As the Barack Obama campaign train sailed through South Dakota and Montana last Tuesday, it knocked Sean Hannity's "Stop Obama Express" to the wayside.

In my opinion, a "Stop Hillary Express" would have made a lot more sense. America does not like Hillary Clinton--that has been a well-known fact from the very start of her campaign in mid-2006. She could never count on the support even of a majority of Democrats. If you can't win the support of your own party, how can you present yourself as a credible representative of that party?

Mrs. Clinton is an artifact of the 1990s--when radical feminism was in vogue, when abortion was popular, when America was too comfortable for deep religious faith and moral conviction, when good looks and smooth talk were enough to get elected to the highest office in the land. That era has passed into the dustbin of history--and Mrs. Clinton should have passed into it as well, except for her unyielding thirst for power at any price and the slew of US mega-corporations from Wal-Mart to Diebold investing in her candidacy. who has been pretending that she could somehow lead our country into a brighter future.
---
I'll continue this post later. Until then, I look forward to the unraveling of the unholy alliance between Hannity and Hillary.

Mr. Hannity: The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "…unmistakable act[s] of war and crime[s] against humanity." (p. 1)

My response: Yes, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were terrible crimes against humanity which killed thousands of innocent people. They were unequivocally condemned as such by all the nations of the world.
But the tragic 9/11 events were not acts of war because they did not comply with the laws of war. According to the international laws which govern warfare, only a legitimate sovereign and leader of a nation-state has the authority to declare war against other nation-states. No ordinary civilian can do so. A civilian terrorist cannot declare war on a country all by himself, in conjunction with other terrorists, or with the financial assistance of another civilian such as Osama bin Laden any more than an escaped convict can declare himself the new chief of police. By referring to the attacks of 9/11 as acts of war, Mr. Hannity is stooping to the level of the terrorists and approving their self-proclaimed status as legitimate warriors. This is an insult to international law.

As a well-educated man, terrorist financier Osama bin Laden himself knows that his "war" against the US and the Western world is not a war legally speaking. Rather, he deliberately uses the term "war" in a broader sense to describe a tactical campaign of criminal terrorist attacks against American targets as well as a moral struggle against American cultural degradation.

Yet Hannity and many others argue that catastrophic "Islamic" terrorism represents a "new", unprecedented type of war. But even in the face of the most catastrophic transnational terrorism imaginable, the reasoning above still applies. The September 11 assault consisted of massive crimes; thus we should have responded with a series of comprehensive and effective anti-criminal measures. Instead of waging a "War on Terrorism", to eradicate international "Muslim" terrorism the United States should pursue domestic security, intelligence, investigation, and law enforcement measures; engage in greater cooperation with foreign governments; and encourage a constructive international dialogue regarding American policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In the summer of 2005, after sporadically tuning in to The Sean Hannity Show for two years, I delved into the popular radio figure's straightforward, tough-minded book written the previous year entitled, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism. Mr. Hannity's unswerving vision of the reality of evil in this book clashes head-on with our modern culture of moral relativism, and struck me as tremendously refreshing.

But on the other hand, I found the book deeply disturbing for a number of reasons. For instance, Mr. Hannity presents numerous "facts" which are either unfounded speculation or vicious lies. Second, logical flaws proliferate. In addition, Mr. Hannity failed to adequately describe and confront the numerous arguments leveled against America's post-9/11 foreign policy, especially those of Pope John Paul II against the Iraq war. Furthermore, in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Catholic Church (of which he professes to be a member), the language of the book dares to equate evil with evildoers or the sinner with the sin, suggesting a seething hatred of both. Hannity takes no prisoners, regarding critics and opponents of the "War on Terrorism", of the war in Iraq and of future wars as unpatriotic. But the biggest failure of this volume is its pernicious assumption that international "Islamic" terrorism is a much greater threat to the well-being of the Untied States than abortion, or homosexuality, or the torture of prisoners, or any other intrinsically evil act committed in or by the United States. In other words, Hannity seems more concerned that Americans be safe from terrorism than that Americans be safe from Hell. To sum it all up, Mr. Hannity's book is a classic exhibition of a new and remarkably insidious form of totalitarianism that has gripped the American government, mega-business world, media, intelligentsia, and culture—namely, neoconservatism.

After reading Deliver Us from Evil, I sent Mr. Hannity no fewer than ten emails throughout the autumn of 2005, broaching my deep concerns about the book. I called special attention to his failure to even mention the denunciations of the "War on Terrorism" and the war in Iraq by the high-profile Pope John Paul II. However, Hannity never once sent me a response. Apparently he does not like to confront uncomfortable facts that his own political worldview cannot account for. So I decided to give a fair exposition of the weaknesses of his ideology in the public square, in reply to what he has written in the book.

McCain admits that America needs secure borders. Hurray!