Michael Continetti writes about the presidential campaign of Michele Bachmann at The Weekly Standard MAGAZINE (links added):
... when she was 16, she made a commitment. “I believe God is real,” she said. “I believe he’s real, I believe he’s true, I believe that there is a heaven, and that’s where I want to go.” She considers herself an evangelical Christian. As an adult, she’s attended both a Lutheran church and a nondenominational Christian church.
Her faith led her to some interesting places. The summer after she finished high school, Michele went to Israel and worked on a kibbutz [Be'eri near Beer Sheva]. The trip was sponsored by Young Life, a Christian ministry. “I always had this love and appreciation for Israel because I was a Christian,” she said. “It’s the foundation of our faith. All of the Bible is about Israel.” She wanted to see the land for herself. What she found wasn’t a high-end vacation destination. She remembers the hurly burly of Ben Gurion airport, 1974: heat, soldiers with guns, customs officers at card tables on the tarmac. Chickens were everywhere. “It was pretty grubby,” she said.
The youth housing on the kibbutz was called the ghetto. Lizards climbed the walls. She would wake up at 4 a.m. and get on a flatbed truck that was pulled by an old diesel tractor. Occasionally Michele operated the rig: “It was my first time driving a clutch.” They would drive out to cotton fields to pull weeds. Armed soldiers escorted them wherever they went.
The soldiers searched for mines as the kids cultivated the soil. “You’re hoping at 4 o’clock in the morning that they see everything,” she told me. The group would work until noon, drive back to the kibbutz, make lunch in the kitchen, and promptly conked out.
The experience has never left her mind. “If you consider what it was like in 1948,” she said, “and literally watch flowers bloom in a desert over time—I don’t know if any nation has paralleled the rise of Israel since 1948.” A member of Christians United for Israel, she’s one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress. One Jewish Minnesota Republican has told me of speeches at local Republican Jewish Coalition events where Bachmann has brought cheering audiences to their feet.
When she returned to the States, Michele enrolled at a community college near Anoka. Money was tight. She’d often work three jobs—school bus driver, restaurant hostess, all sorts of things. The following summer she went to Alaska...
Had we been paying attention, we would have known this already:) Do follow the link and read Rick's excerpt from "an extraordinarily impressive presentation" given by Michele Bachmann to the RJC in LA.
Posted by: Mannie Sherberg | Tuesday, 28 June 2011 at 02:55 PM
Posted by: Hope | Wednesday, 29 June 2011 at 12:40 AM
Posted by: Herman | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 11:21 AM