Loren Lippincott
Living in Germany while serving in the U.S. Air Force in the 1980s and then flying worldwide for Delta from 1990 until 2020 gave me a front row seat to the transformation that has taken place over the last 40 years in many places around the world, including many of our own larger cities.
This transformation has been brought about by an influx of people with allegiance to an ideology other than the one that served as our foundation and made America exceptional, unlike any nation in world history. Sadly, we are seeing a growing threat to our way of life, while many are lulled to passivity in the name of “tolerance.”
Recently Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard spoke on that threat. Here is a paraphrase of some of what she had to say: There is a threat to our freedom that is not often talked about. It is the greatest near and long-term threat to both our freedom and our security, the threat of Islamic ideology. It is propagated by people who not only do not believe in freedom; their fundamental ideology is antithetical to the foundation we find in our Constitution and Bill of Rights… that our Creator endowed upon us inalienable rights, the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This Islamic ideology is the ideology that fuels terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Isis, Al Shabab, and Hamas and Boko Haram and others. They must be defeated militarily as they continue to actively plot and try to attack us. They are a threat to our security and our safety. This Islamic ideology is a direct threat to our freedom because at its core it is a political ideology that seeks to create a Global Caliphate that governs us here in America, threatening Western Civilization… governance by Sharia law.
If we don’t take action to identify this threat, to define it, to call it out for what it is, and take action to defeat it, then we will find ourselves in a place like many European countries, and countries like Australia, have found themselves. Countries where you can get arrested for praying silently on the street corner, as has happened in the UK. Countries where you can be arrested for putting up social media posts that someone finds offensive somewhere.
Threats from this Islamic ideology come in many forms. In Germany they cancelled Christmas markets because of this threat. In 2025 there was a conference that was held representing organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations, which issued a call to action to use American legal and political systems to implement Sharia law. This is already underway in places like Houston. Paterson, New Jersey is proud to call themselves the first Muslim city. They are working to implement in their own government these Islamic principles that are forced on people through the use of laws or violence.
The bottom line is this, when we talk about the threat of Islamism, this political ideology, there is no such thing as individual freedom of liberty. It is fundamentally incompatible with our nation’s foundation of freedom. At its core, when we understand that our freedom comes from God, and no one else, we understand the seriousness of this is Islamic ideology threat. Because it means they deny that God is the one who has bestowed this right of freedom to every one of us.
So what do we do? We as Americans have to stand proudly for freedom and understand that a free society cannot survive if it refuses to defend itself! You don’t preserve freedom of speech by canceling it. We preserve free speech by exercising it, by using more of it, encouraging more free speech. We protect our Constitution by ensuring loyalty to the Constitution. We protect our Democratic Republic by ensuring that we, the people, elect leaders who not only believe in American values, but actually live them, leaders who are committed to ensuring we have a government of, by, and for the people and leaders who most importantly put freedom in the interest and well-being of the American people first in every single decision that they make.
Loren Lippincott represents Legislative District 34 in the Nebraska State Senate. Read his column in the Nance County Journal.