September 17, 2002

The War of Ideas: Smoking

The War of Ideas: Smoking them Out of their Caves

President Bush has reported to the nation on the progress made since 9-11. We have rolled up the Taliban, caught and killed a number of al Qaeda operatives and seem ready to take on one of the terror masters, Saddam Hussein. This war is undergirded by ideas, the idea that evil exists, that certain cultural values are superior to others. Freedom is superior to tyranny, democracy to totalitarianism, religious tolerance to religious slavery. While we are doing well on the military front, how are we doing on the ideational/cultural front? According to Mark Steyn, not so well."Perhaps the president's greatest mistake was his failure to take on the enervating Oprahfied therapeutic culture that, in the weeks after Sept. 11, looked momentarily vulnerable. There were two kinds of responses to that awful day. You could go with ''C'mon, guys, let's roll!'' the words of Todd Beamer as he and the brave passengers of Flight 93 took on their Islamist hijackers. Or you could go with ''healing'' and ''closure'' and the rest of the awful inert language of emotional narcissism. Had Bush taken it upon himself to talk up the virtues of courage and self-reliance demonstrated on Flight 93, he would have done a service not just to his nation but to his party, for a touchy-feely culture inevitably trends Democratic."
It is true that Mr. Bush has not confronted the therapeutic culture with its utopian fantasy that all human problems are the result of misunderstandings, to be corrected by greater empathy for the plight of the "other". Nevertheless, our citizen democracy does not rely entirely on the efforts of the President to fight this culture war. It is our task and there are signs that change is occurring:The strong reaction against the NEA's urging our children to stand around in a "healing circle" and not be angry at anyone. The growing counterattacks against the vile rants of Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky. The whole blogger phenomenon. And the common sense of everyone but some addlepated academics is easily discernible. A recent visit to Yankee Stadium where the fans greeted with robust chants of U-S-A- U-S-A, the descent onto the grass of 4 paratroopers recently returned from Afghanistan. A visit to ground Zero where the many messages left included a large sampling of expressions of rage and revenge wishes towards our enemies. This letter from a fighter pilotA Naval Aviators thoughts on the anniversary of 9/11 to the terrorists has gained wide readership and, as Andrea Harris points out, helps our enemies to "understand" our rage, thus turning multicultural relativism in an interesting direction. After acquainting his terrorist reader, in good multicultural fashion, with his own backround, beliefs and ideas, the writer has these bracingly exhilirating words for him:"I tell you all this because when I come for you I want you to know me. I won't be hiding behind a woman or a child. I won't be disguised or pretending to be something I am not. I will be wearing standard US issue flight gear, and I will be flying a navy aircraft clearly marked as a US warplane.

I want you to know also that I am very good at what I do. I can put a 2,000 LB weapon through a window from 10,000 feet up. I generally only fight at night so you may want to start sleeping during the day. I am not eager to die for my country but I am willing to sacrifice my life to protect it from animals like you. I will do everything in my power to ensure no civilians are hurt as I take aim at you. My countrymen are a forgiving bunch. Many are already forgetting what you did on Sept 11th. But I will not forget and my President will not forget."

The war will be a long one, but we are smoking the utopian ideologues out of their caves and exposing them to the withering intellectual crossfire that will ultimately prevail.

Posted at 10:56 AM by