Jihadi Du Jour

We live in a tupsy-turvy world. Good is evil, evil is good, right is wrong, wrong is right, lies are truths, truths are lies. Regardless of one’s political preferences, regardless of one’s religious creed or absence thereof some things must be said and repeated often enough for them to penetrate the collective consciousness. Though I am a proud and staunchly Orthodox Jew, I am compelled to quote words which I consider a true reflection of the world we live in. The excerpt below is taken from the address by Minister Joe Wright at the new session opening of the Kansas House of Representatives in 1996:

We know Your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good”, [Woe to those who speak of evil as good and of good as evil - my translation of the original Hebrew in Isaiah 5:20] but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We confess that.

We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it Pluralism.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery,

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare,

We have killed our unborn and called it choice,

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable,

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem,

We have abused power and called it politics,

We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition,

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression,

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

When Reverend Wright spoke those words one Democrat legislator walked out in disgust, another called him called narrow minded and bigoted. But were they right? Through my posts I have often decried the West’s loss of spirituality and its replacement with valueless values, its replacement with instant gratification that neither lasts nor gratifies.

As the West becomes “enlightened”, as synagogues and churches who preach love remain half empty, mosques with extremist Imams who preach hatred and submission of the West are filled. The West has lost its motivation, it lives in a dream world full of complacency and lack of values. The fight, the thirst for life has left it and been replaced with emptiness. Reverend Wright spoke those words eleven years ago. Their sounds, their truths still ring strong, still seek to awaken to shake out of our comfortable slumber. Truth is often inconvenient, often brutal, but absolutely eternal!

Aldous Huxley once said that speaking the truth is often a revolutionary act. If such is the case I am proud, to have quoted the words above and hope and pray they will penetrate the hearts of the West so we can start the revolution back to our values, back to our civilization, back to true and lasting enlightenment... while we still can!

Chaim

Crossposted at: Freedom's Cost