Sometimes, he hits it on the head:

Sometimes, he comes up with the most convoluted diagrams and theories that I am left in awe of his ability to find connections, however tenuous, between people and organizations. I am talking about Glenn Beck, of course, who is today one of the most influential commentators on the airwaves. Beck is not my cup of tea: I don’t like the crying, his voice kind of nauseates me, and his chalkboard diagrams suggest vast Left-wing conspiracies (something I do not entirely agree with). On the flip side, I think that Glenn Beck is tremendously logical in his analysis. The central belief that I share with Beck is that the Obama administration is comprised of socialists (from simply socialist-leaning folks to full-blown communists, the whole spectrum). The problem is that I do not believe that Obama and the socialists of the world have a weekly meeting at the oval office to decide on how to destroy America. Glenn Beck would have us all believe that the conspiracy is active, but I beg to differ.

I do not have fancy diagrams to show you, but I do have personal experience and some analysis of what is currently happening in this country of ours. My main argument is this: I have no evidence that Obama is a Manchurian candidate, i.e. that he is a secret communist or secret terrorist or secret anything, therefore, as a regular Joe, I can only take the president at his word and conclude that Obama truly believes that his policies are good for the country. Now, this is more dangerous than if he actually were a Manchurian candidate, because as a true believer in socialistic policies, he will push them through with all his will, use his intellect to disguise radical policy as moderate policy, convince the uninformed, and coerce the underrepresented (non-leftists) to get his policies passed. The effect of his rhetoric and the mainstream media’s near-constant repetition of his message has been profound for two reasons: it has given legitimacy to impractical leftist ideas, empowering them even more and his message appeals to the idealist sentiments of people, sentiments divorced from rationality. The problem is that human beings prefer the “nice-sounding” idea to the “true” idea, hence the reason for phrases such as “the truth hurts” or, as Jack Nicholson said:

Which brings me to the anecdotal evidence. Just two days ago I briefly overheard a conversation at a coffee shop where one man was defending the current president’s foreign policy and a woman was criticizing it. The man reflexively equated defending Obama with attacking Bush and started denouncing a basic premise of Bush’s foreign policy, that there exists evil in the world, specifically the Axis of Evil. He said, almost verbatim “there is no such thing as an evil country. What makes them evil, that they disagree with us? Does their ethnicity make them evil?” This naivete is the type of thing that left us open to attack on 9-11. In my own opinion, populations are not evil but leadership can be, as is the case with the leadership of terrorist organizations or dictatorships that murder their own people. Castro is not evil because he disagrees with us, he is evil because he has coldly murdered thousands and destroyed his country. Same goes for Saddam Hussein, former member of the Axis of Evil. Same goes for Kim Jong Il, who would rather spend billions on nuclear weapons while millions of his subjects starve to death. Despite the clarity of this argument, that there exists evil in the world, here you have an educated person making the argument that we must see the world through a morally relativistic lens, the very type of person that Obama is. Systematically raping virgins so that the state can execute them in Iran is not a cultural curiosity, it is a gross violation of human rights and it is evil. With the Obama presidency, the clarity of these basic observations has been muddled and those who already believed that certain cultures should have the right to act however they want and violate human rights if they so wish have been given a voice in the oval office. For those without a thorough understanding of history and current events, rhetoric emphasizing “empathy” for others and peaceful coexistence at any cost may sound very appealing but make no mistake, there are people in countries all around the world that are actively planning to destroy the United States and actively using violence to gain and retain power. These are not cultural curiosities, these are calculated moves aimed at benefiting from the suffering of others… and it is called evil.

This man that was confused about the nature of evil in the world did not seem to be a radical and probably was not. Since I have no proof that he was not, I point to people I know personally. After the president’s speech on health care the other day, a colleague of mine, a relatively rational person, said that she was very inspired by the president and could not understand those who were protesting his policies. Apparently, she was drawn in by his language and not by the substance or a clear understanding of the consequences of a government-run health system. She obviously has already heard the counter arguments, at the very least from me personally, but she has decided to block all of the reasons out and continues to blindly follow the Leftists. She is not the only one, I am certain that each of you out there knows a few or more than a few people that almost faint at the mere mention of the name Barack. Which brings me back to Glenn Beck and his insinuations that there is an active conspiracy. With so many people out there, regular people at coffee shops, schools, and supermarkets that are enamored of the president and believe everything he says without question, is there any need for an active conspiracy? There are so many people out there that have turned away from rationality and embraced a worldview that emphasizes what “feels right” that I can attribute Obama’s success to this percentage of the population plus the widespread rejection of a truly disappointing Republican Party during the Bush years.

Then consider that Obama appoints socialists as czars and as advisers, does this mean that we are looking at a conspiracy? Of course not. Obama is a person who aligns himself with the Left, therefore he aligns himself with other people who align themselves with the Left, people that include America haters, full-blown communists, terrorist sympathizers, and the like. This means that the pool of people he trusts and that he chooses from to fill positions in his government will be those very same people form the Left. I mean, seriously, how many former-members of a terrorist organization, like William Ayers, host fundraisers for you? I do not even know one terrorist or former-terrorist. That is not proof of a conspiracy, it is a consequence of the “crowd” he runs with. I may be wrong, but until I see some real evidence of closed-door meetings where Obama and his cohorts plan out the downfall of America I will not be convinced. It is sufficient to believe that all of these shady characters that Glenn Beck parades out in front of us during his show are acting independently towards the same goal: redistribution of the wealth and power of America.

To a certain extent, I worry that tying all of these characters together will instill a paranoid fear among those of us liberty-loving people that the Leftists are in an active conspiracy against us. This is not necessarily true. For years, the labor movement and the environmentalist movement were not on the same page. Labor still has certain problems with the Left’s immigration policies. The African-American community, though staunchly liberal, has not embraced the “gay rights” movement. This is good news because it shows that liberals do not form a monolithic group and that some are open to alternate, rational arguments. Beck seems more worried about the commies hiding under the bed than in facilitating some sort of national discourse whereby liberals have a viable alternative to the extreme Leftism that has taken over the Democratic Party. I prefer coming up with ways to brings all Americans together by addressing common concerns and rejecting ideas that would make our country and by extension every one of us, weaker, poorer, and not free. This is why Beck is not my style… sounding the alarm only makes people alarmed. That said, there are times where I support Glenn Beck 100% and this is one of them:

American needs people like Glenn Beck because at least he cares enough to be outraged and maybe even a little misty-eyed. Let’s just make sure that while we strive to defend our freedoms, we not alienate those who are still on the fence.

-AG

Why I am not surprised about ACORN condoning, encouraging, and helping set up an international child prostitution ring? Shockingly, the do-Obama’s-bidding Congress passed an amendment to cut off federal funding for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Good job, guys, it’s about time. Now, we all already know that ACORN has been under investigation for voter fraud and we also already know about the deep ties that they have with the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, but what we did not have was evidence that ACORN offices in multiple cities were more than willing to help up-and-coming international child prostitution enterprises. The videos themselves are pretty undeniable. Here is the latest one:

Similar exchanges occurred throughout the country and different ACORN offices and while it may be possible that the organization does not condone such behavior, what it does show is that our tax dollars are being spent on a shady group of people. Despite the video footage, at least one of the employees claims that she was just making up stories and she thought the whole thing was a joke from the beginning. If so, then she, as a joke, advised them to evade taxes, beat children, run a prostitution ring, fund a political campaign with funds from prostitution, and threaten people with murder. What a comedian! At the very least, this shows that ACORN is a completely undisciplined organization that funds offices that are run by people who have a broken moral compass and that their hiring practices are laughable. At worst, ACORN is an organization that will try, by any means necessary, to accomplish their Leftist political goals by encouraging illegal behavior and defrauding America’s taxpayers. I believe that the truth is more skewed towards the latter. I call on the President of the United States, who has had extensive ties with this group, to denounce their actions. Somehow I doubt he will.

-AG

Jimmy Carter, the man who puts his arms around the world’s more ruthless murderers, tyrants, and terrorists, yesterday said that race was the underlying reason for the Joe Wilson outburst and the strong resistance to the president’s proposals. Two things: this shows just how out of his mind and how rabidly Leftist that Jimmy Carter is. Fidel Castro felt so comfortable with Jimmy Carter’s ideology that he allowed the ex-president to give an unscripted, uncensored speech in totalitarian communist Cuba. Carter is a communist and/or a communist sympathizer, so of course he has no idea as to why so many Americans are up in arms about Obama’s “socialist” policies. Second thing: race is not the reason that so many people oppose the president, if racism were the reason then the two thirds white majority of this country would not have voted for a biracial president by such margins. That is exhibit A. Exhibit B is that Americans are not protesting against his color, nor his accent, nor anything having to do with race, heritage, etc. People are protesting against his policies. The only thing that even borders on racism are the claims that he is a Muslim, but even that claim is backed up by evidence on paper that shows that Barack Obama (under the last name of his stepfather, Soetoro), as a child, was enrolled in school as a Muslim.

One can assume that it is racism but, again, they would be wrong. Personally, I do not think he is a Muslim (I don’t care if he is), but I do believe that he, like Carter, sympathizes and empathizes with even the most extremist elements of the Muslim world.

Carter goes on to say that there is a “belief among many white people – not just in the South but around the country – that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.” Again, he distorts reality. Americans who oppose the president, by and large, do not think he is incompetent but rather that he is smart… too smart. Let me remind you that it was a white president, George W. Bush, who was constantly accused of being unqualified by the Left for eight years.

What Jimmy Carter’s comments go to show is that in moments of desperation, Democrats will reach into their political playbook and pull out the race card. How many times already have we seen this move pulled so far this year? We saw it play out with the Gates arrest incident, when the president said that the police “acted stupidly” in arresting his friend Professor Gates, before even knowing the facts of the case. We saw it when Glenn Beck stated an opinion firmly grounded in fact and backed up by the president’s own words and actions (undistorted, in full context), that Barack Obama is racist, in terms of his policies on social justice. I do not believe that the president is a “racist” (in that he hates people of some color or ethnicity) but I do believe that the president does have ideas of racial reparations and racial social justice, which are, by definition, racist (or racially based). Obama said it:

Yet despite his own words, despite written evidence in his books, Glenn Beck was demonized for his poor choice of words. Then we have the case where the charges against the New Black Panther Party members who intimidated voters were dropped by Obama’s Justice Department. Now we have Carter, standard-bearer of the Democratic Party, accusing Americans who oppose Obama of being racist.

I find it humorous that when liberals criticize conservatives and libertarians, they distort the truth, flat-out lie, and misrepresent individual activists or protesters, but when conservatives criticize liberals, all we have to do is play the video, show the transcript, or point to the very words that the Democratic Party leadership say in order to make our arguments. I understand why the Democrats play the race card to defend their president’s policies, especially when these policies cannot be defended on their own “merits.” What I do not understand, for the life of me, is why the Democrats, when in a hole, think that it is a good idea to play the Peanut Card? At least they got his name right when I checked Wikipedia earlier this morning:

-AG

These are general thoughts about recent events:

First off, RIP Patrick Swayze. He will be missed.

Second, Kanye West was rude to Taylor Swift. Get over it. They are entertainers.

Third, Joe Wilson does not need to apologize anymore. Today’s House vote to formally admonish Joe Wilson for his outburst was a complete waste of time. He already apologized to the president and now the Democrat-controlled House is demanding more blood. What more do they want, the Lewinsky treatment? What this shows is that the Democrats are more interested in crushing dissent than in actually representing the American people. Apparently, the tens of thousands of activists that descended on Washington D.C. to protest the actions of the current administration and the Congress this past 12th of September made little impression on the Democrat ruling party. Instead of focusing on the truly arduous and necessary task before them, scrapping the ObamaCare plan and coming up with a more practical alternative, the Democrats of the House of Representatives decided that slapping Joe Wilson’s hands for speaking out of turn during the president’s speech was more important. No wonder about 70% of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

What I found especially rich is that the spokeswoman for Democratic House Majority whip said, about the outburst, that “we’re not the British Parliament for a reason,” but apparently the Democrats want to be like the British “National Health Service” system. Of course, the “fun” part of this whole affair is the sheer hypocrisy of the Democrats because of their own disrespectful comments and interruptions of former president George W. Bush. During a speech by Bush on Social Security Democrats hollered at the president “making it appear for a moment that Mr. Bush was standing in the well at the British House of Commons.” Where were the admonishments? Where was the outrage from the Congress? Do we so easily forget the years of relentless abuse that Bush received from the Left for his whole eight years as president? Let’s get a grip, people. The Democrats are playing partisan politics and they are playing for keeps. The post-partisan era has yet to materialize. Joe Wilson should not have interrupted the president’s speech, but I understand why he did and in that moment that he breached protocol, he spoke for millions upon millions of Americans across the country who were yelling the same thing at their TV screens. It is now a rallying cry for conservatives. Next time you see a Democrat, thank them, because every single day the Democratic Party’s actions make it clear that they care only about playing politics and power.

-AG

The astroturf creeps onto Washington D.C. After months of deriding legitimate opposition to the government-run health care proposals floating around in Congress, the ruling Democrat Party sitting behind the castle walls of Washington D.C. got a glimpse at the country’s popular will: no more big government. Yesterday, the Tea Party Express, a collection of activists that oppose the current administration’s incessant march towards socialism ranging from conservatives to libertarians to constitutionalists, held a protest rally in the capital. At the same time, we have the President traveling around the country trying to shore up support for his government takeover plans, saying that it will not ruin the free market, that senior care will not suffer, and every other lie and misleading argument he has made about his plans. The question is: which message will triumph?

People across the nation are torn between whether they should support the president’s government health care plans or to oppose them. The problem is that, at the moment, the Democrats have essentially convinced the majority of Americans that they are the only ones with a plan and the Republicans are simply naysayers. This leads moderates to err on the side of action rather than inaction, especially since they know what the costs of inaction are: eventual bankruptcy of our current system and ever more expensive health care. Conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between know the stakes, but not everyone is clear on the costs of the Democrats’ proposals. To put it succinctly, the cost is higher taxes AND, most importantly, the end of competition and innovation in health care. The current system we have now is a trade-off between quantity and quality: free markets sacrifice some quantity for quality and government care would sacrifice much quality for quantity. For those with health care, the vast majority, the quality of care is very high. The quantity part is that we do not insure a certain percentage of the population, a percentage that does not have health insurance for reasons ranging from not qualifying for government help to reasons such as refusing health insurance because they are wealthy enough to afford care. Democrats right now are proposing a system that will focus solely on quantity, nothing in Obama’s speeches clearly explains how we will retain the high degree of quality that we currently enjoy. Equally important is the question: should we offer health care to all or should we simply make the system more “fair?” I think that most Americans would prefer the latter, which brings me back to the “marketing” problem that we face.

The Democrats right now enjoy the reputation of being the party of health care and it is something that they deserve, not because of the quality of their ideas, but rather due to the quantity of ideas that they put forth every year. These ideas have one thing in common, more government spending and more government control of health care. The reality is that the conservative side has come up with ideas as well, many of them that target the excessive costs of the current system and how to reduce them. There are many things at the moment that can reduce cost, only one of which the president has addressed (albeit halfheartedly), and these cost reductions would not drain the taxpayers’ wallets. The problem is that the Republican Party has done a very poor job of explaining and “marketing” their ideas to the general populace. The only thing that is stopping the current regime from simply passing a socialized health care system is the fact that Americans are traditionally averse to government intervention in their lives and higher taxes (we fought a revolution over both). What needs to be done is to market the ideas from the Republican camp so that the population can weigh each one and determine what would be in the best interest of the country. Obama would have us do something different. Obama would have us accept his program with some compromise over the minor points. That’s what he calls bipartisanship. If that is the choice, then I would rather go bankrupt at the current pace than accelerate it by adding more government programs, more taxes, and more spending of taxpayer dollars. It is undemocratic to simply present one plan and then claim that not compromising on that one plan is “obstructionist” when there are more plans out there. Instead of simply taking Obama’s word for it, that his plan is the best, shouldn’t the American public know what their choices are? This blame falls only on the Republicans and on that fact that they are content with simply exploiting the anti-government sentiment that is sweeping the country instead of strongly marketing a real, practical solution to the problems we face with health care, problems partly caused by government intrusion already.

This is why the Tea Party protests that have been popping up around the country since April are not partisan. They reject both parties for their inaction and for their corruption. Republicans cannot prove themselves, once again, to be a party of opportunity and instead cast themselves as a party of action on these issues that currently affect us. To their credit, Democrats are a party of action when it comes to domestic issues, but it is an action that leads to government control and inflated bureaucracies. We need representatives out there that will take action to bring America back to its first principles, the ones that you may have heard of before: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the Republican Party does not do this, then conservatives and libertarians will splinter off and form a third party… giving the Democratic(-Socialist) Party of America a permanent majority for decades to come.

-AG

Yesterday marked the eighth year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Today marks the eighth anniversary of 9-12-2001, a day equally important in the history of the United States. It was on that day that a president who initially hesitated several minutes in reacting to the terrorist attack found the courage and the clarity to recognize and explain the world we live in: there exists evil in the world and we must confront it. It was on that day that we understood that nations can either be with us or against us because the mission of America is not to reshape the world in our image, but rather to allow nations to coexist, trade, and prosper in peace. We have a Freedom doctrine, that is undeniable, but that is because it is the truly free nations in this world that shy away from war because when the destructive wishes of some demagogue emerge in society, only the free exercise of speech allow reason to prevail. I have read articles that make these arguments, grounded in real life experience here in America, sound plain old stupid. I guess some people believe that the dreams that founded America are stupid. Good thing that one of those dreams is the freedom of speech.

Specifically, I refer to this article on the Associated Press where the author explains that now Obama has the bullhorn on 9-11, not Bush. This brings to mind an alternate scenario where instead of having Bush as president we would have had Obama. According to the article, Obama released a statement right after the attacks where he talked about improving security, “understanding the sources of such madness,” and about the “fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers.” What immediately bothers me about Obama’s statement after 9-11 was the fact that he immediately empathized with the attackers, writing that poverty and despair was part of the reasons they did this and saying that they need more empathy. So imagine what a president Obama would have done on 9-12-2001. First of all, some sort of military response would have been necessary, Americans would not allow this to go unanswered. After that initial response, which most probably would not have been as robust as Bush’s response, what would he have done to improve empathy among the attackers? Would he go ahead and give a speech to the Muslim world? Would he try to dialogue with Osama bin Laden? Would he start spending billions more on alleviating poverty abroad, money that probably would end up in the hands of corrupt governments, dictators, and the very terrorists that struck us eight years ago? If Obama were president on that fateful day, we know that today Al Qaeda would be a powerful organization, that they would still have a safe haven, and that instead of two nuclear programs today, we would have had three to contend with. My more liberal friends may want to dispute that, but looking at the evidence, it is clear. Bush needs to be applauded for one thing, something that most people in their everyday lives should be doing more often, he did what he thought was right regardless of his popularity. Day after day, he received terrorist warning after terrorist warning, deciding on which ones were credible and which ones were not, knowing full well that a single terrorist attack on American soil after 9-11 would sink his presidency and kill innocent Americans. Imagine the pressure. On the other hand, Obama cares about his popularity. Just think about how he has reversed course on many decisions, from appointing a communist as his Green Economy Czar then firing him to removing the flag@whitehouse.gov snitch email program. Obama always has been a political animal, flashing a smile, talking softly, lying to our faces, and trying to create socialism under our noses. Bush was much more direct and much more clear in his actions.

So when the liberal terrorist apologists say that we need to empathize more with Osama bin Laden, set them straight: America cannot negotiate with terrorists. An empathetic president on 9-12 would have been a national disaster. In the words of Rudy Giuliani “thank God George Bush… [was] President.” The world today is not so different from the world before 9-11, except for one major difference: America is vigilant. Right now, more than 60% of Americans believe that Obama can keep us safe from terrorists (by being nice to them?) when the reality is that only the residual effects of Bush’s anti-terror policies can keep the enemy at bay: a strong intelligence agency, an offensive campaign, and cracking down on terrorist finances. Obama would have us think that we can talk to the enemy and they will willingly abandon their plans to destroy America. The only people who benefit from a worldview that refuses to acknowledge the existence of evil are those who are evil. The only people who benefit from a policy of playing nice with our enemies are our enemies. It is useful to reflect on our own actions, to admit excesses, and to apologize for missteps, no nation is perfect, but it borders on treasonous to adopt the views and philosophies of terrorists who kill thousands of innocents to make their point. Terrorists want us to empathize with them… Barack Hussein Obama is their biggest success story.

-AG

South Carolina House member Joe Wilson yelled this during the Obama speech on health care tonight. Good for him. Sadly, he did not stand by his outburst and issued an apology to the White House. Bad. What we need right now is for the men and women in government, the ones with the courage to stand up to ‘The Empire,’ to speak truth to power. The comment was made over Obama’s assertion that no illegal immigrants would be covered under the health care reform proposal, but it can be applied to nearly everything that he has said over the last 8 months. While many have denounced Wilson for being disrespectful, I applaud his emotional response. It shows that we are not simply slouching towards Gomorrah but that still exists some fire in our bellies, that even some members of that semi- to fully-corrupt body we call the Congress can call out a liar when he sees one. He deserves to be commended for his actions.

He starts his (second!) prime-time speech on health care claiming that he brought the economy “back from the brink,” when reality shows us that retirement plans have taken a beating, unemployment continues to inch towards double digits, credit is still tight, banks are continuing to fail, consumer spending is stagnant, and the national debt continues to balloon. To call the president out of touch would be too kind. The rest of the speech is a flagrant insult to logic, calling our current health care fiscally unsustainable while simultaneously urging Americans to pass a system that will cost, according to the Congressional Budget Office, trillions more. The fact that we are even discussing this distresses me immensely. If the problem is that we cannot sustain this level of expenditure on health care, then we should not be passing a health care program that will cost more money. This cannot be repeated enough.

Yet in a poll taken after Obama’s speech, two thirds of those who watched now favor his plan. This is absurd. Obama simply repeated the same old arguments. He blamed Bush for a deficit that is dwarfed by Obama’s, yet he received a standing ovation. He misrepresented conservatives’ position on health care and presented his Public Option as something that would not destroy the free market. He promised that senior care will not suffer. He lied about the cost of the health care reform plan. He lied about not raising taxes on the middle class while pushing an individual mandate for everyone to buy into the system (there’s your taxes). He denied everything that people have come to hear about his health care reform plan. He denied that federal dollars would be used to fund abortion (they just fund everything else, call it ’subsidizing’ abortions). It went on and on. He used his urgent voice, his soft voice, his dreamer voice and, apparently, a lot of Americans out there fell for it… again.

This is why I worried when Obama was going to give a speech to schoolchildren, because when Obama speaks to adult Americans, polls show that so many of them turn off their brains. I am starting to doubt the accuracy of these polls… otherwise, we are truly entering a brave new world.

-AG

The audacity of Obama knows no bounds. He has taken it upon himself to become the country’s “educator-in-chief” by having schools show a speech that is supposedly a simple “pep talk” about doing well in school but comes with “suggested” lesson plans. Where in the Constitution does it say that the president of the United States can set the curriculum for students. This is a dangerous and unconstitutional action by the executive branch and may be the first steps towards a full-fledged, government-sponsored cult of personality. The great dictators of our time have all reached out to students and indoctrinated them in order to carry out their grand social experiments. Worst of all was the Department of Education’s initial proposal to have students write letters about how they can “help” the president. Given that President Obama’s entire domestic policy is just one redistributionist program after the other, to invite students to engage in thought experiments about how best to implement such socialism is simply another attempt to brainwash Americans, starting from the earliest of ages.

Fortunately, the Department of Education has scrapped its plans to force public school students to write letters, but regardless of that, the president should not have the power to reach into the classrooms of young students and set their lesson plans. The teachers’ union, of course, is in the pocket of the Democratic party and would be more than delighted to show this video to their students… is this not an egregious conflict of interest? Imagine what would happen if there were not a large public outcry from concerned citizens around the country. The White House would have simply gone ahead with making students part of this socialist experiment and encouraging students to see themselves as part of the Democratic Party. It is, by its very nature, a political act, because to help a Democrat in the Oval Office is to believe in his political mission. We need to continue watching Obama’s actions very closely, otherwise we will end up subsidizing a cross-generational indoctrination by the far Left in America. Keep Obama out of the classroom!

-AG

I was just reading that a CNN poll shows that 57% of Americans are opposed to the war in Afghanistan, a war that even the tremendously timid Obama has called necessary. Surprisingly, only about three quarters of Democrats oppose the war, I was expecting something nearer to 100%. The numbers are frightening because they show us two different thing about Americans: we do not understand the stakes in Afghanistan and that it takes a catastrophic terrorist attack to make us understand the stakes. That’s right, on cue I bring up 9-11. Now, don’t ever forget it. It is well worth repeating that what America faces in the world is not a rag-tag team of terrorists here and there, we face a well-organized, well-financed, and relentless offensive campaign against freedom. They are connected… no not in the neoconservatives’ imagination, but rather in real-cold-as-ice-life. Ask yourself why North Korea was building a nuclear reactor in Syria? Why Russia is doing naval exercises in the Caribbean? What we face is an Anti-American Axis that stretches across the globe constituted by nations and groups that want to destroy the type of world we have brought about.

At present, Islamo-fascists, communists, and dictatorships of all types are arrayed in a relatively well-strung-together coalition against all of our interests. Where does Afghanistan figure in all of this? It (and Pakistan) is the epicenter of the most well-organized and anti-American international terrorist organization in the world. Hezbollah is actually better organized, but they are not as virulently anti-American as Al Qaeda… yet. We are fighting two wings, the domestic wing and the international terrorist wing. The former is the Taliban and the latter is Al Qaeda. The former secures a safe haven for the training, arming, recruiting, and planning of the latter. The latter is dedicated to our destruction and/or the re-establishing of the Caliphate or “true Islamic state(s).” If we withdraw at this point, the Taliban and Al Qaeda will make short work of the current Afghan government and reinstate a terror sponsoring state. What person in their right mind would want to let this happen? Do the majority of Democrats truly believe that Al Qaeda was just joking with us that one time in 2001? Do they not understand the threat? To my more libertarian friends I say this: if you believe that blowback was the reason for their attacks against us, consider the near-impossible task of complying with their demands that we leave Muslim lands forever and abandon our ally Israel. What we need to do is complete our mission in Afghanistan and get Pakistan to keep cooperating with us on the War on Terror, I mean Overseas Contingency Operations. We cannot surrender now, just look at Iraq, a partial withdrawal has already increased the frequency and intensity of Al Qaeda’s attacks and now they await our full withdrawal.

The far Left has hijacked the Democratic Party, insisting on socialism at home and surrender abroad. We cannot let the world think that only catastrophes like 9-11 can wake us from our naive slumber, even if it might be true for the majority of the current dominant political party.

-AG