A Fine Essay about Memorial Day

At National Review Online is a wonderful essay about Memorial Day by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. Mr. Smith is described at the foot of the article as "A former U.S. Marine infantry leader, W. Thomas Smith Jr. writes about military issues and has covered war in the Balkans, on the West Bank, and in Iraq. He is the author of six books, and his articles appear in a variety of publications." The essay is called "It's Not Political" and gives some history of the day and also some thoughtful comments.

An excerpt:

Point being: no matter what flags Americans have served under — or causes they have fought for — since initially choosing between the colonies and the Crown back in 1775, all are indeed Americans.

And most of them have fought less over the politics of a given conflict and more from the sheer fact that they were the ones responsible for defending the homeland or its interests abroad when politics and diplomacy had broken down.

Another:

One of the oft-told stories of the American Civil War is one in which a U.S. Army officer asks a young Confederate soldier, who had just been taken prisoner by Union forces, if he (the Confederate) owned slaves. When the prisoner said no, the officer asked why he was fighting on the side of the rebellion. The Confederate matter-of-factly responded, “Because you’re here.”

Sounds simple, but for the Confederate soldier, taking up arms against the enemy had nothing really to do with politics or such lofty mid-19th-century issues as slavery and its abolition. It had everything to do with the fact that his country had been attacked. And if his fellow countrymen were going to shoulder weapons and march against the enemy, how could he not?

And:

“Memorial Days began very soon after the war, and concurrently by both Northern and Southern groups,” Joe Long, curator of education at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, tells National Review Online. “There’s a book entitled Race and Reunion that claims that the very first Memorial Day service was held by black Americans in honor of Union soldiers.”

Long adds that Northern and Southern observances were organized by ladies’ memorial associations. “Those early memorial services were very much driven by women.”

I hope you will take the time to read and ponder this essay.

Memorial Day

We are in the midst of our Memorial Day weekend. May we all remember what it is about--remembering those who have and are serving our country in the Armed Forces and remembering those who died that we might be free. May we remember what makes America great--the freedoms and the opportunities, the prosperity and the generosity.

For one Memorial Day essay, see Fred Thompson's blog post, "I Remember". (This is also available as a podcast.)

Thank you to our soldiers, past and present, who appreciate our country enough to fight for her. Thank you to those who support our troops--really support them.

The Immigration Problem--Updated

It is difficult to talk sensibly about the need for immigration reform without being labeled by the Left as "racist" or whatever other terms they are currently using in their effort to stifle debate and free speech, as well as honest efforts to solve the problems that face us today. The immigration problem is real and it is growing. We have got to handle it now. I am as sympathetic as anyone for people who want to come to America to improve their lives, but they have got to do it legally.

As usual, I have read some excellent articles that lay out the problems and issues and what needs to be done. The current immigration reform bill is most assuredly not the answer.

Here is a link to Phyllis Schlafly's excellent article at Townhall.com. The article is titled "Senate Immigration Bill is a Sellout, not Reform". There are numerous articles at Townhall.com and at Jewish World Review about immigration--you can easily spot them by their titles--but I wanted to highlight just a few that explain the issues especially well.

For example, Mrs. Schlafly writes about the so-called "benchmarks" in the bill:

The bill claims that bench marks must be met before amnesty/guest-worker provisions go into effect. But the bench marks fail to require that the U.S.-Mexico border be closed, fail to require that the border fence be completed as mandated by Congress in October and fail to require that the Department of Homeland Security implement the entry-exit visa system so Americans can know if visitors and guest workers actually leave. The bench marks also fail to require employee verification and fail to require that the Department of Homeland Security deports absconders, such as the 600,000 immigrants who have already been ordered deported.

She then gives some specific examples where the bill fails in these "benchmark" areas:

The only thing the bill actually requires is that Department of Homeland Security speedily process amnesty applications and green cards for chain migration.

The border security part of the bill calls for a 370-mile-long fence on the U.S./Mexico border. That is only half as long as the 700-mile-long fence ordered by the Secure Fence Act passed overwhelmingly by Congress and ostentatiously signed by the president in front of TV cameras just before the November 2006 election.

The Senate bill authorizes 4,000 new Border Patrol agents, but doesn't require that they be trained or deployed. It's difficult to hire and keep Border Patrol agents because of the way some have been prosecuted and sentenced to long prison terms after intercepting professional drug smugglers bringing in vans of illegal drugs.

Another bench mark is that "tools" will be provided to prevent illegal immigrants from getting jobs, including requirements for identification standards and an employee verification system. But the bill lacks a requirement that anybody actually use the tools.

What good will these "benchmarks" be if no one is required to comply with them in the real world? Mrs. Schlafly also discusses the incredible costs of this bill, which would, of course, be paid for by the American taxpayer:

The costs of the Senate immigration bill are mind-boggling, and the Senate has made no attempt to estimate or figure out how to pay them. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector puts a potential price tag on this bill of $2.5 trillion, which is five times the cost of the Iraq war.

As if that weren't mind-boggling enough, there is also a little-mentioned section that Mrs. Schlafly discusses as follows:

Section 413 calls on Congress to "accelerate the implementation" of the Security and Prosperity Partnership - announced by Bush in Waco, Texas, in 2005 - so that the United States can "improve the standard of living in Mexico." Do U.S. taxpayers want to take on the awesome economic burden of solving poverty problems in Mexico?

The Senate immigration bill states that the United States want to increase access to credit for "poor and under-served populations in Mexico," and expand efforts "to reduce the transaction costs of remittance flows" from the U.S. to Mexico now running at $23 billion a year.

The Senate bill also puts the United States into a "partnership" with Mexico for "increasing health care access for poor and under-served populations in Mexico," for "assisting Mexico in increasing its emergency and trauma health care facilities," and for "expanding prenatal care" in the border region. It looks like the Heritage Foundation and Rector's estimates are only the start of the costs that will put a truly incredible burden on American taxpayers.

Ah, our Congress can certainly be generous with other people's money, can't they? The truth is that we simply cannot afford all this. Money isn't the only problem, though. However many good people come across the border (and many do so illegally, which raises questions about their character, after all), there are criminals who come across, too, and lose themselves inside of the USA, to prey on ordinary citizens. We aren't just talking about natives of Mexico, of course--anyone from anywhere could travel to Mexico to come across our southern border, if they can't get in otherwise. This would include terrorists.

A set of three articles by Dr. Thomas Sowell is also highly recommended. They are "The Amnesty Fraud", "The Amnesty Fraud: Part II", and "The Amnesty Fraud: Part III". As always, Dr. Sowell brings common sense and intelligence to the discussion and brings out many points that few people appear to have considered.

I am more than a little weary of the Left calling those who try to gather information and discuss the issues by such names as racist, classist, mean-spirited, selfish, etc., etc. ad nauseum. We all know that there are those on the Right, as well, who call names, go to extremes, and so forth. Most of us, however, are trying to find the truth and figure out the best solutions for all concerned. Immigration is a huge problem. There are other huge problems that need to also be discussed and thought through. We have to stop throwing money at these problems and take the time to deal with them honestly and discuss them openly.

Update: I ran across an interesting editorial about the immigration problem at The New Media Journal that you might find interesting. It is "Immigration Reform Begins in Mexico" by Frank Salvato. Here is the beginning of the editorial:

As the debate over the issue of immigration reform rages, we would all be wise to examine, honestly, the reasons why more Mexicans emigrate to the United States than die in Mexico each year. While the common argument is that they come here seeking work, the true root of the problem is that the Mexican government has allowed corruption to reach such alarming levels – in both government and business – that the average Mexican cannot survive within the borders of his own country.

The above statement is not an exaggeration. In 2006, 559,000 Mexican nationals emigrated from Mexico to the United States while the Mexican Demographics Agency reported a total of 501,000 deaths among Mexico’s population. The question that begs to be asked regarding the massive emigration is why?

Mexico is a country rich with natural resources. With its wealth of petroleum, silver, copper, gold, lead, zinc, natural gas and timber, it has all the resources a country would need to keep it from becoming a destitute Third World country.

Further, the median age in Mexico is 25.6 years of age and the literacy rate for the total population is at 92.2%. This demographic, combined with their abundant natural resources and central location in the Western Hemisphere, are a perfect catalyst for an employment sector that would – under normal circumstances – compete on the First World economic stage.

Quite an interesting piece with a different viewpoint. Mr. Salvato provides a number of links, too, so you can look at his sources.

For Women Everywhere

In The Weekly Standard Christina Hoff Sommers writes an article called "The Subjection of Islamic Women" that should be required reading (and study) for women everywhere.

In her article, Ms Sommers discusses the differences between current American feminism and the growing feminism of Islamic women. She also points out the differences between current feminism in America and the "first wave" feminism of a century ago here in America. It is a long article, but well worth your time to read.

In her first two paragraphs, Ms Sommers lets us know of her concerns:

The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye. Accounts of lashings, stonings, and honor killings are regularly in the news, and searing memoirs by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi have become major best-sellers. One might expect that by now American feminist groups would be organizing protests against such glaring injustices, joining forces with the valiant Muslim women who are working to change their societies. This is not happening.

If you go to the websites of major women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the National Council for Research on Women, or to women's centers at our major colleges and universities, you'll find them caught up with entirely other issues, seldom mentioning women in Islam. During the 1980s, there were massive demonstrations on American campuses against racial apartheid in South Africa. There is no remotely comparable movement on today's campuses against the gender apartheid prevalent in large parts of the world.

You would think that the subjection of Islamic women would be of major concern to all feminists throughout the world, especially American feminists who, in spite of their statements to the contrary, have more freedom than any other women in the world and thus are free to help their sisters in the far more oppressive regions of the world. Ms Sommers' article discusses why the American feminists are not of more help to the women in other countries:

The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater....

One reason is that many feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgment on non-Western cultures. They are far more comfortable finding fault with American society for minor inequities (the exclusion of women from the Augusta National Golf Club, the "underrepresentation" of women on faculties of engineering) than criticizing heinous practices beyond our shores. The occasional feminist scholar who takes the women's movement to task for neglecting the plight of foreigners is ignored or ruled out of order.

Ms Sommers goes on to discuss American feminist writings both radical and moderate and talks about some of the methods used to accomplish early equality in the United States. She also summarizes what Islamic women have been doing--they aren't waiting for American feminists to help them. In her final two paragraphs, she states:

The women who constitute the American feminist establishment today are destined to play little role in the battle for Muslim women's rights. Preoccupied with their own imagined oppression, they can be of little help to others--especially family-centered Islamic feminists. The Katha Pollitts and Eve Enslers, the vagina warriors and university gender theorists--these are women who cannot distinguish between free and unfree societies, between the Taliban and the Promise Keepers, between being forced to wear a veil and being socially pressured to be slender and fit. Their moral obtuseness leads many of them to regard helping Muslim women as "colonialist" or as part of a "hegemonic" "civilizing mission." It disqualifies them as participants in this moral fight.

In reality, of course, it is the Islamic feminists themselves who are on a civilizing mission--one that is vital to their own welfare and to the welfare of an anxious world. A reviewer of Irshad Manji's manifesto celebrating Islamic feminism aptly remarked, "This could be Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare." Ipso facto, it should be our fondest dream. And if, along the way, Islamic feminism were to have a wholesome influence on American feminism, so much the better.

I would really like to see women everywhere read this article and give some serious thought as to what it means and what they can do to help others, as well as re-thinking their more radical positions here in America, where we have widespread freedom and equality.

"The Encyclopedia of Life"

There is a new web resource just starting up called The Encyclopedia of Life. It is an ambitious undertaking by scientists to post pages on every form of life discovered. The press release says:

Many of the world’s leading scientific institutions today announced the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens will have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered.

The press release is a fairly long article and you can read all of it on the link provided above. Very interesting. Another paragraph states:

Over the next 10 years, the Encyclopedia of Life will create Internet pages for all 1.8 million species currently named. It will expedite the classification of the millions of species yet to be discovered and catalogued as well. The pages, housed at http://www.eol.org, will provide written information and, when available, photographs, video, sound, location maps, and other multimedia information on each species. Built on the scientific integrity of thousands of experts around the globe, the Encyclopedia will be a moderated wiki-style environment, freely available to all users everywhere.

Demonstration pages are available here. FAQs are here and answer a lot of questions you may have about this project. You can register here and get email updates. I'm going to do that because this looks fascinating. It will be a long-term project, obviously, but a very interesting one. I read a note about it somewhere (I'm sorry I can't remember where.), but I think it will be something we can all enjoy and benefit from.

Specific Action You Can Take

I see that I have a comment from Lisa (thanks, Lisa!) that may have been there 2 or 3 days before I saw it. I apologize for that--maybe I should set my blogs to email comments to me so they don't get overlooked!

Here is Lisa's comment:

I agree that something must be done, but I am unsure what I personally can do. Do I contact my representative and demand he call for treason charges? I feel really ineffective and weak when it comes to resisting the juggernaut of liberal thinking that has swept us over.

Specific ideas for action would be appreciated.

I thought Lisa's request for specific ideas for action was a good one and decided to create a post around it for everyone and also request comments from others for more ideas.

First and foremost, I think we need to keep up with current events and be informed voters. Read news from several sources to keep track of what's going on. Register to vote and then vote. Encourage others to do the same.

Next, I suggest finding your state's official website. They'll let you know who your state and national senators and representatives are and how to contact them. Usually, you can send an email, which makes it easy. Also, chances are they give information about bills up for consideration in your state and where they are in the process. You can also contact the governor and other officials. For example, email the State Superintendent (or whatever title your state gives the head of education) about education concerns.

It would also be good to look for city/town and county websites. You can then contact officials to express your views about local issues, too.

The official federal site is http://www.usa.gov/ . There is all kinds of information there. They have a page to contact elected officials. In fact, they have pages from that page to help you find your state, local, or tribal government pages and a variety of civic organizations, as well.

Other suggestions are websites that coincide with your views and interests. For example, Townhall has an "Action Center." This lists suggestions and helps you follow through. For example, sign petitions, contact your representatives, and write letters to editors of newspapers. They also suggest blogging or writing a newsletter.

I think the best thing an individual can do is vote and also contact officials to let them know what your views are. The more people who do this, the better idea our officials will have of what people's real views are.

If you are so inclined and have time, you may want to work on the campaign of someone you support, whether it is for a local, state, or federal office. You could work for a campaign for a specific issue--often people form groups to support specific issues. You might want to volunteer a little time for one of the local civic organizations that encourages an informed citizenry.

You have to be the judge of what you can do and how much time you can spend at it, but the more your views are known the better.

On something like the treasonous activities of some of our national senators and representatives, I think we can at least email our own senators and representatives and tell them that we think certain actions and/or speeches are questionable at best and that perhaps action needs to be considered. You can be bolder, of course, or careful about how you word things--whatever suits you best. It's always good to give some examples or reasons or other details as appropriate to the topic. It doesn't have to sound professional or be perfect, but do try to be clear and use the best spelling and grammar you can.

If you have other ideas of how an individual can be an active citizen, please feel free to post them and also links to websites that have "action pages" or suggestions.

An Assortment for Your Perusal

Patriot Post has a page with a modern language update of The Federalist Papers. I haven't started reading it yet, but it sounds informative and has information about the original authors of The Federalist Papers. I subscribe to the Patriot Post newsletter (it's free!), but you can also read the newsletter on their site from this page under "Edition Archives". It's a very good newsletter with lots of information and commentary. There are a number of sections listed down the left side of the main page, so you'll find a lot of material there.

There is a website called Reagan 2020 about President Ronald Reagan. It has a biography, texts of speeches, and much more. Quite comprehensive.

For a focus on women and family values, there is the Concerned Women for America website. It features links to news items and commentary about women and family issues of today. Ladies Against Feminism also has links to news items and articles in a similar vein. It's recommended that you read this page first on the latter site to get a better idea of their purpose.

Phyllis Schlafly has a website at Eagle Forum. She has also started a wiki Conservapedia here, as a part of the Eagle Forum University. Lots of interesting information there, as well.

There are, of course, many other sites out there that can give you news and information you can't get from the Mainstream Media (MSM). However, just like the MSM, you do need to use common sense and confirm facts from another source. Bear in mind that the MSM is biased to the Left/Liberal agenda--it isn't any more dependable than anything else these days. The sites I refer to above and have linked on my sidebar lean toward the Right/Conservative agenda--they aren't inaccurate just because of that. In fact, they emphasize truth. I think it is important for people to have access to other sources than the MSM so that they can think for themselves about the issues of the day.

What is a Fifth Column and What Does it Do?

After taking a week off last week to recover from respiratory flu/bronchitis/the plague or whatever it was that was making me ill, I am back and ready to go again. Today, I would like to discuss fifth columns. What are they? What do they do? Do we have one in America? How about the rest of the world?

According to Merriam-Webster Online, a fifth column is "a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders" and the etymology is "name applied to rebel sympathizers in Madrid in 1936 when four rebel columns were advancing on the city". More detail can be found at Wikipedia. Its article on "Fifth Column" defines that term as "A fifth column is a group of people which clandestinely undermines a larger group to which it is expected to be loyal, such as a nation." The article tells of the term's origin by stating "The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a nationalist general during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. As four of his army columns moved on Madrid, the general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his "fifth column," intent on undermining the Republican government from within." There is more detail in the article if you are interested.

Frank Salvato has written an article at The New Media Journal titled "The 'Fifth Columnization' of America". In it, he discusses the fifth column in American society and what it does to undermine our nation.

The Progressive-Left’s American Fifth Column is most often epitomized by the militant, bullhorn toting activist who, when not examined thoroughly, seems to be advocating for one “civil right” or another. We see them at the pro-illegal immigration protests, the anti-gun protests, the anti-war protests, anywhere a group of people can lay blame at the feet of government and especially the Bush Administration. But the American Fifth Column’s tentacles spread much wider and delve much deeper into our history and our society and recent events illustrate this as fact, rather than fiction.

The American Fifth Column is born out of Socialist/Communist ideology where the citizenry grows dependent on the government while the government increasingly legislates itself more control over the people.

In the perfect Fifth Column world, everyone is equal and possesses an artificially elevated sense of self-worth, the competitive spirit is equalized through taxes and legislated oversight of private business and societal boundaries – including boundaries in speech and action – are enforced through a shadow set of laws known as political correctness, a set of laws that undermine the authority of the Constitution.

The American Fifth Column is embodied by the politically correct multicultural one-world movement and encompasses all of the Progressive-Left buzz word initiatives, such as “diversity,” “public good,” “it takes a village,” “global village” and so on.

Through the artificial equalization of our society the Fifth Column strives to achieve the Balkanization of the United States through the celebration of diversity while inducing the surrender of individual choice within those Balkanized communities to governmental entities; divide and conquer.

Sound familiar? We hear about it everyday, although not necessarily in critical terms, especially in our left-leaning Mainstream Media (MSM). I worry that we have become so brainwashed already by the left's propaganda that we think we're just being "nice" and "good" when we go along with the feel-good policies proposed, nay, demanded by the left. A number of people invoke Jesus Christ by saying that He would support such things as multiculturalism and diversity, without regard to the difference between the left's proposals/demands and the kind generosity that Christ would truly support.

Much of what the left wants involves serious damage to certain groups or classes of people. For example, they would steal from the rich to give to the poor rather than truly helping the poor by teaching them better ways of life, responsibility, accountability, and so forth. The left also wants us to tolerate, even embrace, other cultures and religions while suppressing our own. In other words, we aren't to just help others or appreciate others--we are to trash everything we have and are. This is just crazy!

As Mr. Salvato writes in his article:

When successful, the efforts of the Progressive-Left’s American Fifth Column achieve the neutering of the American spirit, the end of our celebrated melting pot where pride in individuality, whether ethnic, religious or social, gave way only to pride of country; e pluribus unim. It transforms pioneers into cogs in a machine for the “greater good” and feminizes our society, this feminization giving way to a society of defenseless victims who are completely reliant on government for their survival.

He goes on to discuss the shootings at Virginia Tech and asks why no one tried to stop Cho except for a " septuagenarian holocaust and Soviet Bloc survivor." Then there is this:

The American Fifth Column’s relentless and visionless opposition to the military efforts in Iraq stand as another glaring example.

I stand as one of the few voices who refuses to back down in the face of the Fifth Column’s relentless insistence that weapons of mass destruction was the onus for President Bush’s decision to assemble a coalition of willing nations to topple Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. This insistence, for the overwhelming part, is in error and it has been mischaracterized unmercifully in order to advance their politically correct, one-world efforts to equalize the United States on the world stage.

Ingenuous people will admit that after being reminded of the reasons given for action in Iraq – Saddam Hussein’s genocide of his own people and his blatant violation of the cease-fire agreement that allowed him to live at the end of the Gulf War – it would have been unthinkable to have allowed this madman to go unchallenged.

Yet, the American Fifth Column denounces the Bush Administration, condemns the military actions taking place on behalf of and authorized by a freely elected Iraqi government and insists on arguing the least tangible of all the points given for military intervention in Iraq, WMD, even though regime change in Iraq was mandated by Congress as US policy under the Clinton Administration.

Question for the Progressive-Left Fifth Column: When did genocide become acceptable to you?

That's quite a question, isn't it? And what about education in America?

Perhaps the most disturbing avenue the Fifth Column has cultivated is within our education system. From grade school through college, the education establishment, bolstered by the political activists and social engineers of the agenda-driven National Education Association, has the government mandated opportunity to poison the minds of our children, to brainwash our country’s youth.

Nary a day goes by when there isn’t a story espousing the political indoctrination by the likes of a Ward Churchill or a Jay Bennish, “teachers” – and I use the word loosely – who impose their political beliefs on their students while usurping the parental birthright to bequeath familial core values to their children.

School systems lorded over by busy-body Progressive-Leftists increasingly employ text books that rewrite history at our nation’s expense. Parents are kept from attaining full access to programs mandated by our schools that promote questionable adult content in the form of what is termed sex education under the heading of “diversity” and “cultural awareness.” And some public school systems are promoting the “understanding” of Islam by forcing students to become “Muslim for a day,” in direct contradiction of the Progressive-Left’s belief in separation of church and state.

Then there are the actions of some of our elected officials.

As the Fifth Column Progressive-Leftists make inroads into our society, our education system and our state and federal governments, the overwhelming majority of Conservative lawmakers can’t find their spines long enough to demand action against elected officials who have certainly become nothing less than enemies of the State.

Not one Conservative lawmaker – in leadership or otherwise – has called for investigations into whether or not treason charges should be brought against or at least resignations be extracted from:

▪ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: For her non-authorized and unconstitutional contact with the leader of a State sponsor of terrorism in a time of war in direct violation of the Logan Act. And for then declaring that she was “too busy” to meet with US General David Petraeus when he came to Washington to brief Congress on the current situation on the ground in Iraq.

▪ House Whip Steny Hoyer: For his contact with leadership of the terrorist organization The Muslim Brotherhood, a radical group who actively works to promote the creation of a global Islamic Caliphate as it aids and abets terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, among others.

▪ Representative John Murtha for blatantly lying to the American people about not receiving a briefing from General Petraeus when Murtha received a personal briefing via telephone from the General for almost 30 minutes

▪ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: For his declaration “The war is lost,” a statement that most certainly aided and abetted the propaganda campaign of terrorist organizations with which the United States is currently at war.

While the Fifth Column chalks up victory after victory, inching further and further toward controlling not only the House and Senate but the White House and Supreme Court as well, Conservative lawmakers can’t even find the outrage to charge treason and demand resignations when elected Fifth Columnists are successfully aiding our enemy, steering our country into the abyss of military defeat and toward the human indignity that is Socialism.

Why do any of us find it so hard to stand up for what is right and put a stop to this treasonous foolishness? What makes it acceptable?

But perhaps the most blame for the mess we’re in lies with the American people, specifically the Conservatives among us. While the insanity of the third party route and the casting of protest votes is incredibly clear to those who understand the threat of the Fifth Column, those pale in comparison to the most damaging shortcomings of the Conservative movement: personal inaction and abdication of responsibility.

Mr. Salvato ends his article by asking some very direct questions of us, as Americans, including this one:

The time is shortly after 9:28am ET. The date is September 11, 2001. You are on-board Flight 93 and the al Qaeda hijackers have just made their move to commandeer the aircraft. After a few cell phone calls you come to understand that the World Trade Center is for all practical purposes gone and that the Pentagon has been attacked, all through the use of suicide missions that piloted aircraft as weapons into their targets.

Question: Do you have the courage, do you have the conviction, to you have what it takes to charge the cockpit, to confront the hijackers, knowing full well that you, in all probability, are going to die? Or are you one of the many who cowered in the back of the plane waiting to be slaughtered.

I hope we can all find our way to think seriously about this and find our spines, strengthen them, and support what is truly right and good, in our society and in the world.