What keeps me awake at night is the terrible fear that those we elect to hold public office might not have our best interests at heart. This writer believes that his particular fear is the spawn of some lurking, hulking beast too large to comprehend. But what should really give me cause for alarm are these intercontinental ballistic missiles with electromagnetic pulse technology.

In recent testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, President of the Center for Security Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan organization (according to their Web site), Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. said recently, of the danger posed “to our nation and way of life by the threat of electromagnetic pulse attacks.”

Gaffney added, “as China is one of the potential adversaries who understand our nation’s acute vulnerability to such attacks, I urge members of this committee to ensure that the findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission on the EMP threat … are presented to the full House with a view to implementing as quickly as possible.”

And then there is the leftist government now in power in Venezuela. Are they as dangerous as China seems to be? American televangelist Pat Robertson said just last week that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was “a terrific threat” who would export communism and extremism throughout North and South America. Robertson also went on to call for his assassination.

Chavez might not be able to threaten us with pulse tipped ballistic missiles but he’s pretty close with Castro (and that too has Robertson riled up).

Could The Beard and Chavez conspire to unseat United States influence in the Western Hemisphere? Maybe they’ll somehow get a hold of some sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads, set them loose in the Caribbean, and hope that these long-bodied, cartilaginous and armed fish, will somehow swim up the Mississippi and wreak havoc on the American heartland.

America’s elected officials would have us look outside of our borders for threats to our way of life. Obviously we can’t worry about rising gas prices and healthcare costs when innumerable foreign entities are looking to take us out. We can’t do anything about our crippling energy dependency on unstable nations in the Middle East when terrorists can blow themselves up on any street corner in any American city at any time.

We can’t concern ourselves with the status of public education when the people “over there” hate us for our freedom.

The public needs to get its mind off of the vague threats of some unforeseen future catastrophe and deal with the real problems facing ordinary Americans. Do we need to always look upon the globe with a paranoid world view?

Who can forget Vice President Dick Cheney’s comments about the threat of Iraq taking the shape of a mushroom cloud hovering on the horizon of some U.S. city? The U. S. can’t fix a world that wasn’t broken to begin.

Kyle Hardwick can be reached at [email protected]