A few weeks ago, on a road trip, I had the pleasure of re-acquainting myself with an old favorite author. Years earlier I had obtained a copy of James Michener's POLAND which, in one or another of my many moves, I had packed unread and never taken out. Michener was a master of the panoramic historical novel - in scope and technique he compares well to our own in-house author, "Unca" Walt Snedeker. While Walt explores the tumultuous roots of his Dutch ancestry, Michener has explored the evolutions of dynamic and troubled nations and peoples and regions - from his first interest in the South Pacific, through to the settlement of regions and states within America. POLAND was written toward the end of his life, and it's far from his best - his dialogue and settings far more stilted than in his easy-flowing THE DRIFTERS or CENTENNIAL. But he describes well an admirable, hard-working people, fiercely devoted to home and family and their liege lord - and totally uninterested in the world political forces which have made their land a client state for one or another power for all its history.

But it isn't Michener I wanted to discuss here. It's the way insight can come to you from odd corners; just simply sneak up and WHAP! - blindside you without warning.

This time it was in a hotel bed. I have a ritual, getting ready in strange bedrooms. I pack a second-rate book, set the lights down, and start to read. Most times I start nodding off after about five pages. This particular night, instead, I was brought unprepared to a sudden, black insight.

In Chapter Nine, Michener moved from a pedestrian account of Polish repellence of the Bolsheviks, skipping a generation to the beginning of the Nazi terror. He wrote of the randomness, the capriciousness of the violence - of how villagers were selected seemingly at random for arrest, were ordered to surrender, and were shot immediately without trial or even any ritual. Shot as they stood in front of the authorities they were to report to.

The villagers were commanded to bury such victims, under the watchful eye of the conqueror/murderers. It was a clever psychological ploy: Instill terror in the subjugated population. Their desireTO LIVE! Led them to accept, not challenge, what was being done - in the hopes that individually they could escape what their neighbors would maybe not. The rules tightened as tools of transport, of agriculture and milling, even cookware, were taken from the villagers - and each new restriction was accompanied by more murder and more terror. In pathetic efforts to ingratiate, villagers reported on one another and even collaborated in compiling lists of persons likely to form any resistance.

In time the Poles were rounded up and sent to the camps - not to die immediately, but to work. And starve. And when the end came, the victims marched passively to the trenches and stood humbly awaiting their obvious fate.

And why did they not resist? This is something I have always wondered, since first reading the history of World War II. Michener explains it well: The desireTO LIVE! brought them to accept relocation - instead of the summary murder which awaited protestors. The desire TO LIVE! led them to work, diligently and obediently, in the jobs contracted to the camps - so desirous were they to avoid the fate of their camp-mates being marched over the hill to the trenches. All the while they were further starved, further weakened - until, when it was their turn to march up the hill, all energy, all ability to fight, all desire for life...was gone.

The message here is instrumentalism. And the folly of trying to accommodate people who wish you dead.

* * * * * * * *

Fast-forward to today. We have an enemy - but that enemy, largely overseas is scarcely hidden in intent or aim. He's unsubtle and obtuse and knows little of psychology; and despite all the apologists in this nation, he can scarcely be seen as anything but a base, crude, barbarian threat.

But for the apologists. For within that camp lies our true enemy.

It isn't their stance on the War on Terror that makes them a threat. It's the constant influence this camp has had on American government and life and culture - from their fifty years of holding power, and their continuing to wield power as a self-styled "loyal opposition" and arbiter of culture and values.

Their enemy is America and Western civilization. Their tool is instrumentalism, and their best hope is the human tendency of the other side, to appease andaccommodate and get along.

In getting along, we allowed them to usurp Constitutional protections against abuse of Federal power - buy getting the national government involved in local law enforcement and civil-rights issues. Setting the stage for the situation we face today - where Federal standards come down from on high, teaching our children mischaracterizations and untruths in the schools; impeding industry; extending special benefits on sanctioned groups.

Ingetting along, we allowed the destruction of family - through the underhanded gift of gender-neutral employment, coupled to a heavy Federal tax burden which all but PUSHED the woman into the workplace. Which set the stage for institutional raising of children - by Federally-funded, liberal-controlled daycare; by leftist-controlled schools, and in the streets and gutters. The children brought up in such a sexualized, impulsive, uncontrolled environment are dedicated to their own pleasure and unable to accept or understand morality, deferred gratification, or sacrifice. Especially of the kind needed in a stable marriage.

Toget along with the Left's insistence that traditional structures were no longer meeting needs, we've turned and continue turning, the Federal Government from a limited government existing only to deal with world and national-security needs, into a massive agency for job training and healthcare. This has had, and will have in greater degree, the effect of rendering the public dependent on government for services once viewed as personal responsibility - and has thus made them first respectful, and now fearful, of government, change in government aim or focus, and what government might take away from them.

In getting along, we've allowed the Left to corrupt our Armed Forces - through propagation of the myth that men and women are equal and thus able to serve any duty, in billet, anywhere. The result, predictable to those who hadn't suspended good judgment, is a hypersexualized military immersed in gratification, to the point where discipline and eventually, rules of conduct, are violated en masse.

The insistence of peripheral benefits to enlistment, such as education - which has drawn in candidates interested, not in military service, but a free ride, has filled our "all-volunteer" Armed Services - but with "soldiers" outraged, along with their parents and families, that they would actually be deployed and be obligated to fight and die in the course of their duties.

Tied in with this is the spectre of mass numbers of female casualties, and public reaction to it. A strong argument against deploying women was that the public wouldn't stand for their daughters coming back in aluminum coffins. It was a valid argument, then as now - and the Left knows it

That is the intended purpose; as all of the changes were: to render the U.S. military unusable, undeployable. To make us as unable to protect ourselves or project power in the world, as we are to defend ourselves or exercise power or self-determination in our private lives.

How is this happening? How are these toxic, killing changes being woven into the fabric of our culture? We're trying to get along withAmericans who disagree with us.

JPT

JustPassinThru is a former political-science student and locomotive engineman in the Great Lakes region, where he drives trains, worships cars, curses government - and now will try to write about all three.

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