Except it is not being fought on foreign soil, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe or Vietnam.

It’s closer.

Except it does not involve soldiers, guns, nuclear weapons, planes, tanks or warships. In fact, there’s nothing physical about the greatest war in United States history.

It’s a war of philosophies, of minds and of sheer will.

And we are asleep. We’re asleep in our foreclosed homes and reduced salary positions as our very infrastructure crumbles around us. If we’re not careful, we will wake up one day to find that the United States are gone, living on in name only.

Remember that we must learn from the lessons of history or be doomed to repeat them?

We could be already.

Many speculate the Roman Empire fell, over the period of 300-plus years, due to overexpansion and inflation.

Due to the growing size of the empire, a massive budget was required to maintain many key components essential to its survival. This included roads (required for communication, transportation, and the moving of armies) and aqueducts ( as many of Rome’s cities relied on the water that it provided).

At the time the empire was fighting enemies on all sides due to its expansion into its territories, it was also contributing huge sums of silver and gold to keep up its armies. To try to combat both problems, the empire was forced to raise taxes frequently, causing inflation to skyrocket. This in turn caused the major economic stress that some scholars attribute as one of the causes for Rome’s decline.

Um, anything seem vaguely familiar here?

Projecting ourselves as the world’s watchdog and beacon of light has left us with enemies on all sides. This is not a product of President Bush alone, or President Clinton before him, whose policies placed a great deal of venom into the minds of the Middle East.

When you look out for everyone else, often you lose sight of your own problems and issues. By growing our national debt so much in the last 10 years that it equals what it took 250 years to build up, we have become that guy – you know, the one who goes ahead and buys stuff they can’t afford, puts it on the charge card and figures they will deal with it later?

Well, it’s later.

We’ve ignored our infrastructure – our educations and our economy, namely. The BP oil spill happened because we quit paying attention. Katrina happened because we ignored the fortification of New Orleans to natural disasters. Naturally, the first reaction is to blame what was not done to fix it – but that is America’s biggest problem, we want things fixed, not solved. There’s a big difference between the two.

Early on, and part of the philosophy that this country was found upon, American political leaders and average citizens logically thought through issues that faced us. We identified the problem, noted multiple options for solution, implemented, then tweaked those solutions as necessary.

Was it perfect? No, as anything rarely is perfect. But it was an enlighted, educated and rational method of republican (small r) values. We’re not a democracy – we’re a republic, or have we forgotten the pledge of allegiance?

Perhaps that is the biggest problem facing the United States – we’re forgotten our pledge, most likely because we can’t repeat it out loud anymore. We’ve become so concerned with being politically correct, we’ve become apathetic to everything.

It’s not about health insurance and gay marriage or equal rights, it’s about the entitlement that people feel. It’s about what’s mine, not what’s ours.

We always shared very little in common with each other, but now, we don’t even share the same concept of liberty, freedom and what American Revolution stood for.

We’re at a tipping point. It’s the point in the roller coaster ride where you’re just about to drop. And the crazy carnie with the drop lever is our current President.

While it’s tactically and fatefully wrong to blame one person – you just can’t – it’s hard to notice there’s a drastic difference in the philosophy of President Obama and pretty much everyone who took the oath of office before him.

Obama promised change, and for certain, he is making good on that promise. It took a while, but his landmark change, the healthcare reform, must be looked at through a different scope. It goes beyond just revamping the healthcare industry in the United States and directly to core values of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to the depths of the principles and foundation of this country.

President Obama is a huge practitioner of the Alinsky Method. He spent years teaching workshops on it.

Basically, the Alinksy Method is concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people. It’s core idea is to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace through revolution.

Remember Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008?

She said, ‘Barack stood up that day,’ (talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods), ‘and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about ‘The world as it is’ and ‘The world as it should be…’ and, ‘All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do – that we have an obligation to, fight for the world as it should be.”

They are powerful, moving and motivating words. Remember carefully that we are a nation of problems and we want those problems fixed. What we need is problems solved.

The larger question from Michelle Obama’s quote is simple: who and whose values determine the world as it should be?

The Alinsky Method, a form of Neo-Marxism, suggests that a “Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage – the political paradise of communism.” (1)

President Obama is currently doing this, first with healthcare reform – it’s a guise to end capitalism by taking healthcare into the hands of the government. But it doesn’t stop there.

Obama constantly blames the current Washington landscape for lack of change. He blamed the system for not reacting quickly enough to the BP oil spill. How is this crisis any different than Hurrican Katrina, in terms of how quickly it was dealt with?

It’s easier for most citizens to forgive President Obama because he’s so likable. He says all the right things, wears all the right clothes. He smiles and is engaging. He fills out NCAA tournament brackets, knows his sports and pop culture and even petitions on where he would like to see LeBron James play next season. He’s adept at dealing with the media and crisis and has a strong vocabulary.

In other words, he’s the opposite of President Bush, who lacked the verbal skills and was not as strong in crisis. Heck, when Bush owned the Texas Rangers, he even traded Sammy Sosa, losing major sports points there.

None of that matters or makes one a better or worse leader of a nation, though.

What matters is how well that leader upholds our values and the Constitution of the United States. That’s what they were elected to do. Every President was brought in to monitor and mitigate issues, to use those core documents as a way to solve problems.

And so what’s frightening is this:

“The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves….The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means…The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be.” (1)

That statement is found on pages 25 and 26 of Sal Alinsky’s book. Notice anything, say, about the world as it is or the world as it should be?

Rationing from some to give to all teaches nothing. The only thing gained from that approach is a lazy, apathetic society that expects things to be handed and given to them. Once upon a time, we had to fight to gain our freedom. Now, we take that freedom so literal that we’re blindly giving it up.

President Obama has us right he wants us. We’re awake, but we’re oblivious to the infiltration. He wants to makes us feel as if we know him and we can trust him. In turn, that builds up his innate ability to communicate the unreasonable into the believable. The slogan “Change We Can Believe In” takes on new meaning. It’s not the change part – it’s the belief part.

He wants us to believe. In other words, put faith in him.

That is more than a slightly dangerous proposition, as true faith is and has always been reserved for religion. The simple fact is, President Obama is becoming a kind of cult, a religion if you will.

That was never the intent of the President of the United States, the office or the one holding it.

During moments like this, and there have been several in the past 20 months, I’m reminded of this:

“Whether by innate character or the oath you took to defend the Constitution or the weight of history that falls upon you, I believe you to be an honorable man, sir.” – Ben Gates to The President in “National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.”

That’s not even the best quote of that scene really. The follow-up is even better:

The President: “Gates, people don’t believe that stuff anymore.”
Gates: “They want to believe it, sir.”

And we do want to believe it, as in oaths and innate character. Not in a person, but in ideals and principles that ground us and unite us.

Alinsky’s tactics were based, not on Stalin’s principles, but on the Neo-Marxist strategies of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process rather than a bloody revolution, Gramsci’s transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes.

And that’s the fear.

Or it should be.

We’re asleep – and it’s time to wake up.