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It is time for a re-evaluation of what constitutes "danger" and "treason" in America at this time. Some may point to the New York Times v. Sullivan and the reluctance of courts to uphold treason and sedition laws as an argument, but such statements are specious in that they are often made by those who would likely be targeted under them.

The catastrophic impact of hurricane Katrina illustrated a couple of important things: the first is how surrealistic and preposterous claims of those on the left have become, such as blaming the president's energy and environmental policies for the hurricane and interpreting the sluggish response of the federal government as a calculated attempt to drown black people.

The second: how tenuous are our "civilization" and security. Strange psychological changes take place when a population goes from what is the norm for most Americans to struggling simply to find clean drinking water in the summer heat when one's domicile has been decimated and everyone around is in the same circumstance. A few years ago, there was a severe snowstorm where I live in northern Colorado. Roads were impassable for at least two days. When I dug out and was able to make it to the local supermarket, supplies were frighteningly scant. Admittedly, this was mere inconvenience compared to what the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi are experiencing, and I was well aware of the dynamic of supply chains. Still, it was a chilling reality to behold.

The more stressed the survival nature of human beings becomes, the more our pretense of high evolution and morality falls away. In the Third World, the need for basic survival requirements tends to be much more acute and the effects more dramatic, and this is one reason I believe we see more extremes there with respect to things with which Westerners cannot identify, the basic value of human life being one which springs to mind.

Here in America, it has been a very interesting summer, with gasoline prices soaring, illegal immigration crises resulting in states of emergency being declared in two southwestern states, and then Katrina. We've seen a dramatic spike in sex crimes against children, terrorist bombings in London, the arrests of terror cells in the U.S. and Europe, and heard rumors of portable thermonuclear devices having already been smuggled into our country.

In my mind, this gives rise not to the question "how bad will it get?" but "how bad will it get before something gives?" Despite the socially-unconscious America cultivated by much of the press and portrayed in films and television, most Americans still desire safety and security -- and the direction in which we are heading indicates an opposite course. It is the American majority -- the vast middle class, race, creed and politics notwithstanding -- who are experiencing the brunt of our social and economic malaise.

Those of us who pray do so in the hope that we will never see anything on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attacks or worse again. Those who do not pray, simply hope. How much worse, however, will it have to become before we begin to see vigilantism as a result of the border woes in the Southwest, or overt child predation, or a proliferation of hate crimes against Muslim-Americans? How much worse will it have to become before Americans, incrementally stripped of their respect for the sacred, their security and comfort, and finally their humanity, are prepared to put a Hitler into power? It bears mentioning that I am by no means the only individual to draw a comparison between Germany in the 1920s and America in 2005.

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