Two noteworthy pieces came down today. First, the London Times announced its Person of the Year to be Neda Soltan.

Neda was the young Iranian woman of beautiful spirit who was senselessly gunned down by Iran’s terrorist Islamic regime. She hadn’t a political bone in her body, but she was intuitively outraged by the regime’s brutal repression of the protests against a massively crooked election. She courageously attended her first protest, and gave her life as a result.

In murdering Neda, the regime destroyed forever any illusions of its own decency and legitimacy, while Neda herself was immortalized. Jesus said that “unless a grain of wheat fall to the earth and die, it cannot bear much fruit.” The world will never forget Neda, and the Iranian people will never rest until they are free of political and religious tyranny. Through her sacrifice, Neda has already begun to bear an incalculable harvest of good fruit.

What a refreshing contrast this Times’ pick is, compared to the values-neutral, politically correct, agenda-driven, nauseating pap we’ve come to expect from our own Time Magazine each year. A well-done, inspiring piece. May journalism be reborn with many more like it.

Then, over at the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, again proves to be our own Charles Martell (i.e. Charlie “the Hammer“). America used to stand for something noble, but how far we have fallen. Krauthammer documents the opportunities that were lost this year – particularly one opportunity after another to encourage and advance democracy and human rights – and nuclear safety – in Iran – because the man we chose to pilot our ship of state has no belief in America’s exceptional world role in this regard.

It’s excellent reading, it’s sad reading, it’s tragic reading, and I hope it’s reading that will get you angry enough to begin to speak out, so that Neda’s sacrifice will not have been in vain.

Recall, America, that to whom much is given, much will be required. And then consider that, according to the principles of the Kingdom, it is in helping others that we help ourselves, and “to him who knows to do good, and does not do it, it is sin” (Jas 4:17).

And how on earth are we going to preach the Gospel with any credibility, if we have not first proven our love with the labors of freedom, when we could?

God help us.

Krauthammer excerpt:

… We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship.

Obama responded by distancing himself from this new birth of freedom. First, scandalous silence. Then, a few grudging words. Then relentless engagement with the murderous regime. With offer after offer, gesture after gesture — to not Iran, but the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists — the United States conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it….