"Righteousness exalteth a nation" -Crisis & Response of Past Presidents

American Minute with Bill Federer "Righteousness exalteth a nation" -Crisis & Response of Past Presidents

Shocking reports reveal Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Boko Haram fighters in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa beheading, kidnapping, enslaving and displacing millions of Christians, Kurds and other minorities. Evidence is mounting that the treaty negotiated with Iran will not prevent their development of nuclear weapons, which they have threatened to use against Israel. Has the world faced similar crises in the past, and if so, how did American Presidents respond? During World War II, Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated December 29, 1940: "No nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender... The American appeasers ignore the warning to be found in the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France... They call it a 'negotiated peace.' Nonsense! Is it a negotiated peace if a gang of outlaws surrounds your community and on threat of extermination makes you pay tribute to save your own skins? Such a dictated peace would be no peace at all." Reports are that drug cartels are using tunnels to bring terrorists across America's southern border, and that organizations bringing Muslim refugees into America are not screening out terrorists, raising the spectre of future dissension and internal strife. During World War II, when faced with a similar threat, Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt stated December 29, 1940: "Their secret emissaries are active in our own and in neighboring countries. They seek to stir up...dissension to cause internal strife. They try to turn capital against labor, and vice versa. They try to reawaken long slumbering racial and religious enmities which should have no place in this country... These trouble-breeders have but one purpose. It is to divide our people into hostile groups and to destroy our unity and shatter our will to defend ourselves. There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents. I do not charge these American citizens with being foreign agents. But I do charge them with doing exactly the kind of work that the dictators want done in the United States." FDR added May 16, 1940: "We have seen the treacherous use of the 'fifth column' by which persons supposed to be peaceful visitors were actually a part of an enemy unit of occupation. Lightning attacks, capable of destroying airplane factories and munition works hundreds of miles behind the lines, are a part of the new technique of modern war... We must be strong in heart and mind; strong in our faith... I, too, pray for peace...but I am determined to face the fact realistically that this nation requires also a toughness of moral and physical fiber... These are the characteristics of a free people...a people willing to defend a way of life that is precious to them all, a people who put their faith in God." At the onset of the Cold War with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Democrat President Harry S Truman addressed a Joint Session of Congress, OCTOBER 23, 1945: "In any future war, the heart of the United States would be the enemy's first target. Our geographical security is now gone--gone with the advent of the robot bomb, the rocket, aircraft carriers and modern airborne armies. The surest guaranty that no nation will dare again to attack us is to remain strong in the only kind of strength an aggressor understands--military power... The moral and spiritual welfare of our young people should be a consideration of prime importance, and, of course, facilities for worship in every faith should be available..." Truman added: "The United States now has a fighting strength greater than at any other time in our history...greater than that of any other nation in the world... We are strong because of the courage...of a liberty loving people who are determined that this nation shall remain forever free... We intend to use all our moral influence and all our physical strength to work for that kind of peace. We can ensure such a peace only so long as we remain strong. We must face the fact that peace must be built upon power, as well as upon good will and good deeds... It is only by strength that we can impress the fact upon possible future aggressors that we will tolerate no threat to peace or liberty." When Soviet communists invaded the nation of Hungary, Democrat President John F. Kennedy stated OCTOBER 23, 1960: "Americans will never...recognize Soviet domination of Hungary. Hungary's claim to independence and liberty is not based on sentiment or politics. It is deeply rooted in history, in culture and in law. No matter what sort of puppet government they may maintain, we do not mean to see that claim abandoned. Americans intend to hasten...the day when the men and women of Hungary will stand again in freedom and justice." After decades of domination, the communist Hungarian People's Republic was officially ended on OCTOBER 23, 1989, when the Hungarian Republic was declared by its new President Matyas Szuros. On OCTOBER 23, 1983, fundamental Muslim terrorists blew up a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. military personnel.  Two years later, President Ronald Reagan stated: "OCTOBER 23 is the second anniversary of the date on which the largest number of Americans was killed in a single act of terrorism -- the bombing of the United States compound in Beirut, Lebanon...in which 241 United States servicemen lost their lives. These brave soldiers died defending our cherished ideals of freedom and peace. It is appropriate that we honor these men and all other victims of terrorism... I have hereunto set my hand this 23rd day of OCTOBER, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-five..." President Reagan added: "The problem of terrorism has become an international concern that knows no boundaries -- religious, racial, political, or national. Thousands of men, women, and children have died at the hands of terrorists in nations around the world, and the lives of many more have been blighted by the fear and grief that terrorist attacks have caused to peace-loving peoples. Today, unfortunately, terrorism continues to claim many innocent lives. Recent events in the Middle East...only serve to remind us of the intolerable threat from terrorists." President Ronald Reagan commented further at the Baptist Fundamentalism Annual Convention, April 13, 1984: "Reverend Falwell...It's a real pleasure to be with so many who firmly believe that the answers to the world's problems can be found in the Word of God... On that October day when a terrorist truck bomb took the lives of 241 marines, soldiers, and sailors at the airport in Beirut, one of the first to reach the tragic scene was a chaplain, the chaplain of our 6th Fleet, Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff... He said, 'Screams of those injured or trapped were barely audible at first, as our minds struggled to grapple with the reality before us - a massive four-story building, reduced to a pile of rubble; dust mixing with smoke and fire, obscuring our view of the little that was left... Trying to pull and carry those whose injuries appeared less dangerous in an immediate sense than the approaching fire or the smothering smoke-my kippa was lost. (That is the little headgear that is worn by rabbis.) The last I remember it, I'd used it to mop someone's brow. Father Pucciarelli, the Catholic chaplain, cut a circle out of his cap - a piece of camouflaged cloth which would become my temporary head-covering. Somehow he wanted those marines to know not just that we were chaplains, but that he was a Christian and that I was Jewish..." President Reagan continued quoting Chaplain Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff: "The words from the prophet Malachi kept recurring to me - words he'd uttered some 2,500 years ago as he had looked around at fighting and cruelty and pain. 'Have we not all one Father?' he had asked. 'Has not one God created us all?'... To understand the role of the chaplain - Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant - is to understand that we try to remind others, and perhaps ourselves as well, to cling to our humanity even in the worst of times..." President Reagan ended his quoting of Chaplain Rabbi Resnicoff: "We bring with us the truth that faith not only reminds us of the holy in heaven, but also of the holiness we can create here on Earth... We have within us the power to reflect as God's creatures the highest values of our Creator. As God is forgiving and - merciful, so can we be.'" Get the book American Minute-Notable Events of American Significance Remembered on the Date They Occurred Two centuries earlier, after the end of the Revolutionary War, Yale President Ezra Stiles addressed Governor Jonathan Trumbull and the Connecticut State Legislature, May 8, 1783: "And the widespread domination of the impostor of Mecca, with his successors the Caliphs and Mameluks down toKouli-Kan (Nader Shah, Emperor of Persia, 1736-47), who...plundered India of 200 millions sterling: - these, I say... were all founded in unrighteousness, and tyrannical usurpation." In contrast to "unrighteousness and tyrannical usurpation," President John Adams advised March 6, 1799, during a threatened war with France: I hereby recommend...(to) be observed throughout the United States of America... a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer; That the citizens...call to mind our numerous offenses against the Most High God, confess them before Him... implore His pardoning mercy, through the Great Mediator and Redeemer... and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit, we may... yield a more suitable obedience to His righteous requisitions... That He would make us deeply sensible that "righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people." Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, wrote to Mercy Warren, November 5, 1775: "Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society, corrupting the Morals of Youth, and by his bad example injuring the very Country he professes to patronize... The Scriptures tell us 'righteousness exalteth a nation.'" Patrick Henry wrote on the reverse of The Stamp Act Resolves, passed in Virginia;s House of Burgesses, May 1765: "Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this." After the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson proclaimed October 28, 1865: "It has pleased Almighty God...to relieve our beloved country from the fearful scourge of civil war... Whereas righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin is a reproach to any people... I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, do hereby recommend... that... the whole people make confession of our national sins against His infinite goodness, and with one heart and one mind implore the divine guidance in the ways of national virtue and holiness." President Ulysses S. Grant wrote to the Editor of the Sunday School Times in Philadelphia, June 6, 1876: "Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives...  'Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.'" Democrat President Woodrow Wilson stated OCTOBER 23, 1913: "'Righteousness exalteth a nation"and 'peace on earth, good will towards men' furnish the only foundation upon which can be built the lasting achievements of the human spirit... Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America... invite the people throughout the land to cease from their wonted occupations and in their several homes and places of worship render thanks to Almighty God."