Courage Is America’s First Response To Tragedy -We need to make it our lasting response to terror and all evil

We here at PJ Media, PJTV and Next Generation TV continue to offer our deepest condolences for those people who lost loved ones last week, not just in the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt but also in West, Texas, as a result of the fertilizer plant explosion.

We are constantly reminded of the courage of our first responders to emergencies, and in Boston and West, they made us proud again. What manner of person runs to the sound of explosions and gunfire, or to any danger, disregarding the possibility of death?

Such behavior reminds me of the parting words that Spartan King Leonidas sent back to his countrymen before the deaths of he and his men in battle, words that are now a simple memorial to their brave stand at Thermopylae: “Go tell the Spartans, strangers passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”

Those who vow to defend and protect live by a code, and it truly becomes inculcated into their every meaning. The code elevates the belief in selfless service above all. It is oft times passed down through generations of men and women who have gazed upon pictures of their forefathers and mothers who stood upon freedom’s ramparts or as daily guardians walked the thin blue line.

As we move past the horrific tragedies of Boston and West, Texas, let us never forget the heroism of those who once said, as it is stated in Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I, send me.”

The cold and timid enablers of terror

Unfortunately, as we move into the post-attack phase of the Boston bombing and manhunt, we now see, as predicted, those people who worship at the altar of political correctness and cultural relativism. We are again being anesthetized by the attitude of people who remind me not of the quote by Leonidas but rather of the critical and “timid souls” once described by Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

These cold and timid souls fail to realize that we are facing a serious issue of domestic, radical Islamic terrorism and jihad. These cold and timid souls seek to promote some perverted perspective of cultural relativism in their reticence in confronting the facts.

These cold and timid souls should read the “explanatory memorandum” of the Muslim Brotherhood uncovered in 1991 during an FBI raid in northern Virginia. This document outlines the strategic plan for the infiltration and demise of America by Islamists and their subsidiary front groups,.

The rest of us need to remember this simple quote by Vladimir Lenin: “Probe with a bayonet. If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.” These cold and timid souls are the mush, and we need to steel ourselves.

However, under the guise of tolerance and religious acceptance we continue to allow these groups and the co-opted “useful idiots” who enable them to tell us, through a Star Wars-like Jedi mind trick, “move along, nothing here to see.”

When tolerance becomes a one-way street, it leads to cultural suicide. It is time we face the truth and stop tolerating the intolerable. We rushed to read Boston suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights instead of declaring him an “enemy combatant” for means of intelligence gathering even though the latter designation would have not precluded his being prosecuted in civilian court.

Why? Because as Marine Col. Nathan Jessup said in the movie “A Few Good Men,” “You can’t handle the truth.”

The carnage of Kermit Gosnell

Another truth is that these same cold and timid souls wish to hide from us the heinous actions of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. All it should take to turn one’s stomach in knots is to read the transcripts of his trial.

The actions of this beast are as bad as those of any terrorist. Actually, they are worse because Gosnell’s carnage was wrought against the most defenseless – babies.

The judge in this case dropped three of the charges, citing that no one could prove that a child was born in those instances. That the same judge, upon second thought, quickly reinstated one of those charges speaks volumes about how wrong he was about all three of them.

I challenge you to follow this case because what has transpired here does not reveal the “better angels of our nature” that Abraham Lincoln articulated.

And never forget that President Obama, as a state senator in Illinois, sponsored legislation to make it legal to kill an American child who survives an abortion. Only two countries, China and India, legally support such infanticide.

Is this how little we care about our next generation?

Don’t be intimidated by the politics of air travel

As we get closer to the summer travel season, I wish to extend my humble apology to the American air traveler who is the targeted as the guinea pig of Obama administration drama.

The Federal Aviation Administration started rolling furloughs of air traffic controllers on Sunday as a means to reduce its spending by 5 percent as required under the forced budget cuts of sequestration. However, this 5 percent reduction reflects fiscal 2010 spending levels for the FAA – and I don’t recall any extraordinary flight delays in 2010, do you?

I want to end on a very high note and share with you my trip to Santa Barbara, Calif., and the Reagan Ranch. I truly enjoyed my early morning runs there; it was picturesque. But my heart still prefers running along Juno and Jupiter beaches back in South Florida.

Steadfast and Loyal,

Allen B. West