Detective Tom
Polhaus:
[picks up the falcon] Heavy. What is
it?
Sam
Spade:
The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.
Detective Tom
Polhaus:
Huh?
—The Maltese Falcon
(film)
To ignore history is reckless. To invert its lessons is
suicide.
As we continue to fight for our existence as a free
people, we are crippled by two impulses that one would think are
mutually exclusive. Regarding the thousand year continuing threat
to Western Civilization, we display amnesia, incapable of
integrating the present attacks into a much larger arc of action.
Yet, when determining a response to our current enemies, our
literal, overly precise concept of what constitutes a “crusade”
precludes adding any overt spiritual/moral/religious component to
our effort.
Which is it? Confronting a remarkably patient enemy, how
can we both forget and over-remember at the same time? Our
lives depend on squaring this circle.
WITH A TIP OF THE HAT to another great American scandal,
we begin with a third rate burglary:
Dateline: San Francisco
(February 13, 2007) — The Maltese Falcon is
stolen.
Not “the” Maltese Falcon. Rather, this time it’s a
duplicate of the prop from the movie. The bird sculpture had been
displayed for many years in a corner cabinet on the second floor of
the legendary John’s Grill, a restaurant that is briefly mentioned
in the novella by Dashiell Hammett
as a place that detective Sam Spade used to frequent.
For an object with no intrinsic or artistic value — and
limited resale value — an outside observer would find it curious
that any thief would take any risk to obtain this lump of clay. Yet
that outside observer would only be revealing his ignorance of the
magic of the falcon. The 1930 publication describes an obsession by
many people to own a jeweled version of the bird. This passion then
jumps into the 1941 movie starring Humphrey Bogart. Because of both
the book and the movie’s narrative brilliance, this fictional
obsession then jumps into public consciousness, where it remains to
this day.
Everybody knows, at least vaguely, that there is a
“Maltese Falcon,” and almost as many know that you’re supposed to
want it. While most of us would be not as proactive as the San
Francisco thief, the passion endures. In fact, last year, an
alternate epoxy falcon prop from the movie was discovered and
authenticated, then sold at auction by Guernsey’s to actor Leonardo
DiCaprio for $300,000.00. “The stuff that dreams are made of,”
indeed.
FOR ALL THE MANIA, however, our culture remains thoroughly
ignorant about the exciting and compelling history of the
real Maltese Falcon and the real life role the bird played
in saving and continuing Western Civilization.
In the Hammett story, the Sydney Greenstreet character
explains that the crusaders of the “French Hospitaller” were given
the Island of Malta in perpetual fiefdom by King Charles of Spain,
then head of the Holy Roman Empire. In return, these “Knights of
Malta” were to annually provide the king with one of the prized
falcons from Malta. This capsule summary is correct, but deficient
in explaining why this group of idealists received the
island. While not germane to the story’s plot, there is much more
to understand about the real falcon and the real knights. The
mysterious fat man does not explain why this particular group of
idealists had earned the Island.
Malta is a tiny island — but in its strategic position
south of Sicily it is big enough to constitute a barrier to any
Mediterranean invasion of Western Europe from the east. The Knights
were given Malta after their heroic though unsuccessful defense of
the Island of Rhodes from the Ottoman invaders in 1522. Then, in a
famous battle on Malta in 1565, 600 knights successfully stopped
the progress of Suleiman the Magnificent and 40,000 of his Ottoman
fighters. Right there on that island, Western Europe was, at least
for a time, saved from Moslem conquest.
Given this history, we are losing a spectacular
opportunity by not treating the Maltese Falcon as a trophy of the
successful resistance to Islamism. The bird is no less an icon of
successful defense than is (ignoring motives) the Old North Church
is to the invading British. In a rational world, schoolchildren in
Europe and North America would be making falcons stuffed with
candy.
Note also that the “Maltese cross” is associated with
firefighting, such as the badge of the NYFD. This tradition has
come down from the heroism of the Knights of Malta — 1900 years
before the World Trade Center burned — when attempting to scale
the walls of Jerusalem, the Saracens threw down naphtha and
fire.
THIS INABILITY TO RECOGNIZE the current turmoil in the
broader context of the march of Islam is of one piece with the
moral paralysis which prevents public proclamation of the urgency
and superiority of our cause. Right after the 9/11 attack,
President G.W. Bush implicitly acknowledged the broader historical
and moral context of the event. In fact, he said that our response
would be a “crusade” — but he only used that term once. He was
criticized for being hateful, for judging all Muslims. Soon after,
he said that he regretted using the language.
Sixty-five years ago, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was not
squeamish about figuratively using the word to mean “a coordinated
battle with a moral core.” He began his order of the day on June 6,
1944 (D Day): “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied
Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great
Crusade.” He named his bestselling war memoir Crusade in
Europe. His 1952 presidential campaign slogan was Campaign
for America.
At the Democratic convention of that year, Ike’s opponent Adlai
Stevenson tried tweaking his usage: I hope and pray that we
Democrats, win or lose, can campaign not as a crusade to
exterminate the opposing Party, as our opponents seem to prefer,
but as a great opportunity to educate and elevate a people whose
destiny is leadership.
Judging by the election returns, Americans did not share
Stevenson’s concern. Eisenhower finished his second term in 1959
with a first-time-ever jet plane tour of the world by a chief of
state — dubbed “Crusade for
Peace.”
You’d have to be taking stupid pills to think that, in
America, “crusade” alluded to pogroms or any of the other excesses
of the Middle Ages. No one thought that Ike, a Presbyterian, was
carrying water for the Catholic Church. In President Bush’s case,
he had the additional concern of people thinking he was alluding to
the opponents in the original Crusades. What a shame. Had he kept
using the term, it would have been a teachable moment for both our
friends and foes.
IN A FREE SOCIETY, the morality of a cause is not the
icing on the cake — it’s the whole cake. Facing a threat that is
both long term and spiritually driven, our values-free ethos
disarms us. Conventional wisdom runs that a “decadent” society will
collapse due to “divine punishment.” In fact, the process of social
destruction need not be deity-driven or even supra-rational. Our
inability to operate with a consensus of values renders us
incapable of understanding and combating any enemy more complex
than a street punk.
Which leads us back to the “third rate burglary”: like its
literary avatar, the falcon stolen John’s Grill has never been
found, despite a $25,000 reward. It’s been replaced with a
specially commissioned sculpture. “It’s a fake of a fake of a
fake,” the restaurant owner says, ““but people come
from all over the world to see it. A lot of people moved to San
Francisco because of that movie.” Both the
restaurant’s falcon and the movie’s falcon are what Alfred
Hitchcock would term “MacGuffins” — objects of obsessive,
misdirected pursuit which drive the story but ultimately prove
unworthy of the attention.
In our ongoing existential struggle, the leadership class
has displayed a sense of timing and choreography that would impress
even the great Director himself. Continually and with tremendous
creativity, media, educators and government keep nudging our
attention away from the true historic threat and back towards the
MacGuffin of “extremism,” “fanaticism,” and “militant-ism.” Will we
ever realize we’ve been gamed, correct our mistake and re-focus our
pursuit on the genuine bird of value? On that answer hangs our
future as free men and women.
