Secretary of State John Kerry congratulated the U.S. Embassy staff in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 1 for promoting “a universal message about the rights of people to be free, about democracy, about the ability of people to be able to choose their government and not be oppressed when they speak out or say something.” He should have stopped there. Here is what he said next:
“This is a time here in Africa where there are a number of different cross-currents of modernity that are coming together to make things even more challenging. Some people believe that people ought to be able to only do what they say they ought to do, or to believe what they say they ought to believe, or to live by their interpretation of something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago. That’s not the way I think most people want to live.”
The Ten Commandments are the moral edifice upon which Western civilization was built. It makes absolute prohibitions on a range of issues. Was Secretary Kerry aiming his remarks at the Ten Commandments? Or was he taking issue with the teachings of Jesus as found in the New Testament? Or were his remarks targeted at the Koran, the religious text of Islam?
We not only contacted the State Department asking Secretary Kerry to explain himself, we listed the email address of the organization’s press secretary so our people could communicate with her. They did—big time. Indeed, the press secretary called our office twice to complain.
Finally, Kerry issued a limp excuse that no one believed. We told the media we weren’t buying it. We are confident, however, that our message was delivered.
