by J. R. Nyquist
“You can give the man new facts,†wrote C.S. Lewis. “You can invent a simpler proof…. But when you come to an absolute inability to see any one of the self-evident steps out of which the proof is built, then you can do nothing.†And what if we’ve entered an era in which most people cannot see the self-evident steps or care to hear about them? Lewis thought that an absolute inability to recognize truth “is much rarer than we suppose.†But he didn’t live to see the Sixties Revolution, the trans-valuation of values foretold by Friedrich Nietzsche: the advent of European nihilism and the abdication of common sense. He didn’t live to see the values of the counter-culture triumph over the traditions of higher culture and the standards of higher education. He didn’t see the final erosion of taste and manners exemplified by symphony orchestras begging for money while bat-biting pop starts enjoy fabulous wealth, hailed by presidents and prime ministers.
Does anyone imagine we can ultimately survive and remain comfortable after such a transformation?
It is my contention that a civilization cannot suffer a serious degeneration of its culture without a corollary degeneration of its defensive structures through an attenuation of the very instinct of self-preservation. America’s intellectual elite, the highest political leadership and the best brains of the national security apparatus, fails to recognize or enumerate their country’s enemies. When the president dares to mention the existence of an “axis of evil,†he is mocked and derided by the culture as an ignoramus. It has become, in fact, a faux pas to publicly name the real enemy or to discuss emerging enmities. “The problem is cultural, not political,†wrote Roger Scruton in
The New Criterion, “and resistance to moral obesity must grow from social, not political initiatives.†That is undoubtedly so, but we haven’t the time to wait on social initiatives (whatever these may be). The conservatives’ dream of a “counter-march through the institutions†comes too late and partakes of the same intellectual corruption it pretends to oppose. Besides, the damage to America’s national security apparatus has gone too far. A recent book by former CIA officer Lindsay Moran, titled
Blowing My Cover, describes American intelligence as a system in which inconvenient security rules are routinely ignored. In today’s CIA, reality is disregarded in favor of fashionable fiction, and good results are lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth.
When journalist Kenneth Timmerman discovered that the National Security Agency possessed irrefutable proof (in the form of an NSA intercept) that Iranian officials ordered the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon (killing 241 Marines), he asked former U.S. Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger why a retaliatory strike wasn’t authorized against Iran. Weinberger replied, “If I’d known [of the proof], I wouldn’t have hesitated.†Could it be that the intelligence community withheld information from the president, knowing that a strike against Iran would thereby be prevented? And to what extent has the muddling of intelligence on Iraq been an intentional effort by intelligence analysts to embarrass or confuse a president so utterly dependent on their analysis?
If we want to understand why so many heads have rolled over at CIA, the answer is here. But the president’s soft purge will not produce the desired results, because the problem is cultural and not political. It affects the right and the left. Its subtleties cannot be observed by the culturally afflicted; and newly minted intellectuals, academics and bureaucrats carry and spread the dementia unsuspectingly. A great power is walking blindly through the world, blundering into traps and ambushes. What necessarily comes from all of this, what cannot be avoided, is a catastrophe that will dwarf 9/11.
Why do the heirs of a successful civilization turn soft and lose their instincts? Why do they turn against their own interests, identify with self-destructive models of behavior and sink themselves? Consider the Roman Senate during the late Republic, or the French nobility of 1789. The West’s bureaucratized “intellectuals†are merely another example of the same sorry phenomenon. After generations of common sense, society succumbs to a kind of “intuition deficit disorder.†The common wisdom of past generations is lost to the rational egoism of a final generation that can neither believe as their ancestors, nor think like them, nor act like them. Consequently, they do not thrive or build or persevere. Instead, they weaken, squander and retreat. Under their leadership the state falls into confusion and party strife. Corruption spreads everywhere and cannot be contained. The state itself is attacked by foreign enemies or falls to civil war.
Behind the decline and fall is a spiritual malaise. Something deep gives way. Old-fashioned truths are set aside. Since nothing is regarded as true in the old sense, since nothing is settled or final, then no serious commitments are possible. The only rule is to eschew rules. The only thing worth fighting for is escape, retreat and a good time. Those in favor of making a stand are therefore undermined, as a matter of principle. No other course makes sense.
In a February 13
Washington Times column, William R. Hawkins suggested that Russia and China cannot be trusted when it comes to Iran. One would prefer to hear this explained by President Bush himself. But the corruption of American culture means that the president is not allowed to talk or think in realistic strategic terms, especially not in public. Instead, he must yammer about bringing democracy to a country that isn’t really a country at all, but an ethnically mixed hate-basket ready to explode. He must go to the United Nations and believe the promises of Russian and Chinese officials. He must believe that they also want to stop the Iranian bomb (when they have been the chief facilitators of Iranian military power).
Strategic truth is systematically ignored by a culture that cannot tolerate difficult things. And so, when a disturbing reality finds its way into the headlines, it is left to die quietly (by neglect). This lesson is everywhere absorbed. The culture isn’t interested. You aren’t going anywhere with this sort of thing. Leave it alone. Set it aside. Pundits and opinion leaders prefer not to notice, spinning the truth into unrecognizable tatters. On February 1 the
Washington Post reported, in a column by Karl Vick (A18), that on “the afternoon of Jan. 4, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reached for the phone and got Latin America on the line.†The Post revealed that the Iranian government – supposedly led by religious fanatics – finds its kindred spirit in Latin American communism as personified by President Fidel Castro of Cuba, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. The Islamic terrorists link arms with the Latin American revolutionaries. Together they intend to bring America to its knees. Iran has oil and Venezuela has oil. If they shut off their oil at the same time, what will the Americans do?
The speaker of Iran’s parliament will soon pay a visit to Cuba and Venezuela. Oil power will be used to gain nuclear power, and nuclear power will be handed to terrorists. Hugo Chavez and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei want the same thing. “Death to America.†And they cannot produce this result without nuclear power. Who dares to tell the Americans this truth? And what American would believe it, if told? For that matter, do they have the willpower to act in their own defense?
I am doubtful.
Intuition Deficit Disorder
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