President Obama's speech in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize showed great growth in his development as a leader. He courageously set forth the principles of just war before those who had assembled to give him a peace prize. The president boldly acknowledged America's very real enemy, Al Qaeda, in a move rarely heard from him prior in public addresses. His remarks also rectified his failure to mention any leaders besides himself in his remarks for the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In doing so, President Obama exhibited humility and grace as he noted the achievements of leaders like Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Pope John Paul II, and Lech Walesa in his Nobel address.

President Obama failed in just one key area in his otherwise impressive address. Once again, he proved himself ignorant of history and embarrassingly sycophantic when it comes to the history and nature of Islam.

In the very same week in which five American Muslim men were apprehended in Pakistan for intent to wage jihad, President Obama offered these words that so often sprinkle his messages: “Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded.”

President Obama loves to reference the Crusades as his one Christian parallel for the modern-day Islam of massive religiously-inspired violence. He could not be more wrong. Were Obama to read distinguished Cambridge historian Jonathan Riley-Smith's The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, he would find an excellent account of what happens when Islam expands it reach and what is required to thwart it.

Riley-Smith helpfully counters the modern misconception that Christians attacked Muslims in the Crusades without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them. All the Crusades met the very criteria of the just wars in which President Obama sought to ground his Nobel speech. They came about in reaction to attacks against Christians or the Church. The First Crusade was called in 1095 to defend against the recent Turksih conquest of Christian Asia Minor as well as the earlier Arab conquest of what until then had been the Christian Holy Land. The second Crusade developed as a response to the Muslim conquest of Edessa in 1144. The third resulted from the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and a number of other Christian lands in 1187. In each case, Christians went to war to defend Christians, to combat the attackers, and to rectify egregious wrongs.

President Obama continues to show a lack of history education as he likens the Crusaders to the Muslim jihadists. That ignorance is unacceptable. One would hope that in an Ivy League education that included undergraduate years at Columbia and law school at Harvard, the President would have had access to a non-politically correct reading of history. It appears not.


Thus, we are subjected to the historically negligent comments of a Nobel Peace Prize winner not only in his acceptance speech but in other addresses as well. In his West Point address regarding Afghanistan, Obama said, “As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda - a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents.” In his official remarks at the beginning of Ramadan, the President commented, “These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”


One cannot help but ask, Are Obama's history books lacking an account of the routine Islamic assaults against the infidel lands? For example, the path of coercion and violence inaugurated by Islam's founder, Mohammed, shortly after he created his new religion in the 7th century? The jihadist conquest of Europe in the 8th century, finally repelled at Poitiers in 732 by Charles Martel? The anti-Christian assaults mentioned above which spawned the Crusades? The second Muslim European surge halted at Vienna in 1683? Or the modern day jihad against the West?

Frankly, the aggressive, relentless, militaristic dimension of Islam cannot be ignored. The stakes simply are too high. The very principles that make America exceptional hang in the balance. Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Equality of women. Freedom of assembly. None of these are valued in the Islamic world view, and we ignore that basic fact at our own peril. A strategy of ignorance paves a path to national suicide.

In the last month, we have not only seen the arrests of five more Muslim men from America in Pakistan, we have also witnessed the horror of Nidal Hasan's Islamic terror massacre at Ft. Hood. Moreover, twelve additional American men are being sought on charges of collaborating with Islamic terrorists in Somalia. In 2009 alone, at least 80 Muslim men in America have been charged, convicted, or sentenced on terrorism-related charges. These events have transpired in cities as geographically dispersed as Denver, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Little Rock, New York, Minneapolis, as well as our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

These are terrorists who are right here. They are our neighbors, our students, our co-workers. They do not believe the tenets of freedom; they merely enjoy them. They walk in the footsteps of the warriors and jihadists inaugurated by Mohammed. They do not embrace the very values for which many Americans, including several thousand moderate Muslims serving in the military, are willing to die.

Given that about 0.6% (1.35 MM) of the adult American population is Muslim according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey, that very small population clearly generates an inordinate number of terroristic males. If American numbers of young male Muslim terrorists are this high, one can only imagine what those numbers would look like in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, or Yemen.

When will America and her leaders wake up to the threat that will not go away and the threat which is growing within our own borders? The present strategy of heaping praise and mindless platitudes on followers of Islam who want nothing less than our demise is patently absurd. One also has to wonder when, and if, President Obama will open his mind to read history and current events rather than merely parroting the politically correct mantras of our day about a great religion that has been defiled. A Nobel prize winner can, and must, do much better.

I invite you to join me on Friday to provide Christmas gifts for foster children in the state of Georgia. What a great day it will be!

Clark Howard and I will broadcast from the Wal-Mart on Ashford-Dunwoody Road near Perimeter Mall from 3:00 - 6:00 pm. Andy and Christa will be with us. And a good time will be had by all!

We will be there to partner with you in adopting foster children and purchasing the gifts on their wish lists. For more information, check out Clark's site with full details.

See you Friday afternoon!

Every man (and many women) need a strategy for staring temptation in the eyes and not giving in.

Here are the top 10 ways to do just that. 10 ways to help yourself say, "I just cannot go there."

10) Know your identity. Who you are. When you are at your best. As a person of faith, it is helpful to remember, "I am baptized." I belong to God.

9) Enjoy a Healthy sex life with your spouse – not just often, but one that satisfies your deep desire

8) Wear your wedding band - it is a physical and visible reminder to yourself that you made a vow

7)Remember the old quote from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. "Why would I eat chopped steak when I have filet mignon waiting at home."

6) Understand that marriage is a calling. God has called you to this relationship. It is not merely a contract you wrote. It is a covenant you entered.

5) Remember the goal - a lifetime of love. It is not about your happiness on any single day. It is about a life that you are building together.

4) Do not put yourself in those positions to be tempted - e.g., it may be that you consume no alcohol when you are travelling on the road, or you may have no computer in a private room of your houes. Avoid temptation in the first place; do not merely resist it.


3) Close your eyes and think of your children. Imagine the damage that your one act can and will do to their lives.

2)Know your enemy. He wants to make you live backwards. The backward of LIVE is EVIL. The threat is real. Only the foolish ignore the threat.

1) Know his goals. You will be tempted in your areas of weakness not your areas of strength. Know yourself and your own weak points. Then take steps to prevent temptation.

No gossip. No speculation. That is a rule of the show.

When it comes to Tiger, there are plenty of people to do those things. I prefer to draw out the lessons from this debacle to help you and me become the best versions of ourselves and to help make our relationships stronger.

With that in mind, here are the 7 lessons of Tiger as I shared on the show over the past week.

1) The details of the relationships are none of our business in spite of what TMZ and RadarOnline are doing. The relentless probing and speculation is destroying a family's chance to work their way through personal failures with some privacy and dignity.

2) Tiger is not perfect. None of us is. He is not a role model. No celebrity is. We worship celebrities for one thing they do well. Streisand sings well. Pitt looks good. Tiger hits balls with sticks. They do that one thing well. That does not mean that they excel in every area of their lives. Role models are the real people in your life and the lives of your children - people whose entire lives you can know because you relate to them regularly. Coaches, pastors, teachers, neighbors. Most of all, parents. Do not look for a celebrity to be the primary influence in your child's life. They cannot do that, nor should they try.

3) Tiger was looking for love in all the wrong places. It appears that his downward spiral began shortly after his father's death. In all likelihood, Tiger lived most of his life seeking to please his very strong father's thirst for wins and successes. Once his father was no longer around to please, Tiger had no replacement for the love he had sought from his childhood. My hope is that the counselor in his life now will help Tiger see that the centerpiece of his life is missing - that it should not have been his father in the first place, but rather his Father.

4) Tiger and Elin are right not to air all this out in public. In spite of all the PR advice, this is not about his brand or earnings potential. He has worried his whole life about that. This is about his life, his marriage, and his family. Those things are not press releases.

5)Pre-nups are a recipe for failed marriages. When you plan your exit when you are entering marriage, your bond is flawed from the outset. I never performed weddings where the couple had a pre-nup. A contract about money cannot become the definer of marriage. Bad idea.

6) Every man in any circumstance will eventually have to stare down temptation. That is a fact of life. A healthy man will have a strategy for staring temptation in the eyes and not caving. Tiger clearly did not have that. Later this week, I will share the top 10 ways to stare down temptation with the list I shared on the show last week.

7) Every marriage needs a tune-up at least once a year. You do maintenance on your cars and your kids. Why would you not do that for your marriage? You might visit a marriage counselor once a year for a tune-up or use the 5 questions I posted on my blog yesterday as a way to have an honest conversation about how things are coming.

I have been really behind on making updates from the on-air show to the blog. Thus, I will be posting nearly every day this week to catch up with the stuff I mention on air that you request to appear on my blog. My apologies!

TODAY: 5 Questions Every Married Couple Should Ask Each year

TOMORROW: The 7 Lessons of Tiger

To prevent a marriage meltdown like Tiger and Elin are experiencing, take a day each year to do some maintenance work to see how your marriage is doing. You do routine maintenance for your car, your kids' shots, and your dogs. Why do you not take some time each year to see how things are going in the marriage?

Set aside a day or a weekend to have a real, honest conversation around these 5 questions. Identify the strengths of where you and any danger zones you may be entering that need attention to keep the relationship strong.

The key is honest conversation and then agreeing to find ways to address any issues that arise in the maintenance check-up.

1) Have we been faithful to each other this past year - not only sexually but also emotionally? I.e. are there people outside the marriage we have confided in more deeply than our own spouse.

2) Name one activity that you enjoy doing together (other than the obvious one). It is important to have an activity that you do regularly as a couple - walking, travel, movies, hiking - to keep you joined together rather than becoming 2 separate individuals.

3) Do we share a spiritual life? This is the foundation of a long-term satisfying marriage. Without it, it will be very difficult to sustain a common basis for the decisions and struggles you will face.

4) What sacrifice have you made on behalf of our marriage this week? And what sacrifice have I made? Sacrifice is the root expression of love. Not sex. Sacrifice and giving to benefit the person you love. Be specific. Appreciate how the other person has (or has not) sacrificed on behalf of you as an expression of love.

5) Be honest. Can you imagine life without your partner? If so, move quickly to find ways to address the areas where you have drifted apart. As my grandmother said, "Do not marry someone you can live with. Marry someone you cannot live without."