While we must kill the cancer, we must also defend the body. For this reason, we must also vigorously defend the many excellent values that still exist in America. In the order of economics, we must defend sound principles like private property and free enterprise, which are according to natural law and form the foundation of our prosperity. They are not the causes of our great crisis. That is why we must vigorously oppose those, like the socialists, who unjustly attack these sound and legitimate economic principles as causes of our crisis.
Moreover, these sound economic principles—even when tainted by frenetic intemperance— buttress what remains of natural order in society. Despite many shortcomings, our industrial civilization is still built upon rational foundations that require discipline, logic, hierarchy, and the rule of law—much of which was inherited from Christian civilization.
We must defend this rational order since we are attacked by our enemies because they see this order as hateful and restrictive to their agendas. The world’s terrorist organizations see this order as an oppressive instrument of Western hegemony. As the world’s only superpower, we do not hesitate to affirm that America still represents a bulwark of order that must be defended, even militarily, in a chaotic world. In this sense, the 9/11 attacks were symbolic assaults not just on the nation, but on the unified, rational and universal order that undergirds Western prosperity. A misdirected isolationism or secession is simply not an option.
In addition to these sound economic remnants of a Christian order, we are also attacked for yet another reason—our adherence to the moral remnants of this order. As was mentioned, our American consensus had the good effect of imprinting on vast sectors of the public a great respect for a consensual moral code loosely based on the Ten Commandments. The result is what we might call a “Ten Commandment”
America, which still preserves a healthy attachment to moral values. Such an attachment is hardly a conversion since, like our economic principles, it is often flawed in its application. Nevertheless, this imperfect adherence to family, traditional marriage, property, religion, morality, and country is enough to pose an obstacle to the left’s revolutionary agenda, which seeks to bring down these remnants.
That is why America’s Cultural War over moral values takes center stage as the obstinate attachment of so many to “backward” conservative and moral values serves as a rallying point to all who defend Christian morality. It also makes America the target of those who virulently oppose any kind of Christian order. Today, the United States is perceived by many to be a conservative power that must be destroyed since it is an obstacle to the kind of amoral egalitarian society longed for by the left.
America is hated by her anti-Christian enemies not for her defects (and there are many) but for what she represents of good. And that is what we must now defend.