Spy Smasher! Where are you now?
This is a column from over ten years ago, whose point is timely and timeless enough to bear repeating. Reprinted here as a courtesy to readers who did not see it before:
Let us return to a moment of yesteryear, when children were taught that Nazis were Bad Guys, and they were fought by valiant comic book heroes like SPY SMASHER!
For those of you not up on your Morse Code, the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth nicely taps out the letter “V” — which stands for Victory, and the antiaircraft spotlights in the background of the opening credits make that same “V” against the dark skies of lowering war! Projectionist! Give the salute and roll the tape!
Good golly, this is the least competent spy in comicbookdom! In the first five minutes of film, he knocks over a flashlight with his cape, gets caught, get tortured, and gets shot!
Then he boards a train, and is reading a paper when a Nazi spy asks him for a light, get taken by surprise, and a donnybrook erupts! There is no way this goofball in goggles can halt the march of the Master Race–just look at how Way Cool their mobile unit is.
But at least the Good Guy is Good.
Compare the admirably simple moral code promoted by the above Republic Cliffhanger with our rather less self-confident moral code produced by what I can charitably call the Modern Cult of Death.
Spy Smasher clearly believes that he who would save his life must lose it, because he is shot in the first five minutes of the film. If I were an English Major, I could make the argument that he is a Christ Figure, since he is whipped, is silent before his accusers, and is raised from the dead by a cheese-eating Frenchie. He also believes in punching out men who ask him for a light, perhaps because he shares our modern discontent with smoking and tobacco products.
What is a little odd to my eyes, is that the real Nazis were far worse than the rather comic-booky villains portrayed here. How truly grisly they were, their lies and mass murders, cannot be made the subject of lighthearted entertainment.
The code of Spy Smasher, and of many other sane people, is that evil is to be fought and destroyed, no matter how high and huge the cost; but that compromise is impossible and unthinkable, no matter how seeming trivial and small the cost.
Let us compare that with a moral code more popular these days, a code that claims to be nuanced and subtle, but which is actually the exact same code with the signs reversed: the code that says compromise is always to be sought, and goodness never defended, no, goodness is not even to be admitted to exist. All things are relative and mere illusions, or so this code says.
But what is truly meant, dear reader, is that all things you and yours value are relative and delusive, but that all things the me and mine require are absolute and unimpeachable, therefore you must remove your values from consideration without discussion or protest. Such relativism is not a code of morals, it is merely a coded way of speaking.
Example? Glad you asked.
I hear on the newschatter that a commentator for National Public Radio, Juan Williams, whom I assume to be a loyal Liberal member of the Establishment, admitted (while emphasizing that not all Muslims are terrorists) to a feeling of apprehension when he is aboard a plane and sees passengers in Arab headcloths and robes boarding with him.
With alacrity, the CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, otherwise known as Hamas, expressed discontent and demanded the offender be fired from his post, and the NPR, radio supported by your tax dollars, promptly did so.
Mr. Williams, as according to the policy of the Church of the Most Holy and Politically Correct Cult of Death on strict orders from the Antipope, had the heretic dressed in motley with a paper miter on his head, scourged, pelted with offal, driven with blows and jeers through the streets while bound backward on a donkey, taken to the town square, and solemnly chained to a stake and burned atop a heap of tapes of his own programs. His body is to be buried on unhallowed ground, at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart, and his tongue which uttered the blasphemy against the Great Horned God Political Correctness severed and buried separately.
Ho, ha. Of course I am making all this up. No one in real life would get fired because he expressed the thought that our enemies in wartime, who are hiding among civilians, might be disguised as civilians when they board planes to commit acts of sabotage and political terror. The thought that we should be vigilant where and when the foes may be found is too obvious and too prudent to need further comment. The honorable opponents of the political party in power, no matter how vehemently thirsting for more political power, would not actually stoop to treason, or take steps to aid and comfort the enemy: what would be their motive?
Ah, but Political Correctness is not a political philosophy, a political party, nor a political movement. It is a religious movement, in fact, a cult and a death cult.
Their motive is to eliminate hostility by the power of positive thinking. If they hope and wish hard enough, and if no bad thoughts provoke the foe, the enemy’s hostility will suddenly and softly vanish away as if banished by a Snark. This is something like praying for a miracle, but with nothing and no one to heed the prayer nor grant the miracle: but the fervor is the same.
The motive of the Uncle Screwtape and the Lowerarchy, which is, after all, the mastermind of all such self-destructive nonsense, is death. The members of the Cult of PC do not wish to die, for they are cowards, but they also lack the intellectual agility to perceive that their actions summon rather than repel danger.
They think the Dane will depart in peace if we merely pay the spiritual version of a danegeld, because the Dane are too potent to face. At the same time and in the same sense (paradoxes do not trouble the Cultists: there are the Mysteries of their religion) America is far too potent to be defeated, or even threatened, by any oil-rich and international and numberless foe which springs from a tradition of Holy War over a thousand years old, because — ah, I do not know why the Cultists think America is invulnerable, and I cannot imagine or invent an idea, even for the purpose of satire. There are some things sane men cannot think. In either case, they think that George Bush or Talk Radio is a bigger threat to world peace than the Jihad.
These are not political opinions or beliefs. A political opinion is, for example, the opinion that abolishing the Federal Reserve Board and returning to the gold standard would make further economic collapses impossible; a political opinion is that women should get the right to vote, or that illegal immigrants should be given free college tuition in California. A political opinion is an opinion about how the state should run its business. You can argue for or against even relatively outrageous political opinions by referring to how the human institutions should act or how human institutions are likely to react in the face of various policies and laws.
Contrariwise, the belief that enemies will vanish if you pray, or that Gaea will be pleased if you sacrifice babies to a bloodthirsty China-style One Child Policy, are examples of religious beliefs, cult beliefs. You cannot argue against them because they are not based in reality. There is nothing human involved, merely a faith that “things” will somehow, in a godless universe, conspire to work out for the benefit of people who say and think the Politically Correct doublethoughts.
The Cult of Death is a heresy of the Christian religion which attempts to uphold certain precepts of the Christian religion (such as that all men are images of God, that we should not judge lest we be judged, that we must pray for our enemies, and that the peacemakers are blessed) but without the Christian world-view, metaphysic, logic, or philosophy. Precepts that make sense when practiced by men convinced of the survival of the soul after bodily death, or who fear the Last Judgment, make no sense when practiced by agnostics and materialists. Why pray for enemies if they are not your brothers, and if your death is neither reversed nor avenged when the Final Trumpet sounds? If life is all there is, why not fight to the death when threatened?
With an awe-inspiring symmetry of Freudian projection, the Cultists are indeed what they accuse their Christian forefathers of being: an irrational cult, morbid and seeking death.
The idea that bad guys are, you know, BAD, and may be trying to kill us is ruled out by the article of faith of the Cultists, which states that only Bourgeoisie Capitalist oppressors, Christians, and White Males are Bad, because only they have power. Whoever has power is Bad, and whoever lacks power is Good, no matter what they do and no matter how the power is used. This stark Manichean view, something simplistic enough to fit on a bumper sticker, is what they regard as subtle and nuanced.
We, the honest men of the world, whether Christian, Jew, or Pagan, along with any friendly Mohammedans disgusted at the high-jacking of their religion, will never stop the Terror Masters until and unless we stop their enablers and cheerleaders and collaborators here at home. The war is not physical, it is psychological and spiritual; a war of the mind, a war against principalities and powers but not against flesh and blood. It is a war of ideas, and the Cultists have been bankrupt of ideas and ideals since before the Berlin War collapsed.
What would Spy Smasher do in the current war? What would the type of people who made and who showed to children stories like the one seen above do in the current war?
I think they would fight with their whole heart and soul, not pausing to apologize to nor take orders from the enemy. I think they would take the war seriously.
This is one thing the unsmiling petty tyrants of Political Correctness cannot do: take anything real seriously. It is one of the paradoxes of life that folk who believe in otherworldly religion, like Christianity, can act effectively and pragmatically against real threats, whereas the so called reality-based community can only operate within a framework of purely symbolic gestures having no basis in reality: betraying a loyal servant of their own was purely symbolic. They cannot take the war seriously because war is real.
At some point between then and now, preemptive surrender became not only fashionable, but mandatory.
A second example? Add to the above article, let me report this from the pen of Brad R. Torgersen:
“I was sad, but not surprised, to see today that author Elizabeth Moon has been ejected from the Wiscon feminist-progressive SF&F convention. The holy warriors of Political Correctness are currently ululating over the divine grandness of their mighty victory against the hated satanic infidel that is Elizabeth Moon. Nevermind that Moon has political overlap with her detractors that is far, far in excess of her political differences with her detractors. Her sin was to mention Islam and Muslims in a way that was not 100% flattering to Islam and Muslims.”
Read the rest here: http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/political-correctness-jihadis-evict-moon-from-wiscon/
Elizabeth Moon, if you recall, mastered the art of writing realistic fantasy warfare fiction starring strong female protagonist, notably Deed of Paksenarrion. First book I ever read that mentioned how hard it is to march with spears.
These are the words that got her in hot water with the Correctors.
I know–I do not dispute–that many Muslims had nothing to do with the attacks, did not approve of them, would have stopped them if they could. I do not dispute that there are moderate, even liberal, Muslims, that many Muslims have all the virtues of civilized persons and are admirable in all those ways. I am totally, 100%, appalled at those who want to burn the Koran (which, by the way, I have read in English translation, with the same attention I’ve given to other holy books) or throw paint on mosques or beat up Muslims. But Muslims fail to recognize how much forbearance they’ve had. Schools in my area held consciousness-raising sessions for kids about not teasing children in Muslim-defined clothing…but not about not teasing Jewish children or racial minorities. More law enforcement was dedicated to protecting mosques than synagogues–and synagogues are still targeted for vandalism. What I heard, in my area, after 9/11, was not condemnation by local mosques of the attack–but an immediate cry for protection even before anything happened. […]
I can easily imagine how Muslims would react to my excusing the Crusades on the basis of Islamic aggression from 600 to 1000 […] (for instance, excusing the building of a church on the site of a mosque in Cordoba after the Reconquista by reminding them of the mosque built on the site of an important early Christian church in Antioch.) So I don’t give that lecture to the innocent Muslims I come in contact with. I would appreciate the same courtesy in return (and don’t get it.)
[…] I feel that I personally (and many others) lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom. It would be helpful to have them understand what they’re demanding of me and others–how much more they’re asking than giving. It would be helpful for them to show more understanding of the responsibilities of citizenship in a non-Muslim country. (And the same is true for many others, of course. Libertarians, survivalists, Tea-Partyers, fundamentalist Christians, anyone else whose goals benefit only their own group. There’s been a huge decline in the understanding of good citizenship overall.)
But I don’t expect this to happen. And on this anniversary of 9/11, all I can do is hope that no bombs are thrown, no Korans burned, no innocents killed… by anyone.
You may read them in context here: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/335480.html To me, this sounds like vanilla boilerplate slightly Left-of-Center common sense and common courtesy. Note the gratuitous pro-forma slams against Fundies and Tea Parties and the insulting use of “C.E.” — this nice lady is not one of my camp, even though I agree with her point. She says not all Muslims are terrorists, but that the forbearance demanded by Muslims is excessive and asymmetrical.
The retaliation by the WisCon steering committee, dishonoring their Guest of Honor, of course, proves her point mutely but loudly.
The trolls flooded into her blog to shut her up or shut her down, and she gracefully cut off their tripe-storm. I sympathize and salute her. She handled the cur yaps far more gracefully than did I when it was my turn to receive the Two Minute Hate.
Will no one fight this war? Will no one even admit we are at war?
We need Spy Smasher again! Someone willing to say things like, “I’ll thank you to hand that syringe over now, Ratzi!” — or “Watch it, Fritz!” — without fear of being fired or snubbed.
Oh, you goofball. Did you NOT see that dirty trick Nazi scientist kick coming? Even Maxwell Smart would not fall for the old drop-the-superserum-syringe-on-the-ground-while-at-gunpoint trick.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
