Unlicensed Punditry

Truman Capote was once quoted as saying: “Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.” Unfortunately, the converse is also true – hate also has no geography and it, like love, also has no boundaries.

Less of fiction, more of a prophecy I don’t care if I am called a racist, a bigot or a xenophobe for this for one primary reason: I don’t care what color a savage is, my concern is what the savage does when he encounters a permissive, free, civil society, one far more productive, successful, and far softer than the savage is programmed to accept. I am as concerned about how that permissive, free, civil society reacts when it comes into direct contact with the savage.

Nicole Hannah-Jones admitting to sacrificing her daughter’s future at the altar of progressivism to prove her point – and then proving how wrong she was – is surprising, but really isn’t all that unusual, what is unusual about it is that progressives rarely ever march their own up the Aztec pyramid to have their hearts cut out on a stone altar. That’s a role usually reserved for your daughter – or son.

I sat down to write this last night but decided to wait a bit until my contempt subsided. I claimed in an earlier essay not to hate, and I don’t. There is no emotion in what I’m about to write. I’ve never been in our military, but one of my sons is recently retired, and a nephew is currently an operator, a Ranger - and I am close enough to those who have served to know that when they approach a mission, it is with dispassion and focus on the objective.

I have the same problem with radical communists that I have with anarcho-libertarians, and it is that the logical endpoint of their arguments for either total government or no government at all ends in the same place – a complete loss of individual freedom. Of course, that loss comes through different means, but the endpoint is the same.

Andrew Breitbart famously said that politics is downstream from culture. If that is true, the more interesting question is not what is happening to American politics, it is what is happening to American culture that produces the politics we see. For all the talk about revolutionary social change, much of what we are watching is not revolutionary at all. We have seen versions of it before.

For a nation supposedly in irreversible decline, America produces a remarkable number of critics who are among the most prosperous, educated, and comfortable people in human history. Many are wealthy themselves or the children of wealth, yet they speak as though they are victims of a uniquely unjust society that has somehow denied them an imagined state of perfection.

I’ve said it, but I try not to say it. I do struggle with calling some event “the most important” of our lifetime, because as sure as sunrise, something happens immediately after the sun come up to ratchet the stakes up another few clicks. The truth is that we are all descendants of King Sisyphus and our lives and times are the boulder we push up the mountain, only to have it roll back down overnight.

Look, I opine on a lot of things for which I have no real answer. Most of the time, the problem, issue or situation involves people, and I have no idea how to fix people any more than your average screaming socialist does. What I do have is logic, reason, history and reality on my side, and I think people who try to approach problems with those tools have a better chance of finding real solutions than those who don’t.

If you think the contemporary ideological left has a screw or two loose, I’m not going to argue with you. Their reflexive and flexible opposition to everything they don’t like is only equaled by their willing acceptance of anything or anyone who fits their needs of the moment, including kooks and loons (who should not be roaming free society without adult supervision) and frauds (the backstories of whom are just too damn good to check).