by James Austin Bishop

Science Fiction, Political Satire
(Polaris Books, 308 pp., $14.95)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Dr. Werner Von Braun. Gene Roddenberry. Doctors Carl Sagan and Robert Goddard. Dr. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, and, not least of that list, Dr. Robert Zubrin. Dr. Zubrin, renowned visionary and space engineer, shares with these great men the honor of having won the prestigious Robert A. Heinlein award for "lifetime achievement in promoting the goal of a free, spacefaring civilization."

Zubrin, the 9th person to have won the award, is the author of multiple books and hundreds of papers through which he promotes his visions of the exploration and eventual colonization of space, with a special focus on Mars. Now, Zubrin has turned his ability to envision the possible beyond Earth, and focused it sharply on the impossibly absurd right at home.

The Holy Land is built on a unique concept that is both brilliantly conceived and wonderfully implemented; science fiction as a vehicle for satire. With penetrating insight, Zubrin lines up the crosshairs and lets fly a volley of satirical missiles at his target - the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the larger war on terrorism. The resulting direct hits expose the absurdity...and the truth...of it all to the reader with the force of a physical blow.

Given the recent pain of September 11 and the ongoing, daily struggles in the Middle East, it takes chutzpah write a book lampooning those events; but Zubrin pulls it off masterfully. Sometimes the only way to come to grips with a situation so out of control that it makes you want to sit down and cry is to do just the opposite.

Zubrin begins The Holy Land by establishing his premise, which quickly becomes apparent to anyone who's read a newspaper in the past two years. The Minervans are an alien race of human-like beings who have suffered terrible persecution from the Central Galactic Empire. They were nearly wiped out by that empire, in fact, until the Western Galactic Empire intervened. The WGE (Weegees) help the dispersed Minervans to establish their own homeland, in the city of Kennewick, Washington, U.S.A., ...Earth, which they claim is their ancient homeland.

The Weegees barely tolerate the Minervans themselves because of minor differences in an otherwise common religion: The Weegees worship a triune goddess, while the Minervans accept the divinity of one, but not the other two, of those goddesses...the goddess Minerva.

The Americans are another story, however. The United States is a fanatical, fundamentalist theocracy. The presence of the Mivervan "pagans" is intolerable to them, and the U.S. government sets out to exterminate them all.

With their superior technology, the Minervans make quick work of US forces in a disastrously one-sided battle, and the ensuing dialog between the president of the United States and the Secretary of Defense gives us an early insight into the workings of the mind of an opportunistic despot in an exchange that is at once hilariously absurd and chillingly recognizable:

"We've lost 40,000, but they've lost 400. That's one of theirs for every 100 of ours. We can afford that easily. There are 300 million Americans and only 1 million Minervans. At this rate, we will defeat them by simple attrition. No wonder they are begging for a cease-fire."

The President bowed his head in prayer. "Let us all give thanks to God for this glorious victory."

The exchange is recognizable, yes, but only if we imagine it coming from, oh, Iraq's minister of information, for example, and therein lies the genius of Zubrin's satire. The transposition of the cultures involved awakens the reader like a slap in the face to the insanity of situations to which we've become inured.

The parallels between Zubrin's alternate world and real-life conflicts intensify when the United States, realizing that direct assault won't work, sets out to turn Galactic opinion against the Minervans. Some of the original inhabitants of Kennewick remained when the Minervans settled, living side-by-side with and enjoying the fruits of an advanced civilization. But others chose to move away, and those are rounded up by the government and forced into refugee camps in Kennewick. They live in squalor, under the constant eye of the Galactic News which willingly reports on the oppression of the Kennewickians, by the Minervans.

But if conditions are so bad for the Kennewickians in the camps, why won't the government send food and medical supplies? Better yet, why don't they help them to relocate?

Why, because they're Kennewickians, of course. Kennewickians can only live in Kennewick.

Substitute "Palestinian" for "Kennewickian" and suddenly a political dynamic that seemed impossibly complex is shown for what it is - more propaganda than plight.

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, wrote, "The Holy Land ingeniously highlights the absurdity of the Palestinian position." The book certainly does that, but the Israelis don't escape Zubrin's barbs so easily.

The Minervans, while they would be willing to coexist with and even help the Earthlings, look down on them as inferior. Zubrin explores that relationship through the interaction between the two main characters - Hamilton, a POW Army Sergeant, and his captor, Aurora, a Minervan priestess (3rd class). As those characters are developed throughout the story, Aurora at one point concedes that some Earthlings might possess just enough rudimentary intelligence to maybe, just maybe, be "potentially" human.

But the distance between the two characters in terms of experience, civilization, knowledge, and religious and social training is so vast that it is impossible for one to even comprehend, much less agree with, the beliefs and perceptions of the other. Those unbridgeable differences make conflict between the two cultures a foregone conclusion - compromise is impossible where no common ground exists.

The American efforts to gain sympathy from the Western Galactic Empire fail. Even indoctrinating the Kennewickian children into Minervan hatred and sending them on suicide missions to "martyr" themselves (while staying "in frame" for the duplicitous galactic press) brings no sympathy, and the Americans realize that more drastic measures will be required.

The tension between the Weegees and Americans is complicated by the fact that Earth, and particularly the North American continent, contain huge reserves of "helicity," a substance that fuels the galaxy. Weegee "bluebacks," paid in exchange for the helicity, enrich the corrupt American government officials and fund their plans for holy war.

To declare all out war against the Weegees would be suicide, of course, so the Americans plan a series of stealth strikes against them. Training camps are established by the American government in Peru, and recruits are sent there to learn how to strike. Weegee bluebacks are used to purchase advanced technology to aid the terrorists.

The worst attack on the Western Galactic Empire comes when American terrorists hijack four Weegee spaceships with the intention of using them as weapons on a suicide mission designed to cause massive casualties.

Three of the hijacked vessels succeed.

The date of the attack is August 11.

When the Weegees come to Earth to exact retribution, the Americans divert them to Peru, where the terrorists were trained. Never mind that the hijackers were Americans, trained and funded by Americans. The helicity must flow.

Zubrin doesn't let the real-life Americans off the hook either, as you can see by the situation above. Far from it - his cutting wit slashes and hacks at every aspect of the Middle East conflict, exposing the raw innards for the inspection of anyone with the eyes, and the intellectual honesty, to see.

Nor does Zubrin stop at purely political nonsense. Rather, his humor illuminates the silliness of virtually every aspect of our present-day lives. No one and nothing is safe from Zubrin's satirical volleys.

Not our male-dominated cultures:

"Some of them, for example Earth, really do have governments largely led by men..."

The princess looked astonished. "But that's absurd! How could they possibly survive?"

Pallacina shrugged. "Apparently, not very well."

Not Feminism:

"...The men own all the factories and fish farms and have all the jobs in them...Of course, since we control the government we can balance the scales a little by taxing their excess income."

"How much of it do you tax?"

"Only 90 percent. However, when a Minervan woman chooses a man for a husband, she assumes ownership of 90 percent of his income. Thus together, these two measures set the male share of national income at 1 percent, which is bearable, although we hope to trim it considerably and obtain a more reasonable split in the future."

"Ninety-nine to one isn't reasonable enough for you?"

"Of course not...It's pretty much the same way all over the galaxy...But the cause of women's rights is advancing, and I think that some day we will obtain equality."

And certainly not political correctness:

"...We're being placed under guard, while those assassins are being given the free run of the ship." She shook her head.

"They're reporters," Danatus said. "They need to be able to move freely to get their story."

"Aren't you at least going to search their boxes?"

"We can't. We don't search other reporters, and they are suspicious, so searching them would be suspicion profiling. That would be illegal."

Aurora shook her head again. "May Minerva awake you."

The Holy Land is a literary caricature of a world gone mad, a warped mirror in the face of which the reflections, while often grossly exaggerated, are mostly instantly recognizable (but sometimes only subtly so - look up the location of Kennewick, Washington, on a map. Then look at the location of Israel, and compare the relative positions in relation to the surrounding enemy territories).

Dr. Robert Zubrin has produced a cutting, eye-opening, satirical tour de force. The Holy Land is a must-read for anyone with a social and political conscience. It's also funny - fearlessly funny. If you've already staked out an immovable position on Israeli/Palestinian/War-on-terror issues, then you might just be in need of a wakeup call. Maybe you're right, chances are you're not...in which case, may Minerva awake you.

If She doesn't, The Holy Land surely will.

by James Austin Bishop

The leaders of the West Chester, Pa., "Peace" movement are Fascists.

I labor under no illusions - I know that if any one of them were to read that statement, they would become apoplectic with indignation, quite possibly to the point of busting an artery. I am truly sorry for that, but the statement stands. Those people (Led by a local public figure named Karen Porter, an activist frequently quoted in local news accounts), are Fascists. They are Fascist in their Ideology, in their tactics, and in the objective effects of their “anti-war” activities.

I mention Porter and her Useful Followers only as an example of the newest generation of “peace” activists to arise in response to the newest war – the war of Western Civilization against a version of Radical Islam that is stuck somewhere in middle-ages, having never experience the type of religious enlightenment that moved Christianity up and out of the age of Inquisitions and other abuses of civilized life. Islam never emerged from its own Dark Ages, and we are all paying for that now.

But I digress. This is about the response of pacifists to the real threats against civilized nations, and what would happen if groups like that led by Karen Porter were to have their way.

There exist legitimate political, philosophical and moral arguments against the war with Islamic Fascism. Wrong-headed though those arguments may be, they are nonetheless deserving of a respectful hearing and civil retort, inasmuch as they are held in good faith. How sad for those who cling to pacifism as a moral principle, then, that they are drowned out of the debate by a cacophony of rabid anti-Americansim for its own sake - a shrill hysteria facilitated and amplified to obscene levels by the electronics of the sympathetic State media.

George Orwell wrote of the pacifists in England during WWII that "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.''' The immorality of pacifism in response to evil was as evident then as it is today. The refusal of "principled" pacifists to acknowledge that distances them from reality.

Let’s take a look at Reality for a moment. Let’s imagine Reality as represented by a metaphysical orb - The Sphere of Reality. Inside of this imaginary sphere, principled pacifism would occupy a position on the outer edge of the sphere, well away from the center. Accepting my image, placing reality at the center and principled pacifism on the fringes, how much more detached from the center would we then find those who are so loudly arrayed against us – The West Chester Peace Movement-style of leftover 60's radicals, the European Socialists, the academic and practicing Communists, the New York Times and other media and academic institutions? In fact, they occupy no position in my Sphere of Reality, but float aimlessly, well outside of our orb.

Far from acting out of any motive remotely resembling principle, the forces and individuals mentioned above are driven by blind hatred for the United States and nothing more. None of those ideologies, institutions, groups or individuals have ever been adverse to killing in all its forms - from the murder of an unborn infant up to and including mass starvation, torture and genocide - as a principled pacifist would be. It is only when the United States stands to benefit that they find themselves suddenly horrified by talk of war.

Principle, then, even misguided principle, demonstrated by consistency, would be a requirement for a position within the orb. But the Useful Idiots arrayed against the United States are anything but consistent, and regularly demonstrate their lack of principle by their hypocrisy and unabashed hatred (as is manifestly demonstrated every weekend in the Center of West Chester, Pa.) They form alliances between despots, murderers and sundry generic loons, yet are treated by the media as if they were somehow deserving of enclosure in the orb.

Consider these disconnects from reality:

President Bush's various approval ratings soar in the polls by more than 20 points in one amazing night, January 28, 2003. In describing this unprecedented surge in support, and after citing the actual incredible poll numbers, NBC reports that "we found that people had not changed their minds in significant numbers." (NBC Nightly News, Wednesday, January 29)

A former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clark, in attempting to defend radical Islam, compares Jesus Christ, in a country where 80 percent of the population identify themselves as Christians, to terrorists.

Washington Post television reviewer Tom Shales characterizes President Bush's call for an end to the practice of infanticide that is euphemistically termed "partial-birth abortion" as "a sop to the far right," which if true would place the 70 percent of the population who are opposed to that grisly procedure on the "far right" (making the "far right," in reality, the center).

The Socialist Party, with Tom Daschle and Teddy Kennedy leading the way, accuse Bush of a "rush to war" and of not having made a convincing case to the international community. Over 80 percent of the population disagreed at the time.

These same suspects, along with the academic Communists, facilitated by the State media, and the European Socialists, repeatedly accuse the United States of acting "unilaterally" with respect to Iraq, as if Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Australia, Turkey and Israel were potted plants.

Convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal gets top billing at a "peace" rally.

Tom Daschle. Sean Penn. Hillary Clinton. Mumia Abu Jamal. Dan Rather and the Communist World Workers Party. Michael Moore and Sean Penn, Communists and Socialists, murderers and morons, floating around in the void, runny noses pressed against the outside of the orb, hurling invective at those on the inside.

Such is the state of the modern “peace movement.” The adherents of that movement remain now, as they were then, Idiots; useful to the forces of Socialism, Islam, Communism, Anarchy, and any institution, policy, religion, or political ideology that is anti-American. If it’s bad for America, it’s good for the “pacifists,” by definition.

Recently I had the misfortune to become involved in yet another abortion debate, during the course of which I was given cause to ponder a wider perspective on the issue than the usual, mundane "oh no you can't," "oh yes I can" pro and con banalities. Bear with me.

The spark which fired these particular synapses came from an unexpected source - an otherwise intelligent being of my acquaintance, man of science who on most social issues leans decidedly to the right of center. The sentiment leading to my arousal was expressed as follows:

"A fetus, at least early in development, is not a human being. "Killing" a fetus is no different than "killing" any other tissue biopsy. ...the bottom line is that all this bull- about a five-celled embryo being a full-fledged human being is bull-." (Expletives modified so as not to offend my own fragile sensibilities.)

At first blush this would seem a perfectly logical assumption. A mushy little cluster of cells could hardly be characterized as a "full-fledged human being" by any thinking person. That cluster of cells - how many was it? Five? - has not yet had the opportunity to develop any recognizable human form - no arms, no legs, no system of nerves through which to feel pain or pleasure, no brain, no mind, no beating heart. It probably doesn't even have a social security number or a 401K.

The obvious question to proceed from that position is, of course, just how many cells does it take a life to make? What is the magic number of cells to which when just one more cell is added transforms a "tissue biopsy" into a human being? And more importantly, who among us would be so arrogant as to presume to know?

The answer, of course, is that no one can know. Therefore, we are called upon to make one of the two easy choices: Either life begins at conception, or it begins at birth.

There really is no rational reason to believe that a "tissue biopsy" is somehow magically transformed into a human being as it passes into the cold, unless one is willing to believe that God Himself is standing at the end of the delivery table waiting to breathe life and soul into that mass of cells at that moment. But life-begins-at-birth is the most convenient claim for the self-absorbed, or for the justification of such procedures as partial-birth abortion.

The life-begins-at-birth position is, of course, every bit as arbitrary as would be a claim that life begins when the cell count reaches 110,041, if not moreso. Ergo, in our quest to determine just when it is socially and legally acceptable to obliterate a new life, why stop at birth?

Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton who calls himself a "Darwinian leftist", is known for his advocacy of animal liberation, infanticide, and euthanasia. In his book Writings on an Ethical Life, Singer argues that logical reasoning from the principle of ethical impartiality supports his claim that the lives of some animals are more valuable than the lives of some human beings. He asserts, for example that "a chimpanzee, dog, or pig...will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility."

Killing a human being, then, is more serious than killing an animal only in that humans are capable of planning for the future, while animals are not. Therefor, if it is permissible to kill an animal for some good purpose, then it is equally permissible to kill a brain-damaged infant or a senile oldster.

To take this to its logical conclusion, even normal human infants lack the rational capacities for self-awareness that are found in some animals, and the life of a newborn human is therefore no more valuable than that of an animal with greater intellectual capacities.

There is then no rational behind the arbitrary assigning of "full-fledged human" status to that mass of human cells for no better reason than that it has passed through the birth canal, and the line between infanticide and "abortion" is blurred even further.

Now it falls to someone to decide at just what point in the mental development of the human child it does attain "full-fledged human being" status, with the concomitant right to life.

By extension, the life of an older human who has reached a stage of advanced senility at which his intellectual capacities fall below those found in some animals also has less value than that of those animals, and it becomes permissable to kill him as well, regardless of how his wife, kids and sister, aunt Bessie, might feel about it. But again, someone has to decide when that point is reached - the point at which that human life no longer has "value."

Thinking such as this taps a keg of social horrors which, once released, would continue to foam until society itself is flat and dead.

It is the height of human arrogance to presume to know at what point life begins, or at what point life no longer has value and should end. At the moment of conception, that single cell does not have the capacity to plan for the future, nor can it feel love or hope or charity. But the unique genetic code for that unique individual has been set down at that moment, and the human being who is to come has been absolutely determined.

At that moment, the moment when God's blueprint for that indivdual human has been written, life has begun, and it is not for a fallible human society to decide that it has no value, or less value than its inconvenience is worth.

Nor is it for us to decide that a life in decline has lost value at some point prior to that at which God's code has determined that it should end.

If there exists on Earth just one valueless human life, then no human life has value, and nothing matters.

By James Austin Bishop

Introduction

The core dilemma facing this nation as we move into the 21st century is the insidious weaving of political correctness into the fabric of American culture. There are two competing worldviews - opposing forces locked in battle, engaged in an epic struggle for the dominance of the American mind. The Culture War is indeed a war, make no mistake, and the winner of that war will determine the ultimate course of American cultural evolution.

Origins Of The Culture War

Steven Yates, PhD. and author of "Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong with Affirmative Action" recently wrote an article on LewRockwell.com entitled "Understanding the Culture War: Gramscians, Tocquevillians and Others" in which he in turn reviews an article by John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, published in Heritage Foundation's "Policy Review" entitled "Why There Is a Culture War. Together the two provide clear insight into the origins of the disease that is Political Correctness and nicely articulate the basis of the "Toquevillian America" philosophy which is the subject of this essay.

On one side of the Culture War are the "Gramscians", and on the other, the "Tocquevillians". The names are taken from the intellectuals whom Fonte credits with authoring the respective warring ideologies: The Italian neo-Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, French political philosopher and author of Prison Notebooks, and Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the esteemed and influential Democracy in America.

The Oppressors and The Oppressed

The liberal world-view so prevalent in America today can be traced directly back to Gramsci, whether or not modern liberals know the name - and most of them probably don't. Gramsci agreed with Karl Marx that every society could be divided into two classes, the "bourgeois" and "proletariat" - oppressor and oppressed, respectively.

But Gramsci took it a step further and divided the oppressed into subordinate groups instead of the single homogeneous proletariat of Marx. Gramsci identified these oppressed groups as "women, racial minorities and many criminals."

Gramsci distinguishes two ways that the dominant group exercises control over the oppressed group, whereas Marx had written only of one:

1. Direct control through force and coercion - political domination couched in terms of service to the economic interests of the bourgeoisie.

2. What Gramsci calls Hegemony, which is the tacit use of a values system that supports and reinforces the interests of the proletariat.

The oppressed groups don't even know that they are oppressed, according to Gramsci, because they have absorbed the values system, or "false consciousness", that represses them.

"False Consciousness"

Yates points us to one example of this - the radical feminists who speak of romantic candlelight dinners as a form of prostitution. If a radical feminist claims that dinner is prostitution, or that all sex is rape - even married, consensual sex, and if "ordinary" women object, then the objection arises only as a result of this "false consciousness" asserting itself.

The Marxist Revolution - Infiltrating the Institutions

Gramsci argued that before there could be any Marxist "revolution", it would be necessary to build up a "counter-hegemony". In other words, a system of values that undermined the oppressor group and that favored the oppressed groups would have to be instilled into the cultural consciousness. The entry points for the insinuation of this altered values system into the dominant culture would be those institutions that we take for granted - schools, churches, businesses, media, as well as art, literature and philosophy. Only by infiltrating these traditional sources of consciousness can the Gramscian revolution overthrow the shackles of the oppressors and usher in a true Marxist revolution.

Brainwashing the working class

In the opening of his new book, Hooking Up, Tom Wolfe says "by the year 2000, the term "working class" had fallen into disuse in the United States, and "proletariat" was so obsolete it was known only to a few bitter old academics with wire hair sprouting out of their ears."

But while terminology has changed, the underlying socialist philosophy remains as strong as ever. Wolfe points out that the "proletariat" in the United States, people who had undoubtedly never heard the name Saint-Simon, were nevertheless "fulfilling Saint-Simon's and the other nineteenth century utopian socialists' dreams of a day when the ordinary workingman would have the political and personal freedom, the free time and the wherewithal to express himself in any way he saw fit and to unleash his full potential."

Ironically, the working man thus described does not boast of having attained this level of freedom, indeed is often ashamed of it, because he has "been numbed by the..."intellectuals", who had spent the preceding eighty years being indignant over what a "puritanical," "repressive," "bigoted," "capitalistic," and "fascist" nation America was beneath its democratic façade". They have, in other words, absorbed the "false consciousness" of Gramsci.

"Organic" intellectuals

These intellectuals played an important role in the Gramscian vision of the transformation of society. Specifically, Gramsci called these "organic" intellectuals, as opposed to "traditional" intellectuals. Organic intellectuals were those who belonged to the repressed groups and were attempting to undermine the dominant culture, with the help of any "traditional" intellectuals who could be persuaded to defect. In fact, writes Yates, "changing the minds of "traditional" intellectuals was particularly valuable, as they were already well positioned within the dominant educational institutions." Thus began the "long march through the institutions" - a phrase we owe to Gramsci.

"Diversity"

Gramsci's notion of "organic" intellectuals is evidenced in today's demands within the institutions for more and more "diversity". But this is a diversity of faces, not ideas. "Traditional" intellectuals wield power, especially in education. But as Yates points out, the Gramscian gatekeepers control who is admitted into the ivy-choked halls of academia, and today's in educational institutions, dominated by feminists of "all stripes and colors (and sexual preferences and fetishes)" an outspoken conservative might save himself the trouble of applying.

Deconstruction

The reigning doctrine in our Gramscian educational institutions is deconstruction. The high priests of deconstruction were two Frenchmen, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Of these Tom Wolfe writes, "They began with a hyperdilation of a pronouncement of Nietzsche's to the effect that there can be no absolute truth, merely many "truths," which are the tools of various groups, classes, or forces."

Relativism

Gramsci described himself as an "absolute historicist," his views deriving from the philosopher Hegel. All systems of value, all moral codes, are nothing more than the products of the period in history and the culture that spawned them. There is no such thing as absolute truth or objective morality. There are only value systems that represent the interests of the bourgeois or the proletariat, and the mission of the organic intellectuals is to undermine the dominant value system. The chief means of accomplishing this is to capture control of language, especially the language of morality.

The Language of Morality

Wolfe writes of the doctrine that "language is the most insidious tool of all." The duty of the "organic" intellectual is to "deconstruct the language, expose its hidden agendas, and help save the victims of the American "Establishment": women, the poor, nonwhites, homosexuals, and hardwood trees."

Capturing control over language, especially the language of morality, opens the doors to psychological control of the masses. "Most people will reject ideas and institutions if they become convinced of their basic immorality; most people, too, lack the kind of training that will equip them to untangle the thicket of logical fallacies that might be involved," writes Yates.

Having assumed control of the language of morality, especially in institutions such as the media and academia, the way is now clear for the Gramscian transformation of society.

Political Correctness

The deconstruction movement in academia is a systematic effort to destroy the values of "dominant groups": straight white Christian males of non-Marxist European descent. The values that are under attack are truth as the goal of inquiry, transcendent morality as the guide to human conduct, freedom and independence as political ideals, hiring and contracting based on merit. In a Gramscian world, all of these are myths of the dominant consciousness.

Yates points out that political correctness is the primary weapon in the war against those values. Academic schools of radical feminism, "critical race theory," gay and lesbian "queer theory," the preoccupation with "diversity" as an end in itself and all other forms of PC are direct descendents of Gramsci - they are the chief arm of enforcement of the Gramscian transformation of American society.

The Opposition

But there is a force arrayed against the powerful and moneyed drive toward a Gramscian world. Fonte describes this opposition force as the "Tocquevillian Counterattack."

The core philosophy here is that of American Excptionalism - the idea that there are normative values embodied in America that, far from being mere historical products, are to be embraced for what they are: the values that make America the special place that it is. Fonte describes a "trinity of American exceptionalism" that define the unique development of America:

1. Dynamism. This is the support for entrepreneurship and economic progress, including the changes that economic progress yields, and support for equality of opportunity for all individuals to participate in this process.

2. Religiosity. This is the idea that freedom is only possible to a moral citizenry - that moral values have their origins with God, that character development is a necessary component of education, and that social problems should be dealt with at the local level through the voluntary efforts of men and women of good will and character.

3. Patriotism. Love of country. Support for the Constitution. Limited self-government. The rule of law.

Other Opposition Forces

There is a third set of views, also opposed to the creation of a Gramscian world, but that are not Tocquevillians in Fonte's view because they do not accept all of the three components above. These views might accept two of those three components or emphasize one over the others.

For example, the libertarian author of The Future and its Enemies, Virginia Postrel, puts most weight on the first, distinguishing "dynamists" from "stasists."

Most Libertarians reject the second, adhering to philosopher Ayn Rand's view that morality originates from the necessities of sustaining human existence, or the exercise of reason in responding to a knowable, objective world, rather than from God.

Then there are the members of today's pro-South movement who mistrust the first and who believe that the third can only be realized through secession.

Fonte describes adherents to this third set of views as "libertarians, paleoconservatives, secular patriots, Catholic social democrats, and disaffected religious-right intellectuals."

"Only The Tocquevillians"

But as an opposition force, Fonte doubts that those listed above "will mount an effective resistance to the continuing Gramscian assault. Only the Tocquevillians appear to have the strength - in terms of intellectual firepower, infrastructure, funding, media attention and a comprehensive philosophy that taps into core American principles - to challenge the Gramscians with any chance of success."

Thus far this group, for whatever reason, has not even come close to stemming the Gramscian tide. Despite having its own foundations, and despite considerable intellectual firepower (Fonte names his favorite Tocquevillians: William Bennett, Michael Novak, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Marvin Olasky, Norman Podhorets and scholars such as Williams Galston, Wilfred McClay, Harvey Mansfield and Walter McDougall, as well as writers such as Irving Kristol and Charles Kesler) the Tocquevillians have yet to seize the moral high ground.

Reclaiming the Language

One thing is certain, and that is that, as a beginning, the Tocquevillians must reclaim the language of morality. We must reject the premise of every Gramscian philosophical argument and examine the language used to find the true meaning. We must take advantage every opportunity to expose the liberal Gramscian lie.

We must demand of our institutions, particularly the media and our schools, that they explain or defend the relativistic "truths" broadcast to our living rooms or fed to the minds of our children.

Tocquevillians must stop allowing themselves to be put in the losing position of defending their beliefs against arguments that assume the moral high road and instead reject the arguments themselves as being based on false assumptions. In this way we will gradually re-claim that "most insidious tool of all", the language, and begin the long journey back to America the way it was intended to be - a nation of free and responsible individuals, subjects to no one.

Benedict Arnold
A Drama of the American Revolution In Five Acts,
by Robert Zubrin (Polaris Books, 104pp., $9.95)

Reviewed by James Austin Bishop

It's October in New York State, 1777. The brutal heat of summer lingered too long into autumn, but is now finally giving way to crisp, cool air. The leaves have shed their deep green mantle in an annual explosion of flaming yellow, burnt orange and blood red colors that has reached its peak, transforming this heavily forested region of New England into a natural wonder, the inexpressible beauty of which future generations will travel hundreds and thousands of miles to admire.

But today that beauty is undoubtedly lost on the Patriots whose own blood, shed here for an heroic ideal, soaks into the already fertile soil of Freeman's Farm, and the acrid smell of gunpowder spoils the senses for any appreciation of clean, free air.

British General John Burgoyne's army had been pressing the Continentals from the north, but his position was becoming increasingly precarious. Faced with a growing American force, the Brits nonetheless fought gallantly and had almost won the battle of Saratoga. The Continental Army, led by General Horatio Gates, had all but secured victory when the British formed a final desperate assault, bolstered by Hessian mercenaries. The American lines wavered and were in danger of breaking. General Gates did not appear on the battlefield.
Enter Benedict Arnold.

Arnold had been relieved of command by Gates after a quarrel over tactics. Despite having no proper command, Arnold, sensing impending defeat, rallied the men and drove them against the German troops holding the British center. Under tremendous pressure from all sides, the Germans withdrew into the fortifications on Freeman Farm.

In a stirring display of reckless courage, Arnold led one column in a series of savage attacks on the Balcarres Redoubt, a powerful British fieldwork on the Freeman Farm. He then wheeled his horse and, dashing through the crossfire from both sides, galloped northwest to the Breymann Redoubt. There he joined the final surge that overwhelmed the German soldiers defending that fortification. As he entered the Redoubt Arnold took a bullet in the leg. The resulting wound almost cost him his life. As it was, the injury was to plague him for the rest of his life.

Burgoyne surrendered on October 17, utterly defeated, in one of the most decisive battles in history. Historians consider the Battle of Saratoga to be the turning point of the Revolutionary war, convincing the French and the Americans themselves that an American victory was possible. Had Benedict Arnold died in battle that day, there would be few heroes of the American Revolution more hailed and revered today than he. Instead, Arnold lived to fall into disgrace, narrowly avoiding hanging, and his name has become synonymous with "traitor."

The story of the Revolutionary War is a story of miracles and dumb luck, unlikely heros and villains, selfless bravery and a nobility of ideals that, if fiction, might well be rejected by a publisher as stretching the credulity of a potential audience too far beyond their ability to suspend disbelief. It follows, then, that any successful retelling of that story would come from a mind in tune with the miraculous; a mind familiar with the possibilities inherent in causes larger than the self.

Enter Robert Zubrin.

Benedict Arnold, A Drama Of The American Revolution, In Five Acts, is as the title suggests a dramatization of the Revolutionary War. The historically accurate play is Zubrin's first, as well as his first work of historical fiction.

Zubrin is an internationally renowned astronautical engineer and the author of, among man other worksy, The Case for Mars, which no less a "possibility thinker" than Arthur C. Clark hailed as "the most comprehensive account of the past and future of Mars that I have ever encountered." Whether describing future possibility as with "The Case for Mars," satirizing current political events in The Holy Land, or dramatizing past historical fact in Benedict Arnold, it is Zubrin's ability to grasp the larger vision and to share it in a way that grips the imagination that makes his writing so compelling.

"The American Revolution has always fascinated me, because it was a moment that a people rose above its apparent practical self-interest to launch and win a fight for a visionary future," writes Zubrin, and visionary futures are a concept with which he is uniquely familiar.

Zubrin’s knack for characterization is on full display in Benedict Arnold, leaving the reader with strong impressions of the motives, passions and moral grounding that drove the players in this most crucial moment in American history.

"The key struggle was more moral than military," says Zubrin, and it is a testament to the men of that time that even the most common among them remained morally resolute through that struggle in the face of incredible hardship. It was three of the humblest and most unlikely of heroes, for example, who rose above the chance for personal gain to thwart Arnold’s treachery and save the cause, while Arnold himself, a genuine hero, succumbed to all-too-human passions - jealousy, greed, a beautiful young woman - betraying his beloved Washington and the Revolution itself. It is one of the miracles of the Revolutionary war, not that strong men like Arnold sold out, but that more like him did not.

"That miracle carries a message of real hope and challenge for our kind," says Zubrin. "It dares us to be great."

Zubrin captures the reader's imagination on the first page with the American charge into the Hessian lines and keeps his grip throughout; taking us from Benedict Arnold's most noble hour at Saratoga, through his decline at the delicate, manipulative hands of beautiful and treacherous spy, to his utter disgrace and flight to the British side - all in a single sitting.

Strap in for a visionary trip into the past. Gain insight along the way into the minds of such heros as Washington, Lafayette and Hamilton, villains such as Peggy Shipton and Captain John Andre', and understanding of the passions that drove one of the most intriguing personalities in all of American History – Hero of the Revolution and traitor to the cause - Benedict Arnold.

About the author:

Dr. Robert Zubrin is an internationally renowned astronautical engineer, a former senior engineer at Lockheed Martin, and he is president of the Mars Society, a non-profit group promoting planetary exploration, and founder of Pioneer Astronautics, a successful space technology research and development firm. Zubrin is the author of over 150 technical and non-technical papers in the areas of space exploration and nuclear engineering, and holds two US patents. His other books include the non-fiction Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization, and Mars on Earth, the hard science fiction novel First Landing, and The Holy Land, a science fiction satire on contemporary events.

I sat with my young son at the top of our back yard late on a cool October evening. A small fire crackled in the fireplace and hot dogs sizzled over the flames. We were poking at the coals and talking about the brooding woods around us, here at the top of this dark hill.

Our little home is nestled into the southern side of a hill, a steep, wooded ridge running Northeast to Southwest, a few miles north of Philadelphia. The woods were infused with a palpable sense of history that night up on that hill, a feeling that filtered down through the shadowy branches of the trees, mixing with the starlight.

We were enjoying our cookout on hallowed ground, my son and I. The steep backyard where we live our comfortable suburban lives had been consecrated by the blood of patriots, and it was important to me that my boy should understand the significance of that.

There was another teen aged boy, I told him, quite possibly just your age, who sat on this same hill among the trees. The boy's name was Joe. Joseph Plum Martin, in fact, and he sat on our hill, maybe right here in this same spot, two hundred and thirty years ago.

It wasn't a cool October night when that boy was here, though. It was the first week in December, 1777, and while winter hadn't officially begun, it was already brutally cold. And Joe, even though he was only as old as you are now, was already a seasoned veteran of war.

Joe was cold that night, and he was hungry, and he was very, very tired. He hadn't been paid since summer. He and the other young men serving under General George Washington had suffered two major defeats in battle. Philadelphia had fallen to the British. Washington's spies had determined that the British, commanded by Sir William Howe, were well entrenched in Philadelphia and were far too strong to attack.

But Joe was itching for a fight, so he hoped that Howe would come to them. They were dug in up here on this fortified hill, after all, and felt confident of their position. Besides, they wanted to take out their frustration on some Redcoats.

Years later an aging Joseph Plum Martin wrote down some of his memories of that night on this hill:

"We had a commanding position and were very sensible of it. We were kept constantly on the alert, and wished nothing more than to have them engage us, being in excellent fighting trim, as we were starved and as cross and ill-natured as curs. While we lay there, there happened very remarkable northern lights. At one time the whole visible heavens appeared, for some time, as if covered with crimson velvet. Some of the soldiers prognosticated a bloody battle about to be fought, but time, which always speaks the truth, showed them to be false prophets."

But a bloody battle was just what Howe wanted, too. He desperately wanted to destroy Washington's army and have done with it before winter set in. So Joe got his wish, and Howe marched 12,000 British and German troops - nearly his whole army - out of Philadelphia.

But try as they might, the British couldn't find a break in Washington's lines. They moved back and forth, about a mile away, and Washington's troops shadowed them. They tried to outflank the line on the left, right here on this hill, on the bitterly cold night of December 7th, 1777, in a series of fire fights that became known as the Battle of Edge Hill.

Finally Howe gave up, much to the disappointment of General Washington (and Joe), and retreated to Philadelphia to settle down for the winter. They were too strong to be attacked, so Washington took his army away too, leaving behind the blood of 90 dead and wounded to seep into the ground that you and I are sitting on now.

Joe marched away with the Continental Army to their winter quarters and settled down for what was to become one of the cruelest winters that any man has ever endured It was the winter of trial for men with the moral strength to risk and sacrifice all for a noble cause. It was the Winter of 1777 in Valley Forge.