Too Late?

A guy I know - a former soldier with several tours in the Middle East - told me he didn’t want his son to fight over there, and that surprised me. I asked if it was the military’s rules of engagement and he just smirked. “Well why then?” He was silent again, looking into space while he thought about it. Finally he said he wasn’t sure Americans wanted to win. “Hmm,” I said. It was time for me to pause. He stated what I had been thinking lately, but was afraid to say out loud.

Some of us want to win, but a lot of us don’t. “Our leaders are a reflection of our culture,” my friend said, “and our culture wants our soldiers to fight without hurting anybody.” That’s impossible, of course, but it does seem to be what too many Americans want - and our elected leaders are willing to pretend it’s possible. So we send our finest young men to fight with one arm tied behind their backs because of our asinine rules of engagement. Our soldiers cannot shoot until the bad guys shoot at them first.

Fifty-three percent of us elected a president last fall who thinks he can talk our enemies into liking us. Since his inauguration, he’s traveled the world bowing to foreign leaders and apologizing for America when there’s nothing to apologize for. He says the War on Terror is over and what we’ve got now are “Overseas Contingency Operations,” whatever the hell that means.

His interview with ABC News last July is instructive:

ABC’S TERRY MORAN: Define victory in Afghanistan, or maybe that’s not the right word.
OBAMA: I’m always worried about using the word “victory” because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

What would be wrong with that? If you ask me, it would be wonderful to see Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashir Assad, Mullah Omar, Hassan Nasrallah, and the rest of our enemies lined up to sign unconditional surrenders. Is President Obama forgetting that he’s our Commander-in-Chief? We have a C in C who doesn’t want to even say victory? I want one who’ll settle for nothing less.

Meanwhile, all that bowing and groveling doesn’t seem to be working very well. Iran - the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism - burned Obama in effigy during their annual “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” festival. One of our own army officers shot dozens of American infidels at Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and our president wasn’t even sure he was a terrorist. A wealthy, British-educated, young Nigerian tried to blow up an American passenger plane with 289 people, Obama called him a “suspect” and an “isolated extremist” who “allegedly” tried to set off a device, as if the terrorist were entitled to the same rights American citizens are. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “the system has worked really very, very smoothly” and there was “no indication of a larger terror plot.” As if there were no connection between all the RADICAL MUSLIM terrorists who’ve been attacking Americans, Israelis, British, Spanish, Russians, and others for decades.

So many of us are so infected with political correctness, we go to astonishing lengths to avoid calling our enemy by its name. So indoctrinated with self-hating, leftist propaganda about the evils of western civilization are we that we think it’s no wonder they hate us and want to kill us.

An increasing number of Americans don’t want to do what it takes to win because they don’t believe our way of life is worth fighting for. They don’t believe America is unique. Their brains are so addled with multicultural malarkey, they think all countries and all cultures are equal - even if they enslave women, kill homosexuals, execute anyone who converts to another religion, and continually promise to kill anyone who isn’t like them - it doesn’t make them bad people. They’re just another part of the wonderfully diverse human family and should be celebrated like any other part, including ours.

And now we’ve installed an entire national government with that world view. How do you like the way they’re functioning so far America? Do you feel safe?

Just as the leaders we elect are a reflection of us, so are our children. A fellow teacher asked his writing students recently if the America was the best country in the world and most didn’t think so. I teach the same kids, and when I asked them which country was better they looked at me blankly. They couldn’t name one. They just parroted the diversity doo-doo they were raised with.

This is what America is becoming. Is it too late for us? Are we going to lose?

Redistribution

After passing back weekly US History quizzes on World War I, I paused a few minutes for the “whad-ja-gets” - students asking each other about their scores.

When they were done I said, “I have a good idea.”

“What?” said a girl.

“Many of you are doing well on these lately, getting hundreds and nineties, but others are still doing poorly - getting only thirties and forties.”

They all knew that after the whad-ja-gets.

“I’m thinking about redistributing grades - taking thirty points from those of you who got hundreds, and giving them to the students who got thirties. That way, the kids with hundreds would still have seventies, which is a C- and not that bad a grade, while those with thirties would then get sixties, which is D- and passing. This way, things would be more equal. How does that sound to you?”

Several looked at me blankly. Some had their mouths open. Students I knew had been studying extra hard were wincing.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said one.

“Okay,” I said. “Does anybody like the idea?”

Only four raised their hands.

“Who else doesn’t like it?”

All the rest put their hands up.

“Alright, why not?”

“We worked for those grades,” said a boy. “It’s not fair to take our points and give them to someone who didn’t study. They shouldn’t get points for not doing anything.”

“Yeah,” said a girl. “If you did that, those kids who don’t study won’t ever do anything. They won’t have any reason to.”

“Plus, other kids wouldn’t want to work so hard if the points they earned were just going to be taken away and given to someone else,” said another boy.

“Well,” I said. “It’s just an idea at this point,”

“Not one of your better ones,” said a boy.

“I haven’t made any decisions yet and I’ll let you know when I do. Meanwhile, would you open your books to page 888 please?”

They did.

“I’d like someone to read the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913 - almost a hundred years ago. Any volunteers?”

A boy read aloud: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

“Thank you,” I said. “There had been a temporary income tax during the Civil War and a few times after, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, so passage of the 16th Amendment was necessary to resume it. The tax was only on people who earned the most money - an amount that would be equal to around $80,000 per year or above today. Soon it turned into something called a “graduated” or “progressive” income tax.”

I drew charts on the board illustrating that with a flat tax of 15%, someone making $10,000 per year would pay $1500 in taxes while someone making $100,000 per year would pay $15,000. So the wealthier would pay more, but the percentage would be the same. Then I explained how under a “graduated” or “progressive” tax structure, the percentage went up enormously for wealthier taxpayers to the point where government took most of what they made above a certain amount. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, government took over 90% of their earnings. I passed out charts showing the top marginal tax rates since 1913.

“Wow,” said a boy. “There would be no point in working hard if the government takes it all away.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“This is what you were getting at with the quiz grades, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Finally, I explained that the top half of American workers paid just about all the income taxes, while the bottom half paid almost nothing, or government gave them money under something called the “earned income tax credit.”

“That’s like what the communists did in Russia,” said a girl. We had watched “Dr. Zhivago” to learn about World War I, the Communist Revolution in Russia, and the rise of the Soviet Union.

“Similar,” I said, “but not as drastic. There are other taxes the bottom half of Americans pay so nobody escapes paying some kind of tax, but the rich pay for most of what the federal government does. And - the bottom half figured out that they can vote in congressmen and senators who will give them things somebody else has to pay for.”

Selfishness and Harassment

My baby boom generation and the so-called generation Xers who followed us have aborted over forty million American babies since 1973. It would have required a great deal of personal and financial sacrifice to bear them and then bring them up to adulthood, and they declined. Now, we’re burdening babies we do allow to be born with crippling debt because we want things, we don’t want to pay for them, and we’re passing the bill to the next generation - and whatever children they may have. Congressional Democrats just raised our debt ceiling to $14 trillion. A baby born today inherits a $39 thousand liability and it’s going up. Meanwhile, we’re pulling stem cells from human embryos to prolong our lives.

Any other ways we can squeeze more out of future generations before we die? Christian News Wire tells us that: “Neocutis, a bio-pharmaceutical company focused on dermatology and skin care is using aborted fetal cell lines to produce several of their anti-aging skin creams. . . . Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne [Switzerland] from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland.” Support for this is, sadly, widespread, although most Americans still don’t approve of it. The Roe V Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973 claimed abortion is a woman’s constitutional right and though some of us believe the decision to be deeply flawed, it’s the law and we must accept it until it’s repealed. Nurses, doctors and other medical professionals who believe abortion is murder have, at least until recently, been exempted from performing them.

However, according to HotAir.com: “The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Catholic nurse who was forced to participate in an abortion, despite voicing her moral objections well in advance. Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, was instructed to assist in a late second-trimester abortion for a woman 22 weeks into her pregnancy. The hospital had known of the nurse’s religious objections to abortion since she was hired in 2004.”

The hospital told her if she didn’t assist in the abortion, she would be considered insubordinate and risk loss of her nursing license. Apparently, the liberal agenda will now be forced on the rest of us and no dissent will be tolerated. Don’t believe it?

Last month, a Maine social worker was threatened with loss of his license to practice because he appeared in a commercial for the recent “Yes on Question 1” [repeal homosexual “marriage”] campaign. According the Kennebec Journal: “Don Mendell, of Palmyra, is the subject of the complaint, filed Oct. 19 with the state Department of Professional and Financial Regulation. According to documents of the complaint, it was sent Oct. 19 by a person only identified as Ann’ and seeks to have Mendell's license as a social worker revoked.” The complaint states: “[Mendell] does not have the right as a licensed social worker to make public comments that can endanger or promote discrimination.”As a Maine public school teacher, I made the same commercial Mendell did on the same day, but his version was chosen over mine. Would I be facing similar harassment had my commercial been chosen? It wouldn’t be the first time. Austin R. Nimocks, Mendell’s attorney from the Alliance Defense Fund stated: “This threat to Don [Mendell], and his family and his livelihood, reveals that those who want to redefine marriage also want to punish and silence anyone who disagrees.” If there’s another profession more strongly influenced by homosexual activists than the my own, it’s Mendell’s. After receiving a letter from Maine’s Office of Licensing and Registration ordering him to “send a detailed response to the complaint within 30 days,” he got an email saying, “[B]oth executive boards of the Maine School Counseling Association and the Maine Counseling Association have labored over what appears [sic] to be ethical violations that were breached in terms of the advertisement that was aired on behalf of the Vote Yes on 1 campaign. More specifically, you were featured in an [sic] television advertisement and identified as a school counselor voting yes on this issue.”

“We certainly have absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Mark Sullivan of the “No on 1” campaign. Uh-huh. Homosexual activists claim all should be able to practice their beliefs and live according to their chosen lifestyle without harassment, right? Well, maybe not.

Larry Grard claims he was fired from his job as a reporter for the Waterville Morning Sentinel where he’d worked for eighteen years after a complaint about him from the Human Rights Campaign - the biggest homosexual activist group in the country with sixteen full-time lobbyists. CCL sign defaced by homosexual activists in 2005

According to Al Diamon of Downeast.com, “After Grard received an e-mail on Nov. 4 from the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC that blamed the defeat of Maine’s gay marriage law on ‘lies and hate,’ he sent the group a response that read, ‘Who are the hateful, venom-spewing ones? Hint: Not the yes on 1 crowd. You hateful people have been spreading nothing but vitriol since this campaign began. Good riddance!’”

As of this writing, Human Rights Campaign acknowledges the email exchange with Grard and emailing an objection to Grard’s editor. Grard’s union, the Portland Newspaper Guild, has filed a grievance about the matter on his behalf, and is waiting for an arbitration date.

Maine Today Media, Inc. which owns the Morning Sentinel, denies Grard’s claims.

Opposing Forces

For decades I figured people would wake up and raise hell before things got this bad, but I’ve been wrong. Last summer, however, I noticed stirrings and wrote “Something Big is Brewing Out There.” Democrat congressmen were shocked by constituent anger when they returned to their home districts during the August recess. Citizens back home knew more than their congressmen in Washington did about the various versions of the Obamacare bill under consideration and they were ripped. Our congressional representatives became so afraid, they wouldn’t meet with people except in the most controlled environments. Now something else is brewing that could be just as troubling for big-government liberals who are running our country into the ground.

When Speaker Pelosi cracked the whip on Democrats during the late-Saturday night vote on the multi-trillion-dollar Obamacare bill, an unforeseen element presented itself: Pelosi got her arm twisted by representatives of the American Conference of Catholic Bishops. She was told that unless she took taxpayer funding for abortion out of the House bill, the Catholic Church would actively oppose it. She buckled and pushed through the Stupak Amendment. Since then, Catholics have teamed up with Orthodox Christians and evangelical Protestants to file the “Manhattan Declaration” just two weeks ago, which declares in part:

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them.

Catholics are teaming up with conservative Protestant Calvinists? Who would have predicted this twenty years ago? It’s happening because they’re both “under assault from powerful forces in our culture” and in our government - like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi - two of the most pro-abortion and pro-homosexual politicians ever to hold office. When they and their ilk pushed the disingenuously-named “Freedom Of Choice Act” or FOCA that would force conservative Christian doctors, nurses and hospitals to perform abortions, that was bad. When Pelosi, a Catholic, said the Catholic Church isn’t sure when human life begins, she was not only stating a falsehood, she was throwing down the gauntlet to the bishops. They could either slink away as they have been for decades in the face of leftist “Catholic” politicians, or they could accept the challenge. I’m very pleased to see that they’ve summoned some courage at long last. Now, leftist Democrat Senators promise they won’t sign an Obamacare bill with the Stupak Amendment in it. Moderate Democrat Senators say they won’t sign a bill without it. President Obama went up to Capitol Hill last weekend to try to work out what would seem to be an impossible impasse. I hope he fails.

The downside of the Catholic bishops’ position is that they would support Obamacare absent the abortion funding, even if it’s going to cost $2 trillion we don’t have. In that, they’re not on the same page with the Tea Party protesters. Both groups are against Obamacare, but for different reasons.

As a young Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat I was foolish in many ways, but my opinions about what are now called “social issues” of abortion and homosexuality were the same then as they are now: Abortion killed babies and homosexuality was a perversion. Neither deserved sanction by government. Though I was liberal on other issues, I’ve never been convinced that either abortion or homosexuality warrants government protection. The Democrat Party had a strong conservative wing in the fifties and even in most of the notorious sixties. There were lots of members with views like mine, but then Democrats moved hopelessly leftward on every issue. Now it barely tolerates any members who oppose abortion or homosexual “marriage.”

Unduly influenced by homosexual priests and bishops for the past thirty or forty years, Catholic leaders in New England and elsewhere shrank away from political battles against “gay rights” legislation - even after being ripped apart by the altar boy rape scandals of 2002. I was disgusted, and like many Catholics, cut back drastically on my donations and even considered leaving the church. Recently, however, the Portland Diocese led a successful fight against homosexual “marriage” here in Maine this year, and that defeat of the “powerful forces in our culture” caused a domino effect in New York and New Jersey immediately after.

Neither Tea Party activists nor signers of the Manhattan Declaration were foreseen by the liberal Democrat machine when they swept to power late last year, but both will be formidable enemies in 2010 against Democrats and the “powerful forces in our culture” with whom they’re so closely allied. They’ve seen their enemies lately, however, and that’s why they’re trying so hard to jam through Obamacare and Climate change fixes before too many more people wise up.

The 2010 election will be very interesting.

Addendum: The Senate rejected an amendment last night that would have blocked abortion funding from its version of the Obamacare bill on a vote of 54-45. Let's see what the Catholic Church does now. Time is very short.

Life Is Good

There are lots of problems living on the side of a hill with water flow during thunderstorms in summer, snow and ice in winter, engineering issues, and so forth - but there's one big advantage: a constantly-changing view.My hard drive is clogged with sunset shots and they're all different. Just when I think I've captured it and start to go back inside, it changes and I shoot it again. Have to stop shooting though because my daughter Annie is coming through the back door with my new granddaughter - who is visiting us for the first time.It took a few minutes for her to adjust to the new surroundings.Grandparents and great-grandmother admire Claire Lowell, newest member of the clan.Working on an article for the Lovell Historical Society Newsletter and not writing a column this week. Last week's piece didn't run in the newspapers on Thursday because of Thanksgiving and will run this week instead. So, I'm posting some recent shots I like of my day-to-day life. Didn't finish with that this morning.

Noticed some frost on the beaver bog between Christian Hill and Shave Hill while driving to school.A few miles further on, the sun was rising over the Old Course of the Saco River.And another angle.Checking the properties on Kezar Lake after school.Another angle.Still another angle with 120-year-old white pines. I know because I've counted the rings on their recently-deceased sister trees. I'm very happy to have my 18-270 zoom lens back.Heading back home over Hatch's Hill Road.Life is good.

Dollars, Deficits and Gold

“President Obama is in Asia,” I told the class.

“Yes, and he bowed to the Japanese emperor,” said a boy.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Americans don’t like to see their leader bow to others,” said the boy. “It’s like saying they’re better they we are.”

“He was just being polite,” said a girl. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“Okay,” I said. “Chinese leaders asked how he was going to pay for his health care reform bill, which may cost another trillion dollars. Why would Chinese leaders care about that?”

“Because China lends us money, right?” said another boy.

“Yes. Japan too. Why is that?”

“Because we don’t have enough?”

“That’s right,” I said, pulling down the screen and projecting an image onto it. “This chart goes back to 1980 and it shows how our federal government is paying, or not paying, for what it does.” I explained how we get a deficit when government spends more than it gets in taxes and showed them how the deficit increased during the Reagan and first Bush presidencies and declined during the Clinton years. Then I pointed to the surplus in the late Clinton years and the second Bush’s early years before sliding back into deficit after the September 11th attacks in 2001 and our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Notice that during George Bush’s last year the deficit was a record at almost $500 billion?” I said, pointing on the screen. “Now look at President Obama’s first year,” I said. He’s more than tripled the deficit to $2 trillion.”

“Wow,” said three students.

“What can Obama and the Congress do to reduce the deficit?” I asked. “There are at least three ways.”

“Higher taxes,” said a boy.

“Right,” I said. “That’s one way, and Obama is asking Congress to raise taxes, but not nearly enough to reduce the deficit. Why not?

“Because that would make people mad,” said the boy.

“Right, and congressmen might get voted out. What else can they do?”

“Don’t spend as much,” said a girl.

“Right again,” I said, “but Obama and the Congress are spending more and the health care reform bill they’re trying to pass will cost another trillion dollars. What else can they do?”
 No hands.

“They could print money. The Constitution gives Congress power to do that and they are,” I said. “Good idea, huh?”

“Yeah,” said a boy.

“Won’t that make our money not worth as much?” asked a girl with a worried look.

“Yes,” I said. Other students looked puzzled.

“Why is that?” asked one.

“Because then there are more dollars out in circulation while the number of things to buy stays the same. Each new dollar and the ones already out there are worth less. Prices go up. It’s called inflation.”

I waited while that sunk in. Then I took a dollar and a blank check from my wallet and held them up. “Notice they’re about the same size and both are made of paper?”

They nodded.

“Let’s say you were selling a house for $200,000 and I wanted to buy it, okay?
More nods.


“If I made out this check for $200,000 and signed it, would you take it in trade for your house?”

“That depends on whether you have $200,000 in your account,” said another girl.

“I claim that by writing the check. It comes down to how much you trust me.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Then I held up the dollar. “This is like a check from the United States of America. Do you trust the United States government?”

“Yes.

“Would you take 200,000 of these?”


“Yes.”

“China is nervous about the US dollar,” I said. Then I took a quarter out of my pocket and held it up. “This used to be made of silver but now it’s copper because this much silver is worth more than 25 cents. Ever see an old movie where someone bites a coin?”

Many had.

“Why?”

“Because silver is soft and they wanted to see if it was real,” said a boy.

“Right. They trusted the metal, not the country. This has little ridges around the outside edge because people would sometimes shave some off. With ridges, you know it’s all there.”

“The price of gold has doubled in three years to over $1100 an ounce because people are trusting metal more than dollars again. Two weeks ago India bought 200 tons of it. China is worried about the billions it already lent us. That’s why they’re asking Obama about where he’s going to get the money to pay for his health care reform bill. They’re afraid he’s going to print more dollars.”

Question Reality?

“I wasn’t talking.”

“Hmm. Your lips were moving. Sound was coming out. The person you were facing was looking at you and nodding, but you weren’t talking?”

“No.”

“So, I should believe you, and not my own eyes and ears?”

“Whatever.”

That word is telling. It’s what we’re left with when we deny objective reality. Anyone can talk in my class, but only one at a time and only on the subject. Using the Socratic method, that’s how it has to be. I gave him a consequence and moved on, but I was troubled by his nonchalant denial of the obvious because I’m seeing it around me more and more. Either the world is getting crazy or I am. Once I saw a bumper sticker saying “Question Reality” and I laughed, but I don't think it's funny anymore.

Objective reality hard to perceive exactly sometimes, but we have to believe it exists or we can’t function. It can be fun to question it and consider that everything is relative during late-night bull sessions, but if we pretend objective reality doesn’t exist, we’ll suffer painful consequences. General Custer discovered this when he ignored reports that thousands of warriors could be just over the hill. “Whatever,” he thought, and ordered an attack. Denial of objective reality is most dangerous during wartime and that’s exactly what our president, his party, and the mainstream media are doing by denying the obvious: that the Fort Hood massacre was an act of Radical Muslim terrorism. After September 11th and all that’s happened since, it astonishes me to see Americans are nodding at their ludicrous claims that Major Hasan was really suffering from vicarious PTSD while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as he mowed down our soldiers. That he contacted al Qaeda twenty times and asked what he could do to further the jihad and told fellow doctors: “Infidels should have their throats cut,” and “non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats” is not evidence of Islamofascism, but symptomatic of second-hand stress from counseling returning soldiers.

Whatever.

In education, I’m accustomed to the constant drone of “multiculturalism” and “diversity,” but in our military too? According to Army Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, “A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers' promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don't call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn't hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It's almost impossible for the Army's politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician. Sen. Joe Lieberman . . . needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan's promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.”

According to Obama’s Army Chief of Staff General Casey, however: “[A]s horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

Incredible.

We are most definitely at war, but it’s not like World Wars I & II. It’s not like Korea or Vietnam either. It’s unique. According to some analysts, we’ve been at it since Iran took over our embassy in 1979. That was the first offensive action by Radical Muslims against us, and there have been many since. We were broken out of our denial by the September 11th attacks, but we’re crawling right back into it by pretending our enemies are nothing but common criminals to be handled in the court system. Khalid Sheik Muhammad and the other defendants who planned and carried out September 11th have already admitted their culpability and asked to be executed, but President Obama insists they be tried in a New York City courtroom instead of being lined up and shot as many of us would wish.

President Clinton treated the 1993 World Trade Center attack, killing six, as a criminal matter instead of an act of war and that was a big mistake. It was attacked again in 2001, killing 3000. In the interim, there were attacks on our embassies in Africa, killing twelve, on American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen, and on the USS Cole in 2000, killing nineteen. Rather than learn from Clinton’s blunders, though, Obama is repeating them.

Radical Islam resurrected itself with the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 and it’s goal has been to reunite Islam with government. There had been a separation of church and state (or church and mosque) in the countries of the Muslim world after years of European influence in the region and the Muslim Brotherhood would reunite the two. By 1979, Iran had declared itself an Islamic Republic and started attacking the west immediately, especially the United States. Osama Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996. Then Iran did in 2006. Both have attacked and killed Americans by the hundreds in the case of Iran and in the thousands in the case of Bin Laden.

Bush called it the “War on Terror.” That’s a misnomer because terror is a tactic, not an entity, but Bush was reticent about calling our enemy by its name: Radical Islam. That was bad enough, but the linguistic contortions the Obama government is willing to make are astounding. It dropped “War on Terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operations,” whatever the hell that means, and his Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, now calls attacks of Islamic terrorism like September 11th “Man-caused Disasters.”

Whatever.

After President Obama suspends our “Overseas Contingency Operations” as he seems about to do, the next “Man-caused disaster” we experience at the hands of these “criminals” could produce not only political and economic fall-out, but also the radioactive variety.

We're in Trouble

“Is it possible for a human being to become perfect?” I asked the class. Most students agreed it wasn’t. Some believed we could strive for perfection and that’s a good thing, but each of us would always fall short.

“How about creating a perfect society?” I asked.

“How can you create a perfect society with imperfect people?” said a particularly sharp girl with the perfect rhetorical question.

I was setting them up for lesson on utopian communes in America - efforts to establish perfect societies - and ultimately how the struggle between communism and capitalism dominated the 20th century.

We looked at 19th century communes like the Shakers and the Oneida Community. Both were religious, members of both gave all their property to the commune, both controlled all aspects of members’ lives, but they had opposite views of human sexuality. The Shakers eschewed sex but the Oneida commune spread it around as much as possible in a method they called “complex marriage.” Both thrived economically, supplying members with whatever goods and services they needed and both lasted longer than most attempted utopias. Neither achieved perfection, but they were around for a fairly long time working at it.

Though voluntary, 19th century American communes attracted fanatics who knew what was best for us all, and who were willing to impose it violently. It can’t be just coincidence that two presidential assassins were, at least temporarily, members of the Oneida Community. They were Charles Guiteau who killed President Garfield, and Leon Czolgosz, who killed President McKinley. Czolgosz especially seemed to personify the utopians’ metamorphosis from from religious to secular/socialist, then to athiest/communist as he embraced leftist anarchists and communists. People like him had no qualms about violently imposing their utopian fantasies on Russia beginning in 1918.

They transformed Russia into the USSR, then extended their influence over all of northern Asia and half of Europe. Promising to redistribute wealth, they appropriated private property whether owners were willing to part with it or not. They took control of the entire economy and every aspect of people’s lives, but seemed by all acounts to move further away from perfection rather than closer to it. The USSR couldn’t provide the consumer goods citizens needed. Its planned economy caused its demise.

Communist utopians tolerated no dissent. Somewhere between forty and sixty million people, most of whom were skeptical about communist dreams of establishing a workers’ paradise, were killed - far more than the number who died at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis.

Even without reproducing, the Shakers outlasted the USSR, which finally disintegrated twenty years ago. There are still a handful of Shakers in New Gloucester, Maine a few miles east of where I’m writing. As for the Oneidas - their utopian community is gone but they exist as a joint stock company making cutlery.

The religious American communes were entirely voluntary. People could join or not and if the life didn’t suit them, they could leave. The USSR was anything but. Communist officials built walls and an elaborate security apparatus to keep people from escaping. They had no choice beyond “adapt or die.” Communists believed they knew what was best for all whether they liked it or not. Religion was outlawed and the state became church. The revolution was sacred and capitalism evil. Individual liberty was not only irrelevant, it was “counterrevolutionary.” And, as Boris Pasternak’s novel character, Dr. Yuri Zhivago put it: “They shoot counterrevolutionaries.”

My earliest awareness of this was watching on TV as an ugly little bald guy with a wart on his face took his shoe off during a speech, banged it on the podium at the United Nations in New York City and declared: “We will bury you!” That was Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev. That Kruschev was dedicated to forcing Soviet communism on the entire world came through loud and clear to me that day and I’ve never forgotten it. Kruschev’s USSR collapsed thirty years later only because the United States sustained a forty-five-year-long Cold War.

We face a different enemy now. It’s another religious utopian group with strange ideas about sexuality, but different from its smaller predecessors in that it would violently impose itself on everyone in the world. It’s anything but voluntary. Radical Muslims are true believers with no doubts that they know what’s best for all of us whether we like it or not. They would make the world Muslim and run it under Sharia Law. They’re quite open about their intentions and have demonstrated that they’re willing to kill themselves if they can take a few infidels with them. Radical Shiite Muslims believe the Mahdi will emerge soon to preside over a thousand years of justice and peace. Iranian President Ahmadinejad invoked him from the same UN podium Kruschev used fifty years before.

Like the communists, Radical Muslims know the biggest obstacle in the way of achieving their utopian vision is the United States. Trouble is though, our Commander-in-chief lacks the will to oppose them. He won’t even call our enemy by its name. After US Army Major Hasan openly admired Muslim suicide bombers, declared the US an “oppressor” of Muslims, asked an al Qaeda recruiter what he could do “to further the Jihad,” shouted “Allahu Akbar!” while he gunned down forty-three US soldiers last week, President Obama said: “Well, look, we -- we have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort. And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable.”

Inexplicable?

We’re in deep trouble.