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Posted: May 22, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.
WASHINGTON Two years ago, he was as lonely as the Maytag repairman an obscure congressman trying desperately to raise the visibility of an issue he believed threatened the very security of the U.S.
More recently, he has become a force to be reckoned with, the leader of a powerful House caucus, a Republican who has taken on the president, a man respected for outspoken positions and the political force behind what has become the hottest issue in the nation.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus and the undisputed heavyweight champion of the border security issue in the nation's capital, now tells the whole story of the threats facing the nation, the solutions within its grasp and his own personal quest to awaken the political establishment to the seething discontentment gripping America as a result of illegal immigration.
In his new book, "In Mortal Danger," published by WND Books, Tancredo warns the country is on a course to the dustbin of history. Like the great and mighty empires of the past, he writes, superpowers that once stretched from horizon to horizon, America is heading down the road to ruin.
English historian Edward Gibbon, in penning his classic "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" (ironically published in the year America's Founding Fathers declared independence from Great Britain), theorized that Rome fell because it rotted from within. It succumbed to barbarian invasions because of a loss of civic virtue, its citizens became lazy and soft, hiring barbarian mercenaries to defend the empire because they were unwilling to defend it themselves.
Tancredo says America is following in the tragic footsteps of Rome.
Living up to his reputation for candor, Tancredo explains how the economic success and historical military prowess of the United States has transformed a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles of right and wrong into an overindulgent, self-deprecating, immoral cesspool of depravity.
His recipe for turning things around?
Without strong, moral leadership, without a renewed sense of purpose, without a rededication to family and community, without shunning the race hustlers and pop-culture sham artists, without protecting borders, language and culture, the nation that once was "the land of the free and home of the brave" and the "one last best hope of mankind" will repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the past, he writes.
Tancredo, born and raised in Colorado, represents Colorado's 6th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to his election to Congress in 1998, Tancredo worked as a schoolteacher, was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives in 1976, was appointed by President Reagan as the secretary of education's regional representative in 1981, and served as president of the Independence Institute. He serves on the International Relations Committee, the Resources Committee and the Budget Committee, and is the chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. Tancredo and his wife, Jackie, reside in Littleton, Colo.
