Last week I administered — and received — an education in international relations. I spent several hours with a pro-American European, a person fighting Islamic extremism throughout Europe and across the world. Now, for reasons that will soon be clear, that last statement is precisely true, but most of the following has been changed to protect her (her?) identity. . . .

I can see you leaning forward already. Excellent. Helga(?) is a tall(?), elderly(?), German(?) woman(?). And her job — which she created for herself — is to try to penetrate the carbon-fiber, titanium-reinforced shell of denial that envelopes so many of Europe’s elites regarding the threat of unassimilated Islamists in every corner of the continent. So I found myself toe-to-toe with someone on the same team, but from the opposite side of the fence, so to speak. It was weird. Helga might start in with a criticism of how stupidly the Bush administration handled the run-up to Iraq . . . oh no, here we go again . . . and follow that instantly by saying of course Saddam had WMDs! Bush should have attacked him without warning before he had time to move them to Syria! Not what I expected. So then she’d say if Americans could just be a little more informed they could evolve past being such cowboys about such complex issues — at which point I would jump in and say, whoa, whooooaaa there little filly! You don’t evolve past being a cowboy. Being a cowboy is the pinnacle of evolution. Once you’re at cowboy, there’s nowhere to go but down. Cowboys don’t look for fights, but they don’t run away from them either. They do what they have to do, when they have to do it. And they usually have to do it alone, because everyone wants Black Bart’s gang out of town, but no one wants to walk down the street alongside the sheriff and get shot doing it. Helga had never heard anyone defend cowboydom before. I mean, she’s from freaking Europe, fer chrissakes. But she liked it. And so we spent several hours over lunch, turning the clichés up to eleven in that sort of playful yet serious yet playful tone you take after four margaritas at your best friend’s wedding reception. I asked her if she’d ever fired a gun before, and she had to think for a moment. Once, she replied, at the carnival, shooting at the paper target.

Ma’am? That’s a BB gun. It goes tick-tick-tick-tick. A real gun makes a sound like the earth coming apart and produces a muzzle flash the size of a large pizza. When you shoot a .45 caliber 1911-A1 hand cannon, you will know it. You will have no trouble remembering the experience whatsoever. And when I told her that what I like to shoot at most often was a life-sized paper image of Osama Bin Laden, she literally gasped in amazement. They let you do that?

Let you? They not only let you do it, they charge you for it. That’s the sound of freedom, baby! BOOOOOM!! So I was in full-on swagger mode here, but the more I talked with her, the more I realized just how much harder her job is, compared to mine. I get to stand on a hilltop and trumpet exactly what I believe as loud as I want — like I’m doing right now. I have no way of knowing who will hear me, or how many, nor do I have to worry a hot damn about the effect I have on people. I say what I believe, and if you don’t like it . . . that’s okay too. And when I am done with this here article, I reckon I’m done ‘til next week. Time for a little siesta.

Helga, though, cannot afford to broadcast. Helga, in point of fact, has to be very careful about what she says, because the anti-Americanism that pervades the people she needs to try to convince is a very, very tough nut to crack. How to defend America and the Western tradition, and warn against the threat of Islamic fascism, when every single influential person she meets begins every discussion of the problem with a tirade about America’s foreign policy being responsible? If Helga’s real name appeared on National Review she — no kidding now — would have to resign. No one will even take a call from a neocon Bush apologist. Game over.

Helga, you see, is in effect a secret agent. Yes, of course, she is as much a real secret agent as I am a real cowboy. But that is how she has to operate. Helga cannot broadcast. Helga must use couriers. She must develop — at great time and effort — a series of private relationships and conversations in which revealing her true beliefs at the outset would be to break the connection forever.

Look, I’m an American. That kind of subterfuge and deception just rubs me the wrong way. And I actually thought it was cowardly . . . until I realized that I am not over in Stockholm or Milan or Brussels or Geneva trying to free people from sharia rulings, or fighting — daily — against a threat not across the ocean but at my front door, against a people so monumentally in denial that simply starting a conversation with them requires a commitment of time and money and effort that I certainly would not exert. At heart I’m a cowboy; my attitude is if they’re not going to stand up and fight for what they believe in then they can go pound sand.

But if by taking that attitude, this threat grows . . . and more girls are mutilated and murdered, and more and more people become resigned to the fall of all of that culture and history . . . well, if I’m not willing to do that because it’s too much work, and she is, then who’s the coward here?

And so we hammered out a sort of understanding, Helga and me.

It’s an amazing thing to discuss politics with someone who grew up in a city that is 2,000 years old. Just think of that! How many generations sat against that wall? Walked these streets? Kissed against the rails of that bridge? How many eyes have stared in mute wonder at these paintings and statues, heard this music, thrown coins in that fountain? She is part of an unbroken line, twenty centuries of culture that has civilized the world. Hearing her tell of these things just had me sitting in awe.

You know what had her in awe? Telling her that the Sphinx in front of Luxor in Las Vegas is almost twice as large as the real one because the real one just looked too puny for that XXXL, ebony-black, strobe-encrusted pyramid. That I reached out and touched the wingtip of a home-made spaceship that went into outer freaking space because someone (it was Paul Allen) decided to write a personal check. And you know those little vibrating LED coasters they give you when you get to a crowded restaurant? The kind that goes off when your table is ready? That thing blew her mind. It’s so American! she said. Damn right. When she asked how it worked I turned the America up to eleven and said, well, first it vibrates . . . then the LED’s light up. Then smoke comes out, and lasers shoot out of the top as it plays the Star Spangled Banner in time to miniature fireworks explosions and small waving mechanical flags, and it’s all capped off by a geyser of $100 bills that shoots out the top until the national anthem ends.

So in the end we pushed the clichés as far as they would go, and had a lot of fun doing it too. She had not understood why the cowboy can not take off the hat and go undercover. I had to explain to her that to take off the hat is to invalidate the essence of what a cowboy is: proud of himself, proud of his country, determined, righteous, stoic, and unafraid. To do the smart thing, to use deception and guile where deception and guile are in fact called for, is to rob the cowboy of his greatest weapon, which is not the six-gun, but the self-reliance, the confidence to act alone if acting alone means being on the side of what he considers right.

But I had been mistaken, and sadly condescending, by not realizing the reverse: that the secret agent cannot unmask . . . that to unmask is to give up their power, which is the power to get behind defenses and slowly, slowly do the exhausting and unglamorous work of actually weakening the walls that stand between us and victory.

We need them both, I think: Cowboys and Secret Agents. America could outlast the fall of Europe, but for how long . . . and why? Maybe this is how it should be. Maybe we can both be at our absolute strongest when the Secret Agent can say to Black Bart: Hey, you and I . . . we’re reasonable men. But that guy, that Sheriff? I just walked past the jail, and he’s not only not scared, he’s whistling Dixie and puttin’ on a tie! He wants to kick your ass! Why not make a run for it, while you still can? Works for me, anyway. So I’ll do what I do, and she’ll do what she does (if it’s a she), and together we’ll do what we can to save this civilization of ours — both sides of it. – Bill Whittle lives and works in Los Angeles. You can find him online at www.ejectejecteject.com.