February 27, 2005

As a boy in single digits growing up in part in southern rural Florida in the 1960s, I would spend hours watching the myriad critters that called the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee and the warren of canals in that part of the state home. The creatures my eyes surveilled were many and diverse, and I paid special attention to how each animal had adapted to its environment.

The anhinga, a.k.a. water turkey and snake bird, would dive under water and catch bream with its beak, with which it would then surface, toss into the air and swallow head first so the dorsal spines of the fish did not jam in the bird’s throat.

The alligator would quietly sneak up from under water on a log crammed with napping turtles and then lunge at one from below, the loud snapping and crunching of the turtle’s shell telling the tale of life and death.

And the manatee or sea cow would casually gobble water hyacinth as it used its broad tail to slowly maneuver beneath the tasty plants that had been imported into Florida from South America, likely during the 1884 Cotton States Exposition in 1884 in New Orleans.

I had no idea, though, after reading Darwin’s The Origin of Species for the first time, that successful societies evolve in a manner similar to species. Later in life, after reading a great deal of history and after visiting 40-some-odd countries on every continent that has countries, I would recognize this fact and would come to know that no society is immune to this phenomenon. But in the case of societies, some actually de-evolve, meaning they once had the ability to adapt to changes but later lost that ability.

Enter societal evolutionary factors al Qaeda, Ward Churchill and the Churchill cult.

Unlike the nearly four years following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other Hawaiian targets, it took America only a few months to turn on itself after the attacks of 9-11. Even years after World War II ended, Americans were still pretty tight as a nation and could easily understand threats when they popped up.

That began to change (read: the nation began to de-evolve) in the 1960s, when Americans began to be unable or unwilling to recognize the importance of stemming threats to democracy abroad before those threats arrived on our shores. But by December 2001, America as a whole, despite the worst attack on them in history, could not or would not grasp the nature of that which threatens to this day its very survival.

Global asymmetric warfare against Muslim terrorists may be too complicated and too unsettling a concept for us to effectively adapt to as a people. And as Darwin told us, those who fail to adapt, die.

Like the Roman Empire, arrogance is perhaps the foremost factor working towards the demise of America. Many Americans don’t believe America could succumb to Islamic terrorism.

Following arrogance is liberal hatred for those who are willing and even anxious to defend the very principles that make liberalism possible.

Self-loathing is next, with the blame-America-first faction (Ward Churchill, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Robert Byrd, et al) telling us that America had it coming because of its desire to see freedom spread to people other than the lily white.

Finally we have pure ignorance. Many Americans do not understand that the First Amendment does not overrule laws like Sections 2381 (treason) and 2385 (advocating the overthrow of the government) of Title 18 of the United States Code. Ward Churchill’s acts are treasonous (they aid and comfort the enemy) and he publicly advocates the overthrow of the government and total destruction of America. We have his words to these ends on tape and in writing.

Now 200 of Churchill’s hate-filled sycophants—all University of Colorado faculty members—are demanding in a full-page newspaper ad that the investigation into their hate-mongering god’s pro-terrorism anti-American activities be terminated.

The dodo became instinct when it could not deal with new threats to its existence. A mere 81 years passed from the time those threats were introduced to the dodo’s habitat to the day the last of the dodos walked in the denuded forests of Mauritius.

There’s a movement afoot among liberals to change our national bird to the dodo.

Who among us will stop them?

Bob Newman