What triggered the revolutions and civil wars of the last century? What triggered the first and second world wars? One thing triggered them: ENMITY.

What is enmity?

Enmity is ill will, hostility, antipathy, animosity, rancor — and, above all, it is hatred — not passive, but active. It is a hatred that fuels the cruelty of war. It is the meaning of war. It is the reason for war. It is the all-in-all of war.

Recently the best-selling author, Graham Hancock, passionately decried the stupidity of America’s Pentagon budget to Joe Rogan. Money wasted on armaments, he said, could be used to end poverty or cure diseases. Hancock spoke as if enmity toward America was a kind of convenient fiction of the “powers-that-be.” He did not properly consider those who actively hate America, who want to see America burn.

It may be that Mr. Hancock’s intuition about a lost prehistorical civilization is worth considering, but his intuition about our present civilization is without merit. If America disarmed as he recommends, not only would a dismal poverty inflict the whole planet, but America’s collapse into military insignificance would signal a dark age of Sino-Russian global dominance — an age of slavery and persecution; an age in which dissenters would be imprisoned, tortured and executed by the tens of millions. One only has to look at the bloody oppressions of the police state in China, at the assassination of journalists in Russia, to know the fate that would be in store for us all.

To hear Mr. Hancock speak against my country’s weapons of defense, as if my country was the problem, is more than a little perplexing; especially as Mr. Hancock has no declared expertise in world affairs, no military knowledge, or degrees in political science. I cannot help wondering, as well, that he might be be speaking German if not for my country’s armament. Yet he damns my country’s defense establishment as if it alone stood in the way of mankind’s progress.

Hancock, who is by no means an enemy of America, has adopted the talking points of America’s enemy. If everyone believed in such talking points, who would benefit? It is, indeed, a case of cui bono; for nonsense of this kind has a purpose. Those who hate America want to see her defenseless. They have worked incessantly toward this end for decades.

Recently a reader sent me a picture of a mob of protestors burning an American flag in Los Angeles. Apparently I was supposed to express shock or surprise. If anyone is shocked, it is not me. Los Angeles is, in many respects, the territory of a foreign power. Many places in America are no longer American. They are opposed to the country, opposed to its defense, and want it to burn.

When I was in graduate school more than thirty years ago, many professors and graduate students were working to undo the country. I heard expressions of snarling hatred and contempt for America. It seemed, in fact, that this hatred was gradually becoming academically obligatory. It was, in those very days, that flag burning was judicially approved as “free speech” by the Supreme Court.” Many libertarians and conservatives approved of this decision. But then, given that dragon’s eggs were incubating inside the universities, the Supreme Court decision was more on the order of a landmark — halfway between the censuring of Joseph McCarthy and total destruction by fire.

Seriously. This is a country governed by very special fools. It has been governed by these fools for fifty to sixty years or more. Nearly all men, in all times, are foolish. But to live without a shred of instinct, without a sense of self-preservation, and to arrogantly regard one’s stupor as a superior state of consciousness, is damnable. God does not smile on it.

Enmity is hatred. It is the kind of hatred that burns flags. It is the kind of hatred that burns police precincts and suburbs. It is the kind of hatred that launches ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. It is the kind of hatred that organized the terror famine in Ukraine 90 years ago. It is the kind of hatred that gassed millions of Jews in the Second World War — that firebombed Dresden and put mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Do you think enmity is a fairytale? Do you think it is a myth advanced by the “military-industrial complex”? Think again. If we did not have a single rifle to defend ourselves, would the flag burners in Los Angeles suddenly salute our flag? No. They would proceed to burn down the whole country. Why? Because the flag signifies the country. They burn the flag now because they cannot burn the country.

When somebody burns your country’s flag what do you think they intend? Do you think burning a flag is a fun pastime? Do you think burning a police precinct is protected speech? Do you think burning the suburbs is an understandable form of protest?

And now Minneapolis burns. What other cities will burn? Let us consider, once more, that curious Latin phrase — cui bono. Let us consider the connection between the flag burning (by communists) in Los Angeles, and the burning of a police precinct in Minneapolis. They are, in fact, intimately connected.

One might ask, rhetorically, why the flags of America’s enemies aren’t burning? It is simple. They are the ones doing the burning — of flags and police precincts. They have incited the frenzy of the mob. They have used race and class and sex to divide America into hostile, warring camps. Their game is “divide and conquer.” And we — suckers that we are — play along with this game.

Does anyone see what is happening? Does anyone see who is behind it? Does anyone realize who stands to gain by it? — Not blacks, not whites, not Americans of any color.

Oh yes. We are very, very, special fools.