Posted on 11/04/2020 6:47:59 AM PST by Kaslin
I have tried to think of something appropriate to say upon the end of this endeavor at saving Western civilization through journalism.
Western civilization remains unsaved. That is the first thought that comes to mind. What could I have been thinking anyway? A second thought is that in my failure I have had just a whole lot of fun. That was not the original mission. When you brandish a gleaming sword over typewriter keys -- I do not know whether that image works or not, and, frankly, I don't care at this stage -- you are mentally fixed on higher things than fun.
You shouldn't get yourself in such a fix. You can do better: maybe by giving readers a helpful insight to take with them through that day and maybe the next. You can show them something they had not hitherto seen: a notion, a nostrum, a gleam of an insight, beyond which modest aims the columnist likely shouldn't aspire.
After 51 years of trying to save our slice of humanity from self-destruction, one learns that humanity -- our slice and all the rest included -- has no conscious wish to be saved. Certainly not by college graduates with Ideas and Plans. And not if much expense is attached to the enterprise. Salvation turns out to be a mission above the paygrade of people with typewriters and carbon paper, as was the case 51 years ago, or laptops and Twitter handles, as the case has more recently become.
My original ambition sprang from primordial -- a word I learned from Edgar Rice Burroughs -- anxiety over the apparent collapse, in the mid-1960s, under countercultural influences, of familiar and unitive, not to mention eternal, norms and standards.
So. I grab a typewriter; I start typing -- wappety-wap-wap-wap, in the phraseology of a college roommate.
I might have paid better attention to "Hamlet": "The time is out of joint; O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right." We see, don't we, where that apprehension got Hamlet. No wonder. One of the last century's wisest men, Russell Kirk, once observed correctly, "The times are always out of joint." No rhetorical orthopedist is going to succeed in resetting them.
The election this week is being called "the most important of our times." Maybe so, maybe... a little less so. I am out of the salvation business. I am in the wait-and-see business. I shall vote. I shall then wait to see.
This I will tell you. As an ex-salvationist (with Ph.D. work in U.S. history), I expect human expectations of various kinds to meet with frustration. C. S. Lewis somewhere remarks that no government reform measure ever does half the good predicted for it -- or, for that matter, half the harm. It is a rich generalization, disprovable by microscopic study of history but not so very far off either.
What we need to do, it seems to me, while awaiting proofs of this claim or that one, is rejuvenate our laggard respect for free speech and discussion. I think many people today -- many of whom, alas, teach in prestigious universities and write for prestigious publications -- see the First Amendment as permission for themselves to declare and declaim. As for others -- well, who needs their bad advice?
How do we know it's bad? We know that only by hearing and then testing their affirmations. The columnist I am -- was, I mean -- is different in one respect from the one of 51 years past. I am practically a free speech absolutist. I say, let 'er rip and see what sticks. In a land of liberty, truth -- by John Milton's storied calculation -- should vanquish falsehood.
Debate, debate, debate; argue, argue, argue -- that's the democratic Rx, it seems to me after all these years. Nobody knows it all. Nobody ever will. I'd far rather listen to Edmund Burke than Bernie Sanders, or, Lord help us, AOC, but everybody deserves a chance to prove that good sense and understanding didn't die with the great Burke in 1797.
Oh. And I didn't tell you. I'm going to go on writing in other contexts about other, if intimately related, problems. Saving the world gets to be an obsession. Only I now know I'm not going to succeed: wherein lies the real rip-roaring, rollicking fun.
I expected a second Trump landslide!
What he’s saying sounds very empty.
Talk to me about the voter fraud in Michigan!
Journalists and used car salesman.
Leftist activist “journalists” have delegitimized main street media. It is 90% editorialism, which is being promoted and applauded by the news organizations they work for.
The “MSM”, otherwise known as fake news, has proven itself untrustworthy and irrelevant in today’s world.
In other words, America is stuck on stupid.
Last nights election is exhibit A...
He’s right, in a sane and just world a party as vile, corrupt, nasty, and evil as the Democrats shouldn’t get more than 5% of the vote.
My good news is that I’m pretty old.
Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. While I live will I praise the Lord: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being. Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners: The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous: The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. The Lord shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord.
If there is going to be salvation at all for anyone or anything, it will start here.
The “pause” last night is the key to when the fraud operation went on. Where’s the DOJ? Surely Trump is aware of all of this and has his people on top of it unlike previous wimp Republicans. If Trump loses fair and square then fine, I won’t like it but ok. If it’s fraud on a massive scale then I’m not going down without a fight
Yeah. Blahblahblah.
THe good news....never in my lifetime have I witnessed the people get behind a candidate like they did Trump. On the flip side, our female and soy male voters are eager to sacrifice their liberty to the government in exchange for security. The deep state manufactured so much chaos this year knowing the voter would turn to them for peace and security. That is next years fight.
Exactly. Trump won. He will keep fighting. Pray. Fraud is rampant. Just logically, the map makes no sense. Ohio Florida PA Iowa, but loses AZ and Wisconsin and Michigan....no freakin way.
Face it. It cannot be denied that over the past fifty years a near majority of Americans have embraced decadent neo pagan epicurianism. American culture now celebrates widespread abortion, homosexuality with all its perverse permutations,openly corrupt politicians, pornography, drug use and earth worship. There no longer exists a consensus of commonly held decent values. Hence the rational of a unifying common culture which is essential for a nation to survive no longer exists. The vile globalist elites, who reside here but find patriotism worse than Covid,are now in power. Sic transit America.
You cannot save that which does not wish to be saved.
The other good news is Black and Hispanic voters did NOT fall for the democrats as a whole. I knew this would happen. Repubs need to capitalize on this and drive it home in 2022 and 2024.
Yes fraud may likely push the election over the edge for Biden. But we can’t blame it all on fraud. There are a LOT of people who wanted Trump to lose. We have a nation full of ignorance.
... and, until recently that we grew up and lived in a free American Republic where Liberty was a cherished value.
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