An open letter titled To all Innocent Fifth Columnists was written by Ayn Rand around 1941 encouraging conservative intellections to form a national organization advocating individualism. A Fifth Columnists is defined as a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group, such as a nation, from within, to the aid of an external enemy. The origination of the phrase came from the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when a General reported that his four columns of forces entering the city would be supported by a fifth column of his supporters inside the city.
The following is an excerpt from the letter which you can read in its entirety at the link posted below. As you read this you could substitute today’s language such as “socialism”, “nationalization of health care”, “racists” etc. and see the message is as relevant today as it was then. As she says names don’t matter, only the basic principle and there is no middle ground. Read the full letter and you will see the heading of this post makes sense and you will have ‘food for thought’ on the question it raises.
“First and above all: what is Totalitarianism? We all hear so much about it, but we don’t understand it. What is the most important point, the base, the whole heart of both Communism and Nazism? It is not the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” nor the nationalization of private property, nor the supremacy of the “Aryan” race, nor anti-Semitism. These things are secondary symptoms, surface details, the effects and not the cause. What is the primary cause, common to both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and all other dictators, past, present, and future? One idea — and one only: That the State is superior to the individual. That the Collective holds all rights and the individual has none.
Stop here. This is the crucial point. What you think of this will determine whether you are a mental Fifth Columnist or not. This is the point which allows no compromise. You must choose one or the other. There is no middle. Either you believe that each individual man has value, dignity and certain inalienable rights which cannot be sacrificed for any cause, for any purpose, for any collective, for any number of other men whatsoever. Or else you believe that a number of men — it doesn’t matter what you call it: a collective, a class, a race or a State — holds all rights, and any individual man can be sacrificed if some collective good — it doesn’t matter what you call it: better distribution of wealth, racial purity or the Millennium — demands it. Don’t fool yourself. Be honest about this. Names don’t matter. Only the basic principle matters, and there is no middle choice. Either man has individual, inalienable rights — or he hasn’t.
Your intentions don’t count. If you are willing to believe that men should be deprived of all rights for a good cause — you are a Totalitarian. Don’t forget, Stalin and Hitler sincerely believe that their causes are good. Stalin thinks that he is helping the downtrodden, and Hitler thinks that he is serving his country as a patriot. They are good causes, both of them, aren’t they? Then what creates the horrors of Russia and of Germany? What is destroying all civilization? Just this one idea — that to a good cause everything can be sacrificed; that individual men have no rights which must be respected; that what one person believes to be good can be put over on the others by force.”
http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/taifc.html
