ListenNJNW - Culture Warrior

Central Command (CENTCOM) Initial Briefing

At times you have to fight. No way around it. At some point, every one of us is confronted with danger or injustice. How we choose to combat that challenge is often life-defining. You can face difficulties head-on, or run from them, or ignore them until they consume you. But no one escapes conflict. No one.

In my experience of more than thirty years of practicing journalism, I've found that most people do not like to fight. No surprise there. Battle is not only exhausting and dangerous; it also requires skill and discipline to emerge victorious, much less unscathed.

That's why few of us, except for some weirdly self-destructive souls, seek out conflict. In fact, putting yourself at risk goes against our natural impulse of self-preservation. Whenever I've witnessed strife, I've met far more villains than heroes, but both are relatively rare. Most human beings are neither heroes nor villains but decent people who choose to sit things out until pushed beyond a reasonable limit.

For a variety of reasons that I will explain, I have chosen to jump into the fray and become a warrior in the vicious culture war that is currently under way in the United States of America. And war is exactly the right term. On one side of the battlefield are the armies of the traditionalists like me, people who believe the United States was well founded and has done enormous good for the world. On the other side are the committed forces of the secular-progressive movement that want to change America dramatically: mold it in the image of Western Europe. Notice I did not say anything about "conservatives against liberals." This is not the real culture fight, as I'll make clear. The talk-radio mantra of the left versus the right doesn't even come close to defining
the culture war in America--it is much more complicated than that.

Rather surprisingly, at least to me, one result of my decision to fight in this war has been financial success. Another result has been a measure of fame. Chances are you know who I am and what I do. But you may not understand why I do what I do. That, as they say on TV, is coming up.

The culture war has also made me perhaps the most controversial broadcaster in the country. That hot-button label "controversial" gives my enemies, they think, the right to attack me and my enterprises ceaselessly, unfairly, even dementedly. I truly drive the opposing force nuts! As you may know, I'm engaged in fighting them on a daily basis,
and that warfare is the subject of this book.

Maybe it helps that many of my Irish ancestors were warriors. They lived in County Cavan and fought Oliver Cromwell when he devastated Ireland in the name of the British Commonwealth. They lost that fight. Later, some of them emigrated to America during the great famine of the 1840s. More came later. My paternal grandfather fought in World War I, then became a New York City police officer. He was one tough SOB. I have his billy club in my desk drawer. It was well used. Come to think of it, maybe I was named after that club.

In the next generation's world war, my father was a naval officer and was on the scene during the occupation of Japan. He was by nature a warrior but, in an interesting contradiction, was also frightened by the unknown, the Great Depression having imposed upon my father a fear that he never defeated. Even so, his instincts were to combat injustice and scorn those who ran from necessary conflict. But his reluctance to challenge authority and take chances in his career and life would stifle his potential. I watched throughout my growing years as he was slowly beaten down by...

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