A nation without discernment is easily manipulated.

On February 25, 2020, The Washington Post published an opinion essay by Dr. Shirin Ebadi [born 1947] titled “I Thought the Iranian Revolution Would Bring Freedom. I Was Wrong.”¹ Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, author, and human rights advocate whose life stands as a public rebuke to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic regime.

As Iran’s first female judge, Ebadi was forced from the bench after the 1979 revolution because the new regime would not permit a woman to sit in judgment. Exiled in London since 2009, she has become one of the regime’s most prominent moral accusers. In 2003, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advancing democracy and defending the rights of women and children in Iran.

Her 2020 Washington Post essay is a sober confession. Writing to her daughters and to Iran’s younger generation, Ebadi acknowledges that she and many others who helped bring about the 1979 revolution believed they were building a free, humane, and democratic nation. Instead, she writes, they unleashed a religious dictatorship.

Ebadi admits that she and many fellow revolutionaries were driven by idealism clouded by naivete. They believed that Shia cleric Ruhollah Khomeini [1902-1989] would deliver justice and reform. Instead, he built a personality cult, strangled liberty, degraded women, and established a corrupt, calcified political order that has imposed suffering on younger generations for nearly half a century.

In retrospect, Ebadi concludes that Iran did not need a radical revolution, but reform. Rather than renewing the nation, Khomeini’s revolution defiled and shattered the remaining institutional order, replacing it with repression, corruption, economic stagnation, and despair. She especially laments the cost paid by Iran’s youth, who have spent decades bearing the burden of a disastrous mistake made by their elders.

Her essay is, in effect, a public repentance. She apologizes to the younger generation for helping create a system that darkened their future and deprived them of freedom. It is a remarkable admission: the man many hailed as a savior became a tyrant, and the revolution itself became an apparatus of despotism.

That brings us to John Heubusch’s opinion piece last week, “The Twelve-Day War the Press Already Wants to Lose.”² Heubusch [born 1958] is a veteran public servant, political strategist, and executive who led the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute from 2009 until his retirement in 2022. Chosen by Nancy Reagan and the Foundation’s Board, he brought to that post a career spanning national politics, government, philanthropy, and business.

Before joining the Reagan Foundation, Heubusch served as Chief Operating Officer of Avalon Capital Group and Chief Administrative Officer of Gateway, Inc. Earlier in his career, he led the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1995-1996 cycle, served Elizabeth Dole at both the Department of Labor and the American Red Cross, worked on Capitol Hill, and began his professional life at the Pentagon as a research analyst in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.

In his essay, Heubusch wrote of the inverse relationship between the length of military conflicts and the media’s willingness to accept America’s involvement. As he observes, the White House press pool spent the first 12 days of the Iran conflict asking President Trump, “You’re one week in now… how long do you expect operations to continue?”

To place that in context, America has effectively been at war with Iran for 47 years. World War II lasted 6 years; Korea lasted 3; the Civil War lasted 4; Afghanistan lasted 2 decades; and the Cold War lasted half a century.

Unfortunately for our nation, having lost much of its Judeo-Christian heritage and having forfeited a character-based education grounded in Biblical truth, many of the elites who now wield influence over America’s spiritual, intellectual, educational, economic, vocational, and cultural institutions possess little to no spiritual discernment.

Solomon wrote in Proverbs 21:22, “A wise man scales the city of the mighty, and brings down the trusted stronghold.” In Ecclesiastes 9:16, he added, “Wisdom is better than strength,” and in verse 18, “Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroys much good.”

J. Vernon McGee, the 20th-century evangelical Bible teacher and radio preacher whose Thru the Bible ministry made him one of the most recognized voices in verse-by-verse Biblical exposition, drew from Solomon’s teaching in Ecclesiastes 9 the conclusion that spiritual wisdom is better than weapons of war, that Christ is better than atomic energy, and yet that one sinner can destroy much good.

This is the lesson: moral and spiritual power ultimately outweigh physical or technological might. And the evil wrought by one sinner, when left unchecked, can do more damage than the labor of many righteous men can quickly repair. Adam’s sin affected the whole race. Achan’s sin brought defeat upon Israel. Rehoboam’s folly split the kingdom. Ananias and Sapphira introduced corruption into the early Church.

Christians must now pray for those in authority and for the men and women of influence who surround the president. It was not long ago that Americans were played like a fine Stradivarius through nightly COVID briefings, ratings-driven theater, political posturing, and manipulative messaging.

Anthony Fauci, Big Pharma, Democrat leftists, their street-level allies, Fortune 500 corporations, George Soros, and blue-state governors and mayors invoked ‘science’ to justify a species of alarmist absolutism - the use of exaggerated fear to impose rigid, unquestionable policy and moral conformity - that helped put 40 million Americans out of work.

A nation without discernment is easily manipulated. A people without wisdom is easily ruled by fear. And a press corps without moral clarity will almost always side against the hard, necessary work of restraining evil.

Thankfully, Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand.

David Lane

American Renewal Project

1. The Washington Post, February 25, 2020, “I thought the Iranian Revolution would bring freedom. I was wrong.”

2. johnheubusch.substack.com/p/the-twelve-day-war-the-press-already