GROUND ZER0, New York, New York--June 7, 2003--There is no more frightening enemy than Creeping Terrorism.    Creeping Terrorism is all about letting down our guards, becoming skeptics who Complacently sit back and wait for Terrorism to strike again.

       It's like "bracket creep."   Bracket creep is a tax disease.  It's when you start to make more money but the more money you make throws you up into a higher tax bracket.   As a result, you tend to get less money than before the raise because the new tax bracket eats up the incremental raise.    Say you are netting after taxes $4,500 a month.   You get a nice raise, maybe $500 a month.   But because you were at the top of your tax bracket before, you now at the bottom of a new but higher tax bracket.  The raise of $500 is mostly consumed by the new tax.  Instead of earning net $5,000 a month, you only take home $4,600.    However, when you get another raise--if and when that happens--your net will go up.  But, for the interim, you feel as though you got robbed.
      Deficits in economics are Creeping Terrorisms.
      If your cost of living is going up four percent per year, but your wages only three percent, then you're losing ground at the rate of  one percent per year.  Eventually, your well will be dry

     Dieting is the same.  If you eat more calories than you work off, the fat will cling.  Eventually, your waistline will expand beyond the size of your pants or dresses and you'll "creep" into the next size.
     Life is all about juggling rather than balance.
     The key is to juggle the positive to be at least one percent more than the negative.
     In terms on money, one must be able to make at least one percent more than all the combined costs of living--including all taxes and inflation--to achieve profitability or growth.
     In terms of weight, one must expend at least one percent more calories than one takes in or the body will grow larger.  As age wears one's metabolism down, that means more and more effort must be made to convert the calories, more attention must be addressed to action version inaction as gravity has it way.
     Socially, politically, spiritually the same applies.  If one narrows one's thinking into too fixed corners, refusing to look at the other side of the coin and adjusting his or her opinions to include other viewpoints, the rigidity of one's view becomes so narrow there is no flexibility, no room for negotiation, no ability to evolve.
     The more right or left wing one becomes, the less chance there is for either view to sit down at negotiating tables, to resolve differences, to appreciate the fact that each has the right to their differences, but, if the world is to become a better place in the future, there must be a way for differences to meet at the table, for each side to bend and for the final agreement to be one not that justifies the present, but rather fertilizes the future for the Children's Children's Children.
     That's why the Pledge of Vigilance is a vital tool against Creeping Terrorism.
     Creeping Terrorism, like bracket creep, sneaks up on us.
     It hardens our arteries.  It makes us rigid, unbendable, unable to negotiate the future.
     Terrorism is composed of Fear, Intimidation and the worst of the Triads of Terrorism, Complacency.

     We tend to stand in Fear of the next Terrorist attack right after one happens, and then when the second one doesn't come, we start to be Intimidated that it might, and turn over our individual rights to such things as the Patriot Act that chips away at our freedom on the basis that the "government" is going to protect us.   As the water drips on the rock, we become Complacent, thinking we are powerless as individuals to thwart Terrorism, or, tend to believe that Terrorism has shuffled off into the horizon, to hunt down other victims.  We relax our grips, turn our heads to more mundane issues such as daily survival for food and rent and position.
      That's when the Beast of Terror leaps out of the bushes and jerks the rug from under us.
      Terror Creep has had its way.

      Slowly, Fear, Intimidation and Complacency has burrowed like a termite at the foundations of our lives, chewed away at the fortress beneath us and our structure crumbles.  Our economy collapses.  Our institutions start to shake.   Our images of leadership is marred as we see the fault lines of human defects widen and their fallible natures exposed as though someone cut open their guts to expose the fact they are not our heroes, our saviors.
      Instead of taking responsibility for our own lives, we protest.  We attack "them."  We throw rocks at the government as though "they" were responsible for our own neglect.  We "blame" and point fingers, never including ourselves in the equation because it was "their" job to protect "us" from all the crimes of Terrorism--including those that take away our money, our rights, our privileges.
      We become the bleating sheep of any shepherd.

      Unfortunately, we end up teaching our children that when things go wrong in life, it's "someone else's fault."
      Take the New York Times for example.  Recently, the paper fired two top editors, blaming them for the "Terror Creep" that marred the paper's credibility as the "fountain of truth."   But, is the problem the top of the heap, or the reporters within it?  How many other New York Times reporters did the same things, in greater or lesser degrees, and never got caught?
       Who is in charge of ethics?  The people at the top, or the people at the bottom?  Who is in charge of a person's freedom, the government or the individual?  Who is in charge of insuring one's wealth is secure, Wall Street or the individual investor?   Who is in charge of fighting for individual rights, the Attorney General and Supreme Court, or the mother and father who want to protect their children from a government that rules the lives of its children, and their Children's Children's Children?
       In Iraq, there is some insane belief America will help bring Iraq into the modern world, change its course with destiny, navigate it into the 21st Century.    Critics of American policy are fast to blame the Administration for not making the "conversion," for not turning Baghdad into Disneyland overnight.    Whose job is the future of Iraq?  Is it America's or Iraq's?

       Following World War II, General George S. Patton was admonished for putting former Nazi's in control of key posts in the reconstructed government.  When asked why he made that decision, he told the critics that he Nazis knew how to run the infrastructure.  He wasn't looking at the politics of his decision, but rather the practicality of it.    To get Germany back on its feet the trains and buses and hospitals and electricity had to work, and no one knew how to do it better than the people who had been doing it.    Once up and operating, those Nazis could be replaced or integrated.    Patton lost his command eventually over the politics not the practicality of his decisions.
       Vigilance is about countering Terror Creep.
       Vigilance has three parts to counter Terrorism--Courage to nullify Fear, Conviction to undermine Intimidation, and Right Actions for the Children's Children's Children to chase Complacency from the forefront.
        Vigilance is about individual responsibility, individual duty, individual commitment to battling the Beast of Terror at the doorstep of one's home, without expectations that any army or militia will appear out of the dark to rescue one from the Beast of Terror's fangs and claws.
         Vigilance is about motherhood and fatherhood of the present and future.
        Acts of Vigilance are taken to protect the future generations, and to remind them that each individual has the duty and responsibility to fight the Beast, and further, to abdicate that duty to another or a group, is an act of Complacency certain to launch Terror Creep.

       Long ago Thomas Paine warned not only Americans but the world about the Beast of Terror.   He called it "government" or "authority," and essentially rang the Liberty Bell to remind us all that the "Rights of Man" as he wrote about it in his famous book, came directly from God, from a Divine Authority, from a Higher Power.
        He was quick to illustrate the danger of passing the rights of the individual through the needle's eye of government or authority or another person.   Those rights are the sole and singular possession of each human being, and the duty to protect them rests ultimately with the individual.
        In place of protecting such rights, he claimed, lay Terrorism.  The Terrorism of government dictating rights, of monarchs claiming divine authority over subjects, of the Church claiming authority over the soul, of despots and tyrannical leaders claiming rights over land, people and property.  
        He warned against Terror Creep in his own way.
        Since September 11, 2001, America has been on the road to Terror Creep. 
        More and more rights have been subject to the whim of government under the name of Homeland Security.   More and more people have fallen into states of Complacency waiting for something to happen and relying more and more on the government to fix the ails of society--both domestically and abroad.
       But is that all folly?
       Can America or any country afford to turn itself over to others to protect its future?
       Obviously not.
       The solution to the issue of Terror Creep is to stop it.   That's what the Pledge of Vigilance is all about.
       If one reads the Pledge and signs it, posts it on the refrigerator or the computer, and daily uses it as a tool to counter Terror Creep of all different sizes and shapes--at the economic, political, social, spiritual and personal level---then Vigilance has a chance of ruling over Terrorism by at least One Percent.
       At the beginning of this article we talked about juggling Vigilance so that it was at least One Percent more dominant than Terrorism.  
       To do this, we need to be in charge of Terrorism, and to be in charge of fighting Terrorism means we have weapons to fight it.    The most powerful weapons to fight Terrorism are not bullets and bombs and spy planes and Homeland Security.
      The most powerful weapons are Courage, Conviction and Right Actions for the Children's Children's Children.

       The great Sword of Vigilance is the vow one takes through the Pledge of Vigilance to not let the Termites of Terrorism gnaw their way through the foundations of individual duty and responsibility to protect the future.
        When one is willing to stand up and fight for what is right, and to not blame others for one's plight, or to not point fingers at others for "stealing from them," but rather is willing to take action to protect the home and neighborhood from future thefts, then Vigilance is at work.
        By keeping the Pledge of Vigilance close at hand, Terrorism will creep, but not in your direction.  It will find much easier, more unsuspecting prey.  Remember, ultimately, Terrorism is a coward.  It cannot l face the truth. 
        The Pledge of Vigilance is the Truth.   Take it today.   Send Terrorism Creep on a journey far away from you.

June 6--D-Day At The New York Times--An Act of Vigilance or Terror?

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