9/11 Plus 16

It’s the 16^th anniversary of 9/11. What’s the best possible memorial to those who perished that day?

How about celebrating and upholding the separation of church and state?

Yes, it’s politically incorrect. While liberals and leftists used to stand firmly for church-state separation, in the era of Hillary Clinton and Obama they moved decisively toward political correctness. We can only hope that in Donald Trump’s era this will decisively change. Political correctness means never offending a Muslim. I never thought I’d live to see the day when an Islamic-inspired terrorist would open fire on a gay bar in Florida to commit the most hateful of “hate crimes”, only to be greeted by the politically correct with … silence. That’s how p.c. we have become in America, and it’s why we’re vulnerable to the brutality most notably illustrated by the events of 9/11/01.

To flaunt the separation of church and state on a day like 9/11…well, that might hurt the feelings of a Muslim, and we certainly cannot do that, can we? My advice is to do precisely that. Because it’s church-state separation that organized Islam seeks to destroy and, under government policies since 9/11, we’re giving organized Islam both the moral confidence and financial bank account to do so. We’re counting on President Trump to reverse course.

The concept of separating church and state is often credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704).  According to his principle of the social contract, Locke argued that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he argued must therefore remain protected from any government authority.

“Individual conscience” refers to the fact that you’re sovereign over your own mind. No external authority has the right to tell you what to do or think, whether it’s religion or anything else. The only exception, of course, arises when you’re physically harming or assaulting another in the name of your religion (or anything else).

That’s where you have to be careful about the idea of “religious freedom”. If religious freedom is an absolute, then people may do anything they wish in the name of their religion. This includes all the violent and sadistic things often done in the name of religion. Yes, participants in most if not all religions have been guilty of this savagery at one time or another. But we have to face the fact that in the twenty-first century, the overwhelming ringleader of nearly all religious atrocity is Islam. Don’t blame the victims; blame the victimizers, and the victimizers are acting in the name of Islam. Facts and truth have to trump political correctness. Otherwise, we all die.

In any conflict between the rights of the individual and religion, it’s the rights of the individual that have to win. Otherwise, you’re on the slippery slope to a totalitarian state, in this case a religious one.

In English, the exact term is an offshoot of the phrase, “wall of separation between church and state”, as written in Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Jefferson got it. Only a wall between church and state will preserve the sovereignty of the individual mind when it comes to particular religious beliefs, including no beliefs at all. With all the talk of walls, there are few walls more important than this one. And 9/11 is a glaring, unforgettable reminder.

Islam could not be more in opposition to Jefferson’s thinking. Islam promotes the idea of Sharia Law. Sharia Law seeks to impose Islamic faith, rules and dogma on the entire world’s population. Either you subscribe to Islam, or it’s off with your head. Or if you’re lucky, you get to be a slave to the ruling mullahs. Islam is a political ideology as much as a religion. When translated from Arabic, the word “Islam” literally means “submission” or “surrender”. 9/11, all the events since and the ones yet to come all clearly prove how much they mean it.

When you watch the repeats of the towers falling down on 9/11, remember that these are not the random acts of raging, psychotic terrorists. Psychopaths, even violent ones, are not intelligent enough to pull something like this off. These actions represent the long-range, careful and (on their own terms) entirely rational planning of people who support the destruction of all things Western and non-Islamic as a central tenet of their faith.

The only way to oppose such destruction is to fight back with even greater firepower, something the people we have elected have shown virtually no willingness to do. Hopefully President Donald Trump will entirely reverse the trend. But it goes deeper than firepower. To defeat Islam once and for all, advocates of reason and liberty will have to reassert Jefferson’s and Locke’s principled and unwavering commitment to separation of church and state.

To destroy Islam, you first have to love reason and liberty. Terrorists are only as strong as our weakness allows them to be. If and when Americans shed their political correctness and learn to really fight back, terrorism will truly become a thing of the past.