The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Opinion


https://patriotpost.us/articles/51008-wednesday-opinion-2017-08-30

Today’s Editors’ Choice

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Opinion in Brief

Ben Shapiro: “Whenever disaster strikes, we’re always inspired by images of human beings helping one another. Disaster often brings out the best in us: our capacity for care, our bravery in risking our lives to help others. Then we’re inevitably disappointed in our unending ability to leave those qualities behind the moment disaster ends. We’ll rush into burning buildings to save each other, but we’ll club each other on the head at political rallies. Why? Because there are certain enemies we hold in common. We hold death in common; we’ll help all but our worst enemies escape the grave. We hold natural disasters in common as an enemy; we’ll react to them by helping out our neighbors. And we hold civilizational threats in common; we’ll fight together against the Nazi scourge or the Soviet threat. But what about when there is no civilizational threat? What about when we’re so powerful that serious threats seem unserious? Former President Obama informed us routinely that radical Islamic terrorism didn’t threaten our civilization. It’s no wonder, then, that so few Americans see radical Islam as a threat worth unifying against. President Trump tells us that Russia isn’t a civilizational threat, and neither is global warming. Without a credible existential threat, Americans don’t unify. But there is a credible existential threat to Americans. The problem is that it’s internal.”