When the melting pot boils over, it will be too late

If you've read this column for the past quarter-century (and if you've got a much better memory than I have), you may remember the first time I quoted from Imprimis, the popular Hillsdale College newsletter.

Thanks to Louise Hapner, the wife of former Judge and State Representative Jim Hapner, I became familiar with Imprimis in the mid-1990s. In addition to being on its mailing list, I've been a big fan ever since receiving my first copy.

This past week, longtime Hillsboro firefighter David Lowell emailed a copy of the March 2014 Imprimis cover column by Brian T. Kennedy, which is entitled "Early Warning: The Continuing Need for National Defense."

Mr. Kennedy is president of The Claremont Institute. He's also a member of the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense and co-author of "Shariah: The Threat to America." His columns on national security and public policy issues have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Investor’s Business Daily.

In other words, he's bona fide.

Mr. Kennedy writes:

"Harold Rood, a professor of international relations at Claremont McKenna College who died in 2011, was not as well known as he was influential. A soldier in Gen. Patton’s army in World War II, he taught his students that war is permanent to the human condition, and that in war it is better to win, for no one ever had to accommodate a loser. America will always have enemies, he told them, and those enemies will forever be planning and expending resources to place themselves in a position to defeat us. It would be nice if it were otherwise, he was fond of saying, but it is not otherwise. It is the way the world works.

"During the Cold War, Dr. Rood would demonstrate in his classes – often by reading stacks of clippings from newspapers from around the world – that the leaders of the Soviet Union understood the world in these stark terms, and that they acted consistently on that basis. …

Mr. Kennedy continues:

"One would think the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, would have awakened Americans for the foreseeable future to the need to prepare for unexpected dangers. Surprisingly, its effect was short-lived. Two relatively recent attacks show the problem. The first took place on April 16, 2013, on an electric-transmission substation owned by Pacific Gas & Electric in California. One reason it did not get much notice was that the other – the Boston Marathon bombing that killed or injured 260 people – had occurred the day before.

"On April 16, 2013, just outside of San Jose, Calif., a group of terrorists, operating on American soil, attacked the Metcalf transmission substation in a military action aimed at disabling a part of America’s electrical infrastructure. The operation began at 1 a.m., when the attackers cut underground fiber optic cables, disabling communications and security systems. Thirty minutes later, using high-powered rifles, they began a 20-minute assault on the substation’s extra-large transformer and the cooling system that supports it. Police arrived at 1:50 a.m., but the shooters disappeared into the night. To this day there is no trace of them.

"John Wellinghoff, then chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, would call this attack 'the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving [America’s electrical] grid that has ever occurred.'"

Today, many of the usual suspects continue to clamor for cuts in the U.S. Defense budget. These proposed cuts are not related to those notorious reports of excessive spending for overpriced military latrines and ball-peen hammers, either. No, the Left wants serious, across-the-board cuts in military spending. Some would prefer absolutely no military spending whatsoever. After all, if America plays nice, so will the rest of the planet. Right?

It's not that the Left have suddenly embraced a smaller, more efficient federal government, mind you. It's that, in their convoluted opinion, Defense cuts will allow more of our tax dollars to be redistributed among various and sundry political pet projects.

Never mind that without a secure United States of America, those political pet projects won't mean a tinker's dime to Communist Russia, China or North Korea, to say little of our mortal enemies of the al Qaeda extremist ilk.

Former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointed this out last month when he said: “I think cutting the Defense budget in significant ways right now is a serious mistake. Frankly, the pace at which at both the Europeans and the United States are cutting their defenses sends a signal that we are not interested in protecting our global interests.”

No kidding.

Secretary Gates' comments were made after current Obama Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel revealed a new military budget that reduces the U.S. Army to pre-World War II spending levels.

The esteemed editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, offers this likely rationale for the proposed cuts: "Democrats oppose defense spending because it’s defense spending; Republicans oppose it because it’s spending."

Mr. Lowry adds: "Most Defense secretaries aspire to be the next George Marshall. Secretary Hagel evidently wants to be the next Harold Brown, who presided over the Carter-era hollowed-out military." ...

"Defenders of the current Defense cuts say that we still spend more on our military than anyone else in the world. True," Mr. Lowry writers, "but we aren’t a mere regional power. Unless we want to outsource patrolling the global sea lanes to China and the security of Europe to Russia, we will always have to spend substantially more than anyone else does. Our allies aren’t in any position to pick up the slack. When the French army wants to go anywhere, we have to fly it. The entire British navy is smaller than the fleet sent to take back the Falklands in the 1980s."

And then, once again, there's the ongoing threats of domestic attacks, which Mr. Kennedy addresses in the Imprimis cover story.

"Given the potentially devastating consequences of failing to defend our sophisticated but vulnerable electrical grid, citizens might well wonder how it is that our government – which doesn’t bat an eye at spending billions of dollars on the most frivolous and wasteful projects – fails year after year to do so. The explanation goes deeper than America’s physical vulnerability – it goes to our intellectual vulnerability," Mr. Kennedy writes.

He adds:

"The automatic response whenever one brings up any domestic attack or attempted attack inspired by Islam, is that there are many patriotic American Muslims who do not read the Koran literally and who abhor such violence. This is true. But here are some facts: We have today between 5 and 10 million Muslims in the U.S.; and in surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, 21 percent of these Muslims find suicide bombing acceptable and 5 percent have a favorable view of al Qaeda. That may be a low percentage, but 5 percent of 5 to 10 million is a lot of people. Often these Muslims are radicalized by foreign agents – as well, it must be said – as by the ideological left in our schools and in Hollywood, who tirelessly and tiresomely portray America as an oppressive country. In any case, such a large and disaffected population presents a real problem in a free society such as ours, which is based on ideas like religious freedom and individual rights. We must hold firm to these ideas, which are the source of our greatness. But we must not be blind to the presence of those who seek to destroy us by taking advantage of our freedom."

Mr. Kennedy concludes with this quote from President Lincoln: "As a nation of free men, we are courting suicide by ignoring clear and present dangers. Our elected representatives have eyes but do not see, and they have ears but do not hear. We must awaken ourselves, and then awaken them, before it is too late."

Meanwhile, Washington considers more cuts in the Defense budget and an immigration policy that welcomes would-be aggressors with open arms.

By the time the great American melting pot boils over, it will be too late.

Rory Ryan is publisher and editor of The Highland County Press.