The Obsolescence of the Fifth Column

I have been reading (and in some cases re-reading) a lot of Agatha Christie novels recently.  I love the settings - they are generally placed in early twentieth century England, though sometimes they venture to more exotic locations - and her characters are usually complex and richly drawn.  Having just finished N or M?, a novel set in 1940 wartime England, I was struck once again by the astounding difference between that age and ours.  It is amazing how far the western world has sunk in only a few decades in terms of its moral certainty and its ability to think in principles.  

Which is to say: I was reminded how disarmed the west has become in its self-defense.

One passage from the novel captures the essence of the attitude in Britain as Hitler’s forces overran France and prepared to invade England.  A diverse cast of characters has assembled in a Victorian villa - young and old, mothers, fathers, an old soldier from the last war, a domineering female IRA sympathizer, a mother with her infant, a doting housewife and her sniveling husband, a young girl in love with a German émigré.  They sit around the dinner table, chatting amiably:

The conversation during the meal turned on the absorbing subject of spies.  Well-known hoary chestnuts were retold.  The nun with the muscular arm, the clergyman descending from his parachute and using unclergymanlike language as he landed with a bump, the Austrian cook who secreted a wireless in her bedroom chimney, and all the things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins of those present.  That led easily to Fifth Column activities.  To denunciations of the British Fascists, of the Communists, of the Peace Party, of conscientious objectors.  It was a very normal conversation of the kind that may be heard almost every day... (Note 1, emphasis mine.)

In other words, each character in his own way identified and denounced the enemy.  The tacit assumption was: England is good, Nazi Germany is bad.

Such a “normal conversation” is almost inconceivable today.  Even after the September 11 attacks and the London and Madrid bombings, which were direct military assault against western institutions by Islamic fundamentalists, I cannot imagine a randomly assembled group of American or British strangers today being in basic and unanimous agreement about the identity of the enemy and the nature of the threat against us - at least, not if that group had any modern “liberals” among it, or even just average, apolitical second-handers who uncritically digest everything they hear from their colleagues, their preacher, or the network news.  There is certainly no longer a general tacit assumption that America and the west is right and that enemies who attack us are wrong.  

This is not to say that everyone ought to be in complete agreement, of course.  The characters in Christie’s novel disagreed about particular aspects of the war, and some even hinted at sympathy with some of the Nazi aims.  But no Brit in his right mind would have feared being accused of “Nazi-phobia” if he denounced Hitler, nor would the typical Englishman have felt that the German bombing of London would be a well-deserved punishment for British “imperialism” and hubris.  Yet that is the state of affairs today, when critics of Islam are accused of “Islamophobia” and the September 11 atrocity is considered to be expiation for our sins. 

If a similar fictional portrayal of such a scenario in a movie or novel were translated to modern times, it would be incomprehensible to a general audience.  Words such as “enemy” or “evil” applied to jihadists would cause many westerners to squirm uncomfortably, and if any one member of the group were bold enough to speak out against Islamic fundamentalists, multiculturalists, or pacifists, he would be portrayed as a jingoistic xenophobe, a gun-toting, blockheaded bigot who simply couldn’t comprehend the “nuance” of international affairs.  

Don’t misunderstand me.  I am not arguing that the moral clarity of the characters in N or M? indicates that seven decades ago most citizens of the west were properly grounded philosophically.  It’s not true, and I make that point in the conclusion of this post.  Furthermore, the novel does not even attempt to show this; some of the characters turn out to have evil intentions and even the heroes’ motivations are a well-meaning but jumbled mixture of benevolence, traditionalism, nationalism, and stiff-upper-lip resolution.  Agatha Christie is not Ayn Rand; she does not develop an explicit philosophical defense of liberty.

What is remarkable is the implicit context in Christie’s novel: everyone understood that a war was on and that one’s very survival was at stake.  

This brings me to the subject of the novel and the title of this post: the Fifth Column.  The so-called “fifth column” is a small group of foreign enemies (or sympathizers of those enemies) within a country that secretly tries to undermine national security in a time of war.  (Wikipedia provides an interesting description of the term’s origin.)  In N or M?, the heroes Tommy and Tuppence go undercover to root out the members of the Fifth Column that are diabolically plotting to weaken the British defense against Hitler’s impending Blitzkrieg.  The heroes succeed, of course, but only after employing all their faculties, courage, and a little luck to unmask the Nazi sympathizers who had so cleverly and painstakingly installed themselves secretly into the fabric of British life.

This novel seems impossible today.  In a modern context, the very concept of a Fifth Column seems to be inapplicable - not because the west has no enemies, but because those enemies need not hide anymore.  Does a Fifth Column that is neither clandestine nor a minority remain a Fifth Column?  

There may have been a time when to weaken a free country, it was advantageous to infiltrate the workings of its government, to steal its military secrets, to quietly sow ideas that could destroy it from within, and to break its laws and escape detection.  But that sounds downright old-fashioned today.  Why bother to steal plans for an advanced missile when one can simply hijack commercial airliners and fly them into buildings?  Why whisper anti-western sentiments when one can publish and broadcast them to the delight of the intellectual establishment, be acclaimed by the New York Times, and win Academy Awards?  Why bother to kill all westerners to silence them when they can en masse be made afraid to speak?  Why risk breaking the laws of a free country when one can use those same laws against its citizens?  Why murder innocent people when they can be convinced to commit suicide?

Thus, the Fifth Column has been rendered obsolete.

What is the Fifth Column?  A weapon.  When is a weapon needed?  When one’s opponent will fight.  Of what use is a weapon when one’s opponent humbly dons manacles, slips its own head in a noose, and hands over the end of the rope in submission?  Eagles and tigers may be snared with a trap and shot with a gun; such weapons are not required for sheep.  The Fifth Column is no longer needed, the west having decided not to defend itself.  One does not infiltrate an establishment that opens its door to you.  The western institutions themselves - elementary schools, universities, government agencies, churches, newspapers, Hollywood - readily propagate the enemy’s message, which is: apologize and submit. 

Author and columnist Mark Steyn succinctly described this weakness of modern western institutions in a recent article.  (He knows firsthand how the west’s own institutions are being used to silence criticism of Islam; for a 2006 article he wrote, Steyn is entangled with Canada’s “human rights commissions,” which have been enlisted by the Canadian Islamic Congress to choke off ideas with which they disagree.) 

Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what I’m facing in Canada.  Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading “Behead the Enemies of Islam” and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected by a phalanx of London policemen. (Note 2.)

It is hard to say exactly when the “multiculturalist” trend reached enough of a critical mass to put us firmly on a path of self-destruction.  Steyn identifies Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the subsequent murderous outrage of Muslims against the author, and the frightened silence from western nations as the significant indicator.  I tend to think of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Jimmy Carter’s woeful response to the embassy hostage-taking as the watershed event.  In any case, though “multiculturalism” is a many tentacled beast, the most important tentacle of this dreadful idea is the one being exploited by Islamic groups.  As Steyn notes, although in one respect Muslims are “insufficiently assimilated” in the western nations to which they’ve migrated, “in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, they’re superbly assimilated. ” 

Much more can be said about this, but it would digress from the scope of this post.  The relevant part to note is that today there is nothing clandestine required for enemies of the west to install agents within those free countries.  It is all done quite openly.  

During World War II, in order to intercept particular Allied communications or spread a certain piece of misinformation, Nazi Fifth Columnists would have had to install themselves with great risk and difficulty in order to succeed in their mission, and if they were caught, they were summarily executed as spies.  They could count on very little cooperation from the government and the citizens.

In contrast, observe how much easier we make it for our enemies today.  To effectively intercept and censor virtually all mainstream communications today, Islamic fundamentalists need no Fifth Column.  They do not hide; they declare their hostility openly.  They do not fear the authorities; indeed, they enjoy the protection of the police and legal system.  Most media outlets already happily fall in line with anti-western propaganda, but for those that criticize Islam (like the Mark Steyns and Oriana Fallacis and Danish cartoonists who have the courage to stand out), Muslims set up tax-exempt organizations that use the west’s own laws to silence dissenters and to gradually impose Sharia law.  This last is not yet prominent in the United States - we are precariously hanging on to our First Amendment - but as indicated in Steyn’s case above, there is a chilling trend in Europe and Canada.  As Steyn writes, “If the story of The Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europe’s population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent?”

So, what is the root of this difference between the World War II setting of Agatha Christie’s novel and the situation today?  Why, seven decades ago, did the citizens of a western nation threatened with force believe that they must respond with force, while today westerners who are attacked believe that they must shower their enemies with apologies and billions of dollars of aid?  

The tragic answer is that the moral case for liberty that underpins freedom wherever it exists was not made explicit.  Liberty resulted from the application of reason to social systems, and this is the implicit foundation of freedom’s greatest example, the United States of America: each individual is sovereign and has a natural right to pursue his own interests.  In lieu of this explicit defense of liberty upon self-interest, however, the west is wracked by self-doubt, and is left to float rudderless upon a sea of bad ideas.

Thus, even though the west seemed to demonstrate more moral clarity during World War II than it does now, it was not firmly rooted in individual rights and rational self-interest.  This left us open to the innumerable ideologies based in self-sacrifice: chauvinism, nationalism, socialism, nihilism, and all the religions.  It is no surprise that a civilization beset by the more skeptical of these ideologies, as we have been in the last few decades, would be vulnerable to the assertive ideologies - the religions.

If there is a positive side to this gloomy observation it is this: the reason that the “multiculturalists” have made such inroads is that we do all the work for them.  They count on us being too “liberal” to recognize (or at least proclaim) that western civilization, in its institutionalization of liberty, is objectively better than all others in history.  (By “liberal,” I mean the word in the sense that Robert Frost did when he said, “A liberal man is too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”)  To save the free world, it is as simple - and as difficult - as recognizing the source of freedom.

NOTES

1.  Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie’s Detectives: Five Complete Novels, Avenel Books, New York, 1982, originally published, 1941.

2.  Mark Steyn, “Lights Out on Liberty,” August, 2008. (“http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp”)

3.  The 2006 article in Macleans magazine that got Mark Steyn in trouble with the Canadian government is called “The Future Belongs to Islam,” available online at “http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20061023_134898_134898&source”.

Coalition for Secular Government on Amendment 48

The Coalition for Secular Government (CSG) recently released an excellent paper, Amendment 48 Is Anti Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person, by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh.  The paper speaks for itself and ought to be read carefully in its entirety, but I wish to highlight a few ideas that I found to be particular insightful.

First, for readers unfamiliar with it, the proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution known as Amendment 48 would add the following text to define “personhood”: “As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the terms ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.”[Emphasis mine.]  The referenced sections include basic inalienable rights, such as the right to one’s life and property, and the right to due process and justice in court.

The consequences of defining a fertilized egg as a “person” vividly illustrate why the abortion issue is not merely a minor political “hot button” for women, but is a matter of life and death for all rational human beings.  To extend the rights of a human being to human cells is to dispense with rights altogether.

One profound insight of the CSG paper is a general one, applicable beyond the content of this particular law: when a measure is passed that so egregiously violates individual rights, the rule of law itself is strained.  Armstrong and Hsieh write, “The more consistently Amendment 48 were enforced and interpreted by the courts, the more ghastly its implications would be.”  And later, “The legislature and courts in Colorado might be strongly tempted to pretend that Amendment 48 doesn’t mean what it plainly says in order to avoid its absurd implications.  Such a course of legislative and judicial winking might save Colorado from the worst effects of the measure, but it would do so by undermining the basic principle of rule of law so essential to a free society.”(Note 1.) 

This is a critical point.  The implications of Amendment 48 are stunningly wide-reaching if one takes the law for what it says.  So, either the law means what it says, which if enforced would impose shocking and outrageous limitations on human activities, or the law is to be applied selectively, which would subvert the rule of law itself.  

The truth is that the passage of such an amendment to the Colorado constitution would achieve both disadvantages simultaneously.  Not every implication would come about at once, of course.  At first, the public would challenge some of the ramifications, such as the banning of birth control pills (and perhaps wonder how on earth an “abortion” law could be used in such a way).  But once the measure is passed, it is too late.  The law would always be there, a guillotine blade hanging ominously over citizens’ heads.  Challenges to abortions, to the use of birth control, to experiments with stem cells, and to fertility procedures, would take the form of particular battles waged in court that get successively more difficult to defend against.  The public will have lost the opportunity to dash the amendment at its inception, to excoriate it in principle.  That opportunity is here now, and must not be missed.

If there is a benefit to the proposed Amendment 48 it is that it draws the advocates of a religious state out of the woodwork, exposing their goals in an unusually pure form.  But this clarity exists as a benefit only insofar as we take the religionists seriously and vehemently denounce their attempts to inject religion into the law.  Most importantly, the religionists must be challenged on the proper grounds - specifically, their superstition must be met with the facts of reality, and their morality of sacrifice and altruism must be met with a morality of rational self-interest.  The CSG paper succeeds on both counts.  In its presentation of the biological facts, Armstrong and Hsieh write:

[S]o long as the fetus remains within the woman, it is wholly dependent on her for its basic life-functions.  It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes.  It lives as she lives, as an extension of her body.  It is wholly contained within and dependent on her for its survival.

This is the crux of the matter, the primary relevant fact.  There is simply no fact of nature that would account for a fetus (not to mention a just-fertilized egg) being imbued with the status of a rights-bearing human being; this is why the religionists necessarily introduce arbitrary and supernatural pretexts (such as “God-given rights” and eternal souls) for their position.  In every real, natural, biological sense - that is to say, in any sense that should be considered by the law - the fetus is part of the woman’s body.  They are her cells, not God’s or society’s, and she may dispose of them as she judges best - and if she is moral, she will base this decision on her own long-term self-interest.  

This brings me to the morality of abortion.  The CSG paper makes clear the stark difference between a morality based upon self-interest, which requires an embrace of reality, rationality, and a long-range view, and one based upon sacrifice, superstition, and passive obedience to scriptural command.  “Responsible adults do not allow themselves to be buffeted about in life by accidental circumstances,” write the authors.

The victims of Amendment 48 would be men and women who seek happiness in life; couples who wish to enjoy a rewarding sexual relationship; those that must use fertility techniques to help them have children where none could be expected; people who plan and properly consider all the ramifications of starting a family; women who wish to flourish and be productive in their careers before having (or without having) children; and the untold number of men and women that want to survive the diseases that would have had cures if stem-cell research had not been thwarted.  In short, it is moral people who are victimized by Amendment 48.

In contrast, the advocates of Amendment 48 are profoundly immoral.  For them, a woman is not an independent, rational being who owns her own body; she is merely a sacrificial vessel for God’s plans, an incubator for God’s children.  If she has sexual intercourse - whether or not she has used birth control, whether or not she has been raped, whether or not she can afford to raise a child, whether or not her life’s plans will be ruined, whether or not the delivery will kill her - the consequences must be left in God’s hands.  In the same breath, the religionists claim that a clump of a woman’s cells constitutes a being with rights while the woman herself has no rights.  They hold that a woman cannot remove a part of her body that is deleterious to her life, but a government (in particular, one sanctioned by God) can dispose of the woman as it chooses.

The title of the CSG paper makes a key identification: that the allegedly “pro-life” anti-abortion crusaders are actually anti-life - or more specifically, anti-life qua human.  The religionists smuggle in their advocacy of force under the pretext that “all human life has value,” but in fact it is precisely living a human life that is surrendered.  The woman herself is sacrificed upon the altar to save a group of cells in her body. 

 

NOTES

1.  Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh, Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person, Coalition for Secular Government, August, 2008.  (http://www.SecularGovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf)

Leonard Peikoff Podcast 27

Leonard Peikoff's podcasts are now available on iTunes and via an RSS feed!  Here is the latest:

Leonard Peikoff Podcast 27 (25 Aug 2008)

Teasers: reproduction as the "ultimate goal," status of book (The DIM Hypothesis), the next generation, DIM question, Ominous Parallels revisited, goal of education.   

Leonard Peikoff Podcast 26

The latest audio from Dr. Peikoff:

Leonard Peikoff Podcast 26 (18 Aug 2008)

Teasers: Aristotle's doctrine of the "golden mean," born indirectly from evil, ethics for the terminally ill, "none of the above" on a ballot, the universality of philosophic ideas.