The Less-covered Terrorism Threat That Exists Within America's Borders

December 28, 2016

WRITER

Sitting in for Glenn on radio Tuesday, John Cardillo spent time discussing a threat he said isn't talked about nearly enough.

"If we sealed the borders tomorrow, if somehow we were able to wave a magic wand and we were able to build a 20-foot wall around the United States and we were able to mine every harbor and do these Draconian unconstitutional things, we still would only make a slight dent in a terror threat," Cardillo said.

Listen to the segment or read the transcript below.

JOHN: So we've been talking this hour about terror and some of the false narratives you've been sold by the progressive left, with regards to vetting of refugees, and regards to profiling of bad guys, no matter who those bad guys are, whether they be Islamic terrorists or La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mob. I don't discriminate. Bad guys who want to hurt people are bad guys. I want to deploy the best tactics to stop them.

But one of the things we don't speak about enough -- and I'm guilty of this as well on my show. I touch on it. But I don't touch on it anywhere near enough is a threat that's right here at home.

See, if we sealed the borders tomorrow, if somehow we were able to wave a magic wand and we were able to build a 20-foot wall around the United States and we were able to mine every harbor and do these Draconian unconstitutional things, we still would only make a slight dent in a terror threat.

And you're saying, Cardillo, you're out of your mind, what are you talking about? You sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist.

Well, no, I'm not. Because one of the things you don't hear enough about are the radical converts in prisons.

Remember, we have a very large prison population in the United States.

Now, about a year and a half ago, I had Pat Donely (phonetic) on my show, and he's a world expert with regards to prison conversion to Islam, the radicalization and weaponization of those converts. He spent about 30 years at New York City Department of Corrections. He's written several books on this and then worked with our intelligence community, training special operators on how to identify those who might be converts for America on the battlefield overseas.

And when we first spoke, I said, well, you know, I'm reading that there are about 30- to 40,000 people who convert to Islam yearly in US prisons and jails. Right? Prison is different from jail. Jail is that holding facility for misdemeanors. And before you face trial, prison is where you go after convicted.

So whether it be federal, state, local, about 30- to 40,000 people convert yearly. And I said to him, "Well, you know, how many though do you think would radicalize and weaponize?" And he said, "Oh, it's one percent or sub one percent." And I said, "Okay. Well, that's still a lot. That's still 3- to 400 people. The Orlando massacre at the gay club was carried out by one guy. San Bernardino by two terrorists. So 3- to 400 terrorists, half of which let's say might potentially be released from incarceration is pretty scary. Well, about eight, nine months later, had him on the show again, and that's his day-to-day job. He studies this. He trains our special operations community, our intelligence community.

I said, "So, Pat, is the number still hanging around 1 percent?" He said, "No, that number is creeping up to 10 percent," with the proliferation of ISIS's virtual caliphate and how well they're using social media and how they're spreading their message and going after a younger subset.

And so now let's think about how terrifying this is, right? If tomorrow, we were able to stop, 100 percent of the immigration -- from everybody. Forget even those from the 34 nations -- from everybody. Somebody that isn't in the US as of right now, never stepped foot in our nation and we were able to somehow wave a wand and get rid of everyone who would ever come here who happened to commit acts of terror, we would still be converting in our prisons and jails yearly about 3,000 people with the potential to radicalize and weaponize against us. And, again, I'm being conservative when I say half will be released shortly after that.

The number is a lot higher because our jails are overcrowded and we tend to release prisoners long before they should be. So while we're so focused on the refugee problem -- and we need to be. We need to be diligent. We need to be vigilant.

While we're focused on that, we also need to keep our eye on the ball here at home. Because if we don't do that, if we put ourselves in a position where we ignore the threat that's already here, where we don't put as much money and time and training and resources into the intelligence component of finding how who these people are, what they're doing -- and, again, what does that require when they leave prison? Well, that's going to require profiling and monitoring. And I spoke about it a minute ago, the progressive left doesn't want to do that. So they know full well that there is no mechanism right now to track these people once they leave the facilities.

But one thing I found out about seven, eight months ago -- and, Tiffany, I don't know if you know this: There's a congressman in Tennessee, and I forget his name. I think maybe Fincher. I'm not sure if that's him. But he -- he had sponsored a bill -- I don't know if it's Corker. I think it's Fincher -- something. I'll find that for you.

He is sponsoring a bill to do something that I assumed was being done. And, boy, was I ignorant. And that is to vet clergy that come into prisons. Right now, imams that are coming into prisons who are allowed to speak confidentially with inmates, they have the same confidential privileges as an attorney, they're not vetted.

It doesn't matter if that imam preaches Islamic jihad, hellfire and brimstone, night and day, calls for death to America, death to infidels, they can walk into a prison and speak unmonitored, unrecorded, whether it be audio or video, to these prisoners. They're allowed to walk into that prison, radicalize and weaponize inmates. And think about inmates, they're already prone to violence. They already hate the government because the government incarcerated them. And they're pre-disposed to hate Americans that they've committed crimes upon.

And we don't have one mechanism in place to vet these people. On the federal level, on the state level, or at the local level. And I believe that law would only apply to federal prison, which would still leave all of the state prisons and all of the local jail facilities open and vulnerable to conversion.

And it really is so dangerous. And we're not hearing enough about this. I went back through archives, CNN never -- maybe they did. But I couldn't find -- let me preface this by saying, I couldn't find one CNN story on this, in-depth. I couldn't find a Fox News story on this.

I saw pieces on blogs touching on this. But I could not find an ABC story, an NBC News story, a CBS News story on this.

The mainstream media is ignoring this. And they have the intelligence. They're being advised by their contributors, their security, their intelligence -- contributors are telling them about this. They're not running the stories.

And it goes back to ideology, right? It goes back to the ideology of the radical Islamist and the people that they are taught.

When they're radicalized and weaponized, they're not just taught to hate people in general. They're taught to specifically hate Christians. And, Tiffany, you have family in the Middle East. I mean, you have experience with this.

TIFFANY: Yeah, my family survived Islamic persecution in Iraq. I mean, they fled. They were forced to be refugees. My father fought in the Israeli War of Independence in '48. So he fought them during a Polgram (phonetic) in Baghdad as a child and then again in '48 in Israel.

And what a lot of Westerners don't understand is that this is truly systemic. Even if a minuscule portion of the world Muslim population will actually pull the trigger and become terrorists, the greater number actually harbor these very radical ideas that are rooted in the Koran.

I mean, there are numerous Koranic verses and hadis (phonetic) that I could quote that talk about the subjugation and hatred for Jews -- and to a lesser extent Christians. But definitely Christians as well.

And this is systemic in Islam. There is a tribal mindset that the western world really grapples with and has a hard time understanding.

But people who come from the Islamic world like my family -- and be they Jews, Christian, Yazidi, anyone who is persecuted -- and there are obviously wonderful Muslims. I don't want to always have to add that qualifier. Of course, there are.

But by and large, there is a tribal mindset that is taught to hate and is taught to basically, you know, oppress and subjugate those who aren't like them.

JOHN: Well, and let me put this in perspective. Because you touched on an interesting point and a critical point, right? There are good people around the world -- no matter your faith, your orientation, your race, your creed.

And so let's be very, very generous here. There's 1.7 billion Muslims in the world. Let's say -- now, even the most progressive analysts will say, and only 1 percent will radicalize and potentially weaponize as terrorists.

Well, that's 17 million.

So let's you and I be a little more generous. Let's say half a percent. That's eight and a half million. No. Let's say a quarter percent.

4.25 million Muslims around the world, a quarter percent, where one-fourth of what the progressive analysts even will acknowledge.

That's 4.25 million terrorists. The combined strength of the United States military, all services, and the active law enforcement community, as we sit here today is about 3 million. They still outnumber us by 1.5 million. To me, that's scary. And that's a number you don't hear.

TIFFANY: Listen, even Pew research did extensive studies. I mean, we're talking about Muslims who want Sharia as the law of the land. This is in countries that aren't even as radical as Saudi Arabia. The majority want Sharia to be the law of the land. In Egypt, 85 percent support the executing of apostates. Those are infidels. Those are non-Muslims.

JOHN: Oh, yeah.

TIFFANY: Jordan, 82 percent. Palestinian territories, 66 percent. Those are being Islam --

JOHN: So we're being incredibly generous with our quarter percent number.

TIFFANY: Absolutely.

I mean, just because you won't put on the suicide vest yourself, doesn't mean that you don't support it emotionally and otherwise.

JOHN: Sure.

Even in our military, in our law enforcement community, for every man and woman in the field or on the street, there's a support network behind them. You can't exist without that.

It's terrifying. But, again, we talked about this pretty much throughout the show today. It all goes back to academia. It's what you learn and where you learn it.

And Harvard University -- Harvard University, right? That shining light. That beacon on the hill that everybody looks to and is guided by in academia, Harvard University is now assisting this.

Featured Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Why the Declaration of Independence still matters — Part 2: The Declaration's structure and purpose

From the moment the 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson arrived at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776, he was on the radical side. That caused John Adams to like him immediately. Then the Congress stuck Jefferson and Adams together on the five-man committee to write a formal statement justifying a break with Great Britain, and their mutual admiration society began.

Jefferson thought Adams should write the Declaration. But Adams protested, saying, “It can't come from me because I'm obnoxious and disliked." Adams reasoned that Jefferson was not obnoxious or disliked, therefore he should write it. Plus, he flattered Jefferson, by telling him he was a great writer. It was a master class in passing the buck.

So, over the next 17 days, Jefferson holed up in his room, applying his lawyer skills to the ideas of the Enlightenment. He borrowed freely from existing documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He later wrote that “he was not striving for originality of principle or sentiment." Instead, he hoped his words served as “an expression of the American mind."

It's safe to say he achieved his goal.

The five-man committee changed about 25 percent of Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration before submitting it to Congress. Then, Congress altered about one-fifth of that draft. But most of the final Declaration's words are Jefferson's, including the most famous passage — the Preamble — which Congress left intact. The result is nothing less than America's mission statement, the words that ultimately bind the nation together. And words that we desperately need to rediscover because of our boiling partisan rage.

The Declaration is brilliant in structure and purpose. It was designed for multiple audiences: the King of Great Britain, the colonists, and the world. And it was designed for multiple purposes: rallying the troops, gaining foreign allies, and announcing the creation of a new country.

The Declaration is structured in five sections: the Introduction, Preamble, the Body composed of two parts, and the Conclusion. It's basically the most genius breakup letter ever written.

In the Introduction, step 1 is the notification — I think we need to break up. And to be fair, I feel I owe you an explanation...

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…

The Continental Congress felt they were entitled by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" to “dissolve the political bands," but they needed to prove the legitimacy of their cause. They were defying the world's most powerful nation and needed to motivate foreign allies to join the effort. So, they set their struggle within the entire “Course of human events." They're saying, this is no petty political spat — this is a major event in world history.

Step 2 is declaring what you believe in, your standards — Here's what I'm looking for in a healthy relationship...

This is the most famous part of the Declaration; the part school children recite — the Preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That's as much as many Americans know of the Declaration. But the Preamble is the DNA of our nation, and it really needs to be taken as a whole:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Preamble takes us through a logical progression: All men are created equal; God gives all humans certain inherent rights that cannot be denied; these include the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to protect those rights, we have governments set up; but when a government fails to protect our inherent rights, people have the right to change or replace it.

Government is only there to protect the rights of mankind. They don't have any power unless we give it to them. That was an extraordinarily radical concept then and we're drifting away from it now.

The Preamble is the justification for revolution. But note how they don't mention Great Britain yet. And again, note how they frame it within a universal context. These are fundamental principles, not just squabbling between neighbors. These are the principles that make the Declaration just as relevant today. It's not just a dusty parchment that applied in 1776.

Step 3 is laying out your case — Here's why things didn't work out between us. It's not me, it's you...

This is Part 1 of the Body of the Declaration. It's the section where Jefferson gets to flex his lawyer muscles by listing 27 grievances against the British crown. This is the specific proof of their right to rebellion:

He has obstructed the administration of justice...

For imposing taxes on us without our consent...

For suspending our own legislatures...

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us...

Again, Congress presented these “causes which impel them to separation" in universal terms to appeal to an international audience. It's like they were saying, by joining our fight you'll be joining mankind's overall fight against tyranny.

Step 4 is demonstrating the actions you took — I really tried to make this relationship work, and here's how...

This is Part 2 of the Body. It explains how the colonists attempted to plead their case directly to the British people, only to have the door slammed in their face:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury...

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice... We must, therefore... hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

This basically wrapped up America's argument for independence — we haven't been treated justly, we tried to talk to you about it, but since you refuse to listen and things are only getting worse, we're done here.

Step 5 is stating your intent — So, I think it's best if we go our separate ways. And my decision is final...

This is the powerful Conclusion. If people know any part of the Declaration besides the Preamble, this is it:

...that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved...

They left no room for doubt. The relationship was over, and America was going to reboot, on its own, with all the rights of an independent nation.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The message was clear — this was no pitchfork mob. These were serious men who had carefully thought through the issues before taking action. They were putting everything on the line for this cause.

The Declaration of Independence is a landmark in the history of democracy because it was the first formal statement of a people announcing their right to choose their own government. That seems so obvious to us now, but in 1776 it was radical and unprecedented.

In 1825, Jefferson wrote that the purpose of the Declaration was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of… but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm… to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

You're not going to do better than the Declaration of Independence. Sure, it worked as a means of breaking away from Great Britain, but its genius is that its principles of equality, inherent rights, and self-government work for all time — as long as we actually know and pursue those principles.

Why the Declaration of Independence still matters — Part 1: The Declaration and slavery

Patrick Perkins / Unsplash

On June 7, 1776, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, better known today as Independence Hall. Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies' independence. The “Lee Resolution" was short and sweet:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Intense debate followed, and the Congress voted 7 to 5 (with New York abstaining) to postpone a vote on Lee's Resolution. They called a recess for three weeks. In the meantime, the delegates felt they needed to explain what they were doing in writing. So, before the recess, they appointed a five-man committee to come up with a formal statement justifying a break with Great Britain. They appointed two men from New England — Roger Sherman and John Adams; two from the middle colonies — Robert Livingston and Benjamin Franklin; and one Southerner — Thomas Jefferson. The responsibility for writing what would become the Declaration of Independence fell to Jefferson.

In the rotunda of the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., there are three original documents on permanent display: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. These are the three pillars of the United States, yet America barely seems to know them anymore. We need to get reacquainted — quickly.

In a letter to his friend John Adams in 1816, Jefferson wrote: “I like the dreams of the future, better than the history of the past."

America used to be a forward-looking nation of dreamers. We still are in spots, but the national attitude that we hear broadcast loudest across media is not looking toward the future with optimism and hope. In late 2017, a national poll found 59% of Americans think we are currently at the “lowest point in our nation's history that they can remember."

America spends far too much time looking to the past for blame and excuse. And let's be honest, even the Right is often more concerned with “owning the left" than helping point anyone toward the practical principles of the Declaration of Independence. America has clearly lost touch with who we are as a nation. We have a national identity crisis.

The Declaration of Independence is America's thesis statement, and without it America doesn't exist.

It is urgent that we get reacquainted with the Declaration of Independence because postmodernism would have us believe that we've evolved beyond the America of our founding documents, and thus they're irrelevant to the present and the future. But the Declaration of Independence is America's thesis statement, and without it America doesn't exist.

Today, much of the nation is so addicted to partisan indignation that "day-to-day" indignation isn't enough to feed the addiction. So, we're reaching into America's past to help us get our fix. In 2016, Democrats in the Louisiana state legislature tabled a bill that would have required fourth through sixth graders to recite the opening lines of the Declaration. They didn't table it because they thought it would be too difficult or too patriotic. They tabled it because the requirement would include the phrase “all men are created equal" and the progressives in the Louisiana legislature didn't want the children to have to recite a lie. Representative Barbara Norton said, “One thing that I do know is, all men are not created equal. When I think back in 1776, July the fourth, African Americans were slaves. And for you to bring a bill to request that our children will recite the Declaration, I think it's a little bit unfair to us. To ask our children to recite something that's not the truth. And for you to ask those children to repeat the Declaration stating that all men's are free. I think that's unfair."

Remarkable — an elected representative saying it wouldn't be fair for students to have to recite the Declaration because “all men are not created equal." Another Louisiana Democrat explained that the government born out of the Declaration “was used against races of people." I guess they missed that part in school where they might have learned that the same government later made slavery illegal and amended the Constitution to guarantee all men equal protection under the law. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were an admission of guilt by the nation regarding slavery, and an effort to right the wrongs.

Yet, the progressive logic goes something like this: many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, including Thomas Jefferson who wrote it, owned slaves; slavery is evil; therefore, the Declaration of Independence is not valid because it was created by evil slave owners.

It's a sad reality that the left has a very hard time appreciating the universal merits of the Declaration of Independence because they're so hung up on the long-dead issue of slavery. And just to be clear — because people love to take things out of context — of course slavery was horrible. Yes, it is a total stain on our history. But defending the Declaration of Independence is not an effort to excuse any aspect of slavery.

Okay then, people might say, how could the Founders approve the phrase “All men are created equal," when many of them owned slaves? How did they miss that?

They didn't miss it. In fact, Thomas Jefferson included an anti-slavery passage in his first draft of the Declaration. The paragraph blasted King George for condoning slavery and preventing the American Colonies from passing legislation to ban slavery:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights to life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere... Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

We don't say “execrable" that much anymore. It means, utterly detestable, abominable, abhorrent — basically very bad.

Jefferson was upset when Georgia and North Carolina threw up the biggest resistance to that paragraph. Ultimately, those two states twisted Congress' arm to delete the paragraph.

Still, how could a man calling the slave trade “execrable" be a slaveowner himself? No doubt about it, Jefferson was a flawed human being. He even had slaves from his estate in Virginia attending him while he was in Philadelphia, in the very apartment where he was writing the Declaration.

Many of the Southern Founders deeply believed in the principles of the Declaration yet couldn't bring themselves to upend the basis of their livelihood. By 1806, Virginia law made it more difficult for slave owners to free their slaves, especially if the owner had significant debts as Jefferson did.

At the same time, the Founders were not idiots. They understood the ramifications of signing on to the principles described so eloquently in the Declaration. They understood that logically, slavery would eventually have to be abolished in America because it was unjust, and the words they were committing to paper said as much. Remember, John Adams was on the committee of five that worked on the Declaration and he later said that the Revolution would never be complete until the slaves were free.

Also, the same generation that signed the Declaration started the process of abolition by banning the importation of slaves in 1807. Jefferson was President at the time and he urged Congress to pass the law.

America has an obvious road map that, as a nation, we're not consulting often enough.

The Declaration took a major step toward crippling the institution of slavery. It made the argument for the first time about the fundamental rights of all humans which completely undermined slavery. Planting the seeds to end slavery is not nearly commendable enough for leftist critics, but you can't discount the fact that the seeds were planted. It's like they started an expiration clock for slavery by approving the Declaration. Everything that happened almost a century later to end slavery, and then a century after that with the Civil Rights movement, flowed from the principles voiced in the Declaration.

Ironically for a movement that calls itself progressive, it is obsessed with retrying and judging the past over and over. Progressives consider this a better use of time than actually putting past abuses in the rearview and striving not to be defined by ancestral failures.

It can be very constructive to look to the past, but not when it's used to flog each other in the present. Examining history is useful in providing a road map for the future. And America has an obvious road map that, as a nation, we're not consulting often enough. But it's right there, the original, under glass. The ink is fading, but the words won't die — as long as we continue to discuss them.

'Good Morning Texas' gives exclusive preview of Mercury One museum

Screen shot from Good Morning Texas

Mercury One is holding a special exhibition over the 4th of July weekend, using hundreds of artifacts, documents and augmented reality experiences to showcase the history of slavery — including slavery today — and a path forward. Good Morning Texas reporter Paige McCoy Smith went through the exhibit for an exclusive preview with Mercury One's chief operating officer Michael Little on Tuesday.

Watch the video below to see the full preview.

Click here to purchase tickets to the museum (running from July 4 - 7).

Antifascist mob goes FULL fascist in Portland

Over the weekend, journalist Andy Ngo and several other apparent right-leaning people were brutally beaten by masked-gangs of Antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon. Short for "antifascist," Antifa claims to be fighting for social justice and tolerance — by forcibly and violently silencing anyone with opposing opinions. Ngo, who was kicked, punched, and sprayed with an unknown substance, is currently still in the hospital with a "brain bleed" as a result of the savage attack. Watch the video to get the details from Glenn.

Glenn's Show Prep