Lisa Fabrizio
Have the terrorists won?
By Lisa Fabrizio
Everyone remembers the days immediately after September 11, 2001. Amid the anger tinged with mourning and the brief but unnerving sense that our great land was not totally protected from harm by the two great oceans that previously guarded us, one common thought summed up the nature of the coming struggle: if we let the attacks change our ways as Americans, then the terrorists will have won.
At first, these sentiments concerned themselves with issues that immediately addressed our national security, like the Patriot Act and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. And although these were grudgingly accepted, most of the country seemed to agree with the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
So have we given up liberty to gain security? Were our rights as Americans diminished as a result of the jihad declared against us by al Qaeda? Maybe these were the wrong questions. Maybe, in the wake of the murders of four Americans in Libya and the lack of response from the U.S. government, the real question should be: if these outrages are no longer a cause for outrage, have the terrorists won? Will the ultimate victory be theirs?
These questions should assume an even greater importance in a presidential election year, but this doesn't seem to be the case this time. It is usually assumed that any attack on our country would be a plus for the sitting president; however this just isn't the case with Barack Obama. Why? Because he has demonstrated weakness, inaction and a dreadful inclination to apologize for, rather than defend our way of life.
But this odd behavior doesn't seem so odd when realizing the underlying cause. Dark forces have been at work in America in the last few decades or so, and one need look no further than the powers that be in our liberal media to discover them. Using such euphemistic headlines like, "unrest in Muslim world" or "events in the Middle East," network and print newsies refuse to call these incidents what they are: acts of global terror committed by adherents of radical Islam. And it is this refusal to deal with the reality of this murderous sect that is really eroding our rights.
There have been many strange twists and turns since that bright and crisp morning eleven Septembers ago, but who would have thought that the liberty that would suffer most since then has been freedom of religion? And not the one practiced by those who have perpetrated nearly every terrorist attack across the globe for the last 30 years, but Judaism and Christianity. And is it a coincidence that American liberals have targeted these same enemies as the jihadists?
We have been told, ad nauseam, that images of the prophet Mohammed are unlawful and offensive to Muslims, but let us count the ways in which American state, local and federal governments have actually funded 'art' which is offensive to Christians. Or that our president has repeatedly snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu, while meeting at the White House with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose website recently called Jews "the descendants of apes and pigs," and praised those who wage jihad "against the arrogant Americans." Add to this that the constitutional rights of Catholics and other faithful Christians and Jews are being infringed upon by the Obamacare HHS mandates, and throw in the liberal clamoring for the arrest of the producers of an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and you find the First Amendment turned upside down.
In the recent past, those who choose to peacefully follow God's Ten Commandments have often been labeled as haters by those who do not; but now, even those who merely decry the actions of terrorists are branded with the same mark. But it's worse than that; even the thought police are now involved. You know it's gotten out of hand when even a liberal apologist like Juan Williams was fired by NPR for admitting that seeing Muslims board an airplane makes him nervous.
Someone I know who was parroting the liberal line that seeks a moral equivalence between the terrorists and those who 'insult' them, told me she thought that the makers of the infamous video were hateful cowards. While I was forced to agree with her that there is indeed too much hatred in the world, I responded that what's really cowardly is making war deliberately against innocent civilians without actually facing the enemy.
Yet cowardly though it may be, it is warfare that counts on the cooperation of a few useful idiots to convince the rest of their jihadist propaganda; a list of lies and distortions that might have sprung full blown from the presses of the New York Times: that terrorist tactics are justified since our military might is so much greater than theirs; that we deserve whatever we get because of past 'injustices' committed; and most importantly, that the tenets of all religions are intrinsically alike in spawning fanatics and therefore all must be dangerous and/or hateful at their root; excepting the Religion of Peace, of course.
Who among us has not heard at least some of the above used in whatever arguments liberals put forth in defense of their agenda or against traditional American values? And the most disturbing part is that this poison, spooned into the American psyche like bitter medicine into a sweet drink, has begun to take effect; resulting in part, in the election of Barack Obama, the first post-American Exceptionalist president. It seems that too many of our countrymen now believe that our nation, with its Judeo-Christian values, is just another cog in the One World wheel; unworthy of praise or spirited defense.
And if this continues to be the case, then the terrorists will have won.
© Lisa Fabrizio
September 28, 2012
Everyone remembers the days immediately after September 11, 2001. Amid the anger tinged with mourning and the brief but unnerving sense that our great land was not totally protected from harm by the two great oceans that previously guarded us, one common thought summed up the nature of the coming struggle: if we let the attacks change our ways as Americans, then the terrorists will have won.
At first, these sentiments concerned themselves with issues that immediately addressed our national security, like the Patriot Act and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. And although these were grudgingly accepted, most of the country seemed to agree with the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
So have we given up liberty to gain security? Were our rights as Americans diminished as a result of the jihad declared against us by al Qaeda? Maybe these were the wrong questions. Maybe, in the wake of the murders of four Americans in Libya and the lack of response from the U.S. government, the real question should be: if these outrages are no longer a cause for outrage, have the terrorists won? Will the ultimate victory be theirs?
These questions should assume an even greater importance in a presidential election year, but this doesn't seem to be the case this time. It is usually assumed that any attack on our country would be a plus for the sitting president; however this just isn't the case with Barack Obama. Why? Because he has demonstrated weakness, inaction and a dreadful inclination to apologize for, rather than defend our way of life.
But this odd behavior doesn't seem so odd when realizing the underlying cause. Dark forces have been at work in America in the last few decades or so, and one need look no further than the powers that be in our liberal media to discover them. Using such euphemistic headlines like, "unrest in Muslim world" or "events in the Middle East," network and print newsies refuse to call these incidents what they are: acts of global terror committed by adherents of radical Islam. And it is this refusal to deal with the reality of this murderous sect that is really eroding our rights.
There have been many strange twists and turns since that bright and crisp morning eleven Septembers ago, but who would have thought that the liberty that would suffer most since then has been freedom of religion? And not the one practiced by those who have perpetrated nearly every terrorist attack across the globe for the last 30 years, but Judaism and Christianity. And is it a coincidence that American liberals have targeted these same enemies as the jihadists?
We have been told, ad nauseam, that images of the prophet Mohammed are unlawful and offensive to Muslims, but let us count the ways in which American state, local and federal governments have actually funded 'art' which is offensive to Christians. Or that our president has repeatedly snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu, while meeting at the White House with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose website recently called Jews "the descendants of apes and pigs," and praised those who wage jihad "against the arrogant Americans." Add to this that the constitutional rights of Catholics and other faithful Christians and Jews are being infringed upon by the Obamacare HHS mandates, and throw in the liberal clamoring for the arrest of the producers of an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and you find the First Amendment turned upside down.
In the recent past, those who choose to peacefully follow God's Ten Commandments have often been labeled as haters by those who do not; but now, even those who merely decry the actions of terrorists are branded with the same mark. But it's worse than that; even the thought police are now involved. You know it's gotten out of hand when even a liberal apologist like Juan Williams was fired by NPR for admitting that seeing Muslims board an airplane makes him nervous.
Someone I know who was parroting the liberal line that seeks a moral equivalence between the terrorists and those who 'insult' them, told me she thought that the makers of the infamous video were hateful cowards. While I was forced to agree with her that there is indeed too much hatred in the world, I responded that what's really cowardly is making war deliberately against innocent civilians without actually facing the enemy.
Yet cowardly though it may be, it is warfare that counts on the cooperation of a few useful idiots to convince the rest of their jihadist propaganda; a list of lies and distortions that might have sprung full blown from the presses of the New York Times: that terrorist tactics are justified since our military might is so much greater than theirs; that we deserve whatever we get because of past 'injustices' committed; and most importantly, that the tenets of all religions are intrinsically alike in spawning fanatics and therefore all must be dangerous and/or hateful at their root; excepting the Religion of Peace, of course.
Who among us has not heard at least some of the above used in whatever arguments liberals put forth in defense of their agenda or against traditional American values? And the most disturbing part is that this poison, spooned into the American psyche like bitter medicine into a sweet drink, has begun to take effect; resulting in part, in the election of Barack Obama, the first post-American Exceptionalist president. It seems that too many of our countrymen now believe that our nation, with its Judeo-Christian values, is just another cog in the One World wheel; unworthy of praise or spirited defense.
And if this continues to be the case, then the terrorists will have won.
© Lisa Fabrizio
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
