The Enemy Within: A Conservative Response to a Radical Rebuttal

 

It is not often that I pay much attention to those who tread beyond the margins of respectable political opinion, much less on the fringes of American society. But after reading a member of Young Americans for Liberty’s response to my recent article at The Daily Caller, I’d like to volunteer some thoughts.

In my original piece, I argued that the vast majority of young conservatives who rightly support their country at war must begin standing down the insurgents within our political coalition who refuse to do so. I singled out the anti-war libertarian activists who have coalesced around people like Rep. Ron Paul and their viewpoints. Because these viewpoints tend to include sympathy for America’s enemies and gross historical revisionism (i.e., we provoked 9/11, the Civil War was unnecessary), I argued that proponents of such nonsense ought to be exposed and chastised by those of us who follow in the tradition of William F. Buckley. Just as he chased the radicals of his time out of the conservative mix, so must we.

What did my opponent from Young Americans for Liberty argue? Only a few excerpts from his diatribe need to be highlighted in order to understand precisely where he and his peers stand.

“I am arguing that the American government has engaged in a secretive, imperialistic, war-mongering foreign policy for over 20 years before 9/11 occurred at the cost of the peoples of both the United States and the Middle East.”

Truth be told, Osama bin Laden could not have said it better himself. If this is not a justification for some form of retribution against America, then I do not know what is. Furthermore, the Cold War policies to which he alludes were actually implemented in favor of liberating Afghanistan from communist occupation, at which we succeeded. And those policies, of course, ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union, of which he barely makes any mention.

“I mourn every day for the innocent people that died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, but I equally mourn for the men, women, and children of the Middle East who have endured horrible fates due to what Qualtere refers to as ‘the Good War of a new century,’ a war of aggression being cleverly disguised as a war of defense.”

It is not often that one hears a “but” follow an expression of sympathy for dead Americans, at least not when it comes from an actual American. It is even rarer, and vastly more disturbing, to see that “but” preface an equalization of one’s fallen countrymen with those slain by his country’s military during a combat operation. It is worth noting that the author does not bother at all to make any distinction between civilian casualties and dead terrorists. This is telling.

Earlier on in his article, he sarcastically dismisses another obvious distinction:

“Here’s a radical idea: suppose that young Americans consider the fact that the people of the Middle East are human beings just like us, and that the majority of them want nothing more than to live according to their own values. Suppose that a constant American military presence in the Middle East is recruitment fuel for Islamic extremists.”

Here’s a not-so radical idea: suppose that Americans don’t view everyone living in the Middle East as one homogenous people. Suppose that Americans choose to differentiate the liberated Iraqis who now fight shoulder-to-shoulder with our troops from the ones who once beheaded our men on video camera. And suppose that most Americans are able to see a clear difference between the Afghan woman about to be stoned for adultery and the clerical fascist with rocks in hand. But for that “American military presence,” she and countless others would be forced to live or die according to the oppressive “values” of someone else.

Unfortunately, radical libertarians like my opponent lack the courage to make these vital distinctions. Instead, they prop up contrived and utterly false moral equivalencies between an American soldier and a Taliban militant, between a terrorist attack and a legitimate military campaign, between radical Islamism and liberal democracy.

In the world view of such misguided souls, America has no enemies. The rest of the world, however, does. It is us. Alas, it is little wonder that the libertarian movement has attracted so many self-professed “9/11 truthers”—those who believe that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, planned and executed by the American government—with such public insinuations and arguments as the one with which my opponent closes his article:

“[T]he greatest enemies of our freedom are not hiding in caves overseas, but sitting in decadent halls right here at home.”

Elliot Engstrom, the author of Young Americans for Liberty’s rebuttal to my piece, need not worry about ever bearing any sort of influence on mainstream American politics. His radical assertions, only a few of which I’ve quoted above, have all but guaranteed his irrelevance and permanent place on the margins. But there are many more young activists like him, wise enough to conceal their apparent hatred for the United States but bold enough to continue jostling for political representation and power. All the while, they are obstructing the ideas and efforts of American conservatism and contaminating the party of Reagan with an extremism he would have despised. It is they who must be confronted, discredited, and exiled from the mainstream conservative movement lest they mistake their flimsy CPAC straw poll victory for anything more than a transient fluke. In particular, they are enemies of conservatives of every age, of every brand, of every background. Indeed, in the midst of this war for civilization’s very future, they are enemies of our nation’s indispensable fight for victory. Henceforth, let us treat them as such.

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Tom Qualtere currently serves as research assistant to the president of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. This column was originally published at TheDailyCaller.com.