My Opposition to Women-in-Combat

and

How I Got There: A Strange Journey©

The Transcript of the Speech Given to Retired Naval Officers and Their Wives in Atlantic Beach, Florida

by

Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.)

8 March 2002

I was introduced as 'Beak' Atkinson which is the name I prefer. 'Beak.' You know, knicknames can tell a lot about a person -- often very subtle things. I like that nickname. I have no idea how I got it. [Pause.] My mother did not give it to me. Nor my father. I know my high school and college classmates did not give it to me. My wife does not call me by that name. I got it while undergoing Navy carrier flight training by my fellow naval aviation cadets. They would greet me first thing in the morning with 'Honk!' 'Honk!' The Beak. I didn't know how to take it at first but became so accustomed to it that I painted it on the back of my hard hat in my first squadron -- a fighter squadron. And now I like it so much that I am known as 'Pa Beak' to my grandchildren.

I will let you in on a little personal story regarding that nickname because it has something to do with the subject of my talk. When I reached the 'sport car' stage of my life, I bought vanity license plates for the car -- front and back -- with the logo, 'Beak1.' I liked it so much that I suggested to my second-eldest daughter (who resembles me more than any of the others) that she obtain the vanity plates, 'Beak2,' for her auto. I even offered to pay for them. Well, that raised a firestorm. She thought that was the most horrible idea she had ever heard and most certainly would not have such a monstrosity on her car. The result of this episode -- within a year she went to a doctor and had a 'nose job' and now she is a beautiful mother of two wonderful children.

How is this related to the topic at hand this evening? It is just a reminder. Women are -- well, [Pause.] they are just 'different.'

I must also confess before launching into my subject tonight that 'I discriminate against women.' [Pause.] I am here with my wife of 48 years this evening. She sits at my side. I notice, looking out into the audience that most of you also discriminate against women. You are sitting beside your wife. Now, all of you guys are handsome, intelligent men. There are at least 100 women in the local area who would love to be sitting at your side here tonight. There are probably 1,000 in the state of Florida, maybe a million in the USA, and about 1 billion in the world who you could have chosen to accompany you here tonight. But you and I discriminate against all of those women by choosing to be here with our wives. Yes, DISCRIMINATION can be a good thing!

The Primary Conclusion of this Talk: In the words of a famous baseball manager, "It ain't over 'til it's over." Women-in-Combat is NOT a settled issue. It has not been tested under 'real' combat conditions in a 'real' war. What has been thrust upon our armed forces by self-serving politicians can be reversed. The path may be 'circular' rather than linear. It will be accomplished by reaching the PASSIVES among us.

How do I know this?: I now recognize that I was a PASSIVE ten years ago.

How did I get to this point?: By researching 'sensitivity training' in terms of the Korean War POW experience and Kurt Lewin's American counterpart. Five (5) percent were RESISTERS, fifteen (15) percent were COLLABORATORS, and eighty (80) percent were rendered PASSIVE by the same 'sensitivity training' techniques which have been and are being used today in America on our nation's armed forces.

Introduction

On the table there are materials (essays, video tapes and audio cassettes) which are available for distribution -- FREE OF CHARGE:

1) Issues of the Eternal Vigilance journal -- A journal of American Culture

a) American Civilization in Crisis

b) Ethics at the Naval Academy

c) The Feminization of America -- Part I

d) The Feminization of America -- Part II

e) Women-in-Combat After 9-11

f) El Supremo! Kant's Disciple: The Clinton Legacy

g) The Homosexual Agenda

2) Video tapes

a) The New Totalitarians

b) The Frankfurt School -- Political Correctness: Where It Came From and How it Affects You

c) From Tailhook' 91 to Karl Marx '99. This is the video of a talk I gave to the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness at their conference in Seattle, WA in June of 1999. It is one of only two public defenses made of our carrier naval aviation culture in the wake of the Tailhook '91 fiasco. I do not defend the events that took place there but I do stand up for that culture. The only other public defense of our culture in the wake of Tailhook '91 was made by ADM Thomas H. Moorer, USN (Ret.) on national television when he looked America straight in the eye and reminded us that 'Those aviators had just arrived back from fighting the Gulf Storm war and we don't expect them to be choir boys.' I have never been as proud of a naval officer in my life as I was of ADM Moorer on that occasion.

3) Audio Cassettes -- Radio Talk Show Appearances

a) Where Have All the Warriors Gone? and From Trust to Terror: Radical Feminism is Destroying the U.S. Navy.

b) Who Will Win America's Future Wars? with RADM Mark Hill, Jr., USN (Ret.)

c) Mind Control: The Ultimate Weapon by Major Wm. Mayer, U.S. Army

This audio tape describes the results of debriefing 1,000 of the 4,000 Korean War POWs immediately after their repatriation. This is the detailed account of 'sensitivity training' conducted on our G.I.s. It is told by the U.S. Army psychologist who led the debriefing effort. This account is the one I referred to in my above remarks on the RESISTERS, the COLLABORATORS, and the PASSIVES.

d) A Metaphor: Women-in-Combat and the Terrorist Attack on America

e) El Supremo! Kant's Disciple and the Clinton Legacy

f) Peter Singer, Tim O'Brien & Toni Morrison and Ethics at the Naval Academy and the Feminization of the

Navy's Combat Arms

My Strange Journey

This journey began when the Navy sent me to the University of Michigan to get a PhD in Nuclear Engineering. While there, I received an education far, far beyond any technical discipline that I mastered there. I was as close to the counter-culture revolution that swept our nation's campuses in the mid-1960s as one could be without being a participant. I came to know and understand the mindset of faculty, students and graduate students who by-and-large opposed and demonstrated against the Vietnam War, set fire to the NROTC building, joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), took over the administration offices by force, and shut down classes at will (open it up or shut it down), and reigned under complete anarchy. They formed the women's liberation movement, the New Left, and Welfare Rights organizations.

A scant year from the time that I was being shot at every third day or so in the skies over North Vietnam, I was thrust into that caldron of revolution on our nation's campuses. The atmosphere was such that we (military officers) attending classes at the University of Michigan were ordered to NOT wear our uniforms on campus for fear of physical harm.

I quickly learned that the students there had a paranoid fear of anything military. They were uneasy with, suspicious of, distrustful of, and some even LOATHED the military. One graduate student asked me point blank, 'How do we know you aren't a CIA agent sent here to see who we are sleeping with?' One female friend of a nuclear engineering classmate scowled at me as she scolded, 'My brother isn't crazy.' He had evaded the draft and fled to Canada.

A member of my PhD dissertation committee, a brilliant young Republican who had played tackle at Yale and graduated with a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, became (during the 1980s) first the Provost and then the President of the University of Michigan. He was a huge success. He convinced industry to provide funds and raised a $1billion trust fund to improve the campus' infrastructure -- buildings and equipment.

But Jim also allowed radical administrators to implement an 'unconstitutional' speech code, start minority studies programs, several women's studies programs, and set 'diversity' targets for student enrollment. As a result the University of Michigan is now the target of a lawsuit dealing with preferences for minorities in student admissions. He also allowed the university's law school to hire and protect Catherine Mackinnon as a law professor. She is the radical feminist author of a 'famous' book which proclaims that 'all sex within marriage is rape.'

The excuse given by Jim's conservative protectors is, "Well, Jim has two daughters and no sons." Nevertheless, my venerable alma mater, the University of Michigan, has gone down the tubes! The university that I loved with all my heart since the days I was a young farm kid, listening to the Army/U of M football game in the late 1940s when Glen Davis and Doc Blanchard played for Army. I can remember listening to the game on the radio and at halftime, kicking and passing the football between the barn and the house and pretending to be Bob Chapius of U of M. I loved the University of Michigan from that time on -- just the same as you feel about your alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy.

But now, the U of M is not the school that it was. Culturally, it has gone completely to pot. It has become a Mecca for a New Age counter-culture revolution -- the same revolution that was begun in the mid-1960s and continues to this day in a more extreme and radical form. Could it be because a 'good conservative' allowed it to go awry? Could it be that ADM Charles Lawson, USN (Ret.), the former Superintendent, started the Naval Academy down that very same path? Please read the issue of the Eternal Vigilance journal (on the table over there) with the lead essay, ‘Ethics at the Naval Academy,’ and make up your own mind on the subject.

That which we have seen happen over the past thirty-five years at the University of Michigan has begun to happen at the U.S. Naval Academy. Radical feminist civilian faculty have been hired in the new Ethics Program, in the English Literature studies program, and elsewhere. This turn of events was dictated from above by President Clinton to SecNav John Dalton to the then-Superintendent, ADM Charles Lawson, to the radical feminist faculty which was hired as a result of policy decisions from above. These radical civilian faculty members have been and are still replacing 'tradition' with New Age counter-culture programs at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The next step in my strange journey was taken after graduating with a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and being assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the group that supported the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I and II) with the Soviet Union. Much to my surprise, I found the same attitude among the same year-group young people (most with PhDs -- Piled Higher and Deeper) that I experienced at the U of M. They were in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and especially on Henry Kissinger's National Security Council Staff -- the Verification Panel Working Group (about 35 policy analysts who formulated SALT policy).

To those people, the U.S. military was the villain. The Soviets were simply good guys, the underdogs, who, if given a chance, would show us that they could be as responsible with nuclear weapons as we have been. For these New Age counter-culture revolutionaries working the SALT problem, the Soviets were to be trusted. They certainly would not cheat on the agreements. Later, when they did cheat with respect to testing their SA-5 radars in an ABM mode, the response of our New Age participants was, "Oh, those rat finks, they [the Soviets] let us [the New Agers] down." Indeed, these counter-culture revolutionaries believed that we (the U.S. military) were the 'enemy.'

The last step in my strange journey came during the 1990s. When the Clinton administration came to power during the 1993-2000 years, I observed young people with the exact same mind-set as I saw first at the U of M and then in the SALT talks grasp the mantle of executive power. A light bulb suddenly turned on in my head. I started processing the above experiences, putting two and two together. I started researching the historical record. What I found caused me to leave the ranks of PASSIVE Americans and I became a RESISTER.

At the end of this strange journey of 'awakening,' I found that we can win this battle if we convert the PASSIVES among us to RESISTERS. In this process, we must not waste time and energy trying to convert the COLLABORATORS.

Some Illustrative Readings

Below are selected readings from articles in major national newspapers and other authoritative sources that bear on the subject of Women-in-Combat. The reading will be quoted, along with its source and then a summary comment will be made.

· Piddle Packs. An e-mail, dated 28 January 2002, from an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot who is flying combat missions over Afghanistan was obtained by the Naval Aviation Foundation from the Association of Naval Aviation. It reads in part:

"Had a few scary weeks during the last days of November. Was it the AAA, surface-to-air threat, night tanking, night traps? Nope -- we almost ran out of piddle packs. For those of you who have never experienced the 'cheese sandwich,' let me explain. Imagine flying for 8.5 hours -- let's say from Boston to LA non-stop -- on an airliner with no toilets and 'movement about the cabin' is not only frowned upon, it is prohibited (you can see where I am gong here). When nature calls, the answer is the piddle pack -- a small 20-ounce tough plastic bag with a ziploc top, ergonomically designed for cockpit usage, if you get my drift. Well, the word goes out late November that the ship's piddle pack inventory is running dangerously low, a timely re-supply is unlikely and in-flight relief generally needs to slow down, that is unless you were comfortable relieving yourself airborne on yourself."

"Panic shot through the squadron and, as usual, we had some folks over-react, acting like peed-out piddle pack junkies going to any means to get their hands on some of the last remaining piddle packs: stealing, looting, begging, chicanery, hanging out in bathrooms and dark passageways looking to trade sex for piddle packs, you name it. One guy was found with TEN piddle packs in his helmet bag during the height of the Piddle Pack Depression and was beaten to within one urine drop of his life by a mob of angry pilots and RIOs, all recently forced to make an arrested carrier landing with a full bladder. Ruthless stuff. My squadron, in keeping with the theme that desperate times require desperate (i.e. moronic) measures, survived these dark days by adopting a completely unsafe personal dehydration plan coupled with the procurement of several emergency in-flight relief vessels/urine storage devices -- Gatorade bottles -- for those times when bladder evacuation at 32,000 feet was just plain unavoidable. As an aside, donning the ever reliable DEPENDS undergarment was momentarily discussed but instantaneously dismissed. We were all in agreement that the image of a downed Navy fighter pilot in Afghanistan, paraded in front of the cameras on CNN, wearing only DIAPERS would only serve to heighten the fighting spirit and resolve of the Taliban and al Qaeda network world wide."

Summary comment: We can and did remove urinals from our aircraft carriers and replaced them with 'gender neutral' potties (forcing the men to 'squat to pee' aboard ship) but we could not stock enough 'piddle packs' to fight the war against terrorism in the skies over Afghanistan. Indeed, the Danzigization of the U.S. Navy was a tragic mistake. [See the essay on this subject at this link.] By the way, how do the females use the 'piddle packs' while airborne? Or is it discriminatory to ask? The answer is probably to dehydrate before the flight. This is a dangerous practice.

Who is responsible for this?

· Lawyers are in charge. [Schrader, Esther, "Lawyers are playing big role in Afghan conflict: They advise commanders on each military action," The Los Angeles Times and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 February 2002.] It reads in part:

"In today's war, every bombing run, every missile firing, every raid by U.S. soldiers is vetted by teams of lawyers who are experts on international rules of war. There are lawyers in the top secret operations center, called The Tank, deep inside the Pentagon, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, signing off on the legality of raids and strikes. There are lawyers at the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, poring over lists of potential bombing targets. [Shades of President Johnson, SecState Dean Rusk, and other civilian advisors in the White House on their knees in the map room selecting targets to strike in North Vietnam]. Before they jet off into Afghan skies, Navy pilots are briefed by lawyers based on aircraft carriers on what they can and can't shoot. When special operations forces head out on top secret missions, a lawyer is often at their side."

"Lawyers, often seated at the right hand of commanders, vet the list to determine whether the target is being used for a military purpose and to judge whether the potential for civilian deaths is clearly outweighed by the military utility of the strike. [Could this be the main reason for the 8.5-hour missions over Afghanistan, requiring piddle packs -- pilots waiting for a lawyer's authorization to strike 'last minute' targets of opportunity?] The lawyers review the types of munitions commanders plan to use to ensure that what is ultimately dropped is least likely to harm civilians. They can recommend a bomb be dropped at a different angle or at a different time to minimize civilian deaths. [Shades of Vietnam, where by the time the civilians decided such things for an alpha strike, the enemy knew we were coming and set their air defenses accordingly?]. The final decision is the commander's."

Summary comment: Can you imagine where we would be today if General Ulysses S. Grant or General Wm. Tecumseh Sherman or General George S. Patton, or General Douglas MacArthur, or General Dwight D. Eisnehower had consulted lawyers in the conduct of their battles in our nation's history? Our leaders must be watching too much of the TV series, JAG, wherein lawyers are the heroes. I don't remember ever seeing a lawyer aboard ship and certainly NEVER in an aircraft squadron ready room. In fact, the most devastating insult one could throw at another pilot was to label him a 'ready-room lawyer.'

The above comment is made somewhat in jest. The truth of the matter is much, much more serious. If one is reading the headlines in today's national newspapers, one is aware that the World Court is trying Slobodan Milosevic for 'crimes against humanity' as a result of his role in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. But if one reads the stories of this trial in some detail, one finds that Milosevic is accusing the U.S. and its military commanders with the same crimes for the killing of civilians in Serbia during the war in Kosovo. It is clear from this situation that U.S. commanders are a bit nervous about eventually being charged with the same 'crimes against humanity' for the killing of innocent civilians during the conduct of the war against the terrorists in Afghanistan -- our protestations of 'collateral damage' notwithstanding. The above report on the use of lawyers may be an indication of this possibility.

This possibility becomes even more threatening to our military commanders when one remembers that one of the last policy acts made by the Clinton administration a month or so before leaving office was to propose that the U.S. support the formation of a permanent World Court, under the United Nations, to try just such 'crimes against humanity.' Our military have just cause to be suspicious of a certain element of our nation's possible future civilian leadership. They may become liable to prosecution for conducting war in such fashion that a future president could press for retribution under a World Court which countervails American sovereignty over its own people. This prospect is not in conformity with Victor Davis Hanson’s historical account of ‘The Western Way of War.’ It could portend dire consequences for the survival of American civilization – but more on that later.

Who is responsible for this?

· '40 Days and 40 Nights.' [Culture, et cetera, "Dirty Movie," The Washington Times, 5 March 2002 -- and -- Hunter, Stephen, "'40 Days': One Thing on Its Mind," The Washington Post, 1 March 2002.] They read in part:

"Josh Hartnett is a very handsome young actor playing a twenty-something Internet guy in San Francisco who take a vow of celibacy for Lent. In Hartnett's world, every woman is beautiful, dresses like a high-priced call girl and is willing to have sex with him at the drop of a file folder...[The movie] is depressing because its notion of Our Youth Today is not that it's a Generation X but a Generation seX. That's all these kids think about: sexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsex. Life is a copulation-o-rama, a whirl on the orgasm-go-round, a bodily-fluid exchange sock hop. Can they get that much sex? Can there be that much sex to be gotten? Where's my Viagra? This bears investigating."

Summary comment: What does this have to do with the subject at hand -- women-in-combat? Whether or not the movie is a depiction of what is out there in America today or what Hollywood would like it to be, it is a fact that our military recruits from this pool of twenty-somethings. Fifteen to twenty percent are females. And the Leading Petty Officer and Chief Petty Officer are made responsible for 'managing' human behavior aboard ship. The radical feminists proclaim that it is possible to 'manage' the problem of the raging hormones of this age group. It is not happening and it is not possible to 'manage' it. Consequently, the Leading Petty Officer and Chief Petty Officer are being disciplined for allowing sex aboard ship when it is simply impossible to stop.

Sailors, active-duty and retired, call in on my talk show appearances and tell the audience that aboard ship today (with females in the crew) it is like being back in high school. Chief Petty Officers have to stand watch over the female berthing quarters to see that no unauthorized personnel go in or come out.

Who is responsible for this?

· Top Priorities. [Culture, et cetera, "Top Priorities," The Washington Times, 5 March 2002.] It reads:

"On Sept. 10, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, the group most responsible for promoting women in combat, gathered in Pentagon Conference Room 5C1042. This civilian advisory committee, whose members have the protocol status of three-star generals, monitors the concerns of women in uniform. And what was the topic on the eve of the worst attack in U.S. history?"

"After briefings from representatives of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air force, and Coast Guard, DACOWITS, as the committee is known, issued a formal request for more information on what they deemed a matter of paramount military significance: breast feeding."

"As the terrorists prepared to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon itself, our military leaders were directed 'to engage in open dialogue' on lactation tactics."

Summary comment: A big battle regarding women-in-combat involves the future of this radical feminist organization. As of February 2002 (Scarborough, Rowan, "U.S. moves women away from combat: Defense panel to shift from combat assignments to readiness issues," The Washington Times, 6 February 2002] "...the Defense Department...scaled back [DACOWITS], dismissing all Clinton-appointed members, cutting support staff and steering the panel to deal with readiness issues, not women in combat."

The importance of this action cannot be overstated. But it has only 'stopped the bleeding' from the radical feminist agenda. It will not 'heal the wound' until women-in-combat roles has been repealed across the entire spectrum of billets in which women now serve. The cancer may be in partial remission but it is not cured. Of that cancer, we must ask the question, 'Who packed DACOWITS with radical feminist lawyers and academics -- none of whom have experienced combat first-hand?'

Indeed, who is responsible for this?

· A selected reading from Victor Davis Hanson ["Classics and War," Imprimis, February 2002], Professor of Classics, California State University, Fresno, follows:

Note: Professor Hanson is the author of 'The Western Way of War: the Hoplite Warrior,' 'The Other Greeks,' 'The Soul of Battle,' and most recently, 'Carnage and Culture.'

"The study of Classics -- of Greece and Rome -- can offer us moral lessons as well as a superb grounding in art, literature, history, and language. In our present crisis after September 11, it also offers practical guidance -- and the absence of familiarity with the foundations of Western culture in part -- may explain many of the disturbing reactions to the war that we have seen on American campuses...If more in our universities really understood the Greeks and Romans and their legacy in the West, then they would not see this present conflict through either therapeutic or apologetic lenses. As Classics teaches us, war in classical antiquity -- and for most of the past 2,500 years of Western Civilization -- was seen as a tragedy innate to the human condition..."

"This depressing view of human nature and conflict is rarely any longer with us. It was not the advent of Christianity that ended it; Christian philosophers and theologians long ago developed the doctrine of 'just war,' having realized that nonresistance meant suicide..."

"The deviant offspring of the Enlightenment -- Marxists and Freudians -- gave birth to even more pernicious social sciences that sought to 'prove' to us that war was always evil and therefore -- with help from PhDs -- surely preventable. Indeed, during the International Year of Peace in 1986, a global commission of experts concluded that war was unnatural and humans themselves unwarlike! Unfortunately, innocent people get killed because of that kind of thinking. Many, especially in our universities, now are convinced that war always results from real, rather than perceived, grievances, such as the poverty arising out of the usual list of sins: colonialism, imperialism, racism and sexism. In response, dialogue and mediation have been elevated to the grand science of 'conflict resolution theory,' a sort of marriage counseling or small claims court taken to the global level..."

"To stop the evil of Islamic fundamentalism, the tragic Greeks would make ready the 101st Airborne and the Rangers, while too many in academia would rather that we chit-chat with him, fathom him, or accommodate him as did the Clinton State Department. Seeing war as 'Zeus's curse' in this age of our greatest learning and wealth -- and pride -- is to descend into 'savagery,' when our sophisticated elite promise that prayer, talk, or money can yet prevail. But if we deem ourselves too smart, too moral, or too soft to stop killers, then -- as Socrates and Pericles alike remind us -- we have become real accomplices to evil through inaction. Generations slaughtered in Europe, incinerated Jews, massacred Russians and Chinese, and the bleached bones of Cambodians are proof enough of what the Greeks once warned us."

"Such ignorance of one's own past can weaken a powerful society such as ours that must project confidence, power, humanity -- and hope -- to those less fortunate abroad. This new species of upscale and pampered terrorist hates America for a variety of complex reasons. He despises, of course, his own attraction toward our ease and liberality. He recognizes that our freedom and affluence spur on his appetites more than Islam can repress them. But just as importantly, he realizes that there is an aristocratic guilt within many comfortable Americans, who are too often ashamed of, or apologetic about, their culture. And in this hesitance, our enemies sense not merely our ignorance of our own foundations, but also both decadence and weakness. Rather than appreciating Americans' self-confidence or simple manners when we accept rebuke so politely, our enemies despise us all the more, simply because they can -- and can so easily, and without rejoinder."

"Classics, then, can teach us who we once were -- and thus who we are now in the present war. The ancients not only teach us that life is spirited and tragic, but also that what was created in and followed from Greece and Rome was, and is, man's last and greatest hope on earth."

Summary comment: If we remain true to our Western way of war (our tradition), we will prevail against our enemies. If we do not, we must ask ourselves, 'Who cut future American generations off from their historical roots?'

Who is responsible for this?

· Selected readings from James Kurth, the Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) ["The War and the West," Foreign Policy Research Institute, February 2002.] follow:

"Terrorism has existed since the beginning of human societies across all civilizations...[Concerning the war against Islamic terrorism], the combination and integration of ...three elements (terrorism, political suicide, and weapons of mass destruction) into the 9/11 attacks and the threat of future attacks by Islamic terrorists has created a new kind of warfare..."

"The U.S. has had to wage its war against Islamic terrorists on both the foreign front, beginning in Afghanistan, and the domestic front, which began with security measures directed against potential terrorist cells within the U.S. itself...The war on the foreign front over the next years will be fought with many methods, at the center of which will be 'the new American way of war,' the product of an old military tradition called 'the Western way of war.' Both are characterized by systematic organization combined with individual initiative at the unit level, intense concentration of killing power achieved through the high technology of the time; and relentless continuation of the war until the enemy is annihilated..."

"The war on the domestic front is much more controversial and its full meaning much less comprehended. This war is also likely to be extended over many years...It may become even more important than the war on the foreign front, because the U.S. itself is the Islamic terrorists' most important target..."

"Western civilization is the product of three great traditions and successive eras: (1) the classical culture of ancient Greece and Rome; (2) the Christian religion, particularly Western Christianity; stretching from the ancient, through the medieval, to the modern eras; and (3) the Enlightenment worldview of the modern era...As time moves on, the central front of the war against Islamic terrorism will be the domestic front. Here the target is the American population itself, and the threat comes from the terrorist cells who reside as 'sleepers' within the U.S., living within the Muslim community, particularly among Muslims of Middle Eastern and South Asian origin. Among such Muslims, some are American citizens; many, however, have some sort of immigrant status."

"The Enlightenment has been especially committed to the idea of universality. Indeed, it does not take either the classical culture or the Christian religion seriously; it holds that religious or cultural traditions provide no good reason to exclude anyone from immigrating to an enlightened society. The Enlightenment thinker has tended to assume that a Muslim who is exposed to or immigrates to an enlightened society will eventually give up the Islamic faith and become an enlightened, universal individual..."

"...just as the West cannot go back to being Greece and Rome or Christendom, perhaps in this era of globalization and multiculturalism it can no longer go back to the national identity which, until recently, was so much a feature of the modern era. If so, there is really no longer any West at all, except in the fevered imagination of its Eastern adversaries. There is only the post-West civilization, defined by its universal, transnational, and global pretensions but potentially unable to develop the effective means to defend itself against transnational terrorist networks of global reach."

Summary comment: If we allow 'multiculturalism' to prevail, not only will we lose the war against terrorism, there will no longer be an American civilization. Consequently, we must ask ourselves who allowed 'multiculturalism' and the celebration of 'diversity' to become the guiding lights of our post-West civilization?

Who is responsible for this?

Summary

The answer to the ubiquitous question, Who is responsible for this?, in each of the readings above is the same. The answer is found in the description of 'my strange journey.' The New Totalitarians are responsible -- those eight million or so power elites of the Boomer generation who carried out the counter-culture revolution in the mid-1960s during their young-adulthood years and who have attempted to carry that revolution to completion as they came to political power in the 1990s. They demonstrated against the Vietnam War, formed the New Left and the Women's Liberation movements in the '60s and made secular humanism their foundation for world domination in the 1990s. Indeed, the me, me, me generation is responsible for the decadence and weakness of American civilization today.

So, now we have come full circle. Back to the 'power elites' of the Boomer generation -- possibly the most dangerous generation in America's history. The answer to the question posed takes on a circular path back to where we started in the description of 'my strange journey.' And that takes us to a deeper understanding of the 'scientific' foundation of an explanation of the situation which we face. And that is Chaos Theory. But that is a story for another time.

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