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We probably had it coming. That's not my opinion, but
it is the considered judgment of the Rev. Jerry Falwell,
who on Sept. 13 appeared as a guest on the Rev. Pat
Robertson's television program, the 700 Club.
What we saw on Tuesday,
Falwell said, as
terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God
continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of
America to give us probably what we deserve.
Search as I might through various satellite images of the United States, I haven't been able to find this divine curtain.
But Falwell said it has been in place and functioning
for more than two centuries. I agree totally with you
[Robertson] that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully
these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time
that we've been attacked on our soil, first time, and by
far the worst results.
One can argue that Pearl Harbor and the subsequent
Japanese occupation of several Aleutian islands were not an
attack on our soil,
since Hawaii and Alaska were not
states then, but only territories.
But even if we grant that, the Sept. 11 horror still
wasn't the first time
since the British burned the
White House during the War of 1812.
Foreign revolutionaries invaded the United States on March 9, 1916, and killed 19 people while destroying a town. The town that got burned was Columbus, N.M., and the revolutionaries were a Mexican faction led by Pancho Villa, who apparently wanted to provoke the United States into attacking Mexico, so as to weaken the Carranza government.
That's what the books at hand say, anyway. But America
might have been asking for it in 1916. As Falwell
explained to Robertson, I really believe that the
pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the
gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that
an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American
Way, all of them who tried to secularize America. I point
the finger in their face and say 'you helped this
happen.'
There were pagans in the United States in 1916, and there were feminists -- suffragettes who had won the right to vote in 11 states and were agitating for passage of the 19th amendment to the federal constitution that would give women the right to vote in all elections.
Perhaps that explains why God lifted the curtain in 1916 so that Pancho Villa could cross the border, burn a town and kill Americans. On the other hand, there wasn't an American Civil Liberties Union in 1916 -- it wasn't founded until 1920 -- so it's hard to be sure of causation when you're trying to understand the Falwell-Robertson theory of history.
One thing about that theory that should be obvious by now: it omits certain events, like the Columbus raid. But maybe that wasn't important, since it didn't happen on the East Coast.
So let's go back to the War of 1812, and see whether America was asking for it on Aug. 24, 1814, when the British, after landing in Maryland, marched to Washington to burn the Capitol and the White House.
America was well on its way to apostasy then. Its
second president, John Adams (1797-1801), had affixed his
signature to a peace treaty between the United States and
the Bey of Tripoli. The treaty stated that the
government of the United States is not in any sense founded
on the Christian Religion.
And this impious fellow Adams also suffered a radical
feminist to live in the White House -- his wife, Abigail,
who had written to him that In the new code of laws
which I suppose it will be necessary to make, I desire you
would remember the ladies, and be more generous and
favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care
and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined
to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by
any laws in which we have no voice or
representation.
The president during the War of 1812 was James Madison,
a political disciple of that well-known presidential
apostate, Thomas Jefferson. Madison was another
secularizer: Rulers who wished to subvert the public
liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient
auxiliaries.
Like many American wars, the War of 1812 produced a victorious general who became president -- Andrew Jackson (1829-37). During his term, he was asked to proclaim a national day of fasting and prayer during a cholera epidemic.
He refused. I could not do otherwise without
transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for
the President; and without feeling that I might in some
degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys
in this country in its complete separation from the
political concerns of the General Government.
With attitudes like that among the leaders of the United States in the early 19th century -- people who tolerated feminism and secularization and paganism and a host of other affronts to Falwell and Robertson -- we can now understand why the curtain was lifted in 1814 to allow the British to teach us the error of our ways.
Or can we? After all, there wasn't an ACLU to blame then.
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