Remember when the Department of Homeland Security had a primary color coded alert letting Americans know the risk of terrorist attacks? 

The color red signified the highest level of danger.  The lowest level was signified by green.  Yellow and orange meant the risk of terrorist attack was significant or high.  The code was begun in 2002 and was not retired until 2010, and during those eight years, Americans saw only yellow and orange alerts.  The DHS seldom, if ever, saw red. 

The problem, according to the New York Times, was that the color-coded threat levels were doomed to fail because they didn’t tell people what to do.  They didn’t indicate what the government was doing to reduce terrorist attacks; and they didn’t locate terrorist hot spots.

They just kept Americans in a state of anxiety but never provided increased security.  As Bruce Schneier, expert on security issues said, the system “just makes people afraid.”

Scare weary Americans began to ignore the alerts.  Sometime during the endless eight years of code yellow/orange, they got back to paying attention to the details of everyday life.  After all, who could live in a state of high anxiety forever?  Life resumes.  People got back to their jobs and taking care of their families.

In fact, as the Times article points out, the system became the butt of late night talk show hosts’ jokes, with Conan O’Brien joking, “Champagne-fuchsia means we’re being attacked by Martha Stewart.” Jay Leno added, “They added a plaid in case we were ever attacked by Scotland.”

But the chief problem with the DHS’ Crayola primary color alert system was that it was too vague and all encompassing.  Bluntly, it basically accomplished nothing to counter actual threats -- much as the TSA fondling of three-year-olds hasn’t done much to deter even a single terrorist attack. 

But American citizens should and do have high anxieties based on real threats to their well-being, including the threat of terrorist attacks.  They should be seeing red over the dangers to our country even while the present administration is worried over things that are inconsequential compared to the clear and present dangers of terrorism at home and abroad.

While liberal luminaries such as former Mayor Bloomberg and First lady Michelle Obama are campaigning against the dangers of Big Gulp sodas and passionately advocating the inclusion of carrot sticks for our children’s school lunches, there are real time threats to our and our kids’ safety and well being in the here and now.  While peaceful, harmless American citizens are being subjected to increasingly intrusive searches of their persons and communications by such bureaucratic entities as the TSA, the IRS, and the NSA, what Kevin Wade, Republican candidate for US Senate, considers probably the most serious threat to our country’s safety and well being -- the safety of our borders -- is being virtually ignored.

Kevin Wade, who is challenging Delaware Democrat Senator Coons in November, recently spent several days in Texas at the Southern border investigating first hand spots where undocumented immigrants unlawfully cross over on a regular basis.  He bypassed the opinions of government officials in order to hear what ranchers and others affected by the mass influx.

According to DelawareNewsZap, he found that contrary to what the politicians say, the border is not under secure control by the U.S. government.  In fact, Mexican drug cartels are in complete control.  No illegal immigrant passes through the border without cash or services being demanded, sexual favors and agreement to smuggle drugs being among the most common bribes.  

But it’s not just the cartels’ control of the borders that cause high anxieties.  Who knows what terrorists have passed though our porous borders in order to team up with terrorist cells empathetic to or actual members of such organizations as al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS?

Such concerns are scarcely the fevered conjectures a vast right wing conspiracy. The US already hosts radicalized Muslim groups with which empathetic youths can team up with little impunity.  One of the many maps documenting the locations of what amounts to fifth columns of radical Islamists may be found here.

For example, as Fox News’ Megyn Kelly reports, Minnesota appears to be a hot bed of radicalized Muslims:

“A Minnesota youth center is at the heart of a federal grand jury investigation into a suspected ISIS terrorist pipeline. The FBI says that someone on the ground in Minnesota is convincing young people to join the terror fight in Syria, then giving them money to get there. Up to 30 Somali-Americans who have reportedly joined or tried to join terrorist groups overseas had attended Al Farooq Youth and Family Center in Minnesota. That’s the same mosque that kicked out 31-year-old Amir Meshal this summer for allegedly proselytizing radical Islam ideologies.”

An open border not only means the very real threat of terrorists infiltrating our country.  The fact is that without secured borders, state and national sovereignty is being threatened as seldom before.  A nation without secure borders is no longer a nation.  A state without boundaries ceases to be a state: Texas without borders will cease to be Texas.  Rick Perry’s governorship will be meaningless -- which appears to be the profound hope of the Left, to be achieved one way or another.

It is hard to overstate the dangers to our nation’s and its citizens’ security.  While the Left distracts and increasingly controls daily life with the minutiae characterizing bureaucratic rule; while it takes over realms of choice and authority belonging to the individual, to the family and to familiar institutions of American life; while it concerns itself with controlling what it has no business controlling, it is neglecting and even actively scuttling the government’s primary duty.  It is not providing for the safety and security of its citizens.

Americans can and should make their own choices about what they eat and drink.  They can and should decide where they live. They want to and should decide for themselves where to work, worship and play.

But they cannot provide their own safety against terrorists’ and gangsters’ threats, be they domestic or abroad. They are dependent on a vigilant and engaged government, a government determined to provide its citizens’ safety. 

Securing the border and ridding our country of Islamist terrorist cells and gangster cartels, all the while restoring and respecting state sovereignty are among the most important foundation stones to lay for a safe and peaceful America.

Kevin Wade is Delaware’s Republican candidate for the United States Senate.  He may be reached at klw@wadefordelaware.com; Fay Voshell is a nationally known columnist whose articles have appeared in National Review, PJMedia, ReaClearReligion, American Thinker and other online publications.  She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com