ANALYSIS/OPINION:

In the mid-morning of Sept. 11, 2001, 40 passengers and crew members aboard United Airlines Flight 93 found themselves on the front lines of a war they didn’t realize was taking place when they woke up that morning.

The pilot, co-pilot and most of the flight attendants had been killed by four Islamic terrorists who had gotten into the cockpit and commandeered the plane. At that moment, the passengers gathered in the back of the plane to decide what to do.

Some thought that, like in previous hijackings, the hijackers would want to negotiate and would eventually land the plane. Those passengers thought it best to go back to their seats and do nothing. But then one of the hostages called home and learned that other planes had been hijacked and hadn’t landed but had been used as weapons to strike at the heart of America.

So the passengers took a vote and decided that, instead of remaining passive, they would fight back as best they could. They had very little to defend themselves. One flight attendant who was still alive had a pot of boiling water as her weapon. Other people used utensils left over from breakfast.

They fought back, overwhelmed the terrorists and regained control of the cockpit and the plane. The passengers weren’t able to land the plane safely. Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., killing all 44 people on board. But no one on the ground was injured. Nor, obviously, was anyone hurt at what was thought to be the terrorists’ target: The U.S. Capitol or the White House.

The story of Flight 93 is an apt metaphor for the state of the country and the 2016 election. The idea did not originate with me, but with an author writing anonymously in the Claremont Review of Books.

The point is that this country is the equivalent of that hijacked plane right now. We’re heading toward a disaster, and, unless we can get control of the cockpit again, we won’t have a chance of survival.

Most Americans realize, like the passengers of Flight 93, that the trajectory we’re on has us headed for catastrophe. Polls show only a quarter of the public thinks the country is on the right track while two-thirds thinks we’re on the wrong track.

Polls also show that most Americans are unhappy with the immigration and refugee policies being pursued by the current administration. President Obama last year authorized the resettlement of more than 12,000 Syrian refugees, the vast majority of whom are Muslims coming from countries defined by extremism and hatred of the West. A poll conducted in August by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that only 36 percent of the public supports the administration’s policy.

And, with domestic terrorism on the rise, the Obama administration has proposed to increase the number of refugees admitted to the United States by more than half — to 110,000 people.

That’s not all. Race relations are at their lowest point since Barack Obama took office. Faith in most public institutions is way below historical averages, with only the military and small business doing better than average.

Perhaps most telling, over a third of Americans, including half of millennials, say they would leave the country for good if given the opportunity.

To take this metaphor a step further, think of the other planes that killed thousands when they struck the twin towers and the Pentagon as other Western countries that have veered off course. France has been ravaged by terrorist attacks over the last couple of years, in large part because of its inability to integrate immigrants and its embrace of a kind of multiculturalism that has many feeling that the country no longer has a national identity.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migrant policy resulted in the arrival of 1.1 million refugees in 2015. This influx has led to a rash of sexual assaults by Middle Eastern men against German women and a spate of terrorist attacks over the last couple of months that have left more than a dozen killed and many more injured.

But America’s problems run deeper than this. The Obama era has been defined by a lack of respect for constitutional checks and balances and the separation of powers. If Hillary Clinton is elected, this executive unilateralism would get worse not better. As Mrs. Clinton has said, “If elected president, I will do everything I can to protect the president’s executive actions and go further to bring more people relief and keep families together.”

The U.S. doesn’t need to suffer the same fate as those brave passengers on Flight 93. Nor does it need to kiss our constitutional system goodbye. The United States has an opportunity to fight back and avert catastrophe.

Unless all of us who are worried about the state of the republic regain control of the cockpit, this country doesn’t have a chance. Like flight 93, the country is headed for disaster. It’s time to run down the aisle and save Western civilization.

• Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer is chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.

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