End Of Day - 6/1/2020 - One Nation Under God, Contrasting Visions, Trump Gets Tough

One Nation Under God

On February 7, 1954, Rev. George M. Docherty, pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., delivered his most important sermon. It was written for Lincoln Day, and President Dwight Eisenhower was seated with his wife in the same pew that Abraham Lincoln regularly occupied.

Docherty preached about America and freedom. He recalled his children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance one day, and it occurred to him that the pledge could be said by the children of any country, even those in the Soviet Union.

Docherty felt it was missing something central to the meaning of America: the words "under God," which were so important to Abraham Lincoln that he added them to the Gettysburg Address.

President Eisenhower was so moved that he went back to the White House determined to see the words added to the pledge. Within days, there were resolutions pending in both the House and the Senate. Eisenhower signed the legislation adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.

What we're seeing now in the streets of dozens of American cities is what happens when you teach a country's youth that there is no God, and that the country of their birth is evil.

When you teach your children that their country is noble and worth defending, young men and women line up to defend it when war breaks out. But when you teach them it is evil, you get mobs determined to bring the nation to its knees.

Please join Carol and me in praying for the president, the vice president and our state and local leaders. In the next 48 hours, major decisions will be made, and statements will be delivered. They need to be exactly right in their tone and purpose.

Please pray for God's wisdom and healing upon our land. Urge your pastors, priests and rabbis to speak up and lead their congregations in prayer and reconciliation. As President Trump said this weekend, "Healing, not hatred; justice, not chaos are the mission at hand." The items below will give you many things to pray over.

What A Contrast

On Saturday we saw two starkly different visions of America's future.

We saw the launch of the SpaceX rocket and the successful docking with the International Space Station. I had friends calling and texting me, saying just how important this mission was.

It marked America's return to space and a huge technological triumph for private industry -- an American rocket, launched from American soil with American astronauts on board. We're back in the space race, and no longer dependent on Russia to transport our astronauts to space.

That's what our future needs to be. We need to bring our jobs back home, and we need to get the communist Chinese out of our universities and off of our stock exchange. If we can launch a new manufacturing, industrial, technological revolution, most people will be too busy working to riot.

The second future is anarchy and division. It began last week with many people rightly upset by the horrific killing of George Floyd. But as Governor Tim Walz rightly observed, "The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd. It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities."

This is the future of Antifa, and of radical Professor Cornell West, who declared, "We are witnessing America as a failed social experiment."

God forbid! No country on earth is perfect, but there is a reason so many people from all over the world want to come to America.

Nothing is written in stone. Neither vision of the future is automatic. But it is up to us to decide the future our children and grandchildren will inherit.

An Insurrection

All of you are getting more accurate accounts of what's happening in your city than we're getting on the national news. I want to tell you what's happening where I live and work, the capital of our country, Washington, D.C.

I have been in the D.C. area for decades. I have seen protests and assassination attempts. I have been in the White House when it was encircled by demonstrators chanting disgusting things. What is happening now is not a protest.

This is a riot that appears intended to bring down the government of the United States, and it is not receding. It is escalating.

Friday night, President Trump was taken to the White House bunker for his own safety. At least 50 Secret Service agents were injured when the mob tried to breach White House security.

The rioting continued over the weekend. Last night, various people on the scene said the mob used sophisticated tactics and was led by "experts." They were probing weak spots around the perimeter of the White House. The rioters weren't there hoping to have tea with the president.

Can you imagine what that visual of radical leftists breaching the White House fence would have looked like to the entire world?

There was looting throughout Washington last night, including in the posh Georgetown district. The AFL-CIO headquarters was ransacked. St. John's Episcopal Church, across the street from the White House, was set on fire.

Known as "The Church of Presidents," St. John's was consecrated in 1816. Every president since James Madison has attended services there. The 1,000-pound bell in St. John's steeple was cast by Paul Revere's son.

Thankfully, firefighters were able to get the fire under control and the damage was limited. But the thugs in the streets last night couldn't give a whit about this history. They also vandalized the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial.

Just a few years ago, the Obama Administration infamously tried to shutdown the World War II Memorial, as if that open-air memorial could not be visited by tourists due to a government shutdown. A group of World War II veterans flown in to visit the memorial stiffened their spines and stormed the barricades to visit their memorial.

Now some left-wing radicals get to vandalize it?

There are reports of police encountering cars without license plates filled with "tools to wreck havoc" and piles of bricks and rocks prepositioned in numerous cities. Every sign is pointing to a well-organized effort to create an insurrection. Washington, D.C., which just relaxed its coronavirus restrictions, will be locked down tonight under a 7:00 PM curfew.

This weekend, President Trump announced a crackdown on Antifa. Attorney General William Barr declared:

"Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent, and extremist agenda. It is time to stop watching the violence and to confront and stop it. . . The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa . . . is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly."

I hope this is a top priority for the FBI and Justice Department. Antifa has a long history of violence. It must be taken down.

In related news, President Trump had stern words for the nation's governors today. He reportedly told them, "Most of you are weak. You've got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years." He's right!

President Trump said what only a president can and should say in a situation like this – that the protection of innocent life is the governors' number one priority. Rogue police officers must be held accountable. But governors cannot allow violent revolutionaries to threaten the lives and livelihoods of the American people.