What started the Maui wildfires? A reflection on the future of our democracy
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
Security camera footage reveals what may have started the wildfires in Hawaii that have since claimed the lives of 114 people—sobering proof that seemingly insignificant events can quickly turn tragic. The same cause-and-effect can occur in our body politic as well. For instance, the moral condition of a people determines their destiny. Is this good news for America?
Author: Jim Denison, PhD
Narrator: Chris Elkins
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings. Welcome to the Daily Article Podcast. I'm Chris Elkins with the Denison Forum, narrating today's article written by Dr. Jim Denison. |
| 0:11.3 | President Biden visited Maui yesterday, where he praised the remarkable resiliency of the residents after wildfires killed more than 114 people two weeks ago and destroyed the historic town of Lahaina. |
| 0:24.6 | While the cause of this tragedy remains under investigation, a security camera at the Maui Bird Conservation Center captured a bright flash in the woods at 1047 p.m. on August the 7th. |
| 0:36.6 | A senior official said, I think that is when a tree is |
| 0:41.2 | falling on a power line. The power goes out, our generator kicks in, the camera comes back online, |
| 0:47.3 | and then the forest is on fire. According to the Washington Post, the video adds to evidence |
| 0:52.7 | that Hawaii's main utility equipment sparked |
| 0:56.1 | multiple fires that were then blown by powerful winds through drought-stricken grasslands. |
| 1:01.7 | The article is sobering proof that seemingly insignificant events can quickly turn tragic. |
| 1:08.0 | As another example, officials report that an improperly cleaned ice cream |
| 1:12.9 | machine led to the deaths of three people from Listeria infection in Tacoma, Washington. A California man |
| 1:19.9 | contracted Legionaire's disease after sitting in a hot tub for five minutes and died a few days |
| 1:26.3 | later from the infection. And a total of eight people |
| 1:30.0 | in Florida, New York, and Connecticut have died from a rare flesh-eating bacteria. What can happen to |
| 1:36.4 | our physical bodies can happen to our body politic as well? In one of his earliest published speeches, |
| 1:43.0 | 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln asked a group in Springfield, Illinois, |
| 1:47.5 | At what point then is the approach of danger to America to be expected? |
| 1:52.5 | I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. |
| 1:57.3 | It cannot come from abroad. |
| 1:59.2 | If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and |
| 2:03.9 | finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide. Twenty years |
| 2:11.1 | later, Lincoln observed, with public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who |
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