The Assault on Civilization by David Kelley
Matthew Gaylor
freematt at coil.com
Sun Sep 16 17:27:50 PDT 2001
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/pubs/dk_assault_on_civilization.asp
The Assault on Civilization
by David Kelley, Executive Director
Most of us still find it impossible to grasp the destruction of the
World Trade Center. It was real, we saw it, but it does not belong in
any reality we can understand. We saw the airliners, full of people
who might have been us, streak incomprehensibly toward the walls of
steel and glass. We saw them morph into fireballs that trapped
thousands of people, working at their desks on a routine morning, in
an inferno that killed most of them. We saw the shimmering towers
collapse, and the towers of volcanic smoke that rose to take their
place in the New York skyline. The images have been imprinted on our
minds, never to be forgotten, but they will not compute.
In that sense, the terrorists succeeded. They have rocked our sense
of reality. They have confronted us with a horror we could not have
imagined, and may never assimilate. But they have also revealed, for
everyone to see, the real nature of their cause. The assault is being
described as an act of war against America, and it is. But unlike the
Pentagon, the World Trade Center had no military significance. Unlike
the White House--which the fourth, unsuccessful plane had apparently
targeted--it had no political significance for U.S. policy in the
Middle East, or anywhere else. The attack on the twin towers cannot
be seen as an effort, even a twisted effort, to redress the
grievances of people who feel dispossessed. It was an act of sheer
destruction, for the sake of destruction.
With rare unity, Americans have grasped that this was an assault on
their values, and it was. The buildings were obviously chosen as
symbolic targets. But the values are not uniquely American, or even
uniquely Western. They are the values of civilized life anywhere.
This was an assault on civilization as such.
When it was built in 1973, the World Trade Center was an engineering
marvel, innovative in structural design and in the construction
techniques invented to erect the towers on that site. Though larger,
taller structures have since been erected, New Yorkers were justly
proud of these towering symbols of technical, industrial audacity.
The buildings' tenants were a cross-section of a productive economy:
insurance companies, engineers, banks and investment houses, law
firms, educators, employment agencies, construction companies, travel
agencies. The tenants included great names in American
finance--Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers. They
included Empire Health Choice, which provides health insurance and
medical services to millions of people in New York State. Dow Jones,
one of the world's great publishing companies, had offices in the
South Tower. The top floors of the North Tower housed the
transmitting facilities for the major broadcasters in New York. Fuji
Bank of Japan occupied three floors, and scores of businesses from
other countries had offices in the building. Befitting its name and
the intent of the builders, it was a crossroads of international
commerce, a symbol not only of wealth but of trade as the civilized
mode of human interaction.
"World trade means world peace," said the chief architect, Minoru
Yamasaki. "The World Trade Center buildings in New York had a bigger
purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center
is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace.
The World
Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a
representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual
dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through
cooperation, his ability to find greatness."
These towers became landmark of the skyline of New York City, which
has always been a powerful symbol in its own right, a beacon of
freedom and opportunity. From the Statue of Liberty to the Empire
State Building, that skyline was forged from the melting pot where
the best in man is refined from the accidents of race and
nationality. In Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, the famous novel of a New
York architect, one character says that when he sees the city, "I
feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw
myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my
body." Many of us wished we could have done just that when we saw the
towers finally crumple and collapse.
Technology, achievement, trade, law, peace, freedom-these were the
values under attack. They are not American values but human values,
the values of civilized life.
Though it is not yet known for certain which particular terrorist
band committed the atrocity, we have every reason to believe they
sprang from a fanatical subculture of Islamic fundamentalism. But our
enemy is not Islam, which created one of the world's great
civilizations, nor is it the Arab or Iranian or Afghani peoples. Our
enemy is the nihilism of this subculture.
The terrorist leaders claim to speak for Palestinians. But the
grievances of that people, even if legitimate, cannot explain the
motivation for this act, much less justify it. The terrorists claim
to speak for the victims of Western imperialism. But any literal
imperialism is a thing of the past, long since redressed by the
wealth that Europe and America have showered on these countries. It
is clearly not the military or political power but the cultural power
of the West that they resent.
What makes them denounce America as the great Satan is nothing as
superficial as Coca-Cola or blue jeans. It is our secular culture of
freedom, reason, and the pursuit of happiness. They hate our
individualism; what they want is an authoritarian society where
thought and behavior are controlled by true believers. They hate
capitalism as a system of trade, production, innovation, and
progress; what they want is a return to a primitive mode of existence
from which these "materialist" aspirations have been banished. They
hate the political system of individual rights, the rule of law, and
secular government; what they want is a tribal society ruled by
command.
The nihilist subculture is a worldwide phenomenon. We see it in the
Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect that released poison gas in the Tokyo
subways. We see it in the hate-filled eyes of Christian killers in
Northern Ireland. We see it in the eco-terrorists who spike trees and
blow up electrical transmission towers. We see it in less murderous
forms in the anti-globalization protesters who want to stifle
international trade. We see it in the theorists of primitivism from
Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Unabomber.
Civilization has always attracted parasites who wanted to steal
wealth from those who produce it. But this phenomenon is different.
The nihilists do not seek wealth for themselves. They want to destroy
the wealth of others. They do not seek freedom from domination. They
want to abolish freedom. They do not seek a place at the table of
world commerce. They want to smash the table. They do not seek a
better life. They glory in death. They represent the worst form of
envy, the most vicious form of human evil. They hate us not for our
sins but for our virtues, and they will not be appeased.
The United States and its allies must cease the policy of trying to
counter terrorism by negotiation. Negotiation is an exercise of
reason that civilized people use to resolve their differences. We are
not dealing with civilized people. We must cease the policy of
excusing their violence by their poverty and trying to buy them off
with subsidies. We are not dealing with people who seek such gain. We
must declare war on the terrorists and use whatever force it takes to
render them incapable of posing any further threat. In the early
1800s, Thomas Jefferson sent the United States navy to rid the
Barbary coast of pirates. We urge President Bush and the Congress to
undertake a similar campaign not merely against the perpetrators of
this outrage but against every nest of terrorists who have declared
themselves, by the death and destruction they have wrought, to be
enemies of mankind.
In doing so, we will be acting in our own self-defense, with the
moral authority of those who have been attacked. But we should
understand and declare to the world that we are acting to preserve a
world order on which civilized values depend, and civilized peoples
everywhere must join in this cause.
* * *
) 2001 The Objectivist Center
Formerly the Institute for Objectivist Studies
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