Priestly Rule (IV)

Priests, the forerunners of today’s intellectuals, use their superior grasp of knowledge to help the rest of us find purpose in our lives. The priests controlled the world of tomorrow, while their natural rivals, the warriors, ruled the world of today.

The Great War (1914-18) was a total war, engulfing a whole generation of young men and civilians of all ages. After that war’s use of patriotism to drive millions to their premature deaths, intellectuals determined to rid the world of warriors, and disarm the great powers. That disastrous course of action prepared the ground for Hitler’s conquests and World War II.

FDR, Truman, and Kennedy understood the need for military power in a world with real enemies. European intellectuals, from nations that had suffered more than the U.S. through two world wars and that had lost their empires, were more committed to “better Red than dead,” “ban the bomb,” and “nuclear freeze.” Our war in Vietnam went down badly in Europe, convincing intellectuals there that America was a true threat to world peace.

Against that backdrop, American intellectuals fought to end the Democratic Party’s involvement with Vietnam, and beyond that, move the U.S. away from reliance on military power. Warriors were a national danger intellectuals needed to separate from power in the U.S., as warriors already had been in Western Europe.

Republicans under Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41 and 43 have all benefited from Democrats’ post-Vietnam hostility toward America’s military and national security. Intellectuals believe they have an unfinished mission. Having straightened out the Democratic Party, they must still convert other Americans who misguidedly think employing U.S. force overseas protects civilians at home.

That’s why it’s so important to intellectuals that Bush lose in Iraq. Intellectuals want to drive a wooden stake through the heart of American militarism and its GOP supporters to make sure that never again will our sons and daughters die in foreign wars—except in small numbers while staving off humanitarian disasters such as Rwanda and Darfur. Obviously if we are attacked directly, we have the right of self-defense, which justifies our being in Afghanistan. But that’s it.

The business of America is at home, finishing the agenda of the New Deal led by intellectuals, restored to the positions to which they are entitled.