Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, went to the Senate floor yesterday evening to explain that the U.S. is engaged in a war with radical Islam. “We are at war,” Sasse said. “Washington ignores what it cannot escape.”
The fact that Washington ignores the war means a presidential candidate who focuses on it can do well, Sasse suggested. “[B]efore another person in this body – or in the national media – stands up to scold the American people about how they could possibly entertain voting for candidate x or y, perhaps we should look in the mirror at why so many of our people are running to demagoguing leaders.”
Sasse explained the nature of the conflict:
This is a clash of civilizations— a fight between free people and a totalitarian movement. And let me say clearly that recognizing a clash of civilizations is not the same as wanting one. We are free and our enemies hate it. They hate that my wife leaves our home. They hate that my daughters know how to read. They hate that we decided where we would go to church on Sunday. [T]he people who are supposed to be laser-focused on protecting us (that’s us) mouth more silly platitudes that show that we’re either too weak or too confused to keep our people safe. Then, a megalomaniac strongman steps forward and starts screaming about travel bans and deportations and he promise to keep us safe, which, to some (and actually to many more than most of you seem to understand) sounds better than not being protected at all. You want to stop Islamaphobia? Stop lecturing Americans that they’re supposedly stupid to be frightened about jihadis who actually do want to bomb their sporting event. And instead use your pen and phone as Commander-in-Chief to start telling us what your plan is to find and kill those who would do us harm. Start telling us what your actual plan is to have a Middle Eastern map that isn’t generating more failed states that become terrorist training camps. For America does signify something. Something special. The belief that everyone— Christian, Jew, Muslim, black, white, man, woman, rich, poor, first-generation, fifth-generation— everyone is endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Government is our shared project in safeguarding those rights. Our Constitution – our shared creed – gives us a framework for ordered liberty. When politicians – whether incumbents who have forgotten their oaths, or candidates trying to run merely on the bluster of their personality – don’t talk about the Constitution, when they don’t defend first principles, when they refuse to prefer substance over soundbites – when we nonsensically say that our enemy has nothing to do with Islam or conversely that every Muslim is prejudged guilty – then our national conversation crumbles into simple sound and fury.
