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Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Rebecca Hagelin :: Townhall.com Columnist
Understanding 'The Siege'
by Rebecca Hagelin
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Those of you who are sick and tired of watching liberals drool over Michael Moore's miserable "Fahrenheit 9-11" are probably wondering why our side doesn't have something better to watch. Well, now we do.

Herb Meyer's video on "The Siege of Western Civilization" is taking off among conservative Americans. The video has sold out twice in just the last month ? and one students' organization recently bought 1,400 copies for distribution to all their chapters at colleges throughout the country.

In "The Siege of Western Civilization," Herb Meyer outlines the real threats to our country's security, our economy ? and above all to our culture. And he really "gets it." As Herb puts it, "Our culture is Western Civilization. This is who we are. We need to understand what Western Civilization is all about, such as the rule of law, human rights and economic liberty, and above all we need to teach this to our children. Today our civilization is under siege, and if our children don't understand what our civilization really is and what we stand for, they won't understand why it's worth defending."

Herb outlines the three main threats to our way of life and our future: the war that radical Islam is waging against us, the culture war within the United States that he calls "a second Civil War," and plunging birth rates in Europe, Japan and even here that not only will wreak havoc with our economies but could, quite literally, lead to the extinction of entire populations. And he does all this in a friendly, informal way that makes "The Siege of Western Civilization" good viewing not only for concerned adults, but for students as well.

If you ask students who attend the local public high school what "Western Civilization" is, will they volunteer such concepts as religious liberty, individual freedom and democracy? Will they talk of great art and literature, as well as daring inventions and discoveries that changed the course of history? How about the rise of the middle class and the highest living standard the world has ever known?

Not likely, according to Herb Meyer.

Let me take a moment to tell you something about Meyer, who is the kind of sharp thinker Western Civilization has long produced. This former CIA analyst was one of the first American scholars to predict the implosion of the Soviet Union. Other American intelligence officials looked at the Soviet Union and saw a bustling country with at least 3 percent annual growth as far as the eye could see. They saw a Cold War that would sooner turn hot than turn off.

Herb Meyer didn't. And he didn't have to tap any super-secret veins of information, either. He read newspapers and other completely public documents. "The most vital, most actionable pieces of intelligence aren't "secret" at all," he wrote recently on National Review Online. "They are visible to anyone with a reasonable grasp of politics and economics ..." Continued...

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About The Author

Rebecca Hagelin, a vice president of The Heritage Foundation is the author of Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture that's Gone Stark Raving Mad and runs the Web site HomeInvasion.org.

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