How tragic and yet oddly insightful and revealing…in a terribly chilling way.

A terror attack launched by a radicalized Muslim immigrant to France has killed more than eighty people so far, including numerous children. The horrific attack was carried out when the French people were celebrating Bastille Day.

If you do not understand the significance of Bastille Day, you should know that it marks the storming of a brutal 18th century prison within which French political prisoners were once held arbitrarily by royal authority. The significance of the holiday is not simply French; it marks the beginning of a continental European transition from totalitarianism to democracy… freedom… liberté!

The significance of the holiday was not lost on ISIS, either.

What many of our elected political leaders fail to understand is the nature of ISIS and the threat posed by radical Islam as a whole.

Many, including President Obama, do not see ISIS as an existential threat — they either fail, or refuse, to do so. They claim ISIS is an annoyance, a nuisance, albeit a deadly one. To them, a resurgent Russia or a militarizing China constitute genuine existential threats. Our political leaders will say that nations with nuclear weapons pose a real risk to our overall vitality, terrorism does not.

They are wrong.

To understand the true nature of ISIS you have to understand the core of the Islamist threat. It seeks your total destruction or submission to Islam. The likelihood that ISIS, al Qaeda, or any other group can completely kill all Europeans or Americans is silly. They do not have the means to do so. We know this and so do they.

But it is important to understand that the definition of “total destruction” need not necessarily mean “death.” The total destruction of the enemies of Allah could be effected through a more calculated and strategic way — the destruction and dismantlement of the liberties that make Western Society so unique.

If they make you change in a way that fundamentally dismantles the underlying principle of Western Society, Individual Liberty, then they win a crucial theological goal: make the nonbelievers question their own security when they place their trust in anyone other than Allah.

In places like Germany, women are sexually assaulted for dressing in what might be considered a “sexy” way. Charlie Hebdo represented an unapologetic platform for freedom of expression. The list of targets against symbols of liberty grows on a near daily basis.

Thursday’s barbaric attack on a Bastille Day celebration was more than an attack on soft targets. It was an attack on Bastille Day. It was an attack on the symbol of European progression toward liberal democracy.

Thus, the problem with our shortsighted and often misguided global leadership in this overall fight for cultural survival.

Every time the President of the United States argues for gun control after a massive attack, he is arguing to limit a foundational principle of the liberty we Americans consider sacred: the means to fight for and protect the other nine original pillars of liberty in the Bill of Rights upon which all other Constitutional Amendments are predicated.

Obama’s misguided demands, consequently, play directly into the hands of ISIS, which is not trying to destroy us physically, but dismantle the ideology and philosophy upon which the United States is founded.

The Bastille Day Attacks are yet another reminder that the tools of their aggression are inconsequential. Terror attacks, while tragic, should not be the focus, either. Rather, we need to have a collective understanding of the Islamist goals.

They seek to destroy the one common thread throughout all Western Cultures: Liberty.

It is time to wake up to that reality, lest it be lost forever.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/thepoint/2016/07/15/the-bastille-day-attack-was-not-aimed-just-at-france-this-was-the-big-intended-target/