All Maine Matters
Because All of Maine DOES Matter!
Vol. 1, No. 10 October 2006 FREE
Eclipse of the West
by Fritz Spencer
No sight is more welcome than the sight of the bright, beaming sun. The light of the sun makes the world knowable; and its warmth sustains the life of all living beings. We cannot conceive of a world without light, since as the Book of Genesis teaches us, and as science confirms, light was the first thing in God’s universe to be created and seen. Yet on rare occasions, even the light of the sun is blotted out, as the moon moves ever so slowly to cover over its radiance and glory.
No day is as fixed in my memory as the day I stood alongside my father and mother outside our home in Orono and watched as the sun was plunged into total darkness. I peered through a double fold of photographic film, as the shadow of the moon slowly bit out a black crescent from the face of the sun. In an hour, the darkness was dispelled, and the light of day returned.
I learned in later years that there is an eclipse more frightening than a total eclipse, because it has consequences which are real and terrifying. That is the eclipse of human reason.
The belief that reason is a divine gift which enables man to rise above the natural world and the limitations of his own nature is the fundamental principle of Western civilization. The divine gift finds symbolic expression in the metaphor of light. Lady Liberty holds aloft a torch, and is called “Liberty Illuminating the World.” But it is not liberty that illuminates the world. It is the divine gift of reason which acts in and through the human personality to light our path to freedom.
That is why I view the reelection of John Baldacci with the utmost trepidation. The forces behind Governor Baldacci, through their belief in secular humanism, are committed to the principles of atheism and materialism, the twin pillars of Marxism. These ideological and political forces stand outside, and are opposed to the Western tradition, for the simple reason that they deny that human reason has a divine origin. As such, they imperil our freedom.
Those who object to portraying the upcoming election as a contest between the West and it adversaries, simply do not understand the ideological forces at work in Maine. The photos of John Baldacci and other Democratic leaders standing cordially alongside Fidel Castro make clear the severity of the threat confronting our state. It was after all, Fidel Castro who became the foremost enemy of the West following the death of Yasser Arafat.
Under the administration of John Baldacci, the Left has opposed virtually every core belief of Western civilization. The Left has undermined the right to personal property by imposing confiscatory taxes, in an effort to redistribute wealth according to a socialist model of the economy. The Left has violated the principle of the sanctity of human life by supporting abortion under the guise of “reproductive freedom.” The Left has undermined the institution of marriage by enacting a law protecting homosexual rights.
But by far the worst offense was John Baldacci’s executive order empowering illegal aliens to obtain all the benefits of citizens, at the expense of citizens. Such a law, if followed to its logical conclusion, will have the effect of abolishing Maine as a separate political and social entity.
That is why the upcoming election will be the most crucial in our history. If Governor John Baldacci is reelected, the eclipse of the West, which even now is racing over all the earth, will at long last reach Maine, blotting out forever the beauty and brilliance of our own native land and culture.