There is a yawning chasm of intellectual poverty regarding, especially, freedom and government.
We are stuck with a domination of 19th century romantic idealism promulgated by Marx, Freud, Darwin, Dewey and others that has yet to be supplanted by anything deeper and more satisfying.
Like it or not liberals have the intellectual high ground, low and vulgar though it is. Until there comes along a voice of deep, penetrating systematic thought we will remain stuck.
There is a plethora of intelligent commentarians with well reasoned ideas and a deep fcommitment to the dignity of freedom and individualism.
Until we have a Weltenschaung that systematically replaces the old ideals of the 19th century, of collectivism and its vile spawn, with an in depth analysis of the requirements for individual liberty we will not begin to win the raging wars that engulf us.
Given our nature as human beings, these wars will always be with us. We must fight them over and over again. Paul Johnson, in his Modern Times had this to say:
Of the trio of great German imaginative scholars who offer explanations of human behavior in the nineteenth century, and whose corpus of thought the post-1918 world inherited, only two so far have been mentioned.Marx described a world in which the central dynamic was economic interest. To Freud, the principal thrust was sexual. Both assumed that religion, the old impulse that moved men and masses, was a fantasy and always had been.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the third of the trio, was also an atheist. But he saw God not as an invention, but as a casualty, and His demise as in some important sense an historical event which would have dramatic consequences. He wrote in 1886: "The greatest event in recent times - that 'God is Dead,' that the belief in the Christian God is no longer tenable - is beginning to cast its first shadows upon Europe." Among the advanced races, the decline and ultimately the collapse of the religious impulse would leave a huge vacuum.
Nietzsche rightly perceived that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power,' which offered a far more comprehensive and in the end more plausible explanation of human behavior than Marx or Freud. In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology. Those who had once filled the ranks of the totalitarian clergy would become totalitarian politicians. And above all the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatsoever, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind."
Let's say that again: And above all the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatsoever, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind."
That's who we're dealing with now. The Constitution and the rule of law are just so much toilet paper to those who would rule us now. Our values are punchlines to sneering liberal party jokes.
This is the endgame of Gramsci’s and Alinsky's heirs and disciples. These are the murderous great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the French Revolution, cold-eyed with contempt for you and yours; spiral-eyed crazy with hate for what you believe in and possessed of an utterly unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind. Just as Hitler was completely candid in "Mein Kampf" about what he intended to do with Germany, the Jews and the world, so the Left has been completely up front about where they intend to take America, how they've planned to do it and what they're going to do once they achieve absolute power. So, when it comes to the Constitution and rule of law, my pretties, they’ll not only sweep the pieces off the board, they’ll upend the table and put a bullet in you while they’re at it. As far as the Left is concerned, rules are for losers and history, godawful bloody history is my witness.
The reality is that we’ll never see another truly free, open and honest election in this country until after the next American Civil War and the death of millions. And the America we'll have after that won't be the America we started with - for good or for ill. It was always and ever up to us.
Remember that the people who've now gotten their hands on the apparatus of the State would rather rule in Hell than live in peace with the rest of us. They will happily reduce Western civilization to stinking pile of rubble and corpses as long as they believe that they will be the ones sitting on top of the rubble heap.
Wake up, people. You’re not going to talk or vote your way out of the tyranny that’s coming. And that’s precisely the point of tyranny, isn’t it? None of us have a Get Out of History Free card, either. None.
Your circumstances can and will change overnight.
That's one of the great lessons that so many of us have failed to learn from the history of the twentieth century. Fat, happy, stupid and "it can't happen here," is how most of us are except for the ones who are actually cheering for it to happen here. And then there those of us who see exactly what's going on and are prepared for the eventual outcomes. We're preparing for war.
Change is coming, oh yes indeed - but it's not what any of that Marxist meat puppet's worshipers bargained for. Rand had it right all these many years ago when she said that there is no personal neutrality today. Time to get off the fence. Time to stand up and be heard. Time to start getting together with like-minded people. Time to organize your list of Things To Do, Places To Go and People To Meet. Because when your favorite websites suddenly go dark, when your cell phones and other comm nets no longer work, when the roadblocks go up, when you hear the knock on the door - then it’ll be too damned late.
It will be too late unless you're willing, like Atlas, to shrug - and then pick up a gun before they come for you. Unless you're willing to take action, you aren't going to get your country back, much less preserve your own freedom and dignity.
So don't just sit there with a pile of ammo and a gun in your closet. Participate in the nearest Appleseed Project shoot and join a community of like minded people turning ammunition into skill. Join up with Glenn Beck's 912Project - a latter-day network of the original Committees of Correspondence - to meet more like-minded folks. Connect with people in your own neighborhood to build your own 'Alarm and Muster' network.
It may be the last chance we're going to get.
Ayn Rand once said, "The world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. But not without Freedom." Stand with me. Stand with us. And if you think that freedom is passé or over-rated, just wait until you see what your new masters replace it with.
We are what they fear most - informed, armed and unafraid citizens.
Finally, on the dawn of that "dark modern day" of which Titus Livy spoke over 2000 years ago, when it does all go bad - as it now seems that it will - resolve at the very least to sell your life dearly. Do your best to kill every one who comes for you, your family or your means of self-defense. Make them pay, for if that's what they're coming to do, they are enemies of human freedom and they are unfit to live in a free society. In fact, they are just plain unfit to live. If you surrender to this evil, not only is your cause lost, but you will also strengthen those who would perpetrate their evil on others. And that's the greatest guilt of all...
Conservatism resists systematization, and will never be regarded as thoughtful and humane, never seen as occupying the moral high ground, because it cannot promise people that they will be happy.
EXCELLENT POINTS.
There is a plethora of intelligent commentarians with well reasoned ideas and a deep commitment to the dignity of freedom and individualism.
Until we have a Weltenschaung that systematically replaces the old ideals of the 19th century, of collectivism and its vile spawn, with an in depth analysis of the requirements for individual liberty we will not begin to win the raging wars that engulf us. "
"Waiting" and "hoping"...."Waiting" and "hoping"....just more fetal-position strategy of anticipating a future occurrence of a miracle.
Precisely the strategy posited for many decades....and the results are now clear as the end-game approaches.
There are no nice, civil strategies that have any real "hope" of working.....that is, stopping this (now inexorable) slide into a dark tyranny.
One solution is clear...it was written by the Founders.
The only other possible solution may be the opportunity offered by the government's inability to calculate anything and get a correct answer. (Or, if it does get the correct answer, to lie to it's serfs about the answer!) That possible world-changing solution arrives in in 2026, 2036, and 2037.
Personally I don't want my current grandchildren and great grandchildren and their descendants living as freedom-less serfs into the next millennium because we ignored the solution offered by the Founders OR Apophis goes quietly by.
Life goes in cycles as does philosophy. It's not a linear stream defined by the passing of time.
The philosophy that is embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution has been at trial under fire at least since the late 19th century and has really taken a frontal assault for the last 50 years. But it is surviving.
Over the thousands of years humans have been around they keep coming back to the things that work. That, too, is a philosophy. A natural philosoply, if you will. The philosophy that gave birth to the United States of America is still alive, kicking and is seeing -today - the darkness before the dawn. The marxist/post-modern philosophies don't work and even former marxist/communist states like Russia and China are telling us so in no uncertain terms.
As a constitutional conservative I feel very comfortable relying on the philosophy ensrined by the founding fathers. And it has the advantage of being fairly widely-held and in high regard in this country except for the far left and the partisan liberals.
America will win in the long run because of its philosophy, IMHO.