Susan Sontag is not my enemy. Intellectual elites conditioned to believe that violent people are always the product of injustice, ignorance or poverty, and that the habits of mind and tactics appropriate to resolve conflicts on the playground or in the counselor's office form an adequate theory of how to respond to naked evil -- I pity their moral confusion, but they are not my enemy.
And yet, even with maximum need for charity, I do not think the debate over who we are can be postponed. Our enemy hates "not what we do, but who we are," wrote Joshua Micah Marshall of the American Prospect: "They hate our crass frenzy, ... our libidinous music and the fact we've collectively decided to govern ourselves not by our privately held ideas of moral or heavenly absolutes, but by the rule of law." Diversity, materialism, secularism, tolerance -- he lists the goods we fight for. Is this who we really are?
I have two sons, one of them 18 years old. I am not willing to risk either's life for materialism, diversity, secularism or tolerance. I believe passionately in religious liberty, but not because I have agreed "to disagree about life's most profound truths," as Marshall formulates. Instead I am willing to fight and suffer and sacrifice for America's liberty, including our God-given right to individual conscience. We owe it to Him as much as to each other to defend religious and political freedom, with our lives, if necessary.
Millions for defense, not a single penny for tribute, went the 19th-century battle cry. I wouldn't ask a dog to risk its life for secularism or materialism, but everything I have for God, and country, and liberty. Do you see the difference?