What is a Fifth Column and What Does it Do?

After taking a week off last week to recover from respiratory flu/bronchitis/the plague or whatever it was that was making me ill, I am back and ready to go again. Today, I would like to discuss fifth columns. What are they? What do they do? Do we have one in America? How about the rest of the world?

According to Merriam-Webster Online, a fifth column is "a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders" and the etymology is "name applied to rebel sympathizers in Madrid in 1936 when four rebel columns were advancing on the city". More detail can be found at Wikipedia. Its article on "Fifth Column" defines that term as "A fifth column is a group of people which clandestinely undermines a larger group to which it is expected to be loyal, such as a nation." The article tells of the term's origin by stating "The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a nationalist general during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. As four of his army columns moved on Madrid, the general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his "fifth column," intent on undermining the Republican government from within." There is more detail in the article if you are interested.

Frank Salvato has written an article at The New Media Journal titled "The 'Fifth Columnization' of America". In it, he discusses the fifth column in American society and what it does to undermine our nation.

The Progressive-Left’s American Fifth Column is most often epitomized by the militant, bullhorn toting activist who, when not examined thoroughly, seems to be advocating for one “civil right” or another. We see them at the pro-illegal immigration protests, the anti-gun protests, the anti-war protests, anywhere a group of people can lay blame at the feet of government and especially the Bush Administration. But the American Fifth Column’s tentacles spread much wider and delve much deeper into our history and our society and recent events illustrate this as fact, rather than fiction.

The American Fifth Column is born out of Socialist/Communist ideology where the citizenry grows dependent on the government while the government increasingly legislates itself more control over the people.

In the perfect Fifth Column world, everyone is equal and possesses an artificially elevated sense of self-worth, the competitive spirit is equalized through taxes and legislated oversight of private business and societal boundaries – including boundaries in speech and action – are enforced through a shadow set of laws known as political correctness, a set of laws that undermine the authority of the Constitution.

The American Fifth Column is embodied by the politically correct multicultural one-world movement and encompasses all of the Progressive-Left buzz word initiatives, such as “diversity,” “public good,” “it takes a village,” “global village” and so on.

Through the artificial equalization of our society the Fifth Column strives to achieve the Balkanization of the United States through the celebration of diversity while inducing the surrender of individual choice within those Balkanized communities to governmental entities; divide and conquer.

Sound familiar? We hear about it everyday, although not necessarily in critical terms, especially in our left-leaning Mainstream Media (MSM). I worry that we have become so brainwashed already by the left's propaganda that we think we're just being "nice" and "good" when we go along with the feel-good policies proposed, nay, demanded by the left. A number of people invoke Jesus Christ by saying that He would support such things as multiculturalism and diversity, without regard to the difference between the left's proposals/demands and the kind generosity that Christ would truly support.

Much of what the left wants involves serious damage to certain groups or classes of people. For example, they would steal from the rich to give to the poor rather than truly helping the poor by teaching them better ways of life, responsibility, accountability, and so forth. The left also wants us to tolerate, even embrace, other cultures and religions while suppressing our own. In other words, we aren't to just help others or appreciate others--we are to trash everything we have and are. This is just crazy!

As Mr. Salvato writes in his article:

When successful, the efforts of the Progressive-Left’s American Fifth Column achieve the neutering of the American spirit, the end of our celebrated melting pot where pride in individuality, whether ethnic, religious or social, gave way only to pride of country; e pluribus unim. It transforms pioneers into cogs in a machine for the “greater good” and feminizes our society, this feminization giving way to a society of defenseless victims who are completely reliant on government for their survival.

He goes on to discuss the shootings at Virginia Tech and asks why no one tried to stop Cho except for a " septuagenarian holocaust and Soviet Bloc survivor." Then there is this:

The American Fifth Column’s relentless and visionless opposition to the military efforts in Iraq stand as another glaring example.

I stand as one of the few voices who refuses to back down in the face of the Fifth Column’s relentless insistence that weapons of mass destruction was the onus for President Bush’s decision to assemble a coalition of willing nations to topple Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. This insistence, for the overwhelming part, is in error and it has been mischaracterized unmercifully in order to advance their politically correct, one-world efforts to equalize the United States on the world stage.

Ingenuous people will admit that after being reminded of the reasons given for action in Iraq – Saddam Hussein’s genocide of his own people and his blatant violation of the cease-fire agreement that allowed him to live at the end of the Gulf War – it would have been unthinkable to have allowed this madman to go unchallenged.

Yet, the American Fifth Column denounces the Bush Administration, condemns the military actions taking place on behalf of and authorized by a freely elected Iraqi government and insists on arguing the least tangible of all the points given for military intervention in Iraq, WMD, even though regime change in Iraq was mandated by Congress as US policy under the Clinton Administration.

Question for the Progressive-Left Fifth Column: When did genocide become acceptable to you?

That's quite a question, isn't it? And what about education in America?

Perhaps the most disturbing avenue the Fifth Column has cultivated is within our education system. From grade school through college, the education establishment, bolstered by the political activists and social engineers of the agenda-driven National Education Association, has the government mandated opportunity to poison the minds of our children, to brainwash our country’s youth.

Nary a day goes by when there isn’t a story espousing the political indoctrination by the likes of a Ward Churchill or a Jay Bennish, “teachers” – and I use the word loosely – who impose their political beliefs on their students while usurping the parental birthright to bequeath familial core values to their children.

School systems lorded over by busy-body Progressive-Leftists increasingly employ text books that rewrite history at our nation’s expense. Parents are kept from attaining full access to programs mandated by our schools that promote questionable adult content in the form of what is termed sex education under the heading of “diversity” and “cultural awareness.” And some public school systems are promoting the “understanding” of Islam by forcing students to become “Muslim for a day,” in direct contradiction of the Progressive-Left’s belief in separation of church and state.

Then there are the actions of some of our elected officials.

As the Fifth Column Progressive-Leftists make inroads into our society, our education system and our state and federal governments, the overwhelming majority of Conservative lawmakers can’t find their spines long enough to demand action against elected officials who have certainly become nothing less than enemies of the State.

Not one Conservative lawmaker – in leadership or otherwise – has called for investigations into whether or not treason charges should be brought against or at least resignations be extracted from:

▪ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: For her non-authorized and unconstitutional contact with the leader of a State sponsor of terrorism in a time of war in direct violation of the Logan Act. And for then declaring that she was “too busy” to meet with US General David Petraeus when he came to Washington to brief Congress on the current situation on the ground in Iraq.

▪ House Whip Steny Hoyer: For his contact with leadership of the terrorist organization The Muslim Brotherhood, a radical group who actively works to promote the creation of a global Islamic Caliphate as it aids and abets terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, among others.

▪ Representative John Murtha for blatantly lying to the American people about not receiving a briefing from General Petraeus when Murtha received a personal briefing via telephone from the General for almost 30 minutes

▪ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: For his declaration “The war is lost,” a statement that most certainly aided and abetted the propaganda campaign of terrorist organizations with which the United States is currently at war.

While the Fifth Column chalks up victory after victory, inching further and further toward controlling not only the House and Senate but the White House and Supreme Court as well, Conservative lawmakers can’t even find the outrage to charge treason and demand resignations when elected Fifth Columnists are successfully aiding our enemy, steering our country into the abyss of military defeat and toward the human indignity that is Socialism.

Why do any of us find it so hard to stand up for what is right and put a stop to this treasonous foolishness? What makes it acceptable?

But perhaps the most blame for the mess we’re in lies with the American people, specifically the Conservatives among us. While the insanity of the third party route and the casting of protest votes is incredibly clear to those who understand the threat of the Fifth Column, those pale in comparison to the most damaging shortcomings of the Conservative movement: personal inaction and abdication of responsibility.

Mr. Salvato ends his article by asking some very direct questions of us, as Americans, including this one:

The time is shortly after 9:28am ET. The date is September 11, 2001. You are on-board Flight 93 and the al Qaeda hijackers have just made their move to commandeer the aircraft. After a few cell phone calls you come to understand that the World Trade Center is for all practical purposes gone and that the Pentagon has been attacked, all through the use of suicide missions that piloted aircraft as weapons into their targets.

Question: Do you have the courage, do you have the conviction, to you have what it takes to charge the cockpit, to confront the hijackers, knowing full well that you, in all probability, are going to die? Or are you one of the many who cowered in the back of the plane waiting to be slaughtered.

I hope we can all find our way to think seriously about this and find our spines, strengthen them, and support what is truly right and good, in our society and in the world.