AS WE SEE IT: LIVING TOMORROW TODAY

[The following is an outgrowth of comments made by “Anonymous” to the blog article, “Christianity Takes Another Hit, This Time In Indiana,” by “Eleanor” on 01 December 2005.]

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks again for your interesting question and comment. They provide us an opportunity to clarify your basic question, whether this blog is to be an Objectivist site or a Christian/Conservative one.

First, we think it important to point out the obvious: we are addressing our response to everyone who reads this, not just to you and others versed in Objectivism, so bear with us while we talk about some things already familiar to you but perhaps not to others.

The masthead of our blog reads, in part, “Principle focused, analytic opinion about current events, trends, and threats from Fifth Column elements of the “unholy alliance” between international and national anti-American Left (including Islamia)… All opinions belong to our blogger authors and are never edited, even though some will differ from time to time with our Objectivist orientation.” (Emphasis added)

We established Sixth Column to do whatever we could to counter destructive threats to America. While we are Objectivists, and write from an Objectivist viewpoint (which, after all, is the only one we have!), this blog and its sister website, 6th Column Against Jihad, were created first and foremost to fight the “unholy alliance” between the anti-American Postmodern deconstructionists and Islam, in contrast to promulgating Objectivism per se.

By “Postmodernism,” we mean an umbrella term referring to the many collectivist philosophies (liberals, socialists, communists, fascists, and Nazis), whose common goal it is to “deconstruct” the United States and destroy the Enlightenment ideas (“modernism”) which founded America.

We put the fight against Islam and the fifth column as our primary goal here for two reasons. First, we think it best to follow a policy of “division of labor.” While our acquaintance with Objectivism goes back a fairly long way, to 1964 when we were young medical students, we are not professional philosophers; we believe it best to leave any serious exposition of Objectivism to the professionals. They will produce the future academics, politicians, journalists, scientists, philosophers, judges, teachers, lawyers, statesmen, artists, etc., who will finish rescuing our country from the clutches of the Postmodernists.

Secondly, and ultimately, the victory against the Postmodernists will be won through a long-term process of education, which will cause cultural change. The Founders warned Americans that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance, but we did not heed them well enough; the minds of our children, along with the well-being of our nation’s future, were stolen from us, right under our noses by the immediate predecessors of today’s Postmodernists, starting with the Progressives. It took them over 150 years to put us where we are today, and it will require years to rescue our children and our future from them.

The danger from Islam, unlike the slow rot of Postmodernism, is not “gathering”; it is not “imminent”; it is not even “immediate”; it is NOW: an active, existing, “in-your-face,” flat-out war, openly declared years ago by Islam, and has already killed thousands of us. According to their hero, bin Laden, the enemy intends to kill millions more of us and then go on to establish a worldwide caliphate. It is for this reason—the fact that Americans are already dying under the assault—that we find that trying to “vivisect” the unholy alliance to be the best use of our particular “skill set.”

We are certain that you know how few there are “out there” who are serious students of Objectivism. We are a long way from achieving “critical mass,” so we seek allies today who see selected issues the same way we do. After all, it took over two thousand years for Aristotle’s ideas to inspire the founding of our country, and the same length of time for Plato’s ideas to inspire the various Postmodernists and their bedfellow, Islam. In the electronic information age, the process of change will go much faster, but it will still take an unknown number of future decades.

Because the threat of Islam, aided by the rest of the fifth column, is, in our judgment, such a rapidly spreading and deadly threat to our country and our people, we think that all of us who love our country must prioritize our differences, putting aside those that we reasonably can, and join forces. We can only try to explain our philosophy to others if we are alive, and today, we are in the fight for our very existence.

The fact that there are those who understand, at any level, just how great the threat is, is a remarkable tribute to what Ayn Rand called “The Great American Subconscious.” What she referred to by using that expression was like an attitude (sense of life). That attitude is the last gasp of reason in this country, and that is all left to us as our Founder’s legacy. As Children of the Enlightenment, the Founders understood full well that reason was mankind’s greatest weapon against tyranny of any kind, be it imposed by a monarch of our own culture, or by a Hitler, a Stalin, or Islam. Indeed, our Founders had some very perceptive remarks to make about Islam. If they were in politics today, they would be attacked for saying about Islam what they said about it then, because of one of the most potent weapons yet developed by the Postmodernists--“Political Correctness.”

It was with the use of reason that our Forefathers declared our independence, wrote our Constitution, and then topped it all off with the Bill of Rights.

In 1926, Ayn Rand, the philosopher who founded the Objectivist School of Philosophy, emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States as a young woman barely out of her teens. In 1957, she published her prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged, in which the philosophic roots of the causes and effects of what was happening to our beloved country, then and now, were dramatized in great literature.

By the 1960s, hippies and flower children, with all the problems that these labels subsume, burst upon the scene. Postmodernism had reached critical mass, and the minds of our children were ingrained with its lessons, unopposed, except for the American Subconscious. Our lack of vigilance was showing.

America was “softened up” for the Islamic invasion that was already underway. Multiculturalism, diversity, political correctness, moral relativism, etc. are all products deliberately conjured up by the Postmodernists to aid them in the overthrow of the principles of the Founders. Today, they leave in their wake a Constitution in tatters, a vulnerability to Islam that we are only beginning to awaken to, and about half of the nation’s population who, without knowing exactly why, are uncomfortably aware that something is terribly wrong.

For answers, many who are aware that there is a problem turn the only source of philosophy remaining readily available to them—their religion. As a result, some of our allies believe this to be a “war of religions,” rather than a “war of philosophies.”

Bits and pieces of Enlightenment thinking have persisted here and there, mostly, although not exclusively, among the conservatives. “To conserve,” means, “to keep the same; to prevent change.” In various ways, and in different forms, they have “conserved” some important fragments of the Founders’ ideas. Since today most of the Great American Subconscious resides in conservatives, we look for allies primarily among them.

Are there differences between our (largely conservative) allies and us? Yes, and as you know, some of the differences are profound. Despite that, the people we collaborate with on this blog share some of our most important values, and we simply agree to disagree on the others. This is the basis of our respect and deep affection for our blogger-partner “Eleanor,” as well as for others “out there” in the Blogosphere with whom we have become acquainted. “Eleanor” has made very significant contributions since we began here in July of 2004, and readers have much to gain by reading her blogs. And, if they disagree, they may elect not to accept what they read or comment with rebuttals or even submit to us their own statements for blogging.

If we limited ourselves to working only with fellow Objectivists, we would 1) be “preaching to the choir” (no pun intended!) and 2) we would be missing valuable opportunities to share our concerns and pool our efforts to protect our country against the greatest threat it has ever faced. Few ever get the opportunity to start where they would like; we all must start where we are and work toward where we want to be.

If our clear statement of our philosophical orientation should pique someone’s curiosity, so much the better, but it isn’t essential to our purpose for readers to be Objectivists, or even to want to learn anything about Objectivism; our purpose here at Sixth Column is to help destroy the fifth column before it destroys us. If any reader chooses to pursue the “sunlit universe” offered by Objectivism as a result of what they read from us, then “hallelujah,” so to speak.

We partner with those who are as convinced as we that the unholy alliance presents an unremitting danger that reaches across the centuries from one generation to the next, and who, while they may be unfamiliar with Objectivism, place individual rights, to the degree they have some reasonable understanding of that concept, at the top of their list of values.

We must deal with mixed premises of today’s culture because they cannot be avoided. At best, anyway, convincing adults is harder than sewing buttons on ice cream. Nevertheless, we must deal today with the hand that contemporary cultural development has dealt us, and, following the law of causality, not wait until some tomorrow when a fully rational philosophy becomes routine in America (when it will be far too late for us mortals of today to do anything) to get started. We must make tomorrow starting today, but, to quote Ayn Rand: “Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”

Best,

George Mason and Cubed