A very dangerous pattern has developed in American culture and politics. Everyone wants to be an expert about everything. Yet too few are even equipped to have a valuable opinion, much less qualify to be an expert. This is particularly true in matters of national security, where so few have any direct experience, any knowledge of classified threat assessments, any war planning background or implementation expertise.
Americans have become dangerously overconfident in their personal opinions on matters they really have no knowledge of at all. Sure, each of us has a right to our opinion. But how valuable are those opinions when they are often not based on fact, history, logic, reason, expertise, or even first hand experience?
In any representative republic, the will of the people is intended to establish public policy. But what happens when the will of the people is tainted by bad information, calculated misdirection and politically motivated hogwash? The people's decisions can never be any better than the information used to make them. If the information is bad, the decisions will be equally bad.
Most Americans, especially those on the anti-war left, have no idea how to defend their individual home or family from neighborhood thugs. Yet they feel quite confident in shouting out national security advice and military strategies as if they actually know something about the subject. Tell me what Rosie O'Donnell, Sean Penn or Susan Sarandon knows about national security, basic intelligence or military strategies?
Most Americans know little about the world outside their own back yard, or in the case of Hollywood types, outside their gated compounds. Yet they feel quite confident in handing out advice on how to navigate that world. This is an amazingly dangerous trend that sooner or later, will cost a great deal in innocent loss of life and maybe America's entire future.
What every American MUST understand about 9/11
9/11 wasn't just another simple terror attack that happened to kill 3,000 innocent Americans on their way to work. It was a well planned and well implemented "decapitation" strike.
International Islamic terror groups worked together from within a multitude of nations, including allies, under the operational name of Al Qaeda, in an attempt to take out the Pentagon, America
JB Williams is a writer on matters of history and American politics with more than 3000 pieces published over a twenty-year span. He has a decidedly conservative reverence for the Charters of Freedom, the men and women who have paid the price of freedom and liberty for all, and action oriented real-time solutions for modern challenges. He is a Christian, a husband, a father, a researcher, writer and a business owner.
