Wars ebb and flow like tides, and this particular flood of battles in which we are involved, this Ideological World War, can be traced to a flare-up of a millennia-long war in the opening shots fired in 1776 by the minds and spirits of those whose guts, wisdom, and inspiration created a fabulous conception of legendary promise that came to be called “America”.
The Leftists, knowing their views were not popular among Americans, have fought their Anti-American war in battles that were disguised as American, and have worked slowly to get to where they are now. The Islamofascists have worked slowly too, with terrorist attacks on occasion on embassies, ships, hijacked planes, and spreading fear in countries that already have an Islamic population but which are not under the strict moral rule the terrorists want. But as I wrote in World at War: In Depth Part One, both of these ideological enemies of America are in a position now to turn to stronger methods of warfare.
Make no mistake about it. The War against the Left Collectivists is as real as any that leveled a city. We are competing for the future of our country, between those who want America to be individualistic and free and those who want to turn it into a version of the socialist welfare states of Europe—or worse, or who want to make it an Islamist member of an Islamofascist Caliphate. Wars wear many disguises, and this one has been deliberately made to look like the rumblings and disquietude of some fringe elements of life, people who are smallminded or fundamentalist or paranoid or bigoted.
But could I ask just four questions? (1) Does America have enemies? (Small “e”—that is, does there exist in this world people who would like to destroy America?) (2) Is it possible that these people are just as clever as you and I are, and that they—as could you if you wanted—could think up other ways to fight America than only terrorism? (3) Is it possible that, having thought up clever ways to fight America, they might put them into play? And, (4) Since America is so involved with ideas, values, heritage, and other abstractions, isn’t it logical that the fight could take place in the realm of ideas, in the realm of culture, institutions, and so forth?
We are at war—a real, harsh, bitterly fought war—but such is the nature of this war that the disputants are publicly at odds over whether there is a war going on or not. All wars are well under way long before the first battlefield shot is fired—usually the war simmers beneath the surface of life before exploding into open violence. In order for a war to ignite, there must be fuel throughout the society. This fuel can take many forms, but whatever the form, the fuel itself is in the realm of ideas. People fight for reasons, for concepts, for ideas, however various and with whatever validity those ideas exist. Before every war, the fuel—the body of justifying ideas—is already in existence.
And it isn’t just that under normal conditions the forces of society may keep a war from breaking the surface—it is often the best strategy to prevent the open violence as long as possible. The longer the war can be fought in the realm of ideas, the more the “right sort” of fuel can be manufactured and stored and splashed around, the better it is for those who want to wage the war.
If it is a cultural civil war there is even more reason to keep the war under the surface, to avoid warning the enemy—after all, in a civil war, in a war where brother fights brother, and neighbor fights neighbor, the enemies live too closely together for one side to feel comfortable in bringing a fight into the open unless they feel ready to win. Thus it is especially common for those who seek to benefit from a civil war to maintain the disguise as long as possible, for they would prefer to win without the open hostilities shattering those parts of life that they would wish to keep intact. And often the enemies of a social order wish to develop their armies and weaponry to maximum fighting strength before unleashing them on the unsuspecting society.
A final, most important reason for keeping a war undeclared, is that it is often possible to take the underground war of ideas so far that victory can be had without recourse to open, violent battles—and the literal “fighting in the streets” often occurs when a war of ideas has been provisionally won while in the theater of operations of the mind.
Neither the Leftists nor the Islamofascists want to fight in our streets yet, although the jihadists do plan attacks in Western industrialized countries throughout the world, including ours, to destabilize and to frighten. As long as they can frequently win battles of the media, of the curricula, of the institutions, they are more than happy to do so.
We Americans must start to recognize that there are also non-violent attacks on America that do great damage and have to be fought against just as strongly as we would fight a group of enemy soldiers.
During the American Civil War, one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln sent a long message to Congress. An excerpt from that December 1862 message is extremely fitting today (my emphasis):
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. [. . . ] We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
Later, still during the Civil War, Lincoln said, in the Gettysburg Address, November 1863 (again, my emphasis):
. . . our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
Once again America finds itself in a great war waged primarily about the set of beliefs that formed its creation. The founding fathers made it clear in what they did and in their commentary about it, in the short period of years during which our Declaration and Constitution were written, that they were setting forth ideas which would continue to make their claims throughout time. Lincoln knew that the fight for America was not just the Civil War being waged at the time, but the entire existence over time of “the last best hope of earth”. It wasn’t just about our nation, but about the conception of an ideology, and the dedication of its populace to its endurance into the far future. It was about whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated” could last.
America has been involved in an ideological war throughout its existence, although the ideology only came to open military warfare inside the United States twice, in the Revolutionary War and in the “War Between the States”. The nonopenwarfare of the culture war has been raging for over two centuries now, in undercurrents in the United States and in the rest of the world. America has fought many military wars and battles throughout the world in a universal declaration of its founding ideology. It has also fought to further its beliefs through word and deed in non-military encounters, such as the Cold War, the Marshall Plan, in support of Israel, agreements such as NATO, and so forth.
People who believe in America and carry it in their hearts and minds embody its finest features when they carry out their chosen activities. America spoke when President Ronald Reagan demanded the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. America was in the hands of those who formed the liberty statue at Tiananmen Square. America gained wings in the Berlin Airlift, and it rides with those who work long and hard to rescue people after earthquakes and tsunamis and tornados.
America can only be ready to fight so long as we are.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson's Website, A Blog For All, DeMediacratic Nation, Maggie's Notebook, Jeanette's Celebrity Corner, The Pet Haven Blog, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Right Celebrity, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Nuke's news and views, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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