Gods Secular-Progressives and Generals

David Weigel | November 30, 2006

Sure, I read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. But like most people, I only read it to impress a girl. I never was blown away by his prowess as a political mastermind, which looks to be the right reaction in light of Empire, his new novelexcerpt.

What the terrorists aren't counting on, thought Cole, is that America isn't a completely decadent country yet. When you stab us, we don't roll over and ask what we did wrong and would you please forgive us. Instead we turn around and take the knife out of your hand. Even though the whole world, insanely, condemns us for it.

Cole could imagine the way this was getting covered by the media in the rest of the world. Oh, tragic that the President was dead. Official condolences. Somber faces. But they'd be dancing in the streets in Paris and Berlin, not to mention Moscow and Beijing. After all, those were the places where America was blamed for all the trouble in the world. What a laugh -- capitals that had once tried to conquer vast empires, damning America for behaving far better than they did when they were in the ascendancy.

"You look pissed off," said Malich.

"Yeah," said Cole. "The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy."

That's really what this book is like. It'd be far more interesting to read a liberal's perspective on this dystopia - "the Colmes Diares," or something, wherein the liberal licks his chops at memories of the Organization marching white evangelicals into detention zones. I could point out that this kind of fantasizing is what conservatives (including me) used to accuse liberals of doing with The West Wing, but the peerless Roy Edroso's already covered that base.

I muddled through some similar attempts to convey the seriousness of our Current Struggle through sci-fi back in September.