I’ll never forget asking a family member in US intelligence about the size of the threat after 9/11 and hearing “you don’t want to know”. That answer is not exactly confidence inspiring, but there was an important takeaway. Yes, there are a lot of bad people bent on doing bad things all around the world and right here at home. At the same time, there are outstanding professionals working to combat the threat here and around the world. They’re the Clark Kent’s of our society. Saving the day but we never know it. We still don’t know the extent of the full-threat around the world but we now know what the threat is here at home. Yesterday, the FBI said they’re currently investigating 850 incidents of domestic terror. Doesn’t exactly give you the warm and fuzzies but it does give you an idea of what law enforcement is up daily and how effective they are at preventing attacks from occurring.
Not surprisingly, social media is the most common denominator for radicalization. This is the latest reminder to be mindful of what our kids are doing online. Also, the most common type of threat that’s emerged is religious. 40% of domestic terror investigations involve people targeting others for their religion. This also emphasizes the need to focus on security for places of worship. But I still can’t help but think we’re stuck in a rut of addressing symptoms rather than addressing the premise of the problem.
Even if intelligence officials and law enforcement agencies are successful in thwarting all 850 threats they’re currently investigating, what about the next 850? We want to talk about mental health issues but then we don’t want to talk about the biggest proven connection in the rise of mental health issues. A lack of faith in our society. It’s in the numbers illustrated in Harvard’s study last year. Those with faith are far less likely to have mental health issues and become depressed, however, fewer Americans than ever before have faith. There are answers to these questions. The question is whether we’ll let political correctness, agenda driven educators and government officials continue to take us down a primrose path or if we’ll take a stand for what we believe in that can make a difference. May God bless you and this country.
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