Why Our Government Isn’t Protecting Us From Ebola, ISIS, and Open Borders
Is it just me, or does it seem to you that a switch has been flipped in the past few years that the US government is no longer committed to protecting us?
I’ve assumed all my life, based on American history and biblical principles, that civil governments exist to protect peoples’ God-given rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
But now that Ebola has crossed our shores, ISIS is taking over city after city in Iraq and Syria, and the flood of illegals aliens is back page news but continuing to flood our nation, it appears that our leadership is abandoning its historic position as a protector.
Why are our current leaders not doing everything they can to protect us from these evils?
Three issues have really gotten my attention about the government’s failure to protect.
Illegal Immigration
Remember what a huge issue this was 6-12 months ago? Thousands of women, children, and who knows who else were pouring across the southern boundary into the United States. Among that spate of stories, we learned that the Obama administration had moved its security people away from the actual border, making it much easier for people to enter.
Instead of stopping and deporting illegals, they were changing diapers and running shelters for masses of humanity from Mexico and Central America.
Now months later, many towns and cities are struggling to cope with hundreds of kids who don’t speak English and need to assimilate into American society–while potential terrorists may still be coming across a border that is anything but safe and secure.
And President Obama seems intent during the looming lame-duck session to grant amnesty to millions more of them. Why in the world is this happening?
Back in the real world, I keep coming back to a simple analogy: I would never consider having open doors and windows on my house. If I did, my wife would kill me for not protecting our family. So how can our federal government keep rationalizing open, porous borders in a world rife with terrorism and WMDs?
Why is our government not sealing the border for safe and orderly immigration practices?
ISIS
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria–or whatever you want to call them–are the most zealous and brutal barbarians that the world has seen since the German Third Reich (Nazis). They have no conscience toward the sacredness of human life, but seem to revel (demoniacally) in kidnapping and raping women, crucifying, mutilating and beheading anyone who resists them, and are intent on setting up a religious theocracy based on murder and fear.
A case can be made that we never should have toppled Sadaam Hussein from power (Bush administration). An even better case can be made that the Obama administration made a tragic error in not achieving a Status of Forces of Agreement with Iraq (as we did in Germany, Japan, Korea etc.), leading to the vacuum that ISIS filled.
Everyone seems to know, except the present administration, that the air campaign is neither degrading not destroying ISIS–rather the new Nazis continue their march toward Baghdad and Kobani while the sixty nation coalition remains a farce (not a force).
In my lifetime, the cauldron of evil in the Middle East–centered in ISIS and Iran–has never been at such a high boil. And our leadership appears to either look away, wring their hands, or go back to the golf course–even as heads are chopped off in abject mockery of American impotence.
Why is the United States not willing to account for its mistake and use grounds troops and special forces to crush and remove ISIS?
Ebola
The disaster of the month is not a murderous army or an illegal invasion, but a deadly disease that stalks some West African nations that has now been imported to America.
In late September, Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, a resident of Liberia, entered the United States with symptoms of Ebola and died of the disease on October 8 in a Dallas, Texas hospital. Ebola is an infectious and generally fatal disease marked by fever and severe internal bleeding, spread through contact with infected body fluids by a filovirus.
Duncan potentially contaminated scores of people while in the US, and just this week, two of his nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, came down with the disease. Others may follow.
Why is our government not restricting all visas and travel from West Africa until the plague is checked?
In all three of these instances, I would have expected George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, even Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, even Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower (the presidents of my lifetime) to make a concerted effort to protect the American people from this deadly disease.
It’s called a quarantine. So why won’t the Obama administration do it?
I think there are a number of possible answers:
First, President Obama does not believe that the primary role of government is to protect its citizens. Yes, he wears the title of “Commander in Chief” and has read a copy of the US Constitution, but I believe he has accepted the premise that the primary purpose of government is to provide for the people–not protect them. Hence, his huge and undeterred efforts on building a vast and dependent welfare state where government regulations on health, education, welfare, worldview, and social mores is the preferred focus.
Barack Obama has set his heart on the “fundamental transformation of the United States” which includes the eroding of our Judeo-Christian heritage, work ethic, economic system, and military into a social/secular democracy like many European nations. He sees government primarily as a provider of human services, not a guardian of personal liberties.
Thus, it’s easy to understand why our president spent the first two years of his presidency focusing on taking government control of health care and gutting the military back to pre-World War II levels. The remainder of his six years have been spent championing secular values (e.g. the re-definition of marriage), building a massive bureaucracy of environmental and financial regulations, and doubling welfare dependency.
Barack Obama likes being Big Daddy–not Commander in Chief.
Second, President Obama’s strength lies in fund-raising and campaigning more than leading a nation. As Dick Morris points out in his new book Power Grab, the true priority of the Obama administration is building a permanent social-democratic majority in the US–not solving the nation’s problems. President Obama’s worldview actually determines that he can’t solve the problems we’re facing. Hence he stays in his comfort zone of raising money and giving speeches because he doesn’t know what to do.
Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States with the thinnest resume in history. When elected to the Oval Office due to his charisma and oratorical skills, he had served only as a community organizer, state senator, and undistinguished 2-year US Senator. He’d never served in the armed forces, been an executive, started or run a business, or even met a payroll.
America made a huge mistake when it twice chose an inexperienced and ideologically driven man to lead our nation. His election exposed our own ignorance, narcissistic tendencies, our propensity toward dependency, and our lack of courage in facing the great threats of our time.
We are Barack Obama–he is a reflection of our majority values. He isn’t protecting us because we, too, want things more than liberty.
I hope that during the elections of 2014 and 2016 we will take a look in the mirror, repent of our selfish ways, and again build the personal and national character that once made us great.
Third, Barack Obama and other leaders like him are committed to down-sizing America’s influence and presence internationally. They believe that America does more bad than good around the world—that, we, somehow, are the main reason for the suffering and anti-pathy everywhere.
They fail to understand, that despite America’s mistakes and failures, our nation has been the greatest source of inspiration, deliverance, and development for other countries than any other in history. We’ve also been the greatest exporter of the Good News of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth–with over 120,000 missionaries currently serving in other lands.
America has blessed the world through winning two World Wars, bringing down the Soviet Union, supplying the economic engine for global growth and free markets, guarding the skies and shores of major continents, and leading the world in philanthropic and emergency aid.
That record should not be ignored or misunderstood. It should be built on and treasured.
Fourth, President Obama is either consciously, unconsciously, or, as a subject of Providence, helping to prepare the world for a new order of global government. Bible-based nations must be secularized in order for that to happen. The United Nations or some other entity must rise as the guardian of the peace. There must also be an economic calamity world-wide to cause a realignment of peoples and nations.
This may be a moment in history where the sins and ignorance of the American people paved the way for the ascendance of a leader who would complete the weakening of the last remaining faith-based superpower so that the entire planet could be changed.
I don’t blame Barack Obama for that. I blame we, the people, who have allowed it to happen. In the bigger scheme of things, God is sovereignly directing history toward its ultimate goal in the fulfilling of the Great Commission and the Return of Jesus Christ. The rise and fall of nations are a part of that equation.
To sum up, our government and its leaders are not protecting us because they are inept and have a different vision and agenda for America’s future.
We need to repent, pray with passion, go to the polls and vote for godly leaders, and trust our future to the only One who can revive nations as well as save souls.
When human leaders fail us, we can take comfort in this truth: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble” (Psalms 46:1).
As fellow believers in Iraq, North Korea, and other nations are now being forced to learn, we must find our ultimate safety in God and God alone.
He will protect us from evil.
