Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Aug. 22, 2002

"Time and time again on issues of defense, on issues of border security, issues of defense spending, issues of intelligence, the left in America has repeatedly been on the wrong side of those issues,” Hannity told NewsMax.com.

As his book "Let Freedom Ring” was being shipped to the market, the 40-year-old host — whose three-hour weekday radio show attracts about 10 million regular listeners, less than a year since it went national — outlined for us his case for the American people, with special attention to its first chapter, "Civilization in the Balance.”

"I don’t want to wake up one morning, and … turn on my television set … and witness what happened September 11th ever again.”

And yet, says the conservative co-host of Fox News Channel’s "Hannity & Colmes” nightly TV show, the left continues to act as if nothing happened, as if this nation were not at war, as if the deadly wakeup call never happened.

As Hannity sees it, leftist history on life-and-death issues continues as if no lessons were learned from the terrorist attacks on America.

Destroying U.S. Security

"The left is the group that wanted to unilaterally disarm. The left voted for nuclear freezes. It was Ronald Reagan who built up our nuclear defense system,” with the left fighting him every step of the way.

"It was Ronald Reagan who stood up to Gorbachev and said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ It was Ronald Reagan who wanted to go forward with Strategic Defense."

Furthermore, Hannity adds, it was Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan D-N.Y., "who wanted to get rid of the CIA. He proposed abolishing it.”

And it was Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., "in conjunction with the Clinton administration, who rendered the CIA impotent by forbidding them to deal with the unsavory characters that a person of understanding knows you have to deal with in a dangerous world where there are evil people ….”

"That’s their record,” says the rising radio-TV star, contemplating what the world will be like for his two small children. "They [left-wingers] can’t run from that. They can’t hide from that.”

Hannity, whose radio show skyrocketed in ratings on New York City’s WABC-AM, and then made its debut on a nationwide hookup just hours before hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania, noted that whenever anyone "in the years prior to 9-11 suggested controlling our nation’s borders, in a knee-jerk fashion [that person was] labeled a racist.”

Hannity’s forebears came here from Ireland and ran into discrimination on the order of "Irish Catholics Need Not Apply.” That has left him with an understanding of discrimination concerns against today’s newcomers to our shores.

Yes to Lawful Immigrants, No to Illegal Aliens

"But it’s got to be legal,” he cautions. "I favor immigration. We’ve got to know who’s here. We’ve got to know who’s coming in.”

The "visa express” scandal in Saudi Arabia, where one could simply go through a travel agency to get to America even after Sept. 11, illustrates his point.

Even in the post-Sept. 11 world, "some of these guys on the left don’t get it,” the broadcaster told NewsMax. "They want to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. They want water fountains in the desert rather than guards preventing people from crossing our borders. They want in-state tuition prices … for illegal immigrants.

"They fight tooth and nail to lower defense appropriations even in time of war. And some of them still question the role of the CIA in the modern world.”

Reagan Proved Correct

Hannity "leapt for joy” when his research took him to a 25-year-old warning from Ronald Reagan that America cripples its intelligence capability at its own peril, a warning that was tragically vindicated on Sept. 11.

Way back in June 1977, the future president castigated the Senate committee report that criticized the CIA as if our intelligence service itself were the enemy. As Reagan put it, the committee, headed by then-Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, "makes one wonder if they know who is the enemy.”

"Thirty-eight of the report’s forty pages were consumed with determining whether the CIA was operating lawfully, not whether they were operating effectively against the Soviets, the Chinese, the Cubans, the Arab world, or other threats,” Hannity notes in "Let Freedom Ring.”

Reagan concluded his 1977 broadcast with this rhetorical question: "Isn’t it time for someone to ask if we weren’t threatened more by the people the FBI and the CIA are watching than we are by the FBI and the CIA?”

Later, when he became president, Reagan appointed as CIA director Bill Casey, perhaps the most no-nonsense and most effective leader in the agency’s history. Later, it took the likes of Clinton and Torricelli to cripple what Casey had built. Only Sept. ll caused a serious re-evaluation of the left’s perennial effort to weaken or abolish U.S. intelligence efforts.

Gore Proved Wrong

For those who wonder why many Americans were thankful that George W. Bush was president on Sept. 11 instead of Al Gore, "Let Freedom Ring” cites a quote from the former vice president’s book "Earth in the Balance,” wherein he says that more money should be spent on the environment and less on intelligence, and that the rise of foreign military threats and terrorist networks were "an increasingly remote threat to our national security.”

That quotation may or may not have something to do with a report Aug. 11 in the Washington Times that "Democrats look beyond Gore” for the next presidential race. Gore’s statement could prove embarrassing if brought up in a televised debate.

Even now, a congressional panel has noted that although Congress has mandated an end to the Clinton-Torricelli policy of not recruiting undercover informants with shady pasts, the turnaround had not been implemented as of July. It was pointed out that a choirboy is hardly credible doing undercover work with terrorists.

As Hannity tells NewsMax: "We still don’t get it. We can be hit tomorrow, and it wouldn’t surprise me because we have a lot more to do. We have a lot farther to go.”

Next: Sean Hannity exposes the left’s anti-choice hypocrisy.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Al Gore

Bush Administration

Clinton Scandals

DNC

Immigration/Borders

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War on Terrorism

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"Let Freedom Ring" - Sean Hannity reveals how to triumph over the left