Newt Takes the Lead

Newt is way ahead of the pack.

“In the United States, we refer to this struggle as the "Global War on Terror". Yet, I believe this label fails to capture the nature and scale of the threat faced by civilization. The nature of the threat -- with Iran at the epicenter -- is at its core, ideological. The threat to the United States is an ideological wing of Islam that is irreconcilable to modern civilization as we know it throughout most of the world.”

Newt is right but on a fundamental level the threat is greater than he believes. It’s an attack on a civilization’s core value: reason. Reason, not force, is our primary means of dealing with each other and production, not expropriation, is the means we sustain our values.

He understands that it’s not just how they fight (terrorism) that is a problem but what they fight for: “ … their ultimate aim to destroy the values of freedom, security and religious liberty that sustain civilization in the modern age.” But it is more than that. They want to replace civilization with a mind-locked dogmatic totalitarian religious ideology imposed by Islam on every person in the world.

Even if jihadists reframed from terrorism and used traditional military means, even if they created an electoral system and voted their ideology as the law of the land, Islam would still be as vicious and as dangerous. Newt’s taking a lead but Rebecca Bynum’s got it down cold:

“The real threat is the belief system of Islam which is diametrically opposed to everything the western world holds to be true. The very nature of reality, the very source of rational thought is at stake. … We must understand that in the conflict there can be no middle ground. This is essential. There can be no compromise. To compromise with Islam is to sell future generations into slavery. ...”

Newt, need a speech writer?

(Cross posted at Liberty and Culture)