PROMETHEAN ANTAGONIST

The last great martial cataclysm to engulf the world, World War II, was an engagement with a two pronged enemy; a sect of radical socialism marked by nationalistic fervor (Nazism and Fascism) and an imperialist, militarist force in Asia (Japan).

Today’s war with the forces of international Jihad have become a sort of two front conflict as well; what David Horowitz calls an, “Unholy Alliance” between Islamic Jihad and some of the West's older enemies (often from within our very borders).

The threats from, and military engagement with, Jihad-International has been augmented by a supporting cast from an old ideological force; radical socialism. While most from the socialist-lite crowd have acknowledged their sympathy with radical Islam’s assault on the free world, the more extreme followers have been willing to actively voice support for the Islamist cause, anything to finally defeat the concept of “bourgeoisie” open society -- the free market and its achievements.

The kindred alliance of Islamic Jihad and anti-capitalist authoritarian philosophy are currently directing their attacks against the same free and open systems of government that the Nazis and Imperial Japanese militarists directed themselves against.

While radical socialists typically paint themselves as enemies of fascism, the current bond they seem to now share with it is not new. It's important to remember that, before Hitler’s surprise attack on Russia, the communist leadership there was actually in paradoxical cooperation with Hitler, at least in their self-serving desire for further expansion. Multiple sects of authoritarianism have a sort of odd love/hate relationship with each other, but there is one thing they will always agree on; a common hatred for free, capitalist society. Even Hitler, who often bitterly denounced “Bolshevism,” would at other times express his admiration for the communists’ strategies as well as their common hatred for capitalism.

Like Germany under the Nazis, some of today’s radical socialist states have now developed an intriguing survival strategy by having adopted a sort of capitalism of convenience – reluctant acceptance of market activity to pay the bills on their march to maintain the planned society. While capitalism affords them greater strength, their basic template hasn’t changed – coercive authority in the hands of a single socialist party, complete with punitive powers directed against the less obedient.

While the average socialist control freak from journalism, academia, or entertainment doesn’t have a nation state at their disposal, they certainly can and do rally in support of countries that have adopted the anti-freedom model. Strangely, radical Islamic Jihad hasn’t put most socialists in the quandary one would expect of someone seeking to reconcile two clearly opposing worldviews. From the very beginning, their allegiance and sympathy has been with anyone who will oppose the U.S. and like societies. Often, while clearly expressing their allegiance with the "oppressed" of Islamo-fascist Jihad, they will dare feign a phony position that is "above taking sides" -- but they have taken a side (!), and its not with democratic pluralism and open society.

If a socialist of any stripe were to remain consistent with the causes they claim to support -- equality, justice, and their contrived definitions of freedom, one would think that Islamic Jihad would be their worst nightmare and foe (which it would eventually become if it were to win, just as Russia’s Nazi cooperating partner became it’s worst nightmare). The Jacobins’ hatred is still, as it always has been, against dynamic, diverse, and prosperous liberal society. To engage a radical leftist (or even most of socialism’s milder strains) on the issue of Islamic terrorism, one will consistently find outright sympathy for the Jihadists’ cause with justifications and invective directed against the nations that seek to protect their citizens from random attack or mass destruction. None of this should be particularly puzzling really, after all, the left consists of the same people who defended the Soviet police state and its like during the Cold War -- apologists for Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and today, Castro and Kim Jong Il. It really should be little surprise that the worldview of a ruthless theocratic ideology should have goals in common with the left’s beloved "revolution" to impose socialism.

The left’s stance in our war with Islamic Fascism is not one of mere "criticism." The attempts to sway public opinion into appeasement through their mouthpieces in news venues and education is, in itself, an outright act of betrayal. By now, any terrorist in Iraq and elsewhere surely recognizes the considerable support to their cause that comes from the West's bitter spokespersons of collectivist thought.

Criticisms of his "simplistic" appraisal aside, Bush was right; those who are not with the cause of free society are our enemies. This is really not a difficult conclusion to reach and it's arrived at easily by those who care more for their family, friends, and neighbors than an intellectual construct for planned society.

The war against Islamic Jihad will begin to be won when more people recognize the subversive nature of its other front; the home front’s fifth column – the anti-individual, anti-freedom forces of radical socialism.