Thursday, September 3, 2026

If a family making $60,000 a year spends $70,000 a year, they will first use up their savings, then max out their credit cards, and finally declare bankruptcy. Why should it be any different with nations? Our Official U.S. Debt is currently over $40 trillion and our actual U.S. Debt, which includes Unfunded Mandates like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.--is variously estimated at $100-$200 trillion. (Incidentally, $4.6 to $7 trillion of that $40T is reportedly linked to Covid-related expenses like the stimulus payments, lost production, compliance costs, vaccine costs, etc.) So--How to judge the effect of even that lower number ($40T) on the Nation's economic health? Let's start by asking--how much or how big is a trillion dollars? Well, we can compare it to a million dollars, which is a thousand dollars a thousand times over. Let's assume that you have unlimited access to fresh, crispy new U.S. One-Hundred-dollar bills (Benjamins). How high a stack of fresh, crispy new U.S. Hundred-dollar bills does it take to make a million dollars? The answer is 43 inches, about the height of your kitchen countertop. OK--You continue to have access to unlimited fresh, crispy new US Hundred-dollar bills--How high a stack of fresh, crispy new US Hundred-dollar bills does it take to make a Trillion Dollars? Well, a billion is a thousand million and a trillion is a thousand billion, so a trillion is a million millions. That means our 43-inch stack of Hundred-dollar bills becomes 43 million inches high, which converts to 678.66 MILES high for a trillion US dollars! That's an inconceivable amount of money, so let me give you three ways to help wrap your head around that: (1) If you take a cross-country commercial airline flight, you're flying about 6 or 7 miles up--so our trillion-dollar stack is 100 times higher than your airplane is flying! Inconceivable! (2) Let's say you could hitch a ride with Elon, up to the International Space Station, which orbits the earth at an altitude of about 250 miles--that would still be only 37% of the way up our trillion-dollar stack! A little over a third of the way up . . . . Still inconceivable! (3) Let's make one more try by going on up to the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits the earth at an altitude of 340 miles. That's still only half the way up our stack of US hundred-dollar bills! So, there you have it, 43 inches versus nearly 379 miles high! A trillion dollars is an inconceivable amount of money--and hardly anyone understands that! It's an insane amount of debt to incur. Let's next talk about what $39T in debt means in terms of the size of our US economy. The universally accepted way of measuring that is to express a nation's debt as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the total dollar value of all goods and services exchanged in a year's time in that economy--a fraction/ratio with Debt over GDP. It's currently 120%-124% in the US. 120% is also generally considered to be the level of national debt that, if exceeded over time, will lead to major problems like inflation and the failure of the currency. So, we here in the US are at an inflection point, where we're now consciously risking the future of the American Dollar. And one recent increase in our debt by $1 Trillion--I think it was from $37T to 38T--took only 71 days. Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipates US National Debt growing by $2T/year. We are now the family making $60,000 and spending $70.000 a year; and neither Republicans nor Democrats seem interested in cutting spending to address the problem, with one exception--that President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are seeking to stave off inflationary decline by expanding the denominator in that ratio of National Debt over GDP, by reshoring and revitalizing industry in America--they deserve credit for that much. America has been at or close to 120% in debt once before in my lifetime--At the end of World War II, the U.S. national debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at approximately 106% to 120% (depending on who's holding the yardstick) in 1946, up from 42% in 1941. That massive debt, resulting from over $4 trillion in war spending (in 2026 dollars), was ameliorated/ resolved through a combination of high economic growth and inflation, which reduced the Debt-over-GDP ratio to 23% by 1974. President Johnson had created much or most of that 23% when confronted with a spending decision whether to pursue the Vietnam War or to fund his Great Society domestic spending programs--he chose Option 3, Doing Both, and federal spending got out of control again, so that by 1980 Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker (who is a genuine national hero), had to raise interest rates to 20% to break the back of inflation by inducing recession. But unlike today, Volker was able to do that (with President Reagan's support), in part because the Debt-to-GDP ratio he needed to address was relatively low--similar to the 1941 pre-war number of 42%. Here are some results of that--Mrs. J. and I got a just-under-12% mortgage in 1979. Local friends got a 15% mortgage in 1980; and our Ophthalmologist got an 18% mortgage that same year. And a local car dealer was paying 21.5% in interest, just to keep vehicles in inventory on his lot. We sure hated Paul Volcker at the time, but he gave the US 40 years of prosperity with his brave patriotic action. So how have we gotten back up to a 120% debt level again, without an existential threat like WWII? The short answer is--again--government deficit-spending; but what facilitated that overspending? Let's look more closely at our currency itself, the US Dollar and its history. After the Revolutionary War, upon gaining our freedom from Great Britain, we certainly did NOT want to copy the British Pound as our currency, so we copied the Spanish Milled Dollar--a silver coin that was perforated (in slices like a pie) so as to be divisible into eight bits worth 12 cents each--the famous Pirate money Apieces of eight. (In fact, up through my childhood, a US quarter was still called two bits.) And the BIG thing was that our dollar was to be either composed of, or completely backed by, precious metals, specifically gold and silver. Our US Founding Fathers understood the historically proven need for a national currency backed by something of Tangible Value, specifically precious metals; and in the US Constitution, as part of prohibiting State currencies and assuring a viable National currency, they specifically provided in Article 1, Section 10, that, No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; . . . Then over time, an unfortunate series of court decisions that I don't pretend to understand, allowed President Richard Nixon to take the US Dollar off of what's called the Gold Standard, such that a paper dollar could no longer be taken to any bank and exchanged for gold or silver specie, meaning coins. So how did that happen? My understanding (and again, I have only a partial understanding) is that our European WWII Allies had shipped much or most of their gold holdings (backing their currencies) to the US for safekeeping during the war, and that they were over time repatriating that gold to their custody after the war. But as that gold kept being withdrawn from our custody, we (the US) apparently became increasingly concerned (and this is what I don't understand), so that when French President Charles DeGaulle made a request/demand for repatriation of French gold, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, declining the French request/demand, and in the process, taking the US Dollar off of the Gold Standard. Again, that meant that people could no longer take their US Dollar bills to a bank and redeem them for physical gold. Maybe it would have drawn down our reserves too much--I simply don't know. But I DO know what has happened since that time. Up until the aftermath of WWII, our US Dollar had always been exchangeable for precious metals--and that tie to gold and silver had prevented the US from incurring debt that could not be repaid, because there had to be enough gold and/ or silver in storage to back that amount of debt. Then on a Sunday evening, August 15, 1971, spurred by that French demand, President Nixon, in a televised speech, suspended the convertibility of the US Dollar for gold. At the time, it was called the Nixon Shock, and like many government edicts, it was said to be a temporary thing. But it still stands today, and August 15, 1971, is now correctly called the day the US Dollar died. The Dollar died because our government could then print and spend as many dollars as it wanted, with no need for it to be backed up by gold and/or silver. A greater number of dollars chasing the same or similar basket of goods and services is called inflation; and a national currency with no tangible backing is called a fiat currency. (As an aside--fiat dollars are also a major reason the family unit is struggling in the US, because two incomes were then needed, such that neither spouse could focus primarily on household matters and rearing children.) Since 1850, 52 other nations have attempted to operate with an unbacked fiat currency, and 51 of the 52 have failed, thus throwing their populations into poverty. (The 52nd is Japan, which is a producer nation more than a consumer nation like the US; but it's just on a slower path to poverty--and we're even involved now in propping up the unbacked yen with our unbacked dollars.) The reason for all those currency failures is that the populace learns that it can vote for itself largesse (benefits) from the public treasury by simply pressuring their legislators, who find that their election or re-election can depend on promising more freebies than their opponent. That has been the case in the US, to the point where there is now little to no realistic chance of repaying our national debt in a normal way--or even a political appetite for doing so. I mentioned earlier that the US inflation rate was greatly accelerated by the Covid debacle. And the US Government's Consumer Price Index (CPI) is now so completely corrupted and compromised, as to have no relation to the prices people actually pay. Up until 1986, the CPI did a reasonably good job of gauging inflation. But beginning that year, eight (8) significant changes have been made to the calculation formula, such that it now greatly understates the actual inflation rate; and in the last 6 years, especially, it has wildly underestimated inflation. Several others have developed alternative CPI indexes that are more accurate, with the latest being a website called realityindex.co. Using realityindex.co as a base, Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute has found that we have experienced a 65% overall increase of consumer prices from 2019 to 2026 (with groceries at this writing [June 2026] running at an astounding 8.2% inflation rate). That 65% number is an incredible loss in purchasing power, compared to the government CPI, which shows only a 26% loss in purchasing power over the same time period. And other competent economic authorities have confirmed the validity of Tucker's work. Dean Clancy of Americans for Prosperity reportedly posits that when we read the Ninth and Tenth Amendments plus the Obligation-of-Contracts clause (Article 1, sec. 10, cl. 1) of our US Constitution, we can identify five monetary policies that are constitutionally requisite in the US, two of which are pertinent to this discussion: (1) Only gold and silver coins and currency (banknotes fully backed by and readily redeemable in specie [gold or silver coins]) may serve as legal tender; and (2) Neither the states nor Congress may issue fiat money notes (bills of credit . . .).

One can only hope that his position on the first item above would be tried in the courts and found to have merit--and to start the process of reclaiming our national economic sanity. So--Back to consumer inflation to close this out--Other than cutting back on non-essential purchases and being a so-called smart shopper, what might you do with all this? What can help your family in a wider framework or sense? Further inflation/shrinking of the US Dollar is now baked-in (thanks to government deficit spending), and the result will be the continued hollowing out of our Middle Class. It's not trite to say that we must PRAY for America, for our politicians, and for our upcoming generations. And of course, to impress upon our elected officials the need for major cost-cutting action on their part--for openers, how about a Federal Balanced Budget? I believe that we must walk a deep valley of stagflation or recession/depression if we are to hand over this land, as we have known it, to our children and grandchildren. And in a narrower financial sense, one other answer is to own Hard Assets--tangible things you can touch, like land, buildings, gold, silver, classic cars, some fine art, and some collectibles or other physical items that would hold their value through inflationary times. If you can swing the cost of buying and owning a house or apartment, don't rent one--a house or a condo is the most common and most-sought-after Hard Asset owned by Middle Class folks. I've also read that a top-gun financial expert recently recommended that we need to scale down from building 2200-to-2400-square-foot houses and go back to 1200-1400-square-foot houses. And there are people out there who are researching cheaper-per-square-foot (modular) housing that would be delivered in pieces by truck, to reduce the amount of required on-site labor. (Some of that is already happening.) So that's some of what I'm seeing and hearing lately, and I hope this has helped you with some of the background that produced the inflation we're seeing.

The major celebration of the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah (The New Year 5787) and Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement) are enhanced by a probing and provocative volume of the quality of To Be A Jew Today (A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People) New York: Farrar Strause and Giroux. The recent book by Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law as well as chair of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University where he is the founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli law. Feldman raises fundamental and foundational issues that are at the heart of contemporary Jewish identity that all thoughtful and concerned Jews from throughout the wide spectrum of Jewish affiliation and practice along with those on the periphery of active Jewish life, would find both meaningful and purposeful to wrestle with. Additionally, Feldman's profound scholarship is not of the dry type, rather perks intellectual curiosity while appealing in a clarion call to a big tent approach, to pause and reassess core Jewish themes in conversation with one who shys from being authoritative. "In the course of writing this book, I intentionally have not flagged what I think is now in it. My goal in that isn't to make what I write seem obviously true. It's to allow you, the reader, to use your own reaction to gauge and solidify what you think, not what I think. You can certainly read this book by arguing with it. I read a lot of books this way, and it often works for me. If you want, however, you can also read this book not argumentatively but introspectively--the way I wrote it. Though the book is designed with a lofty and a bit presumptive goal as "A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish people, "It does reflect the author's own respect for high academic standing and his heavy stake in reaching out for a Jewish world in much disarray spiritually, socially and politically with the shaking events he mentions of October 7 offering an urgent backdrop as a uniting Jewish factor. Thus it is not happenstance that he refers to the "Guide of the Perplexed" by the recognized giant Jewish thinker of all times, the medieval Moses Maimonides, who reached out to his own perplexed generation confronted and challenged by Greek, Islamic and Pagan influences while attempting to secure and anchor an authentic Jewish response and identity without imposing his own perspective. Yet he aroused the ire of the rabbinic establishment who called for banning his book but might have resulted, surmises Feldman, in the Talmud's burning by the Church in Paris in 1242. The "New Guide" offered by the author is his own attempt to follow on the Maimonidean model with reaching to his own perplexed times in a way that clarifies without setting himself up as the supreme arbiter of such an imposing agenda of discourse. "One initial aim of this book is to chart a map of contemporary Jewish lives and ideas, a map the reader can use not to identify bad Jews but to explore and appreciate the many different ways Jews can be and think and experience. It can be used as a field guide to Jewish people and ideas as they exist today, and as they are being transformed for the future." Feldman's embracing and inclusive approach focuses on the notion that a "bad Jew" which is common, including the author, to how Jews feel in relation to their demanding heritage regulating Jewish conduct, is in fact alien to Judaism. Given the trying circumstances of the historical Jewish experience, including forced mass conversion of Jews in the medieval era, the rabbis' impulse was not to add misery to fellow Jews caught up in extraordinary painful dilemmas of life and death issues but to allow them a continued sense of belonging, though not in practice, to their eternal Jewish covenant, with perhaps hope that their oppressive condition might be altered. The concise and clear Talmudic dictum. "An Israelite though he has sinned, is an Israelite," speaks volumes of paramount Jewish inclusivity promoted by the author as a continued key principle for a wide pluralistic system. Feldman proves for the sake of it or plain survival, he is an iconoclast, criticizing the State of Israel for not admitting Brother Daniel--the Polish Jew who converted to Catholicism in the Holocaust's harrowing circumstances--under the Law of Return. It does contradict a hallowed rabbinic instruction though secular Israel's decision was ironically influenced by its religious establishment. Indeed there is a blurring of the religious and national poles in Jewish identity. Jewish survival as a tiny minority of some 16 million Jews in a global population of 7.6 billion is a salient factor, not lost on Feldman, which only strengthens his gentle yet forceful argument for a wide framework for Jewish affiliation and acceptance in an age characterized by global natural and man-made threats to human survival along with radical questioning concerning the applicability and relevancy of all things Jewish. Surely the author's "openness" attempting to overarch the denominational Jewish divide which risks overreaching, would find fierce opposition from traditionalists lacking his spiritual audacity and courage for the sake of vital Jewish survival in face of assembling mighty odds with modernity diminishing long held claims such as heralded theme of Jewish choseness which the author fully probes as he does with all that he skillfully analyses. Feldman regards Jewish choseness as a major factor in entrenched antisemitism, "This choseness, I am suggesting, is a provocation to anyone not so chosen, because it amounts to the claim that the Master of the Universe has chosen me and not you." As he points out, there is solid grounding as in the universal proclamations of the prophet Amos, to tone down the double edge sword of exclusive choseness giving rise to a Baruch Goldstein, an American physician who committed the infamous massacre in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs that houses a mosque. "He was a Modern Orthodox Religious Zionist who had been educated at a high school nearly identical to mine. His actions had shaken my belief structure like no other event in my life, before or since." The author concludes his uniquely engaging book with a theme that runs throughout, namely that characterizing any Jew as "bad" is contrary to the hallmark of traditional Jewish inclusiveness, and counterproductive to the cause of Jewish survival and vitality. He raises as an example the complex saga of Elisha ben Abuyah, the Other, as a case in point highlighting multifaceted Jewish thinking which errs toward acceptance of the Other in our own Jewish midst. He finds it kin to Jacob's wrestling encounter with God's messenger. "That struggle-embrace with God lies at the heart of this book. It lies, I have tried to show, at the heart of the Jewish past, the Jewish present, and the hoped-for and possible Jewish future, which we pray to be able to create. It can, I believe, explain and engage and guide the ongoing encounter between God, Israel, and the Jewish people. This irresistible and indispensable treasure trove of wisdom and guidance from a teacher par excellence who cares deeply about the Jewish future while not mincing words, is a most welcome new source for discourse, discussion, study and growth. It is indeed a gift to both Jews and non-Jews for our perplexed and perplexing times. We remember the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with the Jewish New Year coinciding this season.

Some of the earliest Islamic migration to America was reportedly sponsored by Henry Ford, who brought workers from Yemen to Detroit in the 1920s to work in his auto plants. This in turn gave rise to a now-very-large Islamic community in Dearborn and other Detroit-area municipalities. Now, 100 years later, the Islamic community there remains an unassimilated population that stands apart from Western ways and tradition, which grew out of Christianity. So, it behooves us to look into the precepts and the practice of Islam in America. for insights. Islam was founded in what is modern-day Saudi Arabia by a man named Mohammad. He was born in 570 AD in Mecca, where he lived until the year 622, when he and his adherents moved to Medina, where he lived until the time of his death in 632. So, Islam basically began in the early 7th Century, by which time Christianity had spread throughout Europe and North Africa. Mohammad wrote Islam's holy book, the Koran, over the course of his lifetime, essentially in two phases--his early writings in Mecca and his later writings in Medina, all of it in service to Islam's god, named Allah. The early days in Mecca found him endeavoring to find common ground with Christianity--perhaps to even merge the two faiths. So, his early writings were more positive or friendly. But Christianity could not do what Mohammad wanted (meaning for them to honor and worship Allah), so his later writings became more negative, including 109 to 128 (depending on who's doing the counting) so-called War Verses in the Koran encouraging violence against those who do not submit to Islam, calling them infidels. In fact, the word Islam means submission. One example is the Koran's Suras (Chapters) 2.193 and 8.40, which say to, make war on them [the infidels] until idolatry shall cease and God's religion [Islam] shall reign supreme. At this point, I should refer you to an excellent book that I've found to offer valuable insights into the many aspects of Islam in both theory and practice. The book is entitled Secrets of the Koran , written by Mr. Don Richardson, a Christian missionary and pastor/scholar who wanted to learn the truth about why America was attacked on 9/11/2001 by Islamic/Muslim combatants. So, he purchased and studied all 7 available English translations of the Koran, and his scholarship is impeccable. You'll find clear explanation and reasoning there and learn that while Christianity spreads by charisma (his word), Islam spreads by conquest. And that unlike Christianity in America, Islam combines and constitutes both religion and government, via what is called Sharia Law, an Islamic legal system that is trying or mediating or arbitrating (primarily family law) Sharia Court cases here in America, entirely outside the U.S. legal system, in conflict with our Rule of Law. Richardson initially had difficulty reconciling conflicting verses in the Koran, as the war verses are scattered among friendlier conflicting verses. So how is one to determine which conflicting verses take precedence over others? Richardson reveals a primary key to understanding the Koran--a legal term probably taught to first-year law students--ABROGATION--which means that when verses in the Koran conflict with each other, the verse written later in time abrogates (meaning that it over-rides or cancels or negates) any conflicting verse written earlier in time. So, the war verses of Mohammad's later writings apparently over-ride or cancel any previous conflicting friendlier verses, whether written in Mecca or Medina. The war verses also gain credibility when we consider that Mohammad basically went rogue in Medina, adopting caravan raiding as his vocation there. Somewhere between the Koran and subsequent Koran interpretations by Islamic authorities (writings called the Sunnah [tradition], which includes Hadith [narratives] and Sirah [journey]), he also learned that lying and other forms of deception are acceptable if they are employed in serving Allah. Islam has warred against western/Christian-derived thought consistently through the centuries, taking North Africa and most of the Middle East, and launching several European invasions. And, warring against the U.S. from our very beginnings. Early in our history as an east-coast-only nation, sending our trading ships to eastern Asia from our east coast was such a huge effort if done by rounding Cape Horn and crossing the Pacific, that we instead sent our ships a much shorter way--across the Atlantic and onward to the east end of the Mediterranean to meet the overland caravans that brought Asian silks, spices and other products to trade there. But our ships had to pass through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, where they were spotted and intercepted by Islamic pirates from the Barbary Coast nations of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and probably also Egypt), pirates who would kill or enslave our crews and steal the ships and their cargoes--maritime caravan-raiding. So, many of America's earliest naval military ships were built to escort our U.S. trading vessels and to fight the Barbary Pirate nations. This was the first U.S. war fought on foreign soil; and it's enshrined in the Marine Corps hymn, which includes the lyrics, From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, with Tripoli now being the capital of modern-day Libya. Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Channel has written a book about that war, entitled, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates . So now you know where we got the term Barbarian. The point to be made here is that Islam has warred against Western thought and Western nations throughout its history; that war continues today, in various forms. There is much that could be said about various permitted practices within Islam, such as Honor Killings, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Child Marriage--and other distinctives like a woman's testimony being worth one-half of a man's testimony; or heavenly rewards of endless virgins available to men who die in the cause of Jihad. We could also discuss the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2016 booklet by Robert Spencer, entitled Subversive Mosques, in which he cites several studies finding that about three-fourths of the Islamic Mosques in America were preaching violence against the USA, which in our legal system may be Sedition. But our interest in this discussion is in Islam as it relates to, or impacts, our Nationhood here in the U.S. Although Islamic war forces practicing Jihad (meaning the struggle to conquer non-Islamic peoples and lands) were driven back several times in western Europe over the centuries, Islam is now successfully positioned and essentially assured of taking western Europe via what's called demographics, a form of Soft Jihad meaning simply out-populating the native residents of the current Western nations there, all of which have dismally low birth rates while the Muslims have consistently high birth rates. How did that come about? Basically, because Europe had turned away from Christianity as the base on which Western Civilization was built. As millions of Muslims entered Europe, it became clear that the lack of cohesive religious identity made it difficult for the native European host populations to resist cultural onslaught. European elites raised on a steady diet of liberal ideology could not formulate a reason to deny entry to the large influx of migrants; and in many cases, competed to see who could be more accommodating. Those immigrants have shown no interest in assimilating into a culture they believe to be weak and decadent; and the sheer size of the migration has meant that large ethnic ghettos could form to protect the new competing beliefs, reportedly including even no-go zones where even law enforcement dares not enter. Without Christianity (in the words of Dinesh D'Souza) to spiritually animate the other aspects of its cultural identity, Europe has seemed to lose the will to live, abandoning its fate to a new and energetic population that will NOT adopt the European way of life. And America is, to me, on a similar path, though not as far along; and there are still off-ramps to other paths that we in America can take, IF we can find the national will to do so. Before moving along to discuss that national will to do so, I want to clarify specifically how America could properly address our Islamic immigration crisis within the context of the Christian-derived western thought that has successfully guided our nation to this point. You'll find that the American Christian church-- and I believe also the European practicing church (it hasn't entirely died there)--are following the Christian mandate to minister to the needs of the stranger among us, and there are many such ministries now working in international communities here in the U.S. (one example would be Envision Atlanta). That ongoing Christian hospitality work must continue and expand, in order to show the love of Christ to individual immigrants. But when the influx of illegal immigrants becomes so large that it threatens to overpower the host nation, I believe the Christian is called upon to do two seemingly-contradictory things concurrently--to minister to individual Muslim people, simply because they are people made in the image of God; and to simultaneously support the repelling and return (by military force if necessary) of the great hordes that have been organized and sent to destroy our nation and culture--the very cultural infrastructure that allows the Christian to minister to individual Muslims. It's one of history's more difficult, yet readily understood, conundrums. With all that said. now. let's look at the concept of Nationhood and seek to discern how it may apply to alien ideologies like Islam. At the outset, let me also commend to you Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas's April 15, 2026, speech delivered at the University of Texas at Austin, as a wonderful overview of America's founding principles, with emphasis on our Declaration of Independence as the overall framework and guiding principles that we later enshrined in our U.S. Constitution, to implement those founding principles. It is a marvelous overview. But onward now to Nationhood considerations, beginning with a look at how the positive aspects of nationalism evolved out of monarchies and other aristocratic and autocratic governance. The 1880s were a time of great change. The U.S. was thriving as a self-governing nation with a republican form, while much of the world--primarily Europe in our case--was in upheaval as it transitioned from aristocratic rule by monarchies and other autocratic rule, to self-governance. The influence of Christianity had been displacing the Divine Right of Kings with the Rule of Law, meaning that Monarchs were no longer above the Law, but under it-- they became subject to the Law just like other people (beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215). Within this context, an 1880's European voice emerged to address the definition and meaning of a Nation. That person was French historian Ernst Renan, who postulated five possible foundations for what constitutes a nation--Unity of Religion, Unity of Language, Unity of Race/ Ethnicity, Common Heritage/Lineage, and Geography alone. We can simplify them to Religion, Language. Race, Lineage and Geography. Renan posited that all of these five foundations matter, and that they combine to uniquely characterize each nation in some mix that depends on the circumstances of place and history. So, borders are not merely arbitrary lines on a map--they mark the edges of civic sovereignty, restraining states and also containing real people with a unique mix of experiences, memories, belief systems. aspirations and norms that are not replicated in that specific mix anywhere else on the earth.

So, when Henry Ford unwittingly brought in Islamic Yemenis to work in his early car plants, he was laying the foundation for an Islamic community in the Detroit area that even after a full century of time still remains an unassimilated population with a very different unique mix of Renan's five foundations than what has come to characterize the United States, starting with Renan's first foundation, the Unity of Religion. It is a simple fact of life that Europe is falling to Islam, as have most other previously Christian nations in the Middle East and the Northern half of Africa, with the U.S. now well into the same process. In the absence of a national awakening on the matter, demographics alone will again be sufficient over time to carry Islam to a Soft-Jihad victory here in the U.S., where our birth rates are faIling to mimic Europe's. Europe allowed unfettered Islamic immigration, in part, out of an assumption that Western Civilization would be sufficient to absorb the Muslim settlers, who would adopt European ways and become westernized. That didn't happen there, and it won't happen here, based on the very tenets of Islam. America should forgo the granting of citizenship to populations that cannot or will not assimilate here; and eliminate illegal practices like Shariah Law. One related conclusion by Don Richardson (beginning on page 224 of his book) is a well-reasoned observation that because the Koran demands Islamic control over all civil authority and claims the right to replace any and every Nation's laws with Sharia law, untold millions of Muslims have perjured themselves. either consciously or unconsciously, by taking the U.S. Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to uphold our Constitution, which stands in stark contrast to Islamic law. He urges an expanded or specialized loyalty oath for Muslims, which would require every Muslim applicant for naturalization to declare under oath that he or she sides with the U.S. Constitution and not the Koran nor Sharia Law. And even that proposal does not address the Islamic core principle/doctrine he had identified, of permitted deception when done in the service of Allah. Muslim activist podcaster Wajahat Ali (a son of Pakistani immigrants) openly ridicules our national naivete in allowing unchecked Islamic immigration. ever since the passage of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which should be re-examined. He gloats that Islam will one day come to dominate the U.S., as it is doing in Europe. And he's right, as things stand now. With that said, though, there are some--a few--hopeful signs in states like Texas and Florida, which have recognized the inherent hazards of the growing Islamic presence in the U.S. There's also now a government effort to identify interconnected Islamic terrorist-supporting organizations; a recently formed Congressional Sharia Law Caucus; and other emerging efforts being made to address the onslaught of Soft Jihad in America. IF we will remember and honor the first principles of our founding (things like the Rule of Law)--principles that have prospered America and Americans for 250 years--we may yet reduce the magnitude of our Islamic challenge. May God grant us the wisdom and the will to do so.