By Pat Centner, AFAJ staff writer

May 2003 – “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

This quote from Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican presidential candidate, pretty well describes, in a nutshell, the concept behind Joseph Farah’s book, Taking America Back. In fact, Farah, founder and editor of WorldNetDaily.com, the Internet’s largest independent news site, uses the quote in rebuttal to a Publishers Weekly review that labels his new book’s “positions and rhetoric” as “uncomfortably extreme.”

The fact is, Farah’s book will be considered extreme, or even radical, by some who read it. Farah admits that. But he upholds that truth in light of Goldwater’s reminder. 

Written in hard-hitting and often caustic language, Taking America Back challenges the status quo in our nation today. Farah laments that America no longer remembers the two concepts that made her special as a nation. First, the founding fathers wrote a constitution that expressly limits the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. And second, the framers of the Constitution held firmly to the idea that only a nation made up of godly people with common spiritual and social values is capable of self-government. 

Modern-day America smacks of failure on both counts, according to Farah. The federal government has long surpassed the amount of power and authority the founding fathers intended it to have. Worse, the failure of 20th Century Americans to uphold and defend the religious values and freedom principles held sacred by the founding fathers has resulted in a national downslide into immorality and licentiousness that seems to know no bounds.

Farah provides example after example, along with a wealth of background information and statistics, of how and why America has come to its present state. He hammers hard at the importance of the Constitution in the life of America and mourns the fact that it has become “little more than a historical relic.” 

“It’s time for a radical new agenda,” Farah declares ... “to move the nation away from the idea that the federal government represents some large feeding trough through which we can all better ourselves materially. The only way Americans can reestablish their freedom ... is to break the hammerlock of statism and the notion that morally relativistic secular humanism holds the answers to controlling men’s passions and behavior.”  

And how to go about doing that? First and foremost, Farah says Americans must repent and humbly seek God’s help. In addition, he urges a “second American Revolution,” through which the “people must once again take control of their government – not beginning with their elected representatives in Washington, but right in their own backyards” (through involvement on town councils, county commissions, etc.). 

He also advocates, among a long list of actions, withdrawing from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and other “globalist traps;” eliminating all foreign aid; privatizing all federal lands; and abolishing the income tax and the IRS.

For fighting back and restoring liberty to America, Farah suggests twelve steps that include home-schooling children, using local power to resist federal intrusion and mandates, and insulating children from the effects of the popular culture.

On the moral front, Farah says it is imperative that the church come out of its protective shell and become involved once again in civic activities and politics. He acknowledges that the government discourages civic involvement by pastors, priests, and rabbis. 

But Farah told the AFA Journal that the clergy who have bought into the concept of “separation of church and state” and the idea of  “rendering unto Caesar” should read the writings of the pastors who led the revival before America’s Revolutionary War. 

“The War of Independence was really a battle for freedom whose birthplace was the pulpits of America,” he remarked.

“I wonder about clergy today who cite the ‘render unto Caesar’ verse as if it’s the only thing the Bible says about dealing with evil,” he continued. “If we truly had a self-governing society today, we wouldn’t have a Caesar, of course. ... And that’s what the founders believed was necessary – not to have a Caesar. Remember, they only knew about kings and rulers at that time, but our nation’s founders changed all that.  We need to keep that in mind.”

Farah added that he hopes pastors and other religious clergy will read Taking America Back because he believes America’s greatest hope lies with them. “But if they see their only responsibility as being limited to the spiritual lives of their flock,” he reflected, “we’re in big trouble. Because when things have gone well in the culture, the church has been involved.”

He offered the example of the Golden Age of Hollywood from 1933 to 1966. During those years, Protestant and Catholic clergy, at Hollywood’s urging, read every script before the production of a movie. 

“You can still let your kids watch any movie, practically, that was made in that time period,” Farah stated, “because the church was involved.

“To put this book in the hands of every pastor in this country,” he concluded, “would be my greatest goal.”  

Taking America Back is published by WND Publishers and can be purchased from www.shopnetdaily.com and at bookstores across the nation.