In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, most Americans grieved, became angry, and finally united under the singular just cause that is the defense of our sovereign nation. Well, most did anyway.

One group, when faced with the choice of either joining the majority of the nation in unified patriotism or remaining faithful to their impossible dream of international socialism-chose the latter. These dissenters were the so-called "intellectual left" and their decision to run opposite America's renewed national pride was an easy one because they warrant nary a glance from the mainstream media. The very same media that exhausts its resources exposing the "radical right," completely ignored, and in the worst instances, glorified, the radical left.

One such leftist is Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), who cast the lone dissenting vote in the House of Representatives on a resolution granting President Bush the authority to use necessary force against terrorism. Many in the press would have us believe that Ms. Lee is simply a principled pacifist, perhaps craving the spotlight reserved for such a maverick.

William Rasberry of The Washington Post paints Ms. Lee in just such a manner. He describes her decision as "admirable" and "rational" in a time of emotionally charged irrationality. He criticizes those who would call her a traitor as if they were incapable of perceiving the gravity of her decision. Mr. Rasberry is either dishonest or clueless in his assessment. In either instance he is wrong. Barbara Lee is part of the "blame America first" crowd, but much worse, she is a treacherous Communist, the face of the radical left. This is well documented.

In 1983, Ms. Lee, a staffer for an avowed Communist sympathizer and Castro supporter, Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA), accompanied her boss on a "fact finding" tour of Grenada to determine whether an airport being constructed by the Communist dictatorship was a security threat to the U.S., as our intelligence officials had determined. The tour was a hoax.

Ron Dellums and his staff operated for the sole purpose of undermining U.S. security and aiding the Communists in constructing their airport which would harbor Soviet military aircraft. Dellums staff even went so far as to submit a draft of their fact-finding memo to the Communist leaders of Grenada so that they could revise it before its submission to Congress. We know this thanks to documents seized by the U.S. military after the U.S. liberated Grenada. Barbara Lee was extremely instrumental in this operation. Of course, none of this is mentioned in Mr. Rasberry's glowing opinion of Ms. Lee. She is not alone, but her status as a U.S. Congresswoman makes her the manifestation of a radical ideology that persists throughout the nation.

Not even one week after the terrorist attacks, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill was home to a "teach-in" sponsored by the UNC Progressive Faculty Network. In this forum, leftist, anti-American professors assembled with the students whose minds they are responsible for nurturing, to thumb their noses at the U.S. in vitriolic hatred. "If I were president…I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and the impoverished, and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then…I would announce that America's global interventions had come to an end," said Socialist author, William Blum. "I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and I would use the savings to pay the reparations to our victims and to increase social services…," he went on, perhaps wistful for the days of a Clinton administration that attempted to do exactly that.

"If one [of the perpetrators] is Osama bin Laden, send the international police for him and pick up Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet on the way home," said Anthropology professor, Catherine Lutz.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast in Berkeley, California (Barbara Lee's district), American flags were ordered removed from county fire trucks in an effort to appease anti-American demonstrators who supposedly might have become violent upon sight of the flags. This is how one tramples the expression of free speech by patriotic Americans in order to appease the will of a leftist mob.

History is replete with examples of what occurs when the United States is attacked by a foreign entity; attacks from America-haters within our borders follow in kind. The overwhelming patriotism that consumes the freest nation on earth is too much for these global socialists to bear. Thus, they emerge from the basements of their secret societies, shed the camouflage of the "progressive" label, and crawl out from under the rock of the safe harbor the Democratic Party provides.

Americans must not dismiss these leftists as a few disillusioned extremists. Rather, we should permit their rhetoric and radical ideals to soak into our memories so, when these incendiary moments have passed and they once again don their disguises and return to their caves, we will recognize the true meaning of their words. When "redistribution" returns to "social equality;" when "American imperialism" becomes "American intervention;" when "global socialism" becomes "global justice;" when "disarmament" becomes "peace." And when Barbara Lee "the socialist" returns to her post in the United States Congress as Barbara Lee "the Democrat."

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