If we take the reasoned Western approach and try to solve the problem, mindful of everyone's rights under the Constitution and our laws, there's a damn good chance we'll be thrown into unbearable civil chaos.
If we take expedient, direct methods to solve our Muslim problem (and yes, we have one) and our Border Problem, and our Illegal Immigrant Problems (which are not-so-slowly killing the America we expected to continue as our fathers knew it and which we wanted for our children), there's a damn good chance we will lose the rights that make us Americans in the first place.
A way out? I hope so ... by VIGOROUSLY enforcing existing laws ... we can do a lot to clean up many problems and still be democratic, with a small "d." Our real problem is that the Democrats (with a big "D,") have ironclad control over the functional, non-elective Federal and State units (Government Bureaus, Educational Bureaucracies, Police, Local Governments, etc.)
The 4-term Roosevelt government was actually a coup, which gave the Federal Government Bureaucracies, and the Democrats who ran them then and now, ever-accruing power akin to Mussolini's or Hitler's bureaucracies. Being American, they are of course hopefully much less oppressive. But they have taken on a life of their own which is not goal-oriented, but like any bureaucracy, self-aggrandizing. They are thus hopeless in the face of any real challenge and increasingly inept in solving even minor problems. Somehow, we have to reverse the results of this dictatorial part of Roosevelt legacy. It's just not working any more.
Islam seriously disrupted and then eventually ended the Byzantine Empire. If we don't figure out a way to combat Islam effectively, it literally could be the beginning of our end.
I think you have just brilliantly illustrated the great knot into which Islam has tied us.
If we take the reasoned Western approach and try to solve the problem, mindful of everyone's rights under the Constitution and our laws, there's a damn good chance we'll be thrown into unbearable civil chaos.
Your comments remind me of several arguments I had with some rather radical libertarians here who insisted on giving those who would be tried in military tribunals full Constitutional rights. I had never heard something so vapid and asinine in my life. They, in their so-called Constitutional zeal, desired to grant the rights afforded to us under our system of government to those who are/were hellbent on killing all of us if they could.
Then I realized something scary.
We have many undocumented illegal aliens in our country who, just by the fact of them being physically within our borders, have full Constitutional rights.
We can't just go bumrush 18-40 year old Middle Eastern men who congregate together without violating the 4th Amendment. We can't shut up their vitriol they spew against America or we'll violate the First Amendment. We can't put an M-16 in their faces and force them to admit to being part of a terrorist organization without violating the 5th Amendment.
Catch the pattern here?
Our precious Constitution, with nothing equal to it in the history of mankind, is now used against us. By enforcing it, we lose power to keep it.
I'm an avid chess player. My main weakness is not to fall into a knight fork, sometimes concentrating so hard on it that I miss moves and end up losing. But that's exactly what we find ourselves in now, the dreaded knight fork. A triple one at that. Immigration, via student visas, is protected by the Constitution. They can peaceably associate among themselves. And they can hide behind the Constitution to carry out their goals. That's three ways we are threatened without a move to get out of the threat UNLESS we violate the Constitution.
This is why, as you've seen here, whenever I hear someone fippantly say "Deport 'em!" I ask, "How?" How do we go about doing it looking at the mess that not only the INS has created, but, protecting Constitutional rights?
So far, no answers. I'm not surprised because it's not an easy scenario to just "fix."
We're in a precarious time. Heaven help us find the solution.
The roots are deep and the view of history it takes to understand and comprehend (by an overview) is seldom taught. It takes initative and the youngsters of the last 30 years see little necessity to study history. Mores the pity.
We have, indeed, become soft and lazy in general. Many exceptions, of course; however sheer numbers are overwhelmingly on the side of 'its no big deal'. Sword rattling, nothing to get in a sweat about ... attitudes of the majority of Americans are prevasive. My opinion ... I pray I am mistaken. I do not believe so.
Thanks for offerring your perspective.