Deliver Us From Evil
Sean Hannity
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Regan Books
ISBN: 0060582510

Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, & Liberalism.

Three years have passed since 9/11 & though our wounds may have blessedly healed, our senses & memories have dulled over time, & with no further attacks on our land, we've become a bit complacent about the existence of the evil that is terrorism.

Sean Hannity has not! He asserts that “Evil exists. It is real, and it means to harm us.” & to remind us, he revisits the lessons America has learnt in confronting, in the past & in the present, that which is evil.

In order to Deliver Us From Evil, we must first allow that it exists & then remember just what it is, & to that end we revisit Evil on the Record: The Holocaust; Fighting Communism: The Reagan Way; Iraq I: War and Appeasement; Axis Iraq: The New Appeasement; The Gathering Storm; the reign of Hillary and Bill Clinton; Playing Politics at the Water's Edge & then taking a look at The Candidates.

When evil surfaced in the Western world on that glorious September morning, America rose as one nation to the challenge -- led by a leader & his team, who had the clarity of vision to recognize that evil for what it was, & to rally us & much of the world against it. Even many of the most committed liberals seemed to have their compasses reoriented in the face of that unmistakable act of war.

Our nation rallied long enough to expel the Taliban from Afghanistan with their state-sponsored evil. Yet by the time the confrontation with Iraq presented itself, our courage & moral certainty seemed to fade in the face of partisan bickering & posturing. We toppled a murderous dictator - with more than a million dead under his belt - & now the political left & the Democratic Party are trying to use the demanding aftermath of the war to exploit our national cause for their own political advantage.

How did we allow ourselves to forget so soon? Evil exists. It is real, & its intent is to cause harm to us & anyone else whom it deems an enemy. Sean Hannity believes this strongly, & not just because of his Catholic faith, although that's the root of it. Because he works in the news business, everyday he deals with the ugly side of the world.

However, these lamentable true tragedies pale beside the pure evil of September 11. How could anyone witness the horrors of that day, or the vicious repression of the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the mass graves discovered in Iraq, & dismiss the idea of evil?

& yet many people do: Sean Hannity believes it's difficult for liberals, whom he calls moral relativists, to see such moral questions clearly, because they reject absolute standards of right & wrong. In their worldview, man is perfectible, human nature is on a linear path toward enlightenment, & the concept of sin is primitively biblical.

Hannity avers that in liberals' views, society's unfairness compels people to break the law. People like Saddam & bin Laden are not morally depraved murderers, only men driven to bad acts by the injustices of Western society. Everyone should get the benefit of the doubt. Hannity goes on to say that this kind of thinking is all too familiar in our justice system which is crawling with “experts” eager to exonerate heinous criminals on the grounds that they're “genetically predisposed” to endangering the welfare of others; the media fills its airwaves with advocates eager to sympathize with murderers, instead of the families of the murdered.

The trouble with tolerating evil Sean Hannity believes, is that while we're averting our eyes, the evil itself only grows & festers around the world. Remember Neville Chamberlain who assured a wary England that an appeasement pact with Adolf Hitler would lead to “peace in our time.” Remember how liberal elitists during the Cold War ignored or downplayed the atrocities of Communism, from the gulags & mass murders of “Uncle Joe” Stalin, to the killing fields of Cambodia. Remember Bill Clinton's waffling while Islamic terrorists attacked American targets around the world all through the 1990s, in a long prelude that should have alerted us to their burgeoning war on America.

The primary evil we face today is terrorism. Sean Hannity avers that we will never triumph over the terrorists until we realize that groups like al Qaeda are not working alone. Without the deep pockets of terrorist-friendly dictatorships like Saddam Hussein to support them, the loose networks of Islamic terrorism would pose only a fraction of the danger. & those dictatorships are the same brutal regimes that oppress their own people.

As President Bush has stated, it is our duty not to wait around for the terrorists to attack us ... again. We must take the war to them, rooting them out & destroying the despotic regimes that furnish their lifeblood.

The President also warned us that this would be a war like no other: it will be fought on a variety of levels, against a largely invisible & unconventional enemy. Sometimes our efforts will be conducted out in the open; at other times they must be as invisible to the public as the terrorists are themselves.

That having been said, Deliver Us From Evil is quite a read! Sean Hannity has an axe to grind & a perspective that is undeniable. Evil does exist, in black & white, & any grey areas are the product of “liberal elitists'” imagination. In these PC times when we're frowned upon for not calling a spade a digging tool, it's easier to back track into an apologist stance than to step forward & do battle with evil.

I can't say I agree with everything Sean Hannity has to say about the state of America's war on terrorism, & he has a lot to say! However, I do agree with his original premise: that evil does exist & that we do need to fight it.

Deliver Us From Evil is a diatribe of the first order! Sometimes succinct & vitally to the point, & sometimes the mutterings of one man against weak-wristed liberals. In total, it's a lively, informative & thought-provoking read.

More from Sean Hannity: Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism
(08/29/04)

Rebecca