ADDRESSING THE ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM

In an earlier post, Reliapundit criticized the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives for pushing legislation to require 100% inspection of all shipping containers destined for American ports (and for legislation to raise the minimum wage).

His post has attracted, in the comments, some impassioned attacks from leftists who accuse him of hating the poor, and of wanting to see New York destoyed by ship-borne Al Qaeda bomb, and the "East Coast elites were bombed to hell where we can pay for our sins." (They also supported a higher minimum wage.)

Let's take another look at the idea of inspecting every cargo brought into an American port.

First of all, let me note that it is in the first place odd for leftists to worry about another Al Qaeda mass murder attack, since leftists are usually quick to deny that terrorism is much of a threat, and to assert that the risk of terrorism has been wildly exaggerated by the Bush Administration.

As Reliapundit correctly pointed out, requiring that every container be inspected would create a drastic bottleneck in world trade, and would effectively slow down or even temporarily shut down the US economy, as well as the economies of many nations that depend on trade with the US in order to feed themselves.

It would also attempt to solve the worldwide problem of terrorism with an isolationist remedy, shoring up a fortress America without addressing the root cause of terrorism.

It's also odd that leftists would advocate creating such a barrier around America, since they usually promote open borders and granting quasi-citizenship rights to illegal aliens. They do, however, tend to support protectionist tarriffs. Tarriffs are very useful for destroying economies, the way the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff did, and destroying economies is the first step in the leftist program for taking over economies and countries. In general, leftists have only been able to come to power in ravaged economies. In the case of Chile, for example, the Allende regime deliberately sabotaged the Chilean economy so that it could more cheaply expropriate private industries.

Creating a force-field barrier around the United States would not solve the problem of terrorism, and the problem of terrorism can not be solved by having police investigators try to determine who is responsible for the latest episode of terrorist mass-murder so that taxpayer-supported leftist ideologues in the ACLU and National Lawyers' Guild can turn the subjsequent trials into showpieces of anti-American agit-prop.

The struggle against terrorism is a war.

It is a world war.

Some of the active fronts in the the world war against terrorism include the Philippines, the Indonesian archipelago (especially Sulawesi, Java, Bali, and Timor), Thailand, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Canada, the United States, and Australia. (I may have left out a few).

The United States can not be free of terrorism by isolationism.

The United States must lead the freedom-loving, peace-loving, and life-loving peoples of the world in their struggle against the war declared on the rest of the world by the jihadist terrorists.

The root cause of terrorism is the jihadist ideology. That ideology will not be defeated by inspecting every container addressed to an American port.

Moreover, the Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives know that the Senate would never pass such a foolish measure. Thus, they reveal that their support of such a supposedly draconian security program is just a fig-leaf to provide cover for their plans to surrender to the terrorist enemy as soon as they can.

A serious measure that would in fact lead to enhanced security for Americans, and at the same time make it easier for Americans to travel, such as passenger screening based on the known profiles of terrorist murderers, the Democrats would never support.

The leftist commenters are very proud of their working-class backgrounds and their "altruism." They say they are willing to sacrifice the American economy, because they care about the people.

Those poor people who would become unemployed and starving habitues of the breadlines and soup kitchens would be very comforted by these compassionate thoughts from the leftists who had destroyed the economy upon which their prior jobs depended.

As our erudite and astute co-blogger JR has repeatedly shown, leftists are however not compassionate, but haters.

Rather than impose a phony security program that would only weaken the economy without addressing the root cause of terrorism, the legislative leaders of the United States should support a program to take the war to the enemy and defeat him in his lair. The United States must lead the freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples of the world in a struggle that must be at the same time military, economic, and ideological. We have made much military progress against the enemy because of our professional and results-oriented armed forces.

But we are lagging in the softer fronts of this world war.

Luckily for us, our armed forces are made of up patriotic and freedom-loving Americans.

Unfortunately, that can not be said for those parts of our society that must wage the ideological and philosophical war against the ideology of jihadism.

In World War II, the courageous efforts of the 16 million Americans in uniform were matched by the enthusiastic participation of Hollywood, the Press, and the Universities. These institutions provided the necessary philosophical and ideological effort to undermine the ideologies of German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese Militarism.

But Hollywood only supported that war because America had the good fortune to be temporarily allied with Hollywood's hero, "Uncle" Joseph Stalin.

In the war against jihadist terrorism, we can not count on Hollywood, the Press, or the Universities -- or those civilian branches of our government, like the State Department and the C.I.A. that have been heavily influenced by the soft bolshevism of American so-called "liberalism."

Jihadism has proven itself to be curiously attractive to those who believe in the leftist world view, and not only because their first instinct is to blame America and hate America for every problem in the world. Leftism actually shares a lot with jihadism.

Leftism is at its most basic level the practical expression of the belief that all of human life, and all human lives, should be directed by a supposedly benevolent State. You could also call it Statism. From Plato's Republic, to St. Thomas More's Utopia, to the phalansteries of Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, to the revolutionary socialism of Babeuf and Blanqui, the scientific socialism of Marx & Engels, the national socialism of Hitler, the fascism of Mussolini, the communism of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Ho, and to the pathetically impoverished nightmare states of Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, and Robert Mugabe --- the story is always the same: expropriation of private property, elimination of all economic freedom, and the inevitable results of tyranny, oppression, war, poverty, and environmental degradation. Socialism has never worked, and the more thoroughly socialist a program is instituted, the worse are the results that follow.

Jihadism also promises one people, one world, one State, and one ruler. It provides an unambiguous authority and an anti-capitalist ideology which are very much in harmony with the totalitarian programs of the left.

I have given one example, in an earlier post, of the keen emotional energy and joy that leftists experience when they contemplate taking away the private property that other people have created and earned. The prospect of controlling other people, and forcing other people to conform to what they are certain is the only right way to be is of course another very powerful underlying emotional drive in leftist movements.