"Do You Know The F Word?"

"Do you mean f f fornication?" replies Prince Albert to his speech therapist.

"Bertie, you know perfectly well what I mean."

So begins one of the funniest and frankly inoffensive swearing rants I have ever seen, courtesy of the terrific movie - The King's Speech. I first viewed the Reader's Digest version earlier this year at a daughter's church on one of their night at the movies services (without the rant of course) but was able to see the complete movie on my telly earlier this week.

The overall message presented in both was dealing with fear. The Prince grew up without love, without close personal contacts, with a dominating but distant father who happened to be the King of England who never praised but was always critical and with a favored brother who would tease him. All of that resulted in Albert having a terrible stuttering problem, only made worse because he was a public figure.

Albert did have one soul mate, his wife, who persuaded him to seek the help of a man who had a great reputation for helping those with speech difficulties. As we find out later in the movie Lionel developed his skill in Australia during and after WWI when returning soldiers, traumatized by what they had gone through, would come back with deep communication problems. The "doctor" was a good listener. He was able to make a connection with those men, find out and expose their fears to the light of day and bring them out of their speech induced isolation.

The movie was set just prior to WWII. As things turned out the Prince's father, the King, dies and is succeeded by Edward, the Prince's brother. Edward wants to marry a twice divorced woman which is not received well by anyone in the royal family or the government and especially not by the Church of England and so he abdicates the throne thus making our Prince Albert the new King. Later on comes the point where England is going to declare war on Germany and Albert, now known as King George VI. has to address his subjects on the radio, needing to assure and inspire the nation to endure the deep struggles to come. As viewers we get to see the reluctant King courageously come face to face with his greatest fear and do his duty. Thus, The Kings Speech.

I sometimes wonder about the timing of things. King George VI represented the beginning of the rapid decline of the British Empire. On the very day he was crowned King the Irish Free State removed mention of the monarchy from it's constitution. He was the last Emperor of India which was split during his life time into India and Pakistan, both later becoming independent. His Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought appeasement was the way to reason with Hitler and infamously declared after the Munich Agreement that he had achieved "peace in our time." The US came in to save England's rear end and emerged from WWII as the major world power.

Now we fast forward to the day that I saw The King's Speech on the (get this) Sundance TV channel. It was March 3, 2015, a date I believe will be remembered by historians as a critical pivot point in world history.

Earlier in the day our country was visited by Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of the nation of Israel. He came to address a joint session of Congress to speak about the existential threat that a nuclear Iran poses to Israel, to the rest of the Middle East and to the West, including the United States.

Interestingly Bibi's speech occurs the day before the Jewish feast of Purim. In the Biblical Book of Esther there is the story of how the Jewish people living throughout the Persian empire are saved from sure annihilation. There are 4 main characters in the story. Esther is a Jewish woman who becomes the Queen of Persia. The King's name is Ahasuerus (better known in history as Xerxes) who rules a territory stretching from modern day Pakistan to northern Sudan. Esther was raised by a relative whose name is Mordecai who is a minor official in the royal court and last we have the King's top adviser Haman who is a classic narcissist.

A brief rendition of the story is as follows:

Mordecai discovers a plot to kill the King and the bad guys are caught and hanged. The King doesn't know about it but the account is recorded in the Persian annals. The King has a great party for all the top dudes in his empire and then at the end of the feast calls in his beautiful Queen Vasthil to show her off. She refuses to come and gets dumped as Queen. A search goes out for beautiful women and Esther is one of the gals picked. Mordecai advisers her not to reveal that she is Jewish and she becomes the top bachelor babe and is made Queen.

Later on Haman gets promoted to top prince and expects everyone to bow down to him when he walks by. Mordecai, because he is Jewish and will only bow down to God, does not which fries Haman's pants. Haman now wants to kill not only Mordecai but all the Jews everywhere. He pays Ahasuerus a huge sum of money and gets him to issue a decree to do so and a date a short time in the future is set saying that anyone who wants can kill Jews and take all their stuff.

Mordecai tells Esther what is being planned, that she too will not escape and that she needs to get an audience with the King to see if she can change his mind, telling her "who knows whether you have attained royalty for such a time as this?". They call on all the Jews in the capital city to fast and pray for 3 days. On the 3rd day Esther gets her meeting and requests that he and Haman come the next day to a banquet she will prepare for them. Haman. proud little man that he is gets so excited that he has been honored to a private banquet with just the King and Queen that he builds a gallows 50 cubits high to hang Mordecai on.

That night the King cannot sleep and decides to read the Persian annals. He finds the story about how Mordeai saved his life and discovers that he had not been honored. The King asks Haman what should be done to honor a really special dude and Haman, thinking that the only really special dude around is him says that the guy should be able to dress up as king and ride around the city on the king's horse. Ahasuerus thinks that is a great idea and has Haman hold the leash to the horse which leads Mordecai around the city.

Then at the banquet the King asks his Queen what she wants and she spills the beans that she and Mordecai are Jewish and that killing all the Jews was Haman's idea and that it would be nice if the King could undo his decree. The King says nope, not possible but I've got a great idea. I will issue another decree saying that the Jews are allowed to defend themselves (which they do, killing about 75,000 of their enemies but not taking any of their property) and to sweeten the pie we will see that Haman is hanged on that big gallows I see out there (along with his 12 sons).

And that is how the Feast of Purim started. In case you are not aware Persia is another name for Iran.

I have always felt since the time he first became Prime Minister of Israel that Netanyahu would be someone of special importance for the Nation of Israel. It would not surprise me in the least if Bibi himself believes that like Esther he attained his position for such a time as this. He understands what few in the West can actually believe, that militant Islam cannot be reasoned with because their belief system actually requires the destruction of not just the Jews but Western laws, culture and possessions as well.

In the West, believing that at heart all men are basically rational, we want to negotiate to prevent war not realizing that we are already at war. We also do not realize that the goals of militant Shia Islam and the goals of militant Sunni Islam are both ultimately the same. There is only one reason that Iran, run since 1979 by Shia mullahs that seek a restoration of 7th century Islamic rule, would want a treaty and that is to take the pressure of sanctions off and give them more time to achieve their goals. Those include not only regional dominance but also obtaining nuclear warheads for their long range ballistic missiles.

Ah, but here's the rub. A treaty with Iran is currently being negotiated by a man who can't even say the words militant Islam and who sees that treaty, if accomplished, as the hallmark achievement (along with The Affordable Health Care Act) of his presidency.

Our current administration has as it's king a man who has a profoundly different world outlook than the average American and most certainly a different view about what America is and was. These were deeply ingrained in him by his mother, reinforced by the writings of his father and then poured into him by a number of prominent radical leftest who watched after him from college to grad school to community activist to Illinois politics. His administration is filled from top to bottom with people holding those same views. Most I believe have an outright disdain for what is known as Judeo Christian thought.

Even though America is now a post Christian society the core of what our country was has deep foundations in Judeo Christian thought. The idea that all men are created equal and are endowed "by their creator" with certain unalienable rights was believed by men and women of faith and deist as well and is at the heart of who we are as a people. In their wisdom our founders did not want the scepter of kings or the shackles of theocratic rule and so they set up a government with 3 separate branches and a society where men and woman were free to say what they believed and were able to pursue their dreams. They created a Constitution and Bill of Rights that reflected their core principles, derived again from Judeo Christian beliefs. Those are what make everything work in an imperfect world inhabited by imperfect people.

Although we are not by any means perfect we have been the model throughout the world for a free society, a haven for the oppressed, a beacon for the downtrodden and a force for freedom and justice.

But now America has reached the pinnacle of it's power and has started it's rapid decline. This time it is by design. The Hamans of this world still want to kill all the Jews and take all their property and the Creator who endowed us with our rights does not look kindly when we turn our back on the apple of His eye.

Netanyahu says that once again forces in this world want to eliminate the Jew and for that he is called a fear monger. Fear, there is that word again. The Prince grew up without love, without close personal contacts, with a dominating but distant father he could never please. Everyone compensates in different ways. Some need control, some need love, some need courage.

Do you know the F word?  Come on Bertie, you know perfectly well what I mean.