Via Digby I had the chance to read Michael Barone's latest article in which he pontificates on the topic of "our covert enemies". It is never clear who the "we" in this story might be, so I've decided that it must be Mr. Barone and his family. For what else could he possibly refer to? The whole nation? But that's not possible, because he very clearly writes that these enemies are among us:
In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can. Against them we can fight back, as we did when British authorities arrested the men and women who were plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic.
Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.
If it's not the Barones he's talking about here, I'm getting very frightened. Who is it that is my covert enemy, infiltrating itself everywhere? Maybe into the Snakepit Inc. itself! Just a second while I check under the bed.
Nothing new there. Just the usual dustdogs. But wait! Could those be the covert enemies in an alien form? Now calm down, Echidne. Take a deep breath and read more carefully.
Ah! Here is the solution:
We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.
He's most likely talking about Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Tom deLay and Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and... EEK! They're everywhere! Help me! Defend me against these covert Islamofascist sympathizers who hate me just for my freedoms!