My sister sent me a simple question: Global Warming - What do you think?

What I think is that there seems plenty of data to indicate slight warming trend, which may continue. There is also data to show that the Earth has been significantly warmer and colder in the past, long before humans existed.

What I don’t buy is that we know whether humans play a primary, moderate or even significant role in that trend. We don’t know either way, I would say. Of course the recently disclosed emails don’t help the proponents’ case, although some of the statement are less damaging than the opponents want to make them out to be.

I have had the impression for some time that the current passionate advocacy (I might even say frenzy) is more akin to religious fervor than scientific discussion. Have you ever heard anyone snap back, “The debate is over!” when the discussion was truly based in mutual respect and devotion to find the truth?

Part of the problem is that no one who advocates controls based on the assumption that global warming is serious and human-induced can accept anything less than 100% devotion to their view. You can’t, for instance, make much headway saying something like, “Well, I don’t think that the draconian measures you have in mind are necessary or merited, given the thin support available, but of course having cleaner air and water and using less energy are obviously desirable for their own sake, so we certainly should continue to innovate and motivate to achieve all of those goals. You just can’t commandeer the world’s entire economy, bring it to its knees, and install your own dictators (call them whatever you like) to decide who gets to use what when or how much and so on and so on.”

In a typical gathering of the acolytes of this new religion, you wouldn't be able to get past the second comma in the first sentence. In hardcore gathering you wouldn't get as far as the first comma.

In the first Star Trek movie, the silicon “life form” (maybe) V’GER takes over Lt. Ilia and through her talks about the “carbon based infestation of Enterprise.” Global Warming Fundamentalists have a similar view, sort of like modern day Puritans. We (humans) are the infestation. And accordingly, anything we do that makes life more enjoyable or easier must somehow be too energy-intensive and therefore wrong, and we must be stopped. We simply cannot be allowed to consume or emit anything beyond some meager amount that guess-who will decide.

It’s a mess. Like so many of our discussion these days. They aren’t discussions. They are sermons, delivered to opposing choirs (yes, the exact opposite claim - that it's not serious and even if it is it has nothing to do with humans - is just as much a faith-based outcry), and with the loudest preachers taking control one after the other and yanking the rest of us around.

I guess I think that the Global Warming hysteria (yeah, that’s what I’d call it) is part and parcel of having raised a population for generation without the desire or ability to ask a good question, or if asking, without the desire or ability to listen respectfully to the answer and consider whether or not something useful was communicated, and if not to ask another question until both parties seem to understand each other. And then to ask a few more to see if the seeming understanding leads to anything productive. But you have to have that intent to begin with.

To correct the old boy from Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is not a failure to communicate. What we have here is a failure to intend to communicate. What we have here is a desire to control everyone who doesn’t agree with us, or at the very least have them dismissed as stupid.”

Scary.

Part of what’s scary is that we shouldn’t be surprised by this. History is full of examples. It is the rule, not the exception. And yet we continue to allow it take the reins again and again. What have we been teaching our children for 50 years that they should grow up behave like this?

All we can hope for is that those who know (that hunger for power is insatiable in those who give in to it) do not give up resisting the tide.

Hang in there.

I am always surprised when my friends are surprised when I link together the chaos churning along the U.S.-Mexico border and the unrelenting Islamist pursuit of the destruction of the United States of America.

To start with, even if Mexico were falling apart all on its own, the situation would be bad enough. Our southern border is completely out of control. Muslim men have been captured crossing among other illegals. One is too many, but the numbers, widely unreported, perhaps unknown, are probably more like hundreds per month.

It is a safe bet, though, that Mexico is not coming to such a violent state all on its own. Think for a moment about the increased incidence of beheading. To cut a long story short, you only have to think for a moment to realize that this signature technique of Islamists is on the rise and not by coincidence.

Think how much is gained for al Qaeda, or any similarly minded group, by joining in the fray south of the border, in fact by ramping up the fray as much as possible.

A patient and very canny enemy would be quick to make use of the confusion along the border to slip operatives into the country, knowing that they have safe haven in mosques across the nation. All the safer because almost certainly very, very few who attend a particular mosque would have any idea that it was used for such activity. You cannot give away what you do not know. If it takes longer to move operatives around because even other Muslims are being protected from the knowledge, so what? Anyone paying attention knows with great clarity that al Qaeda is nothing if not patient and canny.

Such an enemy would be certain to realize that anything that contributes to the chaos on our border is to his advantage. Ramping up any sort of violence along the border would be especially appealing if it can be related to the movement of drugs. These produce a cash flow of obvious value, and there is the additional benefit of insuring that the infidel speeds up his own demise by getting increased access to the drugs without which he can apparently simply not get along.

If I am an al Qaeda planner, then I am sending my best trainers to every drug gang in Mexico, offering to help train them in tactics that could increase their effectiveness, both at distributing drugs and at taking control of the countryside. How could I say no?

Any increase in violence that accompanies the effort is to the good. If I also get a cut of my clients' drug money, so much the better. Then I can afford to send even more trainers and operatives. I will defeat my enemy with the money he gives me to feed his weaknesses.

How could it get any better? It's a tactic with no downside. It costs little to support my trainers in Mexico. If they are at all effective, they generate capital by taking some off the top for their help. And no matter which gang is rising in any region, it is to my benefit all around. I can even trust my trainees to die happily if Gang A wipes out Gang B and their trainers. They have died in service of the cause. Seventy-two virgins await them.

All this adds up to a very unpleasant certainty. The United States is headed for another major attack, and sooner rather than later. There can be no doubt whatsoever on this score. Operatives are already in place around the country, unless al Qaeda is simply inept and has completely missed this opportunity. Is there anyone daft enough to characterize al Qaeda in this way?

No diplomacy, no containment efforts, no international efforts can prevent this in the absence of even the pretense of controlling our borders. More than failing to protect against it, we cannot seem to get ourselves as a nation to accept that it is there to defend against, regardless of what we do or say in the world. The stupid things we do from time to time certainly provide a boost for the enemy's marketing efforts, but they are not the cause of his actions. To believe otherwise is to ignore all of Islamic history and the enemy's own contemporary declarations of purpose.

The Islamists know exactly what they are about. They are continuing a fourteen hundred year old campaign to bring the enlightenment of Islam to the infidel. Everything is fair. There are no limits, no restrictions. There may be moderate Muslims who do not support that notion, but they have no more influence on the Islamists than anyone else. And in a reprise of the sometimes willful ignorance of German citizens through the rise of Nazi power, many Muslims will accept our nation's fate stoically. Insha'Allah. (إن شاء الله). If this is the will of God, so be it.

Some will say that it is just nuts to impute to al Qaeda and its ilk such a grandiose plan as I have described. They are overlooking all the signs that Islamists see indicating their inevitable, even pending, victory.

Islamists undoubtedly draw a straight line from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers to the collapse of the U.S. and world economies. They have brought this about.

Have no doubt. This is how the situation is being sold in quarters where it counts, where support for such attacks is high and where resources are being sought and obtained. Nothing attracts money like success. Striking in the infidel's own cities, bringing down the infidel's economy, and then huge portions of the world's economy as well, all make for a pretty good resume. Wouldn't you hire someone with that track record if destruction of the U. S. were your goal?

One great problem we have as a nation is that we are not exactly a nation. We do not understand what we have and what we offer that unite us. We do not believe as a nation that we are, in spite of faults, a force for good. And we do not have enough sense of history to understand that there is actually an enemy committed to our destruction. When we do admit the possibility, we do not respect that enemy sufficiently to understand the patience, the resolve, the ingenuity, the genius of that enemy.

If you are still naively racist or "modernist", you may believe that the enemy is backwards, because you see styles of dress that "look funny" to you, or you see primitive conditions prevailing everywhere your enemy holes up. These are distractions and utterly irrelevant. This enemy may be "backward" in some trivial sense of the word, but he is not stupid, or slow, or ever distracted.

The next attack in the U. S. will be breathtaking. It will be widespread and coordinated. In 2001 a few cities and highly prized targets were involved. By 2014 at the very latest, there will be an attack on a much grander scale, assembled from far more and much simpler strikes, utterly audacious in concept, and stunningly simple.

Anybody who laughs at the possibility or minimizes the likelihood is simply not paying attention, or else has a reason to want you not to pay attention.

In a world where some will argue complexity everywhere in order to avoid clarity anywhere, we must figure out, as a nation, that the choice now is as simple as it was when Benjamin Franklin first published his famous cartoon: Join (Unite), or die.