"Happy Dependence Day," the Washington Times editorial page wishes America -- and with good reason. By too many (most?) measures, we are no longer a self-governing people, no matter how many fireworks go off tonight across the country to celebrate a state of liberty we no longer enjoy. (Ask Arizona.) Meanwhile, on the National Mall, the extreme security apparatus imposed on America's 236th birthday party  -- security entry checkpoints, "eye in the sky" surveillance, sub-machine-gun armed police, undercover agents, baggage searches -- belie any notion of living in " the land of the free." Whether we admit it -- and we don't -- we are a nation under siege by Islamic jihad even as our individual autonomy falls to the encroaching superstate.

Sticking to the theme of the encroaching superstate, the Wash Times sums up:

This isn’t the state of affairs the Founding Fathers imagined as they sketched out their blueprint for a national government. In an April 1768 letter to The Gentleman’s Magazine, Ben Franklin explained his principles by writing, “I fear the giving mankind a dependence on any thing for support, in age or sickness, besides industry and frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our natural indolence, to encourage idleness and prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure; thus multiplying beggars instead of diminishing them.”

Thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts, we can finally bury Franklin’s quaint notions of self-reliance. We have a government that can take care of our every need and want, from cradle to grave, in sickness and in health. That is a transformation in our nation’s character worthy of reflection as we celebrate America’s 236th birthday.

This transformation has been a long time coming, its course set three quarters of a century ago during the 12-year-reign of FDR, whose signature "New Deal" entrenched the Marxist (socialist, Leninist, progressive, collectivist, Alinskyite, take your pick) mindset in Ever Bigger Government America. But it is not solely a taste for or reliance on government handouts that has transformed us; something darker still has remade us, as I argue  in my new book American Betrayal: The Secret Subversion and Lying Leaders That Destroyed Our Nation's Character, forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in early 2013. But (much) more on that later. The fact is, the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare is a watershed moment in what is more and more looking like the perversion, if not the failure, of the American Experiment -- the socialization of the USA.

In this latest phase of perversion, however, I don't think it can claimed that We, the People have become wards of a paternalistic or protective state. Certainly not after our central government one year ago embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, a mainstay organization of global jihad dedicated to destroying the West as a civilization; and certainly not after our central government recently hosted a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization, Gama’a al-Islamiya, inside the White House and State Department -- and not due to any mistake, it would seem, judging by the meager words of the tight-lipped State Department.

Gama'a al-Islamiya is not just any designated terrorist group, as John Rosenthal reports:

But in the midst of the controversy, one important point appears to have largely escaped notice. Not only is the historical leader of Gama’a al-Islamiya none other than Omar Abdel Rahman: the “blind sheikh” who was convicted in 1995 of plotting terrorist attacks on targets in New York City. Not only is Gama’a al-Islamiya formally designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Gama’a al-Islamiya is also, in the person of Abdel Rahman’s successor Refai Ahmed Taha, one of the five signatories of Osama bin Laden’s February 1998 “World Islamic Front Statement Urging Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.”

Presented as a fatwa, the statement, of which a translation is available here, amounts to bin Laden’s declaration of war on the United States of America. It specifically directs Muslims to attack not only American military personnel, but also civilians. Thus, it reads: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.” The statement continues, “We – with Allah's help – call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”

This was inside the White House. This was inside the State Department. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has asked DHS Secretary Napolitano to explain how that could be, but don't hold your breath. I don't believe she has yet answered Rep. Louis Gohmert's (R-TX) questions from October 2011 as to how she could have sworn in an MB-tied operative and devote of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, Mohamed Elibiary, to a DHS advisory council, complete with security clearance (which Elibiary used to access and leak sensitive information).

Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, has skipped Dependence Day celebrations altogether, fleeing to the island of Malta.

Maybe he's stay there.