The President Without a
Country
By Pat Boone
“We’re
no longer a Christian nation.” - President Barack Obama, June 2009. “America has been arrogant.” - President Barack Obama. “After 9/11,
America didn’t always live up to her ideals.”- President Barack
Obama. “You might say that America is a Muslim
nation.”- President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009.
Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears
the title of President, I keep wondering what country he believes he’s President
of?
In
one of my very favorite stories, Edward Everett Hale’s The Man without a Country, a young Army lieutenant named Philip Nolan
stands condemned for treason during the War for Independence, having come
under the influence of Aaron Burr. When the judge asks him if he wishes to
say anything before sentence is passed, young Nolan defiantly exclaims, “Damn
the United States! I wish I might never hear of the United States again!”
And
so it was. Philip Nolan was taken away and spent the next 40 years at sea,
never hearing anything but an occasional slip of the tongue about America. The
last few pages of the story, recounting Nolan’s dying hours in his small
stateroom - now turned into a shrine to the country he fore swore - never fail
to bring me to tears. And I find my own love for this dream, this miracle
called America, refreshed and renewed. I know how blessed and unique we are.
But
reading and hearing the audacious, shocking statements of the man who was
recently elected our President - a young black man living the impossible dream
of millions of young Americans, past and present, black and white - I want to
ask him, “Just what country do you think you’re President of?”
You
surely can’t be referring to the United States of America, can you? America is
emphatically a Christian nation, and has been from its inception! Seventy
percent of her citizens identify themselves as Christian. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were framed, written and ratified by Christians. It’s
because this was, and is, a nation built on and guided by Judeo-Christian
biblical principles that you, sir, have had the inestimable privilege of being
elected her President.
You
studied law at Harvard, didn’t you, sir? You taught constitutional law in
Chicago? Did you not ever read the statement of John Jay, the first Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court and an author of the landmark Federalist Papers: “Providence has given to our people the choice
of their rulers - and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of
our Christian nation - to select and prefer Christians for their rulers”?
In
your studies, you surely must have read the decision of the Supreme Court in
1892: “Our lives and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody
the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be
otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our
institutions are emphatically Christian.”
Did
your professors have you skip over all the high-court decisions right up till
the mid 1900’s that echoed and reinforced these views and intentions? Did you
pick up the history of American jurisprudence only in 1947, when for the first
time a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson about a “wall of separation between
church and state” was used to deny some specific religious expression -
contrary to Jefferson’s intent with that statement?
Or, wait a minute, were your ideas about America’s Christianity formed
during the 20 years you were a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ
under 
your
pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is that where you got the idea
that “America is no longer a Christian nation?” Is
this where you, even as you came to call yourself a Christian, formed the
belief that “America has been arrogant?”
Even
if that’s the understandable explanation of your damning of your country and
accusing the whole nation (not just a few military officials trying their best
to keep more Americans from being murdered by jihadists)
of “not always living up to her ideals,” how did you come up with the
ridiculous, alarming notion that we might be “considered a Muslim nation?”
Is
it because there are some 2 million or more Muslims living here, trying to be
good Americans? Out of a current population of over 300 million, 70 percent of
whom are Christians? Does that make us, by any rational definition, a “Muslim
nation?”
Why
are we not, then, a Chinese nation? A Korean nation? Even a Vietnamese nation? There are even more of these
distinct groups in America than Muslims. And if the distinction you’re trying
to make is a religious one, why is America not a Jewish nation? There’s
actually a case to be made for the latter, because our Constitution - and the success of our Revolution and founding - owe
a deep debt to our Jewish brothers.
Have
you stopped to think what an actual Muslim America would be like? Have you ever
really spent much time in Iran? Even in Egypt? You, having
been instructed in Islam as a kid at a Muslim school in Indonesia and saying
you still love the call to evening prayers, can surely picture our nation
founded on the Quran,
not the Judeo-Christian Bible, and
living under Shariah law. Can’t you? You do
recall Muhammad’s directives [Surah 9:5,73] to “break the cross”
and “kill the infidel?”
It
seems increasingly and painfully obvious that you are more influenced by your
upbringing and questionable education than most suspected. If you consider
yourself the President of a people who are “no longer Christian,” who have “failed
to live up to our ideals,” who “have been arrogant,” and might even be “considered
Muslim” - you are President of a country most Americans don’t recognize.
Could
it be you are a President without a country?
Pat Boone, descendant of the legendary pioneer Daniel Boone, has been
a top-selling recording artist, the star of his own hit TV series, a movie
star, a Broadway headliner, and a best-selling author in a career that has
spanned half a century. During the classic rock & roll era of the 1950s,
he sold more records than any artist except Elvis Presley.
