Alea iacta est...

I would be remiss if I didn't take time and care to reflect on President Obama's first days in office. So, to all of you waiting on 'bated breath, here goes.

For those who haven't bothered to take notice, we are apparently in the midst of a somewhat severe economic crisis. Our federal "experts" have indicated, as well, that without immediate and broad-sweeping action from the federal government, our present crisis could deepen to a full blown depression.

Note: the last depression was ended only by the onset of WWII--not by the New Deal as some would have us believe. In fact, in the years leading up to the war, unemployment crept from 13% to 17%...surely not a lasting tribute to FDR's shovels and bridges program. I'll return to this point in another post.

So this is our current political context to be sure, and all eyes are on the Obama administration as to how they'll deal with this crisis.

Enter the Immaculate Inauguration of the Anointed One...

Leading up to the inauguration, Team Obama conscripted, planned, appointed, announced and reaffirmed all of its political and human resources necessary to bring to the fore a full juggernaut worthy of the Obama campaign leviathan, aimed at heading off such an impending depression. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stood at the ready, pens and gavels in hand prepared to push through the largest economic stimulus package in the history of the modern world...

...then on Wednesday--his first full day in office after a half-day of Mardi Gras-like fete and fair--one would expect President Obama, heir-apparent, the Halo, His Hopiness the Great Unifier, to act swiftly and decisively to "remake America." Nope.

Instead, the first taste of "change" and "hope" for America came in the form of an intensively divisive political agenda.

Posted immediately on the White House website was a rather extensive list of policy positions, under the heading "Support for the GLBT Community," which the administration will press forward:

-Expand Hate Crimes Statutes [translation: ban the public positions by conservative/religious communities against homosexuality]

-Fight Workplace Discrimination [translation: ban the use of sexual orientation as an employment criterion by employers who have a moral objection to it]

-Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples [translation: repeal the Defense of Marriage Act]

-Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage [self-explanatory]

-Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell [translation: force a morale-debilitating policy of housing openly homosexual troops with either other]

-Expand Adoption Rights [translation: allow homosexual "couples" to enjoy full adoption rights]

-Promote AIDS Prevention [translation: mandated sex education, in-school contraception/abortion, free needles to drug addicts]

-Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS [translation: offer free microbicides to sexually miscreant women]

Not be outdone, Obama ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Now, no matter your feelings on war in general or the WOT specifically, this prison both has housed some of the most notorious terrorists in the world and has been the wellspring of some of the most critical intelligence information with which we have prevented further domestic terrorist attacks over the last eight years. That foreign terrorists don't possess American civil rights really ought to go without mention, but this is a postmodern America where nothing is sacred any longer.

On the subject of sacred things, in a quite unpublicized ceremony Friday night the President signed an Executive Order rescinding the Mexico City Policy, first enacted by President Reagan. The Mexico City Policy has one simple provision: "to prohibit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive Federal funds from using those funds to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning, or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." NGOs are typically non-profit, public-interest (usually politically-motivated) organizations that receive part or all of their funding from appropriated tax revenues.

That the administration has moved so adamantly to allow for the direct contribution of U.S. taxpayer dollars for abortions is despicable enough. But I know I may be preaching to part of the choir here. Let's assume in a parallel universe that I were an entirely soulless, hedonistic, and selfishly Spartan kinda guy who's only moral motivation was whether I got my "cut of the federal pie" coupled with a bland sort of global humanitarianism (see "We Are the World")...or, in a word, a liberal. Observing the state of the economy and the incessant ranting about it by the Obama campaign and the "Office of the President-Elect", I would expect that the most imminent action by the newly sworn president would be about, well, the economy.

Upon hearing word of the rescinding of the Mexico City Policy, I would naturally wonder how U.S. tax dollars being spent on abortions--particularly those millions given to international NGOs and spent on abortions in other countries--would benefit me. I would go on to wonder whether President Obama really ever had as his first priority the stimulation of the economy. But, this is a parallel universe and, as we know, liberals don't think quite as logically in this universe.

I'll pull my tongue from my cheek here in summation. President Obama's first 72-hours in office have re-opened the veritable gate to Gomorrah. As a Christian I pray that Obama will experience a miraculous awakening moment in which he'll see the light and reverse course. But equally, I expect judgment for America, having taken the blessings of a nation borne in liberty and tossed them out the window. I wonder, as Lincoln did at Gettysburg, "whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."