January 6, 2003
The new Millennium, the new century, the new year, holds as many threats to civilization and to our nation as any that have preceded it. Here is a list of the threats I perceive as the greatest challenges to the freedoms Americans have come to cherish and perhaps even take for granted.
1. The Islamic Jihad. This global war, fought through terrorist attacks, threatens the United States and the entire world. It includes a genocidal policy toward the world's Jews and seeks to impose Islam on Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and all other faiths. It reflects an interpretation of Islam that requires conquest and authorizes violence in pursuit of its goals.
2. The Failure to Protect U.S. Borders. Beyond the threat of terrorists seeking entry to the United States, the failure to restrict illegal immigration is undermining the capacity of the nation to absorb the largest flow of legal and illegal immigrants since the 1850s. The financial pressures on our educational, health care, and criminal justice systems can no longer be ignored. The view that new Americans should neither adopt English as our common language, nor the values set forth in our historic documents is dangerous.
3. The United Nations. This institution is the single greatest threat to the sovereignty of all nations whose right it is to govern in the interest of their citizens. It has declared its intent to be global government and, as such, poses a threat to democracy and freedom worldwide. Through its matrix of treaties, protocols, and conventions, it has sought to impose its agenda, undermining member nation's rights to determine the use of their own land, resources, and social policies.
4. Environmentalism. This movement is devoted to attacking the nation's economy and defense community. A legion of lawsuits has undermined the logging, mining, ranching, farming and fishing industries, to name just a few. Its "wilderness" agenda is the cause of repeated catastrophic forest fires. Its "urban sprawl" agenda seeks to force the population into cities, depriving people of the ability to live where they wish. Its attacks on the beneficial use of pesticides to protect mankind and the obstacles placed on the development of genetically modified food crops only serve to insure needless famine and death from diseases in undeveloped nations and elsewhere throughout the world.
5. Education. The nation's education system has demonstrably failed to provide young people with adequate, basic skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, and has subverted or eliminated the teaching of history, civics, geography and science. America's students consistently fail to meet the standards of those educated in other nations. Local control of education must be returned to communities from the command and control that exists in the U.S. Department of Education and the teacher's unions that control it.
6. The Attack on Property Rights. Capitalism is based on the right to own and use property. There are approximately 2.3 billion acres of land in the U.S. More than 40% is owned by government entities. Less than 5% of the entire landmass represents cities, suburbs and other forms of development. Government programs utilizing taxpayer money to purchase private property, eliminating its productive use, erodes the nation's economic base. This right is so fundamental the Founding Fathers protected it in the Constitution. Congress must reverse this trend.
7. Curtailing the Power of NGOs. At present, Non-Governmental Organizations are free of serious examination of their funding and activities. There is little transparency required of their operations and they are often protected against any legal action. Always proclaiming noble objectives, the NGOs operate behind a veil of secrecy, often working to achieve policies harmful to entire industries and to the maintenance of a democratic republic. The time is long since overdue for regulation of NGOs to require public accountability.
8. Tort Reform. The growing use of lawsuits to threaten legal industries with financial ruin is seen in the billions of dollars extorted from the tobacco industry and the attacks being formulated against the fast-food industry. The virtual blackmail of corporations held responsible for the individual lifestyle choices and actions of litigants threatens to undermine confidence in the nation's legal system. This distortion of the U.S. legal system permits the transfer of wealth to lawyers and to the States, while penalizing the investors, employees, and consumers of the industries under attack.
9. The War on Drugs. While the use of illegal drugs is clearly a significant social problem, the universal opinion of those who have been engaged in, or are observers of our "war on drugs" has deemed it a failure. A new policy is required, and legalization, comparable to the consumption of alcoholic beverages, should be considered.
10. Curtailing the Spread of Socialism. The transfer of the nomenclature of socialism to "environmentalism" has served to hide the way this political and economic system has been able to maintain the deception that wealth must be redistributed from those that have earned it to those that have not. Socialism remains widespread, endemic to Great Britain and all of Europe, as well as many African and Asian nations. The free market system of Capitalism must be aggressively pursued, along with its inherent emphasis on individual freedom.