The true enemies of our civilization as we know it...

I am reading GK Chesterton's "The Man Who was Thursday" (fantastic book--definately a must read, whether you're familiar with Chesterton or not...read it!) and I found thoughts that I have been mulling over abstractly for nearly 3 or 4 years articulated simply and beautifully in the fourth chapter. I was, needless to say, not only overjoyed, but happily refocused in my consideration of the problems that I have been thinking about. I have the articulate answer to the question of who is our true enemy (speaking in fleshly terms of course). The "West", the entire civilization, culture, idea that I love is under attack...and though I am sure I have learned it before, I can now articulate it thanks to G.K.C.

Especially in today's world, where we know for a demonstrable fact that there are people in this world that seek our unconditional destruction, it is vital that we accept the situation that is before us. Civilization has been under attack before, and will always come under the knife by these types of enemies. They will use anything and everything in their means to accomplish their ends: the destruction of our way of life, and the end of life in general. In Chesterton's book, such men are correctly identified as true Anarchists...today, they claim the title of Islamist extremists...the result, I believe, is the same. These are the true threats to our existence.

Now, I imagine, you're thinking that this is painfully obvious and are asking why this has caused me to become so excited that I would even go so far as to publish my thoughts on a blog that the world can (though perhaps might not) read? I'll tell you: it is because the threat that exists is not the one that we generally imagine. Last night, at the RNC California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a very true claim: he said that the terror threat we face today is more insidious then the Communist threat of the Cold War days. This, I believe, is terribly true.

The Communist threat was indeed dangerous. They wanted to rule the world. But that is nothing compared to the threat we face today. The Islamic Extremists, or loathsome, evil terrorists as I like to think of them, are not out to rule the world. Oh, certainly some of them imgaine a day when the entire world would have mosques erected in every city, and the world would bow to Allah, and surely the average foot-soldier of the cause is truly deceived into believing he is accomplishing something constructive through his destructive actions...but the actions of the terrorists on 9/11, the actions of the terrorists fighting in Israel, the actions of the terrorists fighting in Iraq...at the very least the masterminds behind the bombs have no desire to see America or the "West" convert. They desire one thing, and one thing only. Our complete and total destruction.

The men that would conceive of a plan to use commercial airliners to create as much havoc and death as possible--not even caring whether or not anyone particularly important actually died, so long as death in mass was accomplished..these are the diabolical men that we face today, and they are the diabolical men that Gabriel Syme, the main character of Chesterton's book, faced in a fantasy long ago. These men are not akin to the typical criminal that we regularly see being arrested and imprisoned--robbers, murderers, rapists, etc. Those men--as Chesteron says, could at least generally be called conditionally good men--if they had what they are committing a crime to get, they would not be committing a crime. They recognize that there is something good about life...wealth...etc. They pursue it wrongly, but they are at least correctly seeing it as worth pursuing.

However, those conditionally good men, our standard criminals, are nothing in comparison to our true enemies. Those that desire death, who seek to undo all order, all peace, all that knits our society together...those men are the true enemies of our lives today, and of the heritage and civilization that I love. They are the heretics of life. They are the ones that I actually fear and so they are the ones that we must stand against to the utmost and possibly bitter end...for, as Gabriel Syme once said:

"Yes,' he said in a voice indescribable, 'you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down."

"How?' asked the Professor. "Why?"

"Because I am afraid of him,' said Syme; 'and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid."