One of the great causes of division in America is the fact that everything, and I mean everything, has become a political issue. Any problem, any complaint, any issue that someone has is now thrown into the political sphere. Consider some of the big news on "the hill" this week. Rodger Clemens, a baseball player, is being prosecuted for lying to congress. What did he allegedly lie about? State secrets, embezzlement, fraud, treason? No. It was whether or not he ever used "performance enhancing" substances. Not to excuse his alleged lying but why was he ever before congress in the first place?! What authority does the government have to regulate A GAME!

We the people, unfortunately, have come to believe that it is right and proper to use the power of government to solve all our problems and meet all our needs. Every time one American citizen says "there ought to be a law" to fix some complaint or offense and another one says "government ought to..." to meet some need or want, our government is happy to intervene and in the process take more or our freedom and more of our money. Did you ever stop and wonder why we have all the special interest groups and lobbyists we love to complain about? It is because each one of them represents some group of citizens, small or large, that want to use the power of government for their own ends. In this game there are winners and losers and the animosity between the two increases as the stakes get higher and government becomes larger and more powerful. For every citizen that wants the government to do something, there is another citizen that must pay for it and give up some bit of freedom to accommodate this new government activity. That other citizen must now "lobby" on his own behalf, playing the game for his own protection. The government becomes no more than a legalized criminal enterprise, granting arbitrary favors and demanding payment for protection.

When we play this game, however, we never know when the power of government may be turned against us. That is why elections are so contentious. We feel the need to elect people who will protect the privileged status or benefits we have lobbied for and if the "opposition" gets elected, we think we are in danger of losing that status or those benefits. The dirty little secret is that the politicians are doing nothing but playing each of us against the other in order to increase their own power. They scare us exactly along those lines, that some group will lose this or that privilege or that government will adopt some policy destructive to our values or new found "rights". This scheme goes back to FDR who was the first politician on the national stage to adopt this strategy and it has been used ever since by both major parties. It is a game plan in which "we the people" ultimately lose because every time an individual or group succeeds in getting a piece of the government pie, we all lose more money and more liberty while government grows larger and becomes farther removed from its only legitimate purpose.

With the ascendancy of Barak Obama to the presidency, the mask has come off and this process of remaking our understanding of the purpose of government has reached its logical conclusion. President Obama’s only experience in life outside of government was as a community organizer. What does a community organizer do? He or she organizes the citizens of a community to more effectively lobby the government so they can receive some benefit. Now that they are in charge they have discarded the rhetoric of freedom and responsibility that has historically at least served as a veneer for self serving politicians and unabashedly proclaim that government can do anything, meet any need and solve any problem. If "we the people" would just shut up and let the experts in government take care of us, we would realize an American Utopia where everyone is equally healthy, wealthy and wise.

Think about the attitude of the people who desire to be "public servants" as election day approaches. Why do 99.9% of people go into government, either as elected politicians or unelected bureaucrats? One of two reasons. First, there are the selfish ones who want to receive personal benefits from fleecing "we the people". The elected ones want the prestige and the ability to use the power of government to enrich themselves and their friends. The appointed or hired ones want to receive pay an average of 20% more than similar jobs in the private sector, generous health benefits, pensions in which the taxpayers pay their salaries for the rest of their lives and the security of knowing that their job does not depend on their efficiency, value or success but on the ability of the politicians to wring enough money out of the rest of us to ensure their perpetual employment, with raises. Then there are the people who go into "public service" because they truly believe that government is the answer and that all problems should be solved by forcing people to pay for and conform to their vision of how people should behave and society should be organized. The only substantial difference between the con artists and "true believers" in our government and those of Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany are the penalties for non-conformity. We may be fined, jailed or litigated to death instead of being put in the gulag, concentration camp or shot outright. As our government becomes more and more totalitarian our real freedom becomes a distant memory squashed under the heel, not of a jack booted storm trooper, but the expensive wingtips of a highly paid bureaucrat.

The purpose of government, as defined in the Declaration of Independence, is to protect our God-given rights, among them being our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only legitimate reason government has for using force against any citizen is if that citizen has violated the rights of his fellow. It does not have the legitimate right to extort money from one citizen to give it to another. It does not have the legitimate right to regulate the behavior of one citizen because it may offend another. It does not have the right to grant privileged status to one citizen and reduce the status of another. A government that was limited to the protection of our rights run by people who believed that was the only purpose of government would not be involved in most of the things that divide us so deeply. It would not be using the money it forcibly extracts from us for things we don’t approve of. It would not be surrounded by lobbyists circling like jackals to rip a larger piece of flesh from the taxpayer. It would be a government irrelevant to the daily lives of its citizens, staying out of their pockets and activities, allowing them to peruse their dreams, only interfering to call an actual penalty when necessary. It would be a government that would once again unshackle the indomitable human spirit which has yet to meet a problem that time and determination exercised in a free environment in which the rewards belong solely to the one who expended the effort cannot solve.

There is only one way that is going to happen and that is if we make it happen. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are just pieces of paper with wonderful ideas that only have worth when people of flesh and blood believe in their words and principles and act upon them. Only when people in government believe that their only task is to protect our rights will our rights be protected. Only when "we the people" believe that government exists only to protect our rights will we put people in government who will not use the power of government against us. Only when "we the people" stop expecting government to solve our problems, meet our needs and grant our wishes will we get the government the founders envisioned, the government best for us. We get the government we want. If we want a government that meets our every need, we will live as beggars and slaves. If we want a government irrelevant to our daily lives we need to start learning to live without it and elect people who will deconstruct it.

The controversy of the day is the construction of a mosque in the shadow of the "ground zero" site. The talk shows are afire with all the reasons why it should not be built. Is it insensitive on the part of Muslims-certainly. Is it an exercise of freedom of religion and private property rights to build it-yes. Does it make most of us angry-oh yeah. But why? Why do seventy percent of us oppose the construction of this mosque? Is it fair to "profile" all Muslims for the actions of a few? Why are we reluctant to believe the statements of its organizers who assure us that the Muslim center is meant to be a bridge between the Muslim community and all Americans, a vehicle for healing and peace?

As a "radical" libertarian, it would seem impossible to come to the conclusion that the mosque should not be built even on the "sacred" site itself. After all, if the only purpose of government is to protect our rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and private property, how can we legitimately use the power of government to prevent this free exercise of religious expression? If it was a church, cathedral, synagogue, Hindu temple, Shinto shrine or Buddhist monastery, it would be nigh impossible. But it is not; it is a mosque, the symbol and center of the Muslim community, the focal point for the followers of the prophet Mohammed.

The crucial issue at hand is the fundamental nature of Islam and that is where we must go to make our case. The first thing we need to do is eliminate all the talk of religion and religious expression. That is irrelevant and we need to move our argument elsewhere. Listening to some commentators, they make a big deal about how Islam is an all encompassing way of life as opposed to...what? Christianity? Does not Christianity have ritual, symbols, a calendar of festivals? Do you not hear your preacher exhort you to live a "holy life", making every decision in accordance with the teachings of Jesus? What about Judaism with its 613 commandments, the Mishnah and the teachings of the rabbis that deal with the most arcane and seemingly insignificant areas of life. The Amish and some communities of orthodox Jews live lives just as separate and are just as devoted to their way of life as are Muslims, radical or otherwise.

But Muslims want to take over the world. Oh? And Christians do not want to convert every soul to their religion? Isn’t Judaism to be a "light to all nations"? No, the argument cannot be made there either. Discussing this as a religious issue in the common parlance will get us nowhere. We must ask the more fundamental questions. What is the purpose of religion? It is to give the individual a connection with the divine and a context in which to apply the product of that connection in the everyday world. Because religion is such an transcendent individual experience, it is explained through symbol and analogy and these evolve into religious expressions and for the "unsophisticated", superstition. Because of the ecstatic nature of religious experiences, people who have had them desire to share them. If the individual’s experience is profound and powerful enough, they may start a new "religion."

This is where history comes in. Judaism began with Abraham, Christianity with Jesus, Buddhism with Siddharta Gautama. To become part of Judaism, in the days of Abraham and in the present, one has to be born into the clan or voluntarily convert. Jesus preached voluntary repentance as did his followers and if one wants to be a Christian today, one has to voluntarily convert. Buddhism is a voluntary commitment to seek enlightenment. In contrast to the origins of all these other major religions, Islam began as a political system. By that I mean that from the beginning Islam used physical force to convert and enforce its edicts. That is the fundamental difference between religion and politics. Religion uses persuasion to influence belief and behavior, politics uses physical force. Within our social system, religion is a matter of conscience, people involved in religion employ the power of persuasion to influence behavior and belief. Politics, on the other hand, is concerned with the proper application of force, the power of the state, to influence behavior and ideas. For a libertarian, the use of state power to "positively" influence behavior rather than "negatively" employ it to protect personal and property rights, is where all governments become tyrannical. Islam began with the assumption that it is proper, that it is "God’s will", to use force to make others believe and behave in certain ways and that makes it a political system and it needs to be treated as such. There is not freedom of conscience in an Islamic system. In an Islamic state on cannot choose certain personal behaviors or beliefs. A woman in a bikini would be stoned in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Men without beards were killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Converting to another religion is also punishable by death. Women and children are mere property to be bartered with, abused and discarded. While some may decry the desires of the "religious right" to use the power of the state to impose morality, I know of no preachers who advocate the death penalty for the violation of a dress code, promiscuous behavior or conversion.

Because of this, the construction of the mosque is not a "freedom of religion" issue because we are not dealing with a religion, we are dealing with a political ideology. Most Americans perceive Islam as a religion because in the United States, it does not have real political power although in our politically correct culture, they do have an inordinate amount of influence. It is perceived as a religion because we find common themes with Muslims-prayer, worship, morality. But beneath the veneer is a political ideology that desires to enslave as it has in just about every country where it has become dominant. If we as Americans refuse to accept and understand that truth, actual acts of violence will escalate in accordance with the rhetoric we already hear from most Imams. Islam must be treated not on par with Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism but as we once understood Communism or Fascism-ideologies incompatible with our founding principles and therefore direct threats to the country, our freedom and our way of life.

As Americans, we have the right of self preservation, individually and communally. We have a country based on certain principles and ideals and we enjoy their fruits. We do not have to tolerate an ideology that is in direct opposition to those ideals and has not hesitated to use violence to advance its cause. This is more than a national security issue, it is about preserving our basic freedoms for our posterity. We do not have to let the politically correct crowd’s view of constitutional liberty transform our founding document into a suicide pact. We have a right to our country and Muslims have plenty of other places in the world in which to live. Harsh words for some but we are talking about self preservation here. Immigration from Muslim countries should be stopped immediately. Imams or other Muslims who are not US citizens should be deported immediately if their rhetoric or behavior in any way advocates violence. There should be a moratorium on any mosque or "community center" construction. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to build a monument to their greatest attack as of yet in New York. Sound ridiculous? Would we not do the same if some neo-nazi group started building "community centers" where they advocated the violent overthrow of the government? Didn’t we round up Germans, Japanese and Italians, most of whom were good Americans and posed no threat, when their counties went to war against us? When are we going to realize that Islam is at war with the west just as the communists of the Soviet Union were? Their war was mostly "cold" just as ours is, but the primary front is not only in a distant country like Vietnam or Iraq but in our own cities and towns. No one doubted the intentions of the communists to "bury us" and the rhetoric of most Muslim leaders is no less vehement in advocating our destruction. We are, after all, the Great Satan.

So why do so many on the "left" support the "right" of the Muslims to build the mosque? Because ideologically, there is no difference between liberals/progressives and Muslims. They both believe in using the power of the state to enforce their ideas of how every human being should live and believe. One wraps itself in the cloak of religion, the other in environmentalism or fairness or social justice. The result is the same. Those who are under such systems are slaves, under the threat of the whip or the sword of their masters, freedom a distant memory, fear a constant companion. If liberty is to survive, if future generations are going to enjoy the vision our founders had for the country, we must jealously and unapologetically guard what freedom remains and stop retreating under the onslaught of political correctness or under misconstrued arguments for religious tolerance. It is time to advance the cause of freedom before it disappears forever from our blessed land.

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