Kyrie Ellison

Minnesota's Muslim democrat senator Keith Ellison thinks it's unfair to single out a community when discussing the radicalization of Americans who engage in acts of terror against other Americans. The New York Times calls Congressman Peter King's hearings on radicalization "an obsession" and accuses him of "stoking fears" of "supposed radicalization".

I have a few questions for Mr. Ellison and the NYT. Was the Times Square bomber a destitute tea-partying Quaker opposed to health care reform? Did a hymn-singing Southern Baptist men's Sunday School class commandeer four airliners to attack New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11th 2001? Or attend an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan? Did the holiday (Christmas) Tree bomb plotter in Portland Oregan attend confirmation classes at the local Episcopal church? Did a Mennonite sniper kill ten people in the D.C. area in 2002? Was it an observant Jew who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood Texas?

In fact all the people who perpetrated the crimes discussed above had some connection, if not a singular devotion to the ideas of a particular prophet and religion, not Judeo nor Christian in origin. Perhaps Islam is the single most prominent connection between all these crimes.

Whether these crimes stand alone, or are part of some strategy to implement sharia law, or are the first steps to the establishment of a global caliphate is not relevant. These crimes, inspired by Islam, took place on American soil and the plots were hatched in our neighborhoods. These people walked our streets, shopped in our stores, attended our colleges and flying schools and even served in our military services. In some cases, authorities even knew what was happening and, because of cowardice or political correctness, took no action.

With little or no respect to Kyrie Ellison and the New York Times editorial board, I doubt that Echelon is getting much terror chatter out of Catholic dioceses or Methodist conferences. Holding congressional hearings is the very least someone in the federal government could do.

"Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists." President George W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, September 20, 2001. There are those in American society who try to have it both ways....

"Every nation has to be with us or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or finance them are going to pay a price". Senator Hillary Clinton, September 13, 2oo1. There are those in American society who do both....

"If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security." George Orwell, from his 1942 essay, "Pacifism and the War.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the country is under assault from within by a political and media fifth column who fancy themselves aloof and somehow superior to the struggle....