At the beginning of the movie Gladiator, the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, is on campaign battling barbarians in what is current day Vienna, Austria. To a Roman, someone not a Roman was a barbarian, just as Hebrews referred to someone not Jewish as a gentile. Marcus Aurelius was considered a good emperor, as contrasted with others like Caligula. Aurelius was a philosopher and his Meditations is still revered. However, in 180 AD he was resisting the invasion of Roman territory by tribes of Germanic barbarians. Apparently, Aurelius believed a country without borders isn’t a country.
The principal responsibility of government is to protect its citizens. George Bush took us to war in Iraq after Bin Laden and Al Qaeda (which means the base) used safe havens in Iraq to launch the 9/11 attacks on Wall Street’s Twin Towers. It was argued that we should fight Islamic terrorism “over there” rather than here. Bush’s policy of nation building in the Middle East was a failure, and worsened by Obama’s politically motivated exodus from that fledgling democracy. And now the Middle East is in flames and Islamic terrorism is on “Main Street” in San Bernardino and Orlando. I no longer feel safe because our government refuses to protect us and the police are not able to protect us. The government actually hampers our military with politics “over there.” And the fifth column (look it up) media here blame American bigotry and the NRA for Orlando.
For unknown reasons, the attack in Orlando has affected me more than an any other terrorist attack since 9/11. Perhaps the sheer carnage shapes my feelings. Perhaps it’s because those poor people were slaughtered by a perverted religious philosophy and abject evil. It’s pathetic, but totally in character that Hillary and Democrats blame the Second Amendment for the murders instead of Islamic terrorism. France has very strict gun laws, but those laws didn’t stop the Islamic murderers in Paris. Terrorists will always find ways to acquire or make weapons to kill. The Boston Marathon Islamic fanatics ignored our laws which prohibit making pipe bombs. And Timothy McVeigh found a way to use fertilizer to kill Americans.
I am a conservative. I am a Christian. And I have a concealed weapon permit. According to the ACLU, I’m the problem because I’m a representative of what they call the “Christian right.” Obama’s head of the Department of Homeland Security is Jeh Johnson. He recently said that “right wing groups pose as much of a threat as radical Islamists.” Mr. Johnson, I’m not aware of any Methodists slaughtering people. And I can assure you I pose no risk to my family, my neighbors or other law abiding Americans. In fact, whether they know it or not, these citizens are safer around me because I’ve vowed not to be slaughtered. I may die resisting evil, but I will not “go quietly into the night.”
A republic is a type of government predicated on the rule of law. Our representative republic works because the vast majority of Americans agree to abide by our laws. I understand why it is against the law to carry a weapon into a bar where alcohol is served. However, one can imagine a different outcome in Orlando if one brave individual with a 9mm Glock said, “I may die, but I won’t be slaughtered by this monster.” On 9/11, Todd Beamer and his group were huddled in the back of Flight 93, hijacked by Islamic terrorists. Mr. Beamer uttered the now famous, “Let’s roll,” and led the charge to either retake command of the airplane turned missile by the terrorists, or crash the plane before it reached the Capitol or the White House. Incidentally, no firearms were used by the 9/11 hijackers.
Recently, former United Nations Secretary John Bolton was interviewed by a television talking head. This “newsperson” was flummoxed by Bolton’s assertion that we must stand up to the scourge of Islamic terrorism and defeat it instead of appeasing it or tolerating such a perverse ideology. The credulous woman had apparently forgotten that America stood up against Nazism and defeated it. The Third Reich was far more powerful than ISIS. But that was a time when there were men and women who believed in America.
There are good people left in this troubled land and there are fine Muslims as well. We don’t hear much from the latter, perhaps because they are afraid of speaking out against the hate which has taken over sizable portions of their religion. An exception is Zuhdi Jasser, an American, a former captain in the United States Navy, and an internist with subspecialty training in Nuclear Medicine. He is a leader in the Reform Movement of Islam. You should go to gatestoneinstitute.org and read their declaration, which I see as the only hope for Islam. I envision Jasser as comparable to Martin Luther in the 16th century who spoke out against abuses of the Christian Church. Luther was put on trial for his life where it was demanded he recant his beliefs. He famously said, “I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.”
We live in “fortress” America watching the results of Hillary Clinton’s and Obama’s Arab Spring. We see Europe committing suicide as Islamists flood in among the refugees of the Arab Spring. We see our own laws and borders ignored. We see America threatened by ruinous debt, utopian world government philosophy and the social engineering of liberal progressives. America suspended immigration between the mid 1920s and the mid 1960s to allow assimilation of the vast number of immigrants who came here in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jimmy Carter suspended Iranian immigration and deported thousands of Iranian students. Obama has suspended immigration from Muslim countries many times during his Presidency. How is Trump’s call for a temporary halt of Muslim immigration any different?
Recently, Congressman Chuck Fleischmann said it best in a television interview about Islamic terrorism. “We need to be correct, not politically correct.” If we continue to sign trade deals that send jobs away from America, spend beyond our means and allow “barbarians” through the gate, the last bastion of freedom called America will end, and the world will not recover for a long time, if ever.
