Thomas A. Shakely

“It’s not popular to speak of God. But I do so now and publicly because I feel blessed. I am blessed.” So declares King Silas, head of the fictional kingdom of Gilboa, in the pilot episode of “Kings,” one of this summer’s most compelling and least known television dramas.

“Kings” — a modern re-telling of the Biblical story of Saul and King David — represents an unusually ambitious incursion into the territory of high-powered cultural-religious drama in a medium notorious for elevating the pedestrian and pedantic over the thoughtful or provocative.

So, perhaps it comes as no surprise that “Kings” was canceled earlier this year.

Despite its relatively low profile, “Kings” did not lack in talent. King Silas, the program’s lead, was portrayed by Ian McShane, a Golden Globe-winning English actor and stage performer whose first London appearance was a starring role with Dame Judi Dench. [Read more...]

The following remarks were delivered in a speech to Rotary International of State College in Centre County, Pennsylvania on March 24, 2009.

Introduction
First, thank you for inviting me tonight to speak. I’m sure you hear it often, but it really is an honor for me – a guy who four years ago was just an average freshman on a campus of some 45,000 – to be with you now, some of the most distinguished members of what I identify proudly and perhaps rather presumptuously as our shared community in the Nittany Valley.

I’ll be speaking tonight on some of my experiences at Penn State over the past four years as a student and campus leader. Specifically, I’ll be talking about a group I founded two years ago called “Safeguard Old State”, a student-alumni group designed to “protect the rights and traditions of Penn Staters.” I hope to relate how my experiences have shaped my impression of the state of modern university life at a land-grant school like ours.

Finally, I’ll introduce the conclusions I have drawn about the kinds of things I believe our University community will need to rediscover in this century, and how we can write a new chapter in the history of higher education by understanding the crossroads at which I believe we are soon to arrive. [Read more...]

This column originally appeared in The Philadelphia Bulletin on August 13, 2008. You can read the article on The Bulletin’s website.

As energy prices and the cost of living are rising, many elected officials seem content to wring their hands in indignation rather than wringing the necks of those responsible. So, we the people are left to decide our energy future.

Three numbers are keys to a solution. The first is 2 trillion, the second is 86 billion and the third is 16 billion. These numbers account for the amount in barrels of proven oil reserves the United States possesses in the Rocky Mountains, the offshore continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Rocky Mountain region alone represents three times the known oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. The offshore continental shelf holds enough oil to supply U.S. demand for a dozen years, according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Further, the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of Congress, estimates that if we opened only the Alaskan wilderness, we would see a surge in tax revenues of $191 billion from domestic sales. That’s $191,000,000,000 … without levying any new taxes.

While no serious politician, energy executive or environmentally conscious American believes that we can “drill our way” out of the current energy crisis, our dependence on foreign regimes for our energy supplies has proven disastrous.

“Oil money pays for the bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut, and the bombast of dictators from Caracas to Tehran,” said Sen. Barack Obama recently in Michigan. “Our nation will not be secure unless we take that leverage away, and our planet will not be safe unless we move decisively toward a clean energy future.”

All Americans desire that “clean energy future,” and developing a 21st century American energy policy is crucial for our stability into the next generation.

To develop clean and sustainable energy, though, will require research, development and significant domestic investment.

Imagine, then, if the United States were to put that potential $191 billion in tax revenue just from our Alaskan reserves toward such vital research and development through subsidies, prizes and incentives to develop better flex fuels and a cost effective hydrogen solution.

Americans are ready for change when it comes to the use of domestic energy resources. According to a poll last month by Zogby, 74 percent of likely voters support offshore drilling. In other words, a tri-partisan majority of Americans – 58 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of Independents and 90 percent of Republicans – support repealing the ban on domestic drilling.

American Solutions for Winning the Future, a non-partisan political group in the nation’s capital, has garnered nearly 1.5 million signatures for its “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” petition, urging Congress to repeal the federal moratorium that has prohibited domestic expansion for more than two decades.

Perhaps most surprising in this debate is that China has already begun drilling just 60 miles off the coast of Florida. Have we strayed so far on sensible energy and security policy under what Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised would be the “best Congress ever” that drilling off our shores is pursued by Communist China but not allowed in the free market United States?

We cannot reasonably expect to find a sustainable solution to our energy demands over the long-term by banning domestic exploration in the short term.

The American solution to this crisis surely is not to remain content with our failed status quo, funding “bombs from Baghdad to Beirut” by lining the pockets of regimes hostile to the American values. Rather, we can choose to apply ourselves to domestic exploration by petitioning Congress to act.

Only then can we wean ourselves from debilitating dependence on foreign dictatorships and the crippling wealth transfers that result, simultaneously harnessing new tax revenues and applying them toward American entrepreneurs, empowering those who will develop the next generation of sustainable fuel technology.

This column originally appeared in The Philadelphia Bulletin on August 23, 2006. You can read the article on The Bulletin’s website.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah lasted just 32 days, and over that course of time Israeli forces struck at the heart of Hezbollah throughout southern Lebanon, increasing the scope of the war into the north only days before the current cease-fire took effect and Israeli troops were forced to withdraw.

One must question the sense, though, in the current cease-fire which took effect Monday, Aug. 14. Is it in the best interest of Israel as a free state with a right to self-determination? Is it really in the best interest of the Lebanese people, who have undoubtedly suffered from the recent conflict, but whose historically Christian culture has suffered much more greatly at the hands of Hezbollah over the course of its rise to power in that country?

While the current break in fighting has succeeded in bringing an end to most open fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the peace accomplished is as fragile as it is artificial. The United Nations may have brokered a truce between Israel and radical Muslim fighters in the form of Hezbollah, but the war will continue, regardless. It would be surprising if this resolution turns out to be of a permanent nature.

Hezbollah, the most accurate English translation of which is “Hezb’allah,” literally means “the party of God.” Founded in the mid-1980s, Hezbollah’s main goals were to oppose the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and to spread the Shi’a revolution as heralded by Ayatollah Khomeini, the radical Muslim cleric whom President Carter allowed to overthrow Mohammad Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.

In allowing the Shah to fall in 1979, President Carter and the West watched as Khomeini replaced one of their greatest allies for modern reform. Khomeini, himself a preeminent cleric, quickly established Iran as an Islamic theocracy and inspired the radicalization of much of the Muslim faith as it exists today. Hezbollah is one of the standout black fruits of that radical fundamentalism.

Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, the political and ideological leader for Hezbollah and prominent in the recent war against Israel, has had this to say of Israel: “It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.” Nasrallah has also said that, “there is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”

He has claimed that Hezbollah reacts to Israel only in defensive ways and that the Katyusha rockets that famously rained down on Israel, killing many, were originally acquired only to deter attacks on Lebanon. Remember that the most recent conflict began as a result of an incursion by Hezbollah fighters into Israel, whereby two Israeli Defense soldiers were taken prisoner and three murdered.

Much of the West remains blind or pig-headed in its unwillingness to accept the very real threat that groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestinian territory, and al-Qaida globally, present to the free world at large and Israel specifically as the last great vestige of liberty shining in the heart of the Middle East.

Coexistence is not possible so long as Islamofacism remains the dominant ideological and political reality among the powerful Shi’a throughout the Middle East and beyond. Fundamentalist Islam watches and takes note as the free peoples of the West capitulate in one instance after another. It shakes our hands with its right while holding the knife by which it will slay us in its left.

With the recent U.N. ceasefire, we have saved Hezbollah from destruction as a military force, while at the same time emboldening them, as they believe they were the true victors in the recent conflict with Israel. Really, who can dispute their contention of a moral victory?

Hezbollah, responsible for invading Israel, killing three Israeli soldiers and taking prisoner two, and bombing civilian targets resulting in the deaths of dozens of Israelis, has been lent moral equivalence by the United Nations. Hezbollah is greatly strengthened by the current ceasefire.

This is the quiet before a storm that is bound to rage again, and in the quiet, Hezbollah’s capabilities can be repaired, their militia rebuilt and their arsenal restocked by their allies, Iran and Syria, who themselves present threats of a catastrophic proportions that we continue to wish away. If only it was so easy.

Meanwhile, the cease-fire remains in place, but to neither party’s interest. For Israel, the continued existence and threat presented by Hezbollah’s military wing means that their objective remains unfulfilled. For Hezbollah, the continued existence and imagined threat presented merely by the Jewish presence in the Middle East means that their objective of genocide, too, remains unaccomplished. Can we really deceive ourselves into believing that this peace is a lasting, or even meaningful, one?

President Reagan said that “history teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” For Hezbollah and its sponsors, the price of aggression is marvelously cheap. Supplying rockets and fueling state-sponsored propaganda messages costs millions, but for Iran, one of the world’s top suppliers of oil, the price is next to nothing if the result is the chipping away at the mantle of freedom that is Israel.

Whether through gradual spurts of war or by future nuclear means, the reality is that Iran is prepared to effect the destruction of what it labels the “Zionist state”, Israel, whether directly or through its proxies.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration seem to have suffered historical amnesia midway through the Israeli war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The administration shifted its policy from supporting Israel’s right to self-defense to, essentially, the idea that peace at any cost is the ultimate objective.

In brokering this cease-fire, we will have only ourselves to blame when fresh fighting breaks out in the Middle East between Israel and better equipped, battle hardened Hezbollah guerillas. The New York Times reported last week that Hezbollah is already moving throughout Lebanon to offer civilians rebuilding support through its social service network, much of which is grassroots.

With the U.N. hoping to have a meager 3500 troops in Lebanon within two weeks, at best, with the rest of the 15,000 contingent to arrive within a full year, Hezbollah will have more than enough time to move throughout Lebanon as it wishes.

It will capitalize on its already rising support among the Lebanese people, thanks in great part to the lack of Western or even much Middle Eastern aide. Iran, however, being the one notable exception, as it has extended to Hezbollah an “unlimited budget” for rebuilding Lebanon according to Nehme Tohme, a member of the Lebanese Parliament who cited a conversation with an unnamed Hezbollah official.

America and the United Nations have emboldened and abetted Hezbollah, Iran and Syria with the peace that we’ve foisted onto the region. For decades now the free nations of the world have suffered terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals, whether the attackers be Black September, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Iran, or Saddam Hussein.

We cannot bury our heads in the sand forever as our values are degraded and our freedoms destroyed, else we should pull our heads out one day, puzzled by the dark and shocking world transformed around us, wondering when it all happened.