80% of Americans believe the country to be on the wrong track.  That might easily be assumed by liberal pundits to refer to the disappointments of the Iraq War, the financial meltdown, or the governmental incompetence displayed in addressing the ravages of Hurricane Katrina    But my guess is that if you probed deeper, those concerns would prove of only superficial relevance to most Americans.  The more likely reality is that Americans sense  that their  country’s moral balance has been upset; that ideological  forces inimical to the continuity of freedom and liberty are penetrating our governmental system and institutions and that the appearance of excesses of all kinds – financial, political and social  -  is a cause for deep anxiety about the American  future.

On November 5th the American people will awake to the election of a  new President.    It is an article of faith among the citizens of this country  that the American experiment in liberal democracy will continue indefinitely  into the future.   But as the recent financial crisis has revealed, there are no guarantees of anything in this world.  The new President will not only be confronted with very real external threats to American survival but a far more dangerous internal corrosion that threatens to weaken our resistance and compromise our resolve. The President should therefore begin his administration by urging the American citizenry to commit itself to a review of the nation’s moral purpose direction; he should excoriate excesses of all kinds and offer his people a model of restraint, temperance and humility that behooves others to emulate. 

Certainly he should understand, and make the American people understand, that the future of Western civilization is dependent on a willingness to accept  that nothing is certain and nothing is assured without hard work, dedication to task and unflinching confidence in the rightness of one’s cause.  But the recognition of the very real threats to social cohesion, moral direction and internal security must begin with the President.  He has the power, through the dignity and influence of his office, to alter the moral course of the country and assure its future.

Let us hope that either of the two men running for  election are capable of meeting the challenge.

The Western Word - An International Weekly Digest   10-31-2008