How could I know the army officers standing at the office door were harbingers of today’s Red-Green Alliance between socialists and radical Muslims?

My father had gone to work as he always did, providing for his family through a small oil distributorship in Egypt. That day he came home and shared that the company now belonged to the state. The officers had sent him and his colleagues home, a lifetime of labor erased by a government order.

In Egypt, shortly after 1948, when I was born into the Coptic Christian community, Gamal Abdel Nasser had informants everywhere: in workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, even among students. A careless word could travel faster than a child understood.

As a young man, I read about freedom of speech, freedom of religion in America, and the right to say what you believed without fearing the knock at the door, but I was afraid someone might report what I was reading. That is how oppression works. It only has to teach everyone to be afraid.

Banks were nationalized. Foreign commercial holdings were nationalized. Private companies and land were seized. Christians who had lived in Egypt for centuries became second-class citizens. Highly educated believers were pushed out of leadership and into menial work. Churches were restricted. Evangelism was confined.

Not all Muslims were hostile to me. I had Muslim friends from moderate, enlightened homes, and I thank God for them.

I left Egypt in my teens with the clothes on my back. Finally, in 1977, I moved to the United States from Australia. I became a citizen in 1984. I chose America because, in my heart, I had loved her freedoms long before I held her passport.

Americans do not think they are embracing socialism. The numbers bear that out. A Marquette Law School........

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