Our Covert Enemies

Real Clear Politics ^ | August 21, 2006 | Michael Barone

[ProtectOurFreedom]

In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can. Against them we can fight back, as we did when British authorities arrested the men and women who were plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic.

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders -- and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II -- and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect.

Of course, this distorts history. We are taught that American slavery was the most evil institution in human history. But every society in history has had slavery. Only one society set out to and did abolish it. The movement to abolish first the slave trade and then slavery was not started by the reason-guided philosophies of 18th century France. It was started, as Adam Hochschild documents in his admirable book "Bury the Chains," by Quakers and Evangelical Christians in Britain, followed in time by similar men and women in America. The slave trade was ended not by Africans, but by the Royal Navy, with aid from the U.S. Navy even before the Civil War.

Nevertheless, the default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after Sept. 11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel's self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Another winning article from Barone about the two-front war we are fighting for our survival.

[Shery]

Awesome post! Good read! Thanks!

[Outland]

My 2 cents...

Personally, I think we have more than two fronts going in this country if you count the southern border and various social issues.

If we applied more pressure toward quelling socialism, the other fronts would more easily fall in the absence of interference from the socialist appeasement, can't-we-all-get-along, attitude.

If socialist values would disappear, just think how many issues would be met with swift, decisive action.

[nopardons]

bttt

[A Balrog of Morgoth]

Our covert enemies are harder to identify

Just look for the guys wearing a pass with "Press" printed on it.

[nathanbedford]

I commend to your attention the essay of Rabbi Spero which appeared in the August 15, 2006 issue of Human Events and is posted on free Republic here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1684467/posts

I especially refer you to post number 43 which seems to be quite cogent. The rabbi in his very insightful essay has this to say:

Many of today’s powerful and boisterous liberals are wealthy and university schooled and consider themselves “the nice people,” sensitive, morally superior, smarter, and above such things as war. This is their identity, the passport to their social fraternity. They have constructed above-it-all lives, fashioning a sub-culture beyond the reach of life’s messiness. They live as if everything were predictable and within their control. Through negotiation, life is risk-free.

Some of this crowd are, by nature, cowards and appeasers, brazen only when taking on people and institutions they know will never harm them, such as Bible-believing Christians, President Bush, and the American military. Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, for example, and other “human rights” imposters have grown celebrated and well-funded by establishing a set of official guidelines for what is permissible for Western powers during war. But their central motivation is to emasculate the strength of the West to win an armed conflict.

In post number 43, the poster frames the question he sets out to answer:

I am coming to the conclusion that the elites in the left are not purblind, not the misguided victims of their own worldview, but cynical high-stakes gamblers who risk plunging themselves and us into a new dark age if it will enhance their own chances to rule. Unless one believes that the top elitists on the left genuinely do not see the threat to Western civilization posed by a Muslim theocracy, there is no other plausible explanation. After all, Muslim fundamentalists stand for everything repugnant to the left-at least on a superficial level: the belief in God; rule by theocracy; the virtual enslavement of women; repudiation of the scientific method; superstition, etc. life in such a society should be utterly insupportable to leftists. Yet they undermine the war against terrorism at every turn, they oppose the Patriot Act, they oppose international telephone surveillance, they oppose vigorous interrogation, they oppose incarceration, to list just a few. Why?

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Personally, I think we have more than two fronts going in this country...

Yes, you are somebody who does get it...

Try to tell the others in the unwashed masses and watch the eyes glaze over. Makes you sick, doesn't it?

[Outland]

Sick and mad as hell.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

From the article:

"These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism."

Cultural Marxism... and there is some of that even going on around here and within the GOP... it is very easy to spot...

[USNBandit]

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged,"

An awesome description of the modern American liberal. He can't believe enough in America to let us win an armed conflict with an enemy committed to our destruction. This my friends is Jimmy Carter.

[justa-hairyape]

Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong.

Funny thing is, the first empire that conquered the 'Known World' was not a 'rich white' people. They were the Persians. They ruled for hundreds of years and they took many barbarian slaves. Many of our ancestors were the barbarians way back then. Then along came the Macedon, Alexander the Great, and the West has been putting up a good fight for freedom ever since.

Perhaps we should be the ones asking for 'reparations' from these Persians and their new found Islamic Fascist Ideology ?

[driftless2]

I would have more respect for liberals or liberal arguments if I didn't believe most of them simply do not love their country. I have more respect for people who I know are sincere however wrong I think they are. But most libs come off as jaded, effete cynics who sneer at what they consider "provincial" patriotism by people who go to church on Sunday, don't eat pate de foie gras, and actually think their country is great.

Really, just read most of the Euro-socialist adoring garbage lib columnists print. I clearly remember one lib columnist some years back arguing against tax cuts because European tax rates were much higher than ours. Yes, what a "logical" argument. If you could get the truth out of them, most libs don't care anymore about the idea of America. Most would be real happy to live in some socialist hodgepodge world government kind of state. They just won't admit it.

[driftless2]

The media, the educrats, and the culture-entertainment nitwits are the three-headed snakes of liberal disaster. The media is probably the worst of the three because most adult Americans get what they consider the vital info about important matters from them. Our media is as big a threat to the country as are all the Islamo-fascists put together. The I-Fs attack from the front while the media stabs us in the back.

[Gorzaloon]

Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong.

So, realizing this, the rich white devils LEFT.

And those places quickly reverted to pestilence, starvation, and barbarism under corrupt leaders.

[Peach]

What a great read. Thanks for posting it.

[mewzilla]

One good column deserves another :)

Useful Idiots: Islam’s Best Soldiers

[Louis Foxwell]

Elitism, socialism, Marxism, liberalism, collectivism - call it what you will - it all boils down to atheism. The central theme in every liberal rant, policy or effort is the firm belief that "one-who-knows-best" is the source of unassailable authority. By virtue of my importance, this logic asserts, there is no appeal to any authority beyond me. This claim is only possible in the absence of God.
Darwinian atheism, an evolving Constitution, situational ethics, multiculturalism, and a raft of like-minded ideologies are all struts to support the supremacy of an elite class.
The enemy is among us and makes himself appear in shining apparel. He is the minister of the liberal church who claims that God does not take sides in war. He is the teacher who instructs our children that Christian morality is the greatest source of evil. He is the politician who insists that any policy based on the greatness of America is hopelessly doomed to failure. He is the media star of the drive-by-media who tells the story of the suffering of our enemies and never explains their evil intent. He is the entertainment star who puffs himself up with flatulence from all of these listed above and deigns to gas adoring masses with the fumes of their greatness.
We are awash in elitism. The curse of intellectual, moral, spiritual, cultural, political, religious, scientific, economic, aesthetic, or simply smartypants superiority poisons our culture. All of this disease emanates from a single source, atheism. Where there is no God there is no control over the ego of man. Where God is alive His people are humbled before Him and do not elevate one above another.

[Beckwith]

We are fighting a two-front war once again.

The first front, the external war, is against Islamic fascists who use the tactics of Jihad and terrorism to destroy us.

The second front, the internal war, is against Marxists who use the tactics of political correctness, diversity and multiculturism to destroy us.

[Louis Foxwell]

PING

[roses of sharon]

I call them Commie-Vampires who live among us and suck the lifeblood out of everything good in this country.