‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.’ Pogo, 20th century philosopher
George Rebane
That observation has long been repurposed from its original context by pundits of various persuasions, none more consistently than by the elites of the Left. I posted ‘The Liberal Mind Inteprets Florida, etc’ to elicit a broader discussion and illustration of the schizophrenic mind of today’s Americana. The recently joined reader is encouraged to peruse the extensive comment stream following that commentary which itself provides a structured perspective of the contributions to come.
As most students and even casual observers of our socio-political scene quickly realized from the national post-Florida conversation, we are mainly of two minds. Those of the various conservetarian hues see the massacre as another chapter in the ongoing war between fundamental Islam and western civilization. Our enemies in that war consist of the various regiments of rapacious ragheads, their widely scattered brethren wannabes (e.g. Omar Mateen), and the ‘peaceful’ Muslims – states and private actors – who harbor and husband them before they strike.
That is not the case with the west’s socialists and specifically with their progressive element. These people long ago concluded that our world’s existential evil issued from western civilization and continues to do so to this day. The world’s current Islamic wars and massacres are the direct fault of the Great Satan (aka the USA). Had we left well enough alone, the Muslim world would be a community of nations enjoying their own unique pursuit of happiness in lands of compassion, milk, and honey. After all, they do share a common faith in Islam, that great religion of peace.
According to this mentality, it is primarily the words and actions of American Christians (Europe long since abandoned Christianity for secular humanism) that piques the ire of the otherwise sedate and sagacious Muslims. And that is why they take special joy in being able to exterminate Christians and those living in still-deemed Christian lands. The killers are the most devout followers of Allah, readily willing to sacrifice themselves daily to carry out his will. Our progressives take the further step of denying them even the consolation of their martyrdom by repudiating their loud claims to act in the name of Islam – after all, in the west we have always known better what those dark skinned towelheads are thinking than they do themselves. Of course, the Islamists correctly interpret such hubris as just the latest expression of the west’s much detested and enduring colonial mind.
However, for us in the west, and particularly in America, there is an underlying theme at work into which ‘the enemy is us’ plays – globalization. To the progressive mind the outlined American iniquities reinforce their almost two-century-old need to create one global state. And the biggest impediment to that is a vibrant, viable, and free United States. In this context, the Islamic wars are seen by these collectivist elites and their local lackeys as the most recent crisis not to be wasted in the pursuit of such a future.
Across this chasm, the conservetarians view a global government as the worst of all possible ends for human kind. They hold with Mickelthwaite and Wooldridge that “the lesson of history is that when countries compete to produce better governments, they tend to raise standards.” (The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State). This is another way of recognizing that monopolies – especially in governance and commerce – inevitably give rise to human pain and suffering. Our Founders knew that and did their best through our Constitution to give us federalism which is the perennial prime target in the cross-hairs of the American Left.
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