While you were sleeping...

While you were sleeping, or perhaps plotting your next social media move or counter-move in the argument over Confederate iconography, the utterly meaningless spat over the latest eruption from the SCOTUS over the Affordable Care Act, or the essential truth or not in something Ann Coulter may or may not have recently said, Islamic terrorists were cutting off a head at a French chemical plant, shooting up a lot of tourists in Tunisia, and blowing up a mosque in Kuwait. This is one day's work, folks.

It is fashionable of late to argue that since September 11, 2001 "right wing" terrorism has killed more Americans inside our borders than Islamic terrorism over the same period (alleged body count 48 to 26 over around 14 years). Suppose that is true: So what? Islamic terrorism has killed many more Americans -- never mind other people -- elsewhere in the world. Per the freaking Guardian, Islamic terrorists whacked almost 18,000 people of all nationalities in 2013, rising from around 3400 in 2000 (before, we note, any meaningful American retaliation).

Transnational progressives are keen on thinking of themselves as citizens of the world and love looking elsewhere for precedent, best practices, and socialism to emulate, right up until transnationalism undermines their point instead of supporting it. Hence the careful shaving of data comparing 48 deaths to 26, starting right after 9/11 and ending exactly at our borders.

Why should Americans care if virtually all of these murders occur outside our borders? The reasons are legion. First, the problem is growing rapidly, with deaths up six-fold from 2000 to 2013, and up 60% alone in that last year. A few more years of double-digit growth and you will have a real slaughter on your hands. Even if they are, you know, foreigners or Americans silly enough to leave the metropolitan United States. Second, with growth that fast, why do we think the problem will not spread to our shores? Even if American Muslims remain loyal (as they manifestly have to date), are we so confident in our border security that we expect to keep these bastards out? Third, the Islamists are closing the borders of the world. The United States will become a much smaller country if we redefine the security of our citizens to mean only security inside our borders.

Regardless, the media will defend the Obama-Clinton foreign policy for at least the next 16 months. Expect more strange parsing of data and new definitions of actual security in the service of Clinton's campaign and President Obama's legacy. And by all means worry about the four people a year who die "because right wing extremists."