These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question of what kind of government the United States was to have, a republic or a democracy, are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested, by enemies within and without.
The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the Democratic Socialists of America, radical Islam, and America’s four horsemen of the apocalypse (hedonism, nihilism, materialism, and narcissism).
Progressivism
Just in time for our 250th birthday party, progressives in California are blowing up the basic premise of our constitution by fomenting class warfare. This rotten political ideology posits that virtually everything about America is either a lie or wrong. That is, the Constitution was a racist construct aimed at preserving white, male power. Progressives also believe it is wrong for people to become successful, but it is right to redistribute their wealth to people who have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.
California, like other blue states, is at the epicenter of progressivism. On the ballot this November is the so-called billionaire’s wealth tax which is not to be confused with an income tax. This class of earners are already paying more than their “fair share” of taxes. Together, the top 1% of earners (which includes multi-millionaires) in our state pay upwards of 45% of all income tax collected, some $122 billion annually SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, is behind the initiative, not because they are concerned about state and federal benefit cuts to the poor, but because their members stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts.
This tax taxes wealth, including the unrealized value of businesses, stocks, bonds, art, collectibles, and intellectual property. Of course, the problem here is that the billionaires are leaving and taking their companies, tax revenues, and jobs, with them. It is estimated that $1 trillion in assets have left the state, which means the state’s income tax revenue will crater unless the middle class makes up the difference via future tax hikes. In other words, our state economy is set to implode because of the unmitigated greed of public employee unions in this state who have additionally burdened us with upwards of $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are progressives on crack. Take for an example, Avila Chevalier, who just won the Democrat primary for New York’s 13th District, with the support and endorsement of the current leader of the pack, New York Mayor Mamdani. Avila Chevalier has been described by some as “like AOC, but to the left.” According to CNN, “Darializa Avila Chevalier, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s “right to exist.”
That begs the question, that people like James Carville are asking, why are DSA members allowed to run as Democrats?
Extinguishing the Flame of Freedom
Of course, the progressives are responsible for creating the circumstances that have led to the election of radicals like Mamdani and “the squad” (Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and the like who are considered DSA “affiliates”), namely by flooding our country with poor immigrants from third world countries who constitute their main constituent voting bloc. That is, these immigrants are voting for fellow immigrants like Chevalier, Mamdani and Omar. For example, according to censusreporter.com, Chevalier won her party’s nomination by winning a district where 33% of the population is foreign-born, 55% of households speak a language other than English at home, and most of the people are poor, earning a paltry median income of $37,754. In other words, a constituency that would love to be the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth via a distortion of the American dream that can only survive by destroying the American dream.
It is not an accident that many of the leaders of the DSA and their affiliates are Muslim radicals that did not come here to assimilate but to conquer. I do believe there are many Muslims in America that wish our country no harm. They are not proponents of Sharia law, or jihad. They don’t support the genocide of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel.
But, the fact remains, America, just like Europe, is being colonized by radical Islam. One illustration I can give you about this is a statement made by the UAE, a solid Muslim country. The UAE provides scholarships to its own citizens (UAE nationals) to study at foreign universities, in addition to supporting them at local institutions. However, the United Arab Emirates is restricting students from enrolling at UK universities amid fears campuses are being radicalized by Islamist groups, namely, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, this radical movement is not restricted to our cousins across the pond!
Last year, “The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released its landmark report, The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into Western Society: A Systematic Analysis, at a high-level policy event in Washington, D.C., featuring members of Congress, senior diplomats, policy experts, and leading researchers. The report represents the first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategic assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan at its halfway point, mapping its ideological, institutional, and financial penetration into North America.
The 200-page analysis provides a detailed account of how the Brotherhood has spent five decades embedding itself within Western institutions while maintaining ideological opposition to democracy and pluralism. Drawing on authenticated internal documents, verified network mapping, and extensive case studies, the research reveals a coordinated, multi-generational project designed to influence policy, education, and civil society from within.
As stated, “the Muslim brotherhood is not simply a political movement but a transnational ideological project that adapts itself to Western systems while working to undermine them. The Brotherhood has learned to use the very freedoms of democracy as tools to erode it from within, exploiting the tolerance and openness of liberal societies as strategic vulnerabilities.”
Forgetting God
Of course, none of these things would be a problem for America or in America, were it not for the four horsemen of our apocalypse. As Robert George outlined in his report, “Solzhenitsyn’s Prophecy,” on the occasion of the 1978 commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered a severe critique of American society. It was a time, as George noted, that anti-Americanism was flourishing both abroad and at home. Many Americans—particularly young Americans—had lost faith in their country, its institutions, its principles, its culture, its traditions, and its way of life. He viewed the West’s weakness, including its weakness in truly standing up to Soviet aggression, as the fruit of the materialism, consumerism, self-indulgent individualism, emotivism, and narcissism—in a word, the immorality—into which we had allowed ourselves to sink.
What is behind all this? According to Solzhenitsyn, the moral decline of the West has behind it the same factor that produced the horrors of communism, namely this: “Men have forgotten God.” People worship themselves, deify their own desires, fall into an idolatry of the self, because they have forgotten that there is something—indeed someone—higher.
They have forgotten God.
And, I might add, they have forgotten the warning of Benjamin Franklin as they can’t define what constitutes a constitutional republic even though their life and their freedom depend on it!
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