The Rational Response to 911 — Not Taken. By Benjamin Weingarten.

The rational domestic response to 9/11 would have been for the federal government to engage in an extensive study of Islam, Sharia, the ideology and practices of both violent jihadist organizations and “civilizational jihadist” organizations, and then to calibrate a whole-of-government response to neutralize the threat posed by those animated by that ideology, and prevent it from coming to our shores and metastasizing to the greatest extent possible under the law.

Authorities would have surmised that our foes’ primary goal was to spread Islam over the world; that they would impose their totalitarian system using any and all means necessary; that that system was inherently incompatible with America, posed an existential threat to our republican system, and that its adherents would seek to exploit all of our freedoms — including our commitment to religious liberty — to advance their antithetical political and social project under banner of religion.

They would have acknowledged, in short, that our commitment to religious (and all other) freedom requires us to prevent threats to that freedom clad in religious garb — including from those seeking to overthrow our nation with a hostile, totalitarian, theopolitical ideology in the name of Allah.

Our response would have included closing the borders, a total freeze on immigration only to thaw once policies had been implemented to mitigate the threat, the rolling up and eliminating of Islamic supremacist support networks, deporting non-citizen promoters of such subversive and revolutionary ideology, likely a related denaturalization effort, eliminating foreign funding mechanisms of such activities to all relevant public and private institutions, etc. — anything and everything possible under the law to prevent Islamic supremacists from operating in or coming to the U.S., influencing let alone coercing us, and advancing their subversive cause in our body politic. …

But what did our ruling class do instead?

Its primary feature … has been to abide if not encourage mass Islamic immigration and integration into every aspect of American society.

Lefties, it’s not your civilization to give away.

I preferred the earlier situation where they live in their countries and we live in ours. That’s what countries are for.