Romney's Wise Advice

Fire of Liberty
It seems that the folks over at the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the various other interest groups have gotten their feathers a little ruffled after Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney noted in a speech before the Heritage Foundation that the FBI shouldn't be wary of keeping a watchful eye on "radical Islamists" because they're afraid the pc banshees showing up. Now, I'm all for people practicing their religion in the confines of their churches, mosques, and synagogues unabated by the government but I draw the line when folks partake in illegal activities like preaching hate, urging jihad, weapons training, plotting violent activities and hide behind these holy sanctuaries using it as a shield against local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. It's a crying shame that a governor can be lambasted by various special interest groups because he suggested that the agencies - who were created to secure this nation from terrorism - actually do their jobs without falling into the trap of "political correctness" that seems to run roughshod over our everyday life. Thankfully, Andrew C. McCarty, a former federal prosecutor and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has provided a great bit of insight into Gov. Romney's arguments in this piece over a National Review Online. I'd say he summed these sentiments up best in the following paragraphs:

Militant Islamists are our enemy in the war on terror. Militant Islam is an ideology. Ideologies do not fall like rain out of the sky. They are taught. In this instance, we have long known exactly the places where this one is taught, and at the top of the list are mosques.

Radical mosques have been the center of indoctrination. They have been the hub for paramilitary training. They have been central to recruitment. They have been ideal for conspiratorial confabs about explosives. They have been collection points for terrorist financing. And they have been the scene of crimes (such as the provision of a gun to a government informant at the Abu Bakr mosque in Brooklyn during the run-up to the WTC bombing).

In short mosques have been safe havens — even today, even after all that has happened — because the terrorists and those who share their utopian, universalist vision know full well that if someone like Gov. Romney sensibly suggests that we should be paying more attention to them, he will be pilloried with far more vigor than the press has for examining militant Islam and than the civil-rights lobby has for defending the right of innocent Americans to live.

Romney, it should be noted, was not saying that every mosque should be scrutinized. He instead asserted that we should not shrink from wiretapping mosques out of "political correctness."

While most Republican governors in a Blue State like Massachusetts, who are facing a re-election in 2006, usually restrain themselves from making statements or taking actions that would create waves amongst the sea of liberals in Teddy Kennedy's backyard. Luckily, Gov. Romney isn't one to waiver from his convictions and beliefs and I think the folks in the state of Massachusetts appreciate such candor as well. One can see him going far if he ran for Prez in 2008. An Allen/Romney 08 run looks good to me or even a Romney/Rudy run. Things look interesting in the future.