| | Ed Hudgins writes:
This is why religious conflict between members of sects so close to each other are often the most violent -- Protestant versus Catholic Christians, Sunni versus Shi'ite Muslims. Those who fail to make rational judgments in distinguishing between honest disagreements and dishonest ones -- or appreciate the mixed motives of many, tend to act like the ARI types at their worst or religious fanatics.
There's another reason why brother-against-brother "civil wars" of this type are so common, fervent, and bloody: This is where the action is. This is the only fight that counts.
The worst theft in just about any business is internal: employee pilferage, not shoplifting, embezzlement, not armed robbery. The worst enemies at war are usually the fifth columnists, saboteurs, and traitors -- the enemies within. To this day, Americans overwhelmingly hate not William Howe (who?) but Benedict Arnold (a far less important officer). Pretty much everyone understands that ultra-famous WWII Pogo cartoon: "We have met the enemy. And he is us."
Once Objectivism -- or at least liberal ideology -- cleans itself up and sorts itself out, the battle is mostly won. The world will almost fall at our feet. But not till we're truly worthy. Not till the ideology is really clean, and something close to being exactly right and completely true.
But the philosophical attainment of this Western liberal ideal won't be the achievement of a group without backbone or decent fighting spirit -- a group which lacks the intellectual power, skill, will, courage, confidence, and moral certainty to attack its clear enemy. And this status of liberal ideological perfection won't be the achievement of a group of bizarre, malicious, robotic, intellectual fascists which stands at great odds with the whole notion of reason, philosophy, speculation, inquiry, objectivity, neutrality, curiosity, dialectic, discussion, and debate.
In the end, it isn't Osama bin Laudin and Hu Jintao which threaten liberal society. It isn't even Islamist terrorism or communist aggression. The real enemy of a rational liberal world order -- the fundamental and underlying enemy -- is Kant and Marx -- and Peikoff.
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