Pat Boone
Friday, July 22, 2005

This will remain true until defenders, with greater than equal will, fight back sufficiently under the rules the aggressors made. (I would favor high-powered fire hoses for some subwoofer subspecies ... but that's just me.)

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In the war on terror, if the enemy's will to destroy life and property is exactly equal to our will to preserve them, their side will inflict a lot of mayhem. For that to cease, our side, paradoxically, will have to become more aggressive, in order to bring a greater will to preserve against their proven will to destroy. While at the mercy of the less decent and the less civilized, the more decent and the more civilized will need to stay interested in the "root causes" of indecency, of terrorism: "Why do they hate us?"

It's a painful fact of life for me that there is anything of a culture war, because (contrary to the mythology) neither I nor friends of mine went looking for one. But a culture war exists - you hear mention of it almost as much as the war on terror - and it has important similarities with the war on terror.

During a military war such as World War II, citizens feel themselves to be living unequivocally in wartime. Factoring the war into personal plans and priorities is a normal part of daily living, and is spoken of openly. In the war on terror Americans have come to show little of any such feeling, and even when getting to airports earlier than they used to, personal adjustments in recognition that "we're at war" are spoken of timidly. Likewise, few Americans feel themselves to be living in wartime with reference to a culture war; and if they speak of it at all, they speak of it timidly.

Enough time and enough dissent seem to have washed our shores since we took our worst hits in both the culture war and the war on terror, and we now know that certain among us will answer any outraged patriotism with some variant of jaded partisanship. Notwithstanding this, another similarity shared by the culture war and the war on terror is the overwhelming importance of their ultimate outcomes.

The desirability of a rather more pluralistic and tolerant world instead of a post-modern worldwide Islamic caliphate is only obvious; it really needs no description. The desirability of a culture given to more responsible patriotism and less casual selfishness and narcissism is a bit less obvious; it really needs patient, tireless description.

Aggressors by definition arrive unannounced, toppling and shaking things up in ways the settled inhabitants are not prepared for. This description holds for an airliner torpedoing a skyscraper, a wardrobe malfunction puncturing the propriety of a family TV time, or a profanity-laden rant from subwoofers shaking the asphalt at a crowded intersection. "The aggressor makes the rules," and war is brought to us whether we felt like being defenders or not. Thus has it been through history.

In his widely quoted dissection of the culture war Dennis Prager writes: "We are in the midst of the Second American Civil War. Who wins it will determine the nature of this country as much as the winner of the first did." He points out that "a religious (Judeo-Christian) society, a secular government, personal liberty, and capitalism" constitute our national DNA - and must be defended.

Those who value their homelands will defend them as best they can. Will those who value their values do likewise?

It's being pointed out that the 7/7 London bombers were assimilated locals who ate fish 'n' chips and played cricket. Discussing the implications on "Fox News Sunday," California's liberal Democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman commented :"There may be radical Pakistani-trained Americans, American Pakistanis, in parts of our country. ... We have to win the argument with the next generation who are turning into suicide bombers. ... We have to make sure that parents know where their kids are."

Hooray for Jane! Now, Ms. Harman, please get on the social-consciousness crowd in your very hip coastal Los Angeles district and remind them that the Bush administration pays too little attention to the root causes in the war on terror! Many of your constituents' beliefs in economic determinism (still part of the Marxian hangover of their set) won't blind them to the fact that the standard criticism by Islamists against Western culture is that it is morally bankrupt, impious, and unholy. Defending against this root cause needs re-emphasis.

The wartime task before the Hollywood left and the whole entertainment community in America is to repair the pornographically tinged product marketing that makes more likely targets of us all! Even the degrees of vulgarity, obscenity and crassness will probably matter, so start with MTV and work backward toward ... oh, I don't know ... allowing the return of public prayer to baccalaureate services?

Could be the left has it right, thinking seriously about root causes. However, the cultural left today exhibits a libertine streak that seems to overrule personal sacrifice for country or cause. So among them we do get aggressors who make rules in the culture war, but as defenders in the war on terror they may not make great soldiers.

When historians looking across the ages almost universally assert that civilizations die of internal causes more than external threats, could anything be more obvious than our need to win the culture war as a step toward winning the war on terror?

Congresswoman Harman, applause for your alarm about "winning the argument with the next generation who are turning into suicide bombers." Now, can we get those entertainment industry bigs in your district to doing duty for their country?

Related Article:
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