For the first time in American history, we have irrefutable evidence that there is a dangerous and functional foreign-born “fifth column” at work on American soil.
The term “fifth column” has its origin in the ’30s Spanish Civil War, when the military decided to overthrow the Madrid government. With four columns of troops advancing on the capital, their general announced that “the fifth column is within the city” – meaning people secretly in league with the military who would perform acts of sabotage and terrorism from inside the government’s redoubt.
America is threatened as no other nation is by the strategy of planting a “fifth column” inside our society. Why? Because of our openness, our constitutional commitment to civil liberties and our social commitment to treating people as individuals and not members of a faceless group.
Thus, we’ve been having vicious quarrels for 50 years about the appropriateness of the U.S. government’s conduct in dealing with the ideological “fifth column” made up of native-born Americans who were spying for the Soviet Union.
And you’ll find almost nobody who can come up with a defense for the decision during World War II to force Japanese-Americans into internment camps – an act undertaken because of fears of a traitorous “fifth column” sticking like a barnacle to the underside of the Japanese community.
Other nations, even democratic nations, are far more homogeneous than the United States – which means it’s far more difficult for non-citizens to hide themselves from view. A homogeneous country is a country whose citizens have precious little reason to conduct a public debate about racial profiling.
The American melting pot has been this country’s great glory. But at this moment, it poses a specific security and terrorist threat as well. Even as we express concern for the well-being of Muslim- and Arab-Americans and native as well as non-native Blacks in the face of ignorant and vicious yahoos, we also have to confront the very real fact that their neighborhoods and communities have dark crevices and corners where the fifth columnists working for the al-Qaeda network, AntiFA and BLM are finding succor.
The glaring result of this is highlighted by the rioting and destruction in Minneapolis which has spilled over into other enclaves where there are non-homogeneous populations involved in what would seriously qualify as insurrection against the United States.
Arabs and Muslims as well as Blacks do not simply have to sit by and be victims – victims of the terrorists threatening the United States, or of racist morons. They, too, can be heroes just as surely as the four men who took their stand on United Airlines Flight 93 and may have saved the White House.
The best way for the “fifth column” to be smoked out of its hole is for Arabs, Muslims and Blacks to keep a watchful eye on their own communities and to supply authorities with information that may prevent future terrorist acts inside the United States. The FBI has made this very simple – with anonymous hotlines and Internet sites where tips can be posted.
The problem, as I see it, is that political correctness and the fear of being labeled as racist has blunted the self-preservation instinct in good, law-abiding folks to the point of self-hatred and unsubstantiated guilt.
Tolerance was never designed to be a suicide pact.