A nation cannot survive treason from within

By Col. Ron Scott, PhD, USAF ret, USAFA ’73
STARRS President & CEO

Earlier this week, the spouse of a VERY high-ranking retired officer of our armed forces posted on a social media platform a video that was anti-ICE.

See for yourself this screeching, revolution-style music video against federal law enforcement officers whose mission is to “protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.”

Another spouse of a retired high-ranking military officer incredibly responded “Great song!” to which the first said, “Yes it is!!!”

I can appreciate the temptation to manifest cynicism associated with competing world views–yet when we have been privileged to participate in organizational/cultural activity at strategic levels, the elite positioning affords influential power.

When that power is used to impose moral judgment, it matters if it is based on our Judeo-Christian tradition or progressive secular humanism.

I took the liberty of posting a response.

“Very disappointing . . . Schweitzer’s epigraph in his recent, timely book, The Invisible Coup, shared this warning:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.

An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.

He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” —M. Tullii Ciceronis, Orationum Pars I.[–III]

Schweizer, Peter. The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon (pp. vii-viii). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

When I shared the above with STARRS colleagues, one responded with this statement:

“Reminds me of the stories of members of the Russian aristocracy who thought it was cool in 1917 to wear Bolshevik red hammer and sickle pins shortly before the October Revolution. Things didn’t go well for them when the Bolsheviks came to power.”

Another colleague with extensive CIA counterintelligence experience reported:

Ethel Rosenberg wore the pants in her family and got her husband and brother to spy (then portrayed herself as a ‘sweet, innocent mother’).

In the Cold War days, if the KGB found out a wife was sympathetic to the Left, she would be targeted as a vector to reach/influence the general. That happened with Oppenheimer and other spies. Even Eleanor Roosevelt had been in contact with agents of the NKVD (later KGB) and had a code name.

In this era of domestic threat, with the Left having an organized movement, their intel/security arms would easily target left-leaning spouses of generals and other officers. Unfortunately, unlike the old Cold War days, I don’t think the service’s CI/security offices understand this as a threat.

More about this organized insurgency:

Military intelligence officers warn: Minneapolis is an organized insurgency

Based on my observation–“When that power is used to impose moral judgment, it matters if it is based on our Judeo-Christian tradition or progressive secular humanism”–a third colleague consulted Copilot (Microsoft’s AI platform).

Here is what AI reported in response to the prompt: “Compare focus on the world to focus on heaven.”

COPILOT

A comparison like this gets right to the heart of a classic spiritual tension: what deserves our deepest attention and what kind of life each focus produces. Different traditions frame it differently, but the contrast is remarkably consistent across cultures.

🌍 Focusing on the World