"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind."- Common Sense, 1776.
The United States of America was created as a refuge for an ideology, admirably described in Thomas Paine's few, pithy words above.
I do not suppose that his generation saw themselves as anything but refugees and survivors. It has taken 227 years (not really a lot, in historical terms) for the descendants of those who oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant to bestride the world like a Colossus-but that we do.
Our ancient enemies are not defeated, however, and our great power and expansive reach have created for them a commonality of interest.
America is born of a theory. Boldly stated, "We hold (certain) truths to be self evident".
Our enemies emphatically disagree. Only one of us is right.
The test has come to us, unexpectedly to be sure, but it is at hand.
Just as the USSR vanished in an eyeblink when its organizational principles (State Socialism and Red Terror) were exposed as false and/or inhuman, so may we if we are not endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, if governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, if it is not true that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.
The EU transnational socialists certainly recognize what is at stake here, as do the Islamists.
Do we?
"In the last century, America was threatened by a global communist revolution. Avoiding all-out war, we outlasted it. And we can outlast this Islamist revolution. What we must avoid is a war of faiths, a war of civilizations between Islam and America. And those who propagandize for such a war are the unwitting or willful collaborators of Osama bin Laden."---Pat Buchanan
We are at one of those cataclysmic junctions in the history of mankind. The thing that presents the most angst and therefore willingness to stick ones head in the sand, is that no one has a clue on how this will turn our and most of us will be worm food before it does (turn out).