On November 14, 2002, the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire wrote a column called "You Are a Suspect." It is posted below, an early signpost to our current state of dislocation and upset.
It is dislocating and upsetting to be confronted with the Edward Snowden leaks: the leaked court order, the leaked logistical scope of what is being aptly labeled the Surveillance State. This what Safire predicted would be foisted on Us, the People. We are told it is The Only Means Possible to prevent "another 9/11."
The mendacity of this rationale is as appalling as the totalitarian structure of the hyper-state it supports.
Yesterday, I focused on the failures of former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden to comprehend the quite simple patterns of Islamic conquest that history is replete with, that our own era is undergoing, that Western civlization is being transformed by. Why would an intel chief draw such blanks? One reason might be hostile Islamic penetration of the policy-making chain, which appears to have influenced key actors inside our government. Congress blindly, resolutely refuses to examine any evidence of this. Rep. Michele Bachmann's political career seems to have cratered after and because she quite logically and patriotically asked for Inspectors General outside Congress to examine the evidence and was demonized as a second coming of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Another wrong on its face, as my new book, American Betrayal, argues.
Hayden, of course, is not alone. Indeed, he exemplifies the hollowness at the very top of our security bureacracies: FBI Director Mueller, DNI Clapper, JCC Dempsey, DHS Secretary Napolitano. CIA Director John Brennan, overtly sympathetic and even protective of Islam, is another bird entirely. He may well be a Muslim himself.
Under the fundamentally flawed guidance of such hollow people, a terrifying super-state has arisen to defend their beliefs, their ideology, not the Constitution.
It doesn't protect the public, either, although this is the rationale that is supposed to excuse the "overreach."
If US leaders had really wanted to prevent another 9/11, they would have admitted the obvious: that the world of Islam, from its terrorists to its kings, is engaged in the latest cycle of jihad to extend the reach of Islamic law (sharia). To protect the US Constitutuon they would then have taken wartime (anti-jihad) precautions accordingly. For starters, these would include securing our borders; halting Islamic immigration and travel, canceling Islamic education visas, barring return-travel from jihad nations such as Chechnya, Pakistan, etc.; preventing US institutions, including colleges, media organizations and banks, from accepting money from sharia-ruled dictatorships; closing down mosques where jihad is preached and supported.
Not a single phone call or email would thus have to be read to fend off jihad and the vectors of sharia aimed at the heart of the US Constitution.
But such measures would undermine the prevailing, Marx-derived ideology that has poisoned the wellspring of every American institution, from academia to churches to the family unit itself. This is an ideology that knows no partisan bounds. It is as prevalent on the "right" and it is on the "left."
How this ideology triumphed is the story of American Betrayal.
In the secretive and powerful hands of our ideologically zealous leaders, facts play acolytes to Marx-inspired ideology. Some facts are picked, some are discarded, but always to strengthen the ideology. This is how The Big Lie lives. We know it as "universalism" -- the concept that all peoples, religions, cultures are the same -- but this is an undisguised precept of global Communism. Consciously or not, everything our leaders do serves to advance this Marx-derived orthodoxy, from sending young men to lose their body parts on IED-studded Afghan roads to prove we are all the same, to shredding the Constitution at home to prove we are all the same.
The peoples of the world are not all the same. Indeed, some peoples, some cultures, some religions, are our enemies because they are hostile to our liberty.
Why is this so hard to understand? This is also the story of my book, which is subtitled, The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character.
On September 11, 2001, a ticket-taker at Logan Airport did not need to mine the meta-data on three billion electronic phone calls and comunications to know that she should be looking more closely into the i.d.'s of several Arab men about to board a plane who were acting oddly. What we know as "political correctness" -- pure Marxian mental conditioning -- however, made her suppress her survival instincts, her logic processes, and say "Have a nice flight" instead. A dozen years later, "profiling" is considered worse than terrorism and we all routinely strip naked electronically for TSA and consider ourselves protected.
Progress? You bet. Only not for "the people" as a nation of individuals. But we are more and more identifying with the collective. Collective safety. Collective security. Funny how both Marx and Mohammed founded collectivist creeds. Actually, it's not funny at all. The similarities are profound -- and alarming (also in American Betrayal).
Islam rises alongside our collectivist Superstate. Mosques prolierate in this country, sharia advances, the superstate flexes, freedom of speech constricts, policing becomes more thuggish, the superstate stockpiles bullets, crowd control becomes more restrictive, fear grows, privacy is extinct, the superstate imposes, requires, invades, provides, rewards, punishes, socializes medicine, targets individuals, covers up everything, ramps up the IRS for your "health," tracks your electronic life, your phone calls, your travel, your mail.
Snowden strikes, grabs our attention about what we should have known was happening.
It was a gigantic act of courage, it has struck me so far, seemingly from idealism, seemingly to unmask the machine secretly grinding away any remaining semblance of the American republic. Then again, as others have noted, this is a young man who seems to consider himself a citizen of the world. Then again, given that he is a creature of his time, how could he not? What school system in America teaches youngsters pride in the founding of this country?
Is Snowden real? Was he duped? Is he dead? We don't know. Is he a hero? I think so, but if it turns out he is working for China or takes refuge in Russia -- both totalitarian enemies of liberty -- then I will think again.
What I do know for sure is that Edward Snowden has thrown down the gauntlet.
The heroism is up to us.
