Yesterday evening I spoke at the John W. Pope Civitas Institute’s 4th Annual North Carolina Conservative Leadership Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. I spoke about September 11, and about what was hamstringing us still on this eighth anniversary from mounting an effective response to the threat of jihad and Islamic supremacism.
Other speakers at the weekend event include John Fund of the Wall Street Journal; Al Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator; radio host John Ziegler; and…Grover Norquist. I saw Mr. Norquist speak last night; he is an engaging and effective speaker. But he didn’t take any questions.
After I spoke, a local reporter came up to me and said that he had caught only the last part of my talk — the part in which I was explaining the wisdom of the non-establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment and the necessity to defend it. He asked if I said that to other audiences around the country, and I said yes, it was a common feature of my presentations — whereupon he asked if it was ever poorly received by my audiences. I told him no, it had never been anything but enthusiastically received. He then asserted that there was scant support for it among certain groups around the country, and asked me if I had ever encountered evidence of that. I told him that I had not.
He was, you see, searching for those ever elusive Christianists, the folks who are supposedly bent on subverting the Constitution and making the U.S. into a Christian theocracy. Never mind that Islamic jihadists are working actively to subvert the Constitution and insinuate elements of Sharia into this country — he has no concern for that. He would rather focus upon fictions, chasing after the shadows and inventions of the Left.