What a wondrous world we live in. We look all around us and there is so much beauty to behold. And yet, there are grave problems as well, problems which are beginning to threaten our very existence on this good earth. What are the threats we face in our time? Granted, we may be generalizing somewhat, but it seems that the threats we face fall into three general categories: the threats to our Economy, the threats to the Environment, and the threats posed by ideological Extremism. We can refer to these types of threats-the Economy, the Environment, and Extremism-as the 3-E's, for short.

An Ideology of Common Sense is a new way of thinking and a new way of talking to one another, a new framework for rational discourse, based on the proposition that even in our fractured world there exists a core set of principles which are universal in their scope, and which have universal appeal. Common sense may be the only gift we were given to bring order to our lives. In our fractured world, common sense is the common denominator!

You don?t have to be a prophet to realize that the world is moving, at an ever accelerating rate of speed, toward some sort of ultimate conclusion. We?ve been around as a species for some 2,000,000 years, and for 99% of that time we?ve used our God-given common sense to survive. But in the last two hundred years, from the Industrial Revolution to the recent phenomenon of globalization, we find ourselves hurtling briskly toward an existential culmination of world events. So I ask you, which way will we go as a species?

The United States, along with many other Western nations, find themselves embroiled in a seemingly intractable struggle against the forces of ideological extremism and terror. The enemy is not Islam. Much of Islam is compatible with Western values, and most Muslims subscribe to those values. All religions contain certain scriptural passages which are not palatable to the modern mind. Most of us, however, use our common sense to ignore such passages, even as we embrace our respective religions. The enemy is ideological extremism.