France, we all know, went through a "Reign of Terror" after its revolution, when dissidents -- real or perceived -- were summarily judged and guillotined.
America is going through a reign of terror before a revolution.
The difference is not simply in the timing: America is yielding to terror from an external threat -- Islam. And that terror is paralyzing the nation's confidence and the nation's will.
The symptoms are all too clear: politicians are politely pussyfooting around the issue, academics are cravenly kowtowing to pressure groups, and entertainers are blithely joking about something that is deadly serious.
There is nothing to laugh about in this situation. Western civilization -- or what is left of it -- is on the brink of a breakdown that up until now seemed unthinkable. Islam, we thought, has had its day. Islam, we believed, was comfortably contained in a faraway part of the globe. It was foreign, it was historical, it was quaint. Perhaps even irrelevant and obsolete.
But now, it is at our doorstep. It is arriving in our airports, it is appearing in our schools and settling down in our neighborhoods. New York has actually approved erecting a mosque cheek-to-jowl on the very site of the World Trade Center! This is like allowing a convent to be built next to the Auschwitz death camp. (The convent was built, and was eventually and rightfully removed.)
We fight hopeless battles where our existence is not endangered (Iraq, Afghanistan), but we shrink from asserting and defending our basic values at home. Apologize and accommodate have become the passwords.
Americans who are still wearing rose-tinted glasses will say, after all, this is a democratic country, and our history has been based on tolerance and diversity. But America is not "a rainbow nation", as South Africa proclaims itself to be. America is a patchwork quilt, and it is fraying at the edges.
We can't patch in the hundreds of thousands who are clamoring to enter this Land of (diminishing) Opportunity, and especially not those who refuse to adapt and integrate into the fabric. When I cast my vote in Florida, the ballot is written in English, Spanish and Creole! Frankly, I don't want anyone who can't read, write, or speak the language of the country to determine who should be governing it. Nor do I ever want to converse with a woman through the shroud of her burka.
Where have we gone wrong? We have allowed ourselves to slip from kindhearted tolerance into passive resistance, and from there into denial and nonchalance. We think we are protected by simply having more cameras, more border guards, more police, and we let them deal with our terror while we fiddle around at the mall.
The coming revolution -- the takeover of America -- may actually be bloodless. It will happen while we're watching Jay Leno and sipping our Diet Coke.
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