THE “WAR” ON TERRORISM: A SOUTHERN PERSPECTIVE (2003)
The post 9-11 “war” on terrorism appears to have solid support among Southerners. After all, Southerners possess, historically, a martial culture, and the Establishment has found it relatively easy to appeal to Southern “patriotism” in times of war or impending conflict. But Southerners must not allow their patriotism to obscure their good judgment when it comes to fighting and winning the war on terrorism.
Few would question the firm moral case for responding forcefully to the sort of attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001, if indeed they were carried out by hostile foreign powers. In that case, those responsible ought to be pursued and punished. Moreover, those charged with America’s defense ought to honestly address the weaknesses that allowed the attacks to happen in the first place. Providing for the common defense is supposed to be one of the few things the general (or federal) government does, at least according to the Constitution.
In a flurry of post 9-11 activity, the Bush administration has sought to reassure Americans that all that can be done is being done to protect the country against future terrorist attacks. For now, all of this activity (e.g. the invasion of Afghanistan, the arrest of numerous Muslim terror suspects, the passage into law of the USA PATRIOT Act, the establishment of the massive Homeland Security Department, etc., etc.) seems to have made most Americans feel more secure. Now, we are being prepared for a war against Iraq, and our leaders tell us that it’s unavoidable if we are serious about winning this war on terrorism.
Wanting to trust Bush and his administration, Americans—and especially patriotic Southerners—refrain from questioning their elected leaders in a time of proclaimed national crisis. But ought Southerners place such blind faith and trust in the Washington elites? To answer this question, we must look at who these elites are and the way they view the world and their own place in it.
First, who are they? Virtually all the Washingtonian elites are products of the Ivy League (especially Harvard and Yale). They are the self-proclaimed “best and brightest.” They are traffickers in information and analysis; they produce nothing usable by anyone outside their own narrow class. But they command for themselves great power and influence by controlling the flow of and access to critical information. Second, they are involved in the often-incestuous relations among government, the multinational corporations, the academy, the media, and the big non-profit foundations. Third, as committed internationalists and proponents of global democracy, global capitalism, and even empire, they have no loyalty to any nation, regional identity, State, or local community. They are truly a deracinated class—politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, lawyers, consultants, academics, corporate executives, media moguls—that abhors the traditions associated with place and culture, blood and soil. These well-paid sophisticates disdain true patriotism, Christian ethics and mores, historical and cultural memory, ethnic and racial homogeneity within historical states, and, in the case of America, constitutional government. In short, they are enemies of all that traditional Southerners hold dear.
The elites’ view of the world is based on narrow self and class interests, and such interests have been packaged rather innocuously for public consumption as “global democracy” and “global capitalism.” But these transnational elites do not define “democracy” as would a traditional Southerner. The latter likely would associate his democratic republic with the idea of “the consent of the governed.” This, however, is far from the meaning of “democracy” for the global elites. For them, democracy is not a process worked out on the campaign trail and at the ballot box. Rather, it has more to do with results than with process. Democracy is an ideology that can be furthered only by certain social, cultural, economic, and political outcomes. For “global democracy” and it handmaid, “global capitalism,” to be the genuine article, it must successfully promote multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, radical egalitarianism, open borders, the free flow of money and credit and goods and services, and other ideas that serve to undermine the concept of national sovereignty and traditional cultures. In other words, bad for Whites and good for Jews, blacks, and other non-Whites.
Also, “global democracy,” and all the leftist ideas and policies that inform it, has taken on among the elites the authority of a religion. Thus it stands in opposition to the Christian worldview that for long has dominated the South. The religion of the elites is steadfastly grounded in the rationalistic philosophies of the Enlightenment and in some of the shadier ideas and organizations that emerged in that general period. Thus they believe that human progress, leading to utopia, can bring secular salvation to a world floundering in ignorance, bigotry, and superstition. As the high priests of this humanistic religion, the elites will allow no other gods before their high-tech Caesar—the omnipotent managerial state (as Dr. Samuel Francis calls it). And as the Oz-like manipulators of the levers of the managerial state, the elites see themselves as surely superior to the common folk over whom they rule. When pundits speak of the post-Christian West, they speak of the forced acquiescence of the American hoi polloi to this paradigm.
But can the secular international elite (and the American state which they control) committed as they are to a rationalistic post-Christian order, really defend us against the specter of militant Islam? Once upon a time, Christian Europe had no trouble in launching the Crusades or defending the Balkans and the Iberian Peninsula against the spreading cancer of Mohammadism. Then, a vibrant, self-assured Christendom showed no qualms about asserting itself against a competing religion sworn to its overthrow and destruction. But times have changed, and what remains today of Christendom is but a pale image of its old self. The medieval monarchs and warrior heroes who defended the gates of Christendom against the Muslim hordes (and often, their Jew accomplices) have been replaced in our own day by bleating men who proclaim Islam a “religion of peace” and worry more about hate crimes against Muslim immigrants than they do about truly securing our borders against real and potential terrorists, Islamic and otherwise.
In truth, the post-Christian elites in Washington are hamstrung by their own ideology. Their commitment to multiculturalism, diversity, and tolerance precludes them from shutting down the borders and getting control of the problem of immigration, both legal and illegal. It also prevents them from championing America as an historic place settled and developed by Christians for their Christian posterity, a place worth fighting for. But because of the pernicious influence of the elites on public opinion, through political correctness (or, properly speaking, Cultural Marxism), today’s emasculated Christians dare not utter a word about this “place” actually being ours by inheritance, and as such closed off to those who do not share or respect our history, culture, and religion. They have bought the elites’ mumbo jumbo about America’s uniqueness as a “proposition nation” whose creed is radical egalitarianism. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these slumbering Christians need to be awakened to cold, hard reality.
Simply put, the Washington ruling elites are not about to do the hard things necessary to protect us from an aggressive Islamic jihad. To do so would undermine the very ideology that keeps them in power. If we are to successfully counter the threat, we must first free ourselves from the grip of their alien ideology and then declare to Islam that it is our intention, as Christians, to defend our God-given inheritance. It would appear that the South, as the last bastion of historic Christendom, would be best suited to make this bold assertion.
To do this, we shall have to call this struggle with Islam what it is: a religious war. Moreover, we must stop confusing the issue by calling Islam a peaceful religion. The only peaceful Muslims are apostate Muslims. The best hope for the elite class is that most Muslims and Christians in the world today have truly and finally apostatized and therefore do not take their religion seriously. Regarding these peaceful and apostate Muslims now residing in the West, how many await the day when their numbers swell to the point that they can safely become faithful Muslims again? Should religious passions become inflamed between serious Christians and Muslims, the elites’ global utopia likely will be swept away by forces that their vain ideology cannot keep at bay. And we as Southerners should bid this elitist worldview and all its pestilent policies good riddance. Only then can we seriously get about the task of winning the war against terrorism, in whatever form it may appear.
Michael Hill
Killen, Alabama
