The great news coming from our swift military victory in Iraq is, of course, the capture of Saddam Hussein, a man whose name will join those of the worst tyrants of modern times. His ignominious capture is yet another reason for too many Arabs to continue wallowing in their victim psychology, blaming America and Jews for their failures.

The work of taking a nation that has been held in the death grip of despotism for more than three decades to one that establishes the basics of constitutional democracy is not a job that will be accomplished in a few months or even a few years. The Iraqis, an educated, energetic people are, however, capable of it.

Even the U.S.A, after winning the War of the American Revolution, went through a lengthy period, abandoning the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution of the United States in 1789, and then having to wait until 1791 for the ratification of the Bill of Rights. From 1861 to 1865, our nation engaged in a Civil War to insure it would remain unified. Constitutional democracy is a messy business, but it is the best form of self-governance compared to everything else. Men are not angels.

Historians will, hopefully, look back at the 21st. century and say that the world moved closer to choosing constitutional democracy over Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Socialism, Statism and other forms of authoritarianism, having spent the 20th. century in a nearly constant state of war to reach this point. This new century is the dawn of the American Empire, one that must protect our national sovereignty, while extending the blessings of freedom, self-governance, and prosperity to other nations. So far, however, we are witnessing the continued movement toward Socialism and Statism in the U.S.A.

In the era of globalism, we cannot afford to live in a world where millions of people are denied the opportunity to be productive, where despots are permitted to deny education, food, medicine, and other necessities of life to people; where slavery continues; where AIDS continues; where hatred is encouraged as policy. This is generally viewed as a Liberal position, but it is also a Conservative one and that is why a Conservative President is leading the fight.

The enemies of freedom, however, never rest. Leading the fight against freedom this nearly passed year was the United Nations. It did everything in its power to keep Saddam Hussein in power!

By the end of the year, the UN held a conference for the purpose of exerting control over the Internet, the greatest instrument for freedom ever invented. The UN wants to establish control over all forms of free expression in word and speech. Fortunately, the U.S.A., Canada, and other freedom-loving nations put the “kibosh” on this latest effort to impose the slavery of a global government on the world.

The UN experienced another major defeat when Russia decided not to ratify the Kyoto treaty that insanely asserted it could “control” the climate in the name of the utterly discredited notion of “global warming.”

It was the unilateral decision of the United States and its multinational coalition of freedom-loving nations that demonstrated the UN’s impotency, when they removed the Ba’athist regime from control of Iraq. What was the response of the Islamist enemies of freedom? They bombed the UN headquarters in Iraq, and the UN retreated immediately. A new generation is learning the lessons of the UN's failed predecessor, the League of Nations.

If anyone thinks that the West and its institutions are not under attack, they should recall the bombing of the Baghdad headquarters of the International Red Cross as well as that of the United Nations. The list of terror bombings around the world is testimony that the war between Islam and the rest of the world continues.

Here at home, the assaults on the U.S. Constitution continued and, to the growing alarm of many people, they were led by the U.S. Supreme Court which, having previously sanctioned abortion, went on to sanction sodomy, depriving the individual states of the American federal union of their right to determine their own laws on such matters. Nowhere in the Federal Constitution will you find any reference to either of these socalled “rights” -- the rights to have abortions and engage in sexual perversion. The Tenth Amendment clearly states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

An assault on the free expression of religion, the cornerstone of the moral power of the Constitution, continued as the opponents of religion and the advocates of rigid and thoroughgoing secularism sought to remove any symbol or statement of religious faith from public display or discourse. Even the sanctity of marriage, always reserved to the bond between a man and a women, the bedrock of all societies, was under attack by the courts. The Supreme Court continued its assault on free speech by upholding the campaign finance law that imposes restrictions on political advertising prior to an election and uncouples campaign donations from the expression of free speech.

There was, however, a great victory for the voice of the people in the California special election that removed one Governor and replaced him with one pledged to fiscal sanity.

America, too, seems to be in the early stages of throwing off the shackles imposed in the name of “environmentalism.” When thousands of acres and homes in California burned, the first, tentative steps were taken by Congress to protect our national forests against the prohibitions on proper management that were imposed by the Greens. The effort remains to restore some rationality to the proper use of our natural resources and the upgrade of our system of creating and distributing electricity, and other forms of energy. A huge blackout that plunged the East Coast into darkness was a warning sign that dare not be ignored. That said, a bad energy bill was derailed and will possibly be replaced with one not designed to make corn farmers ecstatic.

Even so, the Green effort, led by groups allied against property rights, the cornerstone of capitalism, continues to put vast areas of the nation off limits to any further development, despite the fact that less than five percent of the entire nation’s landmass is developed, i.e., has cities, suburbs, highways, et cetera. The fact remains that our population, now more than 280 million, is growing and will continue to grow. People need a place to live! Denying them that right in the name of “endangered species”, in the name of deserts declared “wetlands,” or in the name of preventing “urban sprawl” is yet another Green deception.

Perhaps the best news was the astonishing swift recovery from 9-11, as the economy rebounded along with our growing determination and confidence in our ability to protect the nation from attack and our willingness to destroy our enemies no matter where they hide.

An era of pusillanimous cowardliness has been replaced by a new sense of America’s mission. It is inspiring other nations to join the fight against the enemies of liberty.

2003 was the year Americans rediscovered their courage, their faith in God, and the reasons we are the greatest living republic on the face of the Earth. There are battles yet to be fought to protect our freedom, but oh what a year it was!

Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center (www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past col- umns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Na- tions vs. the United States, both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.

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Copyright 2003 Alan Caruba

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Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
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