Have you ever stopped to consider words and phrases we too often take for granted?
Civilizations are real. The culture and civilization of Asia are very, very different from the culture of Africa. And the way things work in Afghanistan is very, very different from the way they work in Australia.
And our civilization is the Judeo-Christian Civilization.
Have you ever stopped to think what that phrase actually means? We aren’t just Christians, and the West isn’t something born in Europe.
Now, I could spend thousands of words defining what Judeo-Christian Civilization stands for, and I’d enjoy it too since my undergraduate degree was, in fact, Philosophy and Theology. But I’m not sure you would enjoy it! So let me stick to just what matters in this time of war in the birthplace of Civilization, the Middle East.
Yes, the deep roots of the West lie in Ancient Greece, with the first philosophers and their love of wisdom and human reason. But their religion was an anthropomorphic polytheism in which their multiple Olympian deities were just as capricious, jealous, and selfish as their worshipers down on Earth.
And yes, the second ancient source of our culture comes from ancient Rome, with its predictable laws and its Senate, but it too was a brutal culture, as evinced by the mass slaughter of the Games in the Colosseum and the judicial murder of mass crucifixions.
But we are nothing as a civilization without Israel’s influence, and the act of ultimate love from a Jewish carpenter nailed to one of those Roman crosses.
Why? First, because the Jews were the chosen people, and instead of believing in many gods who were just pale reflections of themselves, they believed in one god, the True God, and they actually had a relationship with him, the Covenant. Greeks and Romans had no meaningful relationship with their gods except for obeisance.
Beyond that monotheistic reality, there was the unique nature of Jewish theology.
When the Bible speaks of Man made in the image of God – imago dei – that isn’t poetic flourish; that is the actual foundation of our whole civilization.
Ask yourself a simple question: why do have rights? Because a government decided? Or because your rights are divine, derived from your being made in the image of He who made you? In fact, just ask the Founding Fathers. There’s a reason we have “unalienable rights,” and they knew it. That’s why they mention the “Creator” in our founding document and do so with a capital ‘C.’
So, to that Republican student leader from Stanford who asked me in the Q&A after I spoke to the San Matteo Republicans at their Regan dinner last week, the war in Israel matters.
Your advice that we should just pray for Israel and do nothing more because “it’s not our war” is dead wrong. And your assertion to me afterward that we aren’t a “Judeo-Christian” civilization, but just a Christian one, and that Jesus was just an “ethnic Jew” couldn’t be more wrong. Just listen to the Messiah himself who told us: “I did not come to destroy the Law or Prophets but I am the fulfillment of them,” (Mat 5:17-20), a Jew who worshiped at the temple all his life. We are one civilization, and this Saturday, it was reinforced by a Jewish American.
I was at the veterinarian clinic with my Belgian shepherd, Killian. As I waited, an elderly gentleman with his 14-year-old German shepherd recognized me from my Newsmax show. We chatted at length about what happened on October 7th and what needs to happen to the savages of Hamas. He was born in Israel to Jewish parents who escaped Hungary before the war and moved to the reborn nation of Israel in 1948.
At the end of our chat, he tapped his side and said: “I’m ready for them. If they try and kill me, I’ll take a few of those bastards with me.”
I tapped my pocket in response and told my friend, Shlomo, “I’m ready too.”
One Civilization, one Fight, one Team.
Sebastian Gorka Ph.D. is host of SALEM Radio’s AMERICA First and The Gorka Reality Check on NEWSMAX TV. A former Strategist to President Donald Trump, he is a member of the National Security Education Board of the Pentagon. His latest book is The War for America’s Soul. Follow him on his SubStack page and website.