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About
Frank Salvato
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of
Terrorism Research for
BasicsProject.org a non-profit,
non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His
writing has been recognized by the US House International
Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict
Prevention. His organization partnered in producing the original
national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical
Islamist terrorism. He serves as the managing editor for The New
Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor
on FOX News Channel and is a regular guest on talk radio
including on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent
Radio Network and on The Captain's America Radio Show catering
to the US Armed Forces around the world. His opinion-editorials
have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The
Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally.
He is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is
available for public speaking engagements.
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Frank Salvato
Managing Editor
Ignoring ‘The Perfect Storm’ at Our Own
Peril
August 15, 2008
The mainstream media and the
presumptive nominee from the Democrat Party have done a pretty good job
of steering the electorate’s attention to issues of a domestic nature.
It wasn’t hard to do. With gasoline prices hovering around four dollars
a gallon, combined with the self-induced but limited financial crisis
created by proprietary lenders and a healthcare system that’s being
raped by grifting lawyers and robber-baron insurance companies, it is
easy to understand why voters would fall prey to diversionary tactics of
the political power seekers. But we do so at the expense of the well
being of our nation. We do so ignoring “the perfect storm.”
French Nobel prize winner and reformed communist Andre Gide once said,
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the
one who lies with sincerity.” We in the United States, especially those
who are politically aware, can identify with this phrase because our
political parties have taken to questing for political power rather than
the execution of good government. While there are some elected officials
who sincerely strive to serve our nation and its people, the great
majority of those who inhabit the halls of government – whether at the
local, state or national levels – do so to move their political agendas
forward and to institute their party’s special interests. In doing so
they abdicate the duty of their positions in that they are not
representing the will of their constituents.
Examples of elected officials placing politics before government are
abundant. An overwhelming majority of the American public have
expressed, in no uncertain terms, that they want their elected officials
to, among other things:
▪ Utilize our nation’s natural resources to break from the chains of
foreign energy dependence.
▪ Secure the borders.
▪ Simplify and make more equitable the tax codes.
▪ Balance the budget by maintaining fiscal responsibility (read, don’t
spend what you don’t have, keep your checkbook balanced and stop raising
taxes to institute new programs of entitlement).
▪ Institute an effective and practical solution for the looming Social
Security crisis.
▪ Eliminate foreign aid to countries that consistently oppose the United
States on the world stage.
The list could go on and on but the point is clear; politicians
consistently put politics, power and financial special interests before
the issues most important to the American people: A small, elite group
of Progressives, beholden to the environmental lobby, uses their
governmental powers to usurp the will of the people by refusing to allow
drilling in places we know there are oil deposits; politicians on both
sides of the aisle pander to an illegitimate voting demographic in the
illegal alien population for fear that if they stand up for America’s
sovereignty they may be voted out of office by those who shouldn’t be
voting in the first place; politicians of both major political parties
refuse to banish the earmark and reserve the right to raid the
government treasury to provide bribes to their constituencies in an
effort to garner re-election; the tax code continues to overburden the
middle class and penalize the family while expanding entitlement
increases the number of those feeding from the public trough and the
mega-rich evolve into an elitist class; etc, etc, etc...
But perhaps the most devious, the most troublesome example of elected
officials putting political opportunism before good government comes in
the form of “the perfect storm.”
Our nation faces two enormous threats, one externally and one from
within, and we do so without a proper understanding of why we should be
fighting them both with every fiber of our collective being.
The mainstream media and the progressive, anti-war left feverishly
contend that Iraq and Afghanistan are two separate conflicts – one
illegitimate and one poorly managed. They continue to deny – adamantly –
that Western Civilization is at odds with the aggressive ideology that
is fundamentalist Islam. They do so insisting that dialogue is always
the answer and believing that the actions of the United States in the
Middle East justify the violence of the jihadi movement.
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception,
the one who lies with sincerity.”
Facts are stubborn things and the facts surrounding this third major
attempt to establish a global Caliphate are no different.
Wahhabists and Salafists like al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Ayman al
Zawahiri, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Yusuf al Qaradawi, perhaps
the most influential voice within the Muslim Brotherhood, have stated in
no uncertain terms that the catalyst for their violent jihadi movement
transcends the actions of the United States.
While bin Laden and al Zawahiri used the excuse of US forces in Saudi
Arabia as a catalyst to launch their aggression, the rhetoric that
surrounds their every action exposes the totalitarian tenets of their
religious beliefs. Their Wahhabist beliefs call for the conversion or
extermination of the infidel and the institution of Sharia law world
wide; the establishment of a global Caliphate.
Hassan Nasrallah – the figurehead of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and
mouthpiece for Hezbollah’s creators, the Iranian mullahs – pursues the
extinction of Israel and, like his ideological master, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, yearns for the return of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, who
can only come when the world is in chaos at the “end of days.”
Al Qaradawi and his Sunni Muslim Brotherhood – perhaps the most
dangerous of them all – promotes the proselytization of Wahhabi Islam
throughout the world. It should be noted that Wahhabi Islam is the brand
of radical, violent Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and all of the
9/11 hijackers.
Understanding that those who believe in Wahhabism and/or Salafism and
those who practice the brand of Shi’ite Islam practiced by Ahmadinejad,
hold their beliefs as strict religious dogma, understanding that
ingenuous dialogue – but for capitulation – with anyone who embraces the
strict tenets of radical Islam is then impossible, why would any elected
official, true to good government, deny the enormity of the threat posed
to the United States and the West by radical Islamist elements?
The second serious threat is less immediate and less violent, but
caustic and lethal to the American philosophy and the continued
existence of our country just the same. This threat comes from the
American Fifth Column; the threat from within.
Emanating from the failed ideologies of Marxist-Leninst socialism and
communism, the American Fifth Column dedicates itself to the
transformation of the United States from a representative republic to a
system of democratic socialism. This movement is personified by the
progressive-left that has effectively hijacked the Democrat party.
Those leading the American Fifth Column have instituted a shadow
government by instituting a shadow set of laws known as political
correctness. They strive to legislate acceptable thought (no hate
speech, the Fairness Doctrine) while Balkanizing the country employing
the false notion that diversity makes us a stronger nation. Using the
simple science of etymology it is clear that diversity is based on
division, not unity. This diversity is anchored in the failed ideology
of multiculturalism. Examples of how devastating the institution of
multiculturalism is to a society can be witnessed in the incremental
disappearance of the national identities of all the nations of Europe.
Europe is now abandoning multiculturalism in favor of nationalism.
By promoting moral relativism the American Fifth Column strives to move
away from the doctrines of Judeo-Christianity and Natural Law; the
ideologies our Founders and Framers understood to be essential for a
nation that championed individual rights.
Through unconstitutional entitlement programs and the legislation of
inequitable tax burden on those who have successfully employed the
capitalist system to their benefit, those leading the American Fifth
Column strive to artificially create economic equality through the
redistribution of wealth. Ironically, those who lead the American Fifth
Column have established an elitist class for themselves, as most of them
are millionaires (like Nancy Pelosi) and even billionaires (like Peter
Lewis and George Soros). They do so to reduce the “influential
footprint” of the United States on the world in a quest for a one-world
order administered by the elite.
Interestingly, the progressive-leftists of the American Fifth Column are
playing the roll – either unwittingly or recklessly – of the useful
idiot to radical Islam’s quest for a global Caliphate.
So, the people of the United States face these two incredibly potent
threats – each which could affect the end of the great American
experiment – yet we are apathetic to the threat. Why? Because we face
these challenges constitutionally illiterate.
We in the United States – but for those who have served to protect our
liberty – stand apathetic to the threats because we do not understand
the worth of our liberty, the worth of our freedoms and therefore we
cannot adequately value them. Because we do not value our liberty,
because we do not understand the worth of our freedoms, it is easier to
incrementally abdicate them and to abdicate the responsibility to
protect them. In doing so we invite the nefarious – those with ulterior
motives, totalitarian quests and special interests – to take on the
façade of public servant while they institute ideological agendas that
literally kill out nation.
Our educational system has been hijacked by progressive-left ideologues.
They rewrite our school’s textbooks to place more emphasis on the notion
that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, that Benjamin Franklin had a
tendency to philander or any number of human frailties possessed by our
Founders and Framers rather than exploring the incredible intellect of
these men, rather than examining the philosophies that so affected these
men that they would create the genius of the Charters of Freedom – the
Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
In today’s classrooms the American Fifth Column provides a curriculum
short on Hobbes, Locke, Aristotle and Cicero and heavy on tolerance,
diversity and the proper use of condoms.
It is time that parents from all over the country – all over the world –
embrace the idea that we have to take charge of educating our children.
In the long run we have to run for school boards and take an interest in
our schools’ curriculum development. In the short run we have to engage
and support
organizations that are sounding the alarm about not only the
indoctrination being perpetrated on our children through “special
interest education” but the threats we face from dangers internally and
externally; the perfect storm.
Edmund Burke is quoted to have said, “All that is necessary for the
triumph of evil
is that good men do nothing.” It is time, patriots, to ask ourselves,
are we supporting those fighting the good fight? Or are we doing
nothing.