Most Americans are comfortable with the phenomenon that over time we begin to resemble our pets. Most Americans would not find much comfort in the realization that over the last 6 years we have begun to resemble our enemies.

To wit; the sudden political emergence of the term ‘Caliphate,’ a darkening apparition which should send us rushing to the mirror for a second look. The word (ca•lif•ate) has its origin in the religion of Islam and refers to Islamic domination of the world by the subjugation of all civil and political laws to a supreme religious theocracy. Jihad is their holy war to achieve it.

At first blush, the idea that God must inevitably trump politics sounds deceptively harmless, but it’s not; especially considering that the philosophy surfaced in a 1964 manifesto* by Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb and has now been quietly co-opted by Bush apologists and franchised to the Department of Justice.

The gang at DOJ was recently revealed when their Oz curtain was rudely dragged aside by three decidedly political events; first, the exposure of an apparent government epidemic of unconstitutional hiring practices; second, a disgraceful recitation of 120 or more ‘I can’t remembers’ by America’s #1 Lawyer; and third, the public revelation that 150 graduates of a 4th tier Christian law school had been hired by the DOJ and were now responsible for adjudicating our country’s cardinal issues. On its own merits, this last event should have sent a luminous flare into the darkness of public apathy.

By abandoning America’s honorable tradition of seeking and promoting the best and the brightest, President Bush’s strategists chose instead to populate the Justice Department with a crew of compliant bottom-of-the-barrel barristers, hired not for their understanding of the law, but rather for their love of the holy scriptures.

For some, glassy-eyed fervents at the big tent show, this might seem a stunning example of the Hand of the Almighty at work. However, when all-of-the-mighty are Bush-bred elephants bent on stampeding a major re-draft of the constitution “…tearing down the wall between church and state in America and enmeshing the two,” a policy openly advocated by Prof Ashcroft and 4th tier Regent University founder Pat Robertson, I think it’s time once again for us to reexamine the man in the mirror.

Look deeply. Do you see that six-o’clock shadow? Well, that darkening growth on America’s cheek bones has a name; it’s the ‘Christian Caliphate,’ same word, just clean-shaven. Its presence signals the maturation of a new and terrifying American soldier, a Special Forces type, operating behind enemy lines, a grunt endowed with special powers; spiritual weaponry.

Take a second look. Is that stubble growing into a long black beard? Can the turban be far behind? Whose jihad is this anyway?

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*One line of thinking proposes that America's tragedy on September 11th was born in the prisons of Egypt in 1964 with Qutb’s work entitled "Ma'alim fi al-Tariq."