How important is it that we define our terrorist enemies? Some believe that accurately defining our enemy isn’t worth the effort. One network commentator even ridiculed the idea.

Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (also a former member of Congress) says he finds this attitude disconcerting. As a young officer, one of the books on the mandatory reading list was The Art of War by Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. This is what he says about defining the enemy.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself and not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

You have to wonder if this politically correct desire not to label radical Muslim terrorism will contribute to our inability to successfully defeat terrorism. It is understandable why both President Bush and President Obama want to keep from painting all Muslims with a terrorist label. But these discussions veer into absurdity when we try to say with a straight face that the Islamic State is not Islamic.

Charles Krauthammer believes that this linguistic appeasement makes diplomatic appeasement easier. “This passivity—strategic, syntactical, ideological—is more than just a reaction to the perceived overreach of the Bush years. Or a fear of failure. Or bowing to the domestic left. It is, above all, rooted in Obama’s deep belief that we—Americans, Christians, the West—lack the moral authority to engage, to project, i.e., to lead.”

I hear from any Americans (both on radio and in person) who desire a leader who will speak plainly about the threat we face and set forth a strategy to make us safe. Perhaps that is why so many appreciated the speech by Benjamin Netanyahu before Congress last week. You can’t defeat an enemy you refuse to name.

The Supreme Court is poised to redefine marriage and force Christians to serve same-sex marriage ceremonies even if they have moral objections. Is this what Americans want? A recent survey clearly shows that is not what registered voters want.

The WPA Opinion Research found that a majority (53%) agreed with this statement: “I believe marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.” I took the time to look at the demography breakdown of the poll and was surprised to find that a majority of all men and older women, and a majority of whites and African Americans also agreed with the statement.

An even larger majority (61%) agreed that: “States and citizens should remain free to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman and the Supreme Court shouldn’t force all 50 states to redefine marriage.” A majority of all demographic groups (with the exception of non-church attenders) agreed with this statement.

The poll also asked these registered voters if they agreed or disagreed with this statement: “Government should leave people free to follow their beliefs about marriage as they live their daily lives at work and in the way they run their businesses.” More than eight in ten (81%) agreed with this statement. Each and every demographic group agreed with this statement with an overwhelming majority.

Remember these results as the Supreme Court listens to oral arguments about same-sex marriage and delivers their decision in June. Americans reject the idea that marriage should be redefined. An even larger majority believes that states and their citizens should be free to define marriage as they see fit. And an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that government should leave people alone and allow them to follow their own beliefs about marriage.

Nevertheless a few members of the Supreme Court seem ready to redefine marriage and force Americans to accept it against their will. If five of these justices do so by June, America will be a very different country.

Now that the FCC has passed regulations concerning net neutrality, some are not only calling for Congress to challenge the regulations. They are calling for Congress to challenge the FCC itself. Tom Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation, for example, even says it is “Time for Congress to Gut the FCC.”

Even if you don’t understand the concept of net neutrality you have to be concerned about the process by which the current FCC issued their regulations. We have now discovered that there were two sets of regulations. The FCC commissioners were working to develop a set of regulations on net neutrality that would have been moderate and a compromise between some of the strong positions taken by various interest groups. But while they were working on these regulations, the Wall Street Journal has now reported that there were a series of secret, parallel regulations developed at the White House that became the final regulations.

That leads to a second concern. No public comment was allowed on those regulations for a very good reason. As I have reported in previous commentaries, nobody was allowed to see those regulations. This is not what we would expect from what was supposed to be the most transparent administration in history.

These regulations will affect you and the Internet you use everyday. That is why the FCC should have made the process open and transparent. In fact, these sorts of regulations should be made through the legislative process not by a few bureaucrats appointed by the president.

Tom Giovanetti argues that the FCC could be completely eliminated by distributing FCC responsibilities to other agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Many of these functions already overlap these and other agencies.

Congress may not eliminate the FCC, but at least it should rein it in. Senator John Thune is pushing ahead with an investigation. He says, “The FCC’s direction is bad for the Internet and bad for consumers.” It is time for Congress to challenge the FCC.

If you can’t enact gun control through Congress, then perhaps you can achieve the same effect by banning certain types of ammo. That seems to be the strategy being used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

A spokesman for the National Rifle Association put it this way: “The Obama Administration was unable to ban America’s most popular sporting rifle through the legislative process, so now its trying to ban commonly owned and used ammunition through regulation.” The ATF has established a framework for evaluating certain types of ammunition used in the AR-15 rifle.

A little history is in order. Back in 1986, Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officer’s Protection Act. It was intended to protect police officers from “armor piercing” projectiles. The focus was on banning bullets that could be fired from a handgun. The authors of the bill realized that bullets fired from most common rifle cartridges could penetrate soft body armor. So Congress incorporated an exemption into the bill in order to protect ordinary rifle ammunition.

The ATF is now arguing that since these bullets can be used in semi-automatic handguns, they pose a threat to police and must be banned. Last week that was the argument made by the White House spokesman. “We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and women in law enforcement, and believe that this process is valuable for that reason alone.”

A number of members of Congress have written to the Director of ATF challenging the assertion that this ammunition poses a danger to law enforcement. “This round is amongst the most commonly used in the most popular rifle design in America. The AR-15. Millions upon millions of M855 rounds have been sold and used in the U.S., yet ATF has not even alleged—much less offered evidence—that even one such round has ever been fired from a handgun at a police officer.”

I think gun owners and gun groups have a point when they say this is merely a back-door gun control effort by banning certain ammunition.

Recent articles and announcements remind us how dangerous ISIS has become, and why we should pay more attention to these radical Muslim terrorists that used to be described as merely a JV team.

Graeme Wood’s article in The Atlantic explains “What ISIS Really Wants.” He says “that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”

He goes on to add that: “Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.”

Also of concern is a recent announcement about the influence of ISIS even here in the United States. FBI Director James Comey recently spoke to the National Association of Attorneys General. In the midst of his talk, he made this startling statement: “We have investigations of people in various stages of radicalizing in all 50 states. . . . This isn’t a New York phenomenon or a Washington phenomenon. This is in all 50 states and in ways that are very hard to see.”

Let me mention two Christian books that explain ISIS in detail. Jay Sekulow and others wrote The Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Cannot Ignore. He has been on my radio program and many other media to talk about the threat we face from ISIS.
Charles Dyer and Mark Tobey have written The ISIS Crisis.

When I spoke on ISIS recently, someone in the audience suggested that we place these books in every congressional office. Not only should our elected representatives read these books, you need to read them as well. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

While reading the book, The Happy Christian, I came across the story of Professor Jack Chambliss at Valencia College. Each year he begins the class by asking his students to write a ten-minute essay on what the American dream looks like to them and what they want the federal government to do to help them achieve that dream. I would recommend that you ask young people you know to do the same. I think you will be shocked.

The professor says that about 10 percent of the students wanted government to leave them alone. In other words, they didn’t want to be taxed too much or regulated too much. In other words, they wanted government to just give them a chance to pursue their dreams without major hindrances. I would suggest to you that a generation or two ago, that percentage would be much higher than 10 percent.

Sadly over 80 percent of the students said “that the American Dream to them meant a house and a job and plenty of money for retirement, and vacations and things like that.” Then they began to describe what the federal government should do for them. They wanted “free health care, they wanted the government to pay for their tuition. They wanted government to pay for the down payment on their house.” Many of them wanted government “to give them a job.”

I could go on, but you get the idea. These college students wanted everything, and they wanted the federal government to give it to them. If you thought that the Baby Boom Generation was the Entitlement Generation, you haven’t met the latest crop of college students. More and more commentators are calling them the Entitlement Generation or the Gimme Generation or even the New Me Generation. These future voters and taxpayers have an overwhelming sense of entitlement and expect the government to provide everything they need.

This is not the American Dream. It certainly isn’t what Americans in the last few centuries described as the American Dream. It is a false worldview that promises lots of benefits without any hard work or initiative. Frankly, it’s a mindset of entitlement on steroids.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is a Muslim and the president of Egypt. He grew up in the midst of the Muslim world and in the world’s center of Sharia scholarship. So when he called for a religious revolution within Islam, his words had great significance.

In his speech in Cairo’s premier center of religious learning, he called for a change and revolution. He argued that Islam is in “need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting on you. The entire world is waiting for your word … because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost.” He went on to add that, “We need a revolution of the self, a revolution of consciousness and ethics to rebuild the Egyptian person — a person that our country will need in the near future.”

Columnist George Will lauded al-Sisi for his bravery. He said that, “as head of the Egyptian state, al-Sisi occupies an office once occupied by Anwar Sadat who was murdered by Islamic extremists for his opening to Israel. This was an act of tremendous bravery by al-Sisi, and if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is looking for someone who plausibly deserves it, they could start there.”

President al-Sisi is right that Islam is in need of a religious revolution, but it is hard to see how that will happen in the Muslim world where more and more Arab countries are run by or else threatened by radical elements within Islam. And it is hard to see how Europe and America will help when the leaders of most of these countries are afraid to even talk about radical Muslim terrorism.

President al-Sisi is now calling for other Arab countries to join forces to battle ISIS. On a recent televised speech he said, “The need for a unified Arab force is growing and becoming more pressing every day.” He is one Arab leader who understands the problem within Islam and is calling for other Muslims to join together and fight ISIS. He deserves our support.

Yesterday I talked about how some commentators have been trying to minimize the threat from terrorism. Today I would like to talk about how others are trying to minimize Muslim terrorism.

The most common method is familiar to all of us. Don’t use the word Muslim when talking about terrorism. Our nation’s foreign policy sounds like something from a Harry Potter book. We are fighting “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” It will be hard to win a war on terrorism if you cannot describe and define the enemy.

There is a second method that is quite subtle but also ends up minimizing Muslim terrorism. Last month we heard of three Muslim students who were killed near the University of North Carolina. We soon found out that the killer was a liberal atheist who admired people like Rachel Maddow and supported groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation. We haven’t heard much about him since the killing, but I suspect he would have been the topic of conversation if he had been a conservative, a Christian, or a member of the National Rifle Association.

Let’s return to the method of minimizing Muslim terrorism. After this story hit the news, one progressive leader joked on Twitter that he was “waiting for the atheist community to condemn this awful hate crime.” He then asked, “Is their silence complicity?” Essentially, he was trying to argue that the Muslim community does not have to speak out against Muslim terrorism. Atheists don’t have to explain and condemn the actions of an atheist. Why should Muslims have to address Muslim terrorism?

I would argue there is a significant difference. Nearly all atheists (like nearly all Christians) are peace-loving and value human life and would never go on a jihad. There aren’t thousands of atheist cells using the Humanist Manifesto to justify killing others.

The same cannot be said for millions of Muslims around the world. Radical Muslim groups use key verses in the Qur’an to justify killing infidels and apostates. The Muslim world does have a responsibility to speak out and condemn the killing.

I have noticed over the last few months that a number of commentators have been trying to minimize the threat from terrorism. Perhaps they are doing it because they don’t want us to over-react to the social media videos of burnings and beheadings. Some may not want America to be drawn into another war. Whatever the reason, there seems to be a concerted effort to minimize the terrorist threat.

One writer calculated that since 9/11, “a grand total of 30 Americans” had been killed in “terrorist incidents inside the United States.” The odds of an American being killed by terrorism are lower than being killed in a car accident or killed in a building fire. He added that Americans are “four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.”

If you believe the U.S. is spending too much in terms of blood and treasure fighting terrorism, you could use this argument. Of course, you could have made that same argument in America before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. How many Americans were killed by the Axis powers in the 1930s? Your chances of being killed by Nazi soldiers or soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army were effectively zero.

Even after 9/11, you could make the case that most Americans and nearly all our other cities were unaffected by the terrorist attack on that day. You could even point to the fact that except for the World Trade Towers and part of the Pentagon, all the other buildings in America were intact and unaffected by the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Charles Cooke uses an extreme example to make his point. Imagine that 100 planes crashed into other important business and governmental buildings. That would have been devastating. But still, most of the homes, churches, libraries, malls, hotels, and gas stations would be intact. Would the citizens of America have been comforted if George W. Bush appeared on TV to say that America was still, statistically speaking, safe and unaffected by the events of the day?

We shouldn’t over-react to the threat of terrorism, but we don’t need to use statistical arguments to minimize the threat either.