The Barbarians Are within Our Gates

If we are in a second Cold War, it sure seems awfully hot — not only at the global pressure points where we’ve come to expect conflict, but on America’s streets and campuses.

I do two things every December, as the Christmas and New Year holidays invite us to reflect on where we’ve been, the better to know where we may be headed. First, I try to assess the year’s trajectory in light of how I suspected it would pan out when I did the same thing last year. Second, like other proud members of National Review Institute’s 1955 Society, I do what I’m humbly urging you to do: make a contribution to support the work we do at National Review Institute, the nonprofit journalistic think tank that supports the NR mission.

Last year, I lamented the passing of a golden age, a Pax Americana few of us perceived we were in until it was disappearing behind us. China, a totalitarian regime of formidable economic and military might, was now threatening, not only in east Asia but seemingly everywhere, challenging America over influence, resources, and geopolitical positioning. War raged in Europe for the first time in three-quarters of a century, driven by a rapacious Russia that, though a shadow of the Soviet Union, had joined a China-led axis — in alliance with North Korea, Iran, and the latter’s proxies — in confronting the West and dashing any remaining irrational enthusiasm that History had reached a happy ending of enlightened democracy.

Things were not trending in a good direction, to put it mildly. But nothing about this dangerous drift prepared us for 2023, in particular, October 7, 2023. The barbaric Hamas attack on Israel has exploded into war — an existential war for our vital ally standing for democracy and civilization, and a war of perilous possibilities for expansion into something even worse (as this is written, Iranian proxies have attacked American forces in the Middle East over 100 times in the past ten weeks).

Perhaps worse, if that’s possible, the war has brought to the surface the epidemic of antisemitism seething in major Western cities and universities. For those who believe what their eyes tell them, it cannot be gainsaid that the plague of Jew hatred — always a reliable first symptom of a jihad against Western institutions — has been caused by the surrender of our education systems to the antinomian Left and the collapse of border security.

I’ve been a National Review reader since I was a teenager. But I’ve so happily ended up at NR and NRI because my background and passions made it a perfect fit. I had a very satisfying career as a New York conservative lawyer who worked for 20 years as a federal prosecutor, the last decade mainly devoted to national security. When I came to National Review, our founder, William F. Buckley Jr., an iconic Cold Warrior, was especially concerned that we do what we could do to oppose and unmask jihadist terror, the totalitarian wave then rolling across the United States and Europe.

That is what I was doing at the Justice Department and has always been a big part of what I do here — which is only possible because I am an NRI fellow, and the Institute’s support allows me to shed light on the legal and security developments that often start out as seemingly trivial departures from tradition, evolve into alarming trends, and, if ignored too long, grow catastrophic.

For example, I’ve written for decades that the Muslim Brotherhood – the world’s most effective sharia-supremacist organization — was building an infrastructure in the West, the foundation of which were not notorious jihadists but rather the Muslim Students Associations. First established in the mid Sixties by just a handful of obscure chapters on midwestern campuses, hundreds of MSA chapters are now on campuses across the United States and Canada. They steep students in the anti-Western animus of Islamist scholars; this grooms them to find common cause (or is it “intersectionality”) with the radical students, faculty, and administrators of the campus Left and its DEI indoctrination.

You want to know how Harvard, within days of the October 7 atrocities, could generate a statement in which nearly three dozen student associations effectively champion jihadist terrorism against the only democracy in the Middle East? That’s how.

Then there’s the border. For years at NRI, I’ve written and spoken about how we could not maintain national security absent an immigration system that vetted alien would-be entrants for anti-constitutional ideologies. This generated no small amount of scornful blowback, but it is simply a fact: While the First Amendment allows Americans to harbor and preach loathsome creeds, it does not require us to import them. As we witness the shocking displays of anti-Americanism and antisemitism on our streets and on the quad, understand it has been decades in the making, the result of forgetting both security needs and common sense.

In short: The barbarians are within our gates.

At NR, we are fighting the battle to restore order every day. As Israel fights its existential war, we see America’s broader battle for constitutional liberty, security, and the Western way of life. It, too, is an existential battle. If America lost, there would be no one left to take up the torch. We can’t let her lose. We’re here to do our part in seeing that she doesn’t.

These are the fundamentals to which WFB devoted his career, and for which he founded NR and NRI to preserve. It’s the work we do, day in and day out. That’s why I contributed today, and I hope you, too, will support National Review Institute with a tax-deductible, year-end gift.

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Our challenges are weighty, but not insurmountable. As we rise to them, we wish you joyous holidays, a Merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy 2024.