The economic health of the nation

Three of the most influential leaders of America were born during the month of February. And God used each one of them in the right time to raise up the United States as an example for people all over world who crave for political, human, and economic freedoms. Defeating the largest empire on earth against incredible odds but with Christian faith and a desire for liberty, the military genius of George Washington (born Feb. 22, 1732) assisted in the birth of the new nation. It was for the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln (born Feb. 12, 1809), to draw inspiration from the Holy Scriptures (for his inauguration, Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office using Lincoln's Bible) to help him defeat the evils of slavery and to preserve the union during its worst crisis. And it was for today's emblem of the Grand Old Party, Ronald Reagan (born Feb. 6, 1911), to seek wisdom in God's Word and lead America in the final stages of its victorious campaign against the socialist empire of evil, freeing more people from oppression than any other war on tyranny in human history.

It is because February has given us such remarkable statesmen, whose talents have been used to build and strengthen a political union without parallels, that it is worth exploring during this month the health of that union through the eyes of its current leader and his economic advisers as it was presented in a speech to Congress last Tuesday. The media was duly impressed by the change in rhetoric from the 2008 "spread the wealth around" to last week's "freeze spending, lower corporate taxes, remove red tape." Euronews labeled it a "significant shift to the right," but one would be imprudent to seek behind it a major shift of heart and mind. It is not hard to see the parallels between the president's apparent willingness to seek compromise with his political opponents and the survival tactics of Bill Clinton when his party suffered a midterm defeat of similar proportions. In my humble view, the speech most likely was crafted with an overriding (if not the single) intention to re-brand the ideology of Barack Obama in a way to recapture independent voters to the cause of reelecting him in 2012. Thus it is my intention to offer WORLDmag.com readers a sequel in three parts analyzing the good, the bad, and the ugly in the current "state of the union."

See you next week.