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Taking Wisdom Where You Find It
A movie I didn’t think of in response to the recent Guilty Pleasures thread, but wish I had, is Serenity. It’s a pretty decent little science fiction flick based on the short-lived television series Firefly, which I also enjoyed.
There’s an iconic scene in Serenity in which the spaceship captain, Malcolm Reynolds, resolves to expose a crime despite a deep conspiracy to keep it silent. I won’t spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but the gist of it is that Reynolds is about to defy the government, and he’s telling his crew that he wants them to join him in the effort. He delivers a little speech which culminates in this:
Y’all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all come to the same place. So now I’m askin’ more of you than I have before. Maybe all.
As sure as I know anything, I know this: they will try again. Maybe on another world. Maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make… people… better. And I do not hold to that.
So no more runnin’.
I aim to misbehave.
I was thinking today of what’s wrong with so much of progressivism, with its casual disregard for the Constitution and its misplaced faith in collectivism and central planning. The left seems to believe that people not only can be made better but that, in some deep and fundamental way, we’ve already been made better.
That’s the idea behind collectivism, after all: that we the people will become essentially altruistic (we won’t); that those who rule us will embrace a noble selflessness (they won’t). It’s also the idea held by those who favor a “living” Constitution and think the actual Constitution outdated and obsolete. They believe that we’ve changed, and that we aren’t the people the original Constitution was designed to protect us from. But of course we are.
We are in the grips of something embarrassingly close to martial law. I say “embarrassing” because too many of us practically begged our leaders to impose this on us, and now seem perfectly willing to tolerate its indefinite extension by every petty tinpot bureaucrat. Why are we in this situation? We’re in it because people haven’t changed. The same power-hungry busybodies the Founders feared are calling the shots today; the men who wrote the Constitution would recognize Cuomo and Newsom and the rest of these grasping scoundrels. They designed a nation specifically to keep people like them in check.
Those who know nothing of history are free to believe that people were different back then and that we’re better, more enlightened, now. That isn’t true. Sure, many of our laws have improved. Our culture is in many ways better. We’ve jettisoned some toxic baggage over which people have always been divided. Many things are better today than they were two hundred years ago than they were even sixty years ago.
But we aren’t better. We’re the same as we’ve always been, and we need the same protections – the same Constitutional protections, the same free press, the same suspicion of those who wish to tell us what to do – as we’ve always needed. Because men who seek power and revel in its application have always been with us and always will be with us, and we protect ourselves from them by keeping the seats of power limited and under our ultimate control.
Progressives don’t understand that. How could they: they know nothing of history and nothing of human nature.
The good news is that it’s easy to misbehave today. We can misbehave by observing that people come in only two fundamental varieties, male and female. We can misbehave by pointing out that by far the biggest problem faced by black Americans is crime in black American communities – not racism, not the police, but rather disintegrating families and bad behavior. We can misbehave by pointing out that public schools are failing America’s children, teaching them every manner of nonsense but not, alas, fundamental and valuable skills like reading and writing and basic math.
We can misbehave by being unapologetic in the face of criticism, by ignoring the harpies and the scolds, and by asserting our right to be unmolested in our own homes by the heavy hand of the nanny state and its “experts.”
We can misbehave simply by saying unapproved things, by not taking nonsense seriously, and by not surrendering to the mob.
Our republic is at stake.
Published in Culture
Is this kinda like saying we can misbehave by not acting stupid?
Well, we’ve got to be just a little more active than that, but pretty much.
These people are selling a whole bunch of stupid and this includes that man standing in as President.
Yes, pretty much.
That’s the idea behind collectivism, after all:
Interesting. So self-interested aggression = altruism.
No, in his mind the ideological collectivist is the chief force for good. If he learns and applies the arts of deception, repression, torture, terror, and death, it is only temporary, and only for the long term good of his fellow man.
This is why the enlightened and essentially altruistic ideological collectivists can align with the childlike mob for rioting and destruction. Those in the mob will then attach themselves dependently to the created collectivist governing structures amid the disappearing individuals.
I think the misbehaving is going to have to be a little less passive than you describe.
Note to the editors:
[ And, by the way, I don’t know which of you that is. The Constitution should be amended to say that every writer has the right to face his editor. ;) ]
[ Update: Okay, I made the edits myself. If the post stays on the Main Feed that’s just ducky. If not, maybe someone will bump it up again? Thank! — H. ]
I appreciate that not everyone likes the em dash. I do, but it’s an editor’s privilege to inflict his or her preferences on the prose and I accept that.
I used four em dashs in my original post, and all have been removed. Unfortunately, their removal has in each case made my writing grammatically incorrect. That reflects poorly on me and, since this is now a Main Feed post, I’d be delighted if we could correct the errors. (I don’t know if I’m able to do that, now that it’s been promoted.)
If you’ll message me in private I’ll be happy to discuss this with you.
Thanks!
Hank
An immediate change in policy that might reduce this kind of embarrassment in the future is this. If the dashes were removed manually by an editor, then forbid any staffer who hasn’t demonstrated knowledge of English grammar from making attempted grammatical corrections.
I’ve always liked that quote.
It’s more apt than it has been in a long time.
That seems a bit harsh. I don’t think editors are paid for their service, and they’re probably overworked and pestered endlessly by people less congenial and untroublesome than myself. But I do think it would be great if it were possible to find out which editor advanced any given post to the Main Feed, so that we could discuss this stuff in private. [ “And there you go again, asking for more transparency into the way Ricochet works.” Yeah, that’s me all over. ]
All the more reason to relieve them of this added workload. Not harsh at all.
In any case, there is nothing harsh about job qualifications. No reasonable person is in the least offended by only being given jobs for which he is qualified, is he?
Small N, buddy. I’ve bumped into the occasional curb in my 45+ years of driving. They didn’t take my license away for it. (Not yet, anyway.)
Just edit it yourself. It will return to the member feed, but that’s fine. Why give away your writing for free?
Or post the whole paragraph as a comment here, with the dashes inserted properly.
I edit, but hate being edited! That’s especially so when an editor inserts something ungrammatical.
I agree with the sentiment and misbehave is my middle name, but I wonder if that will be enough. America was founded by the progeny of fearless men and women seeking liberty, but I wonder if that spirit of liberty, that rejection of betters, that suspicion of authority, that distrust of bureaucracy and the government scam, has been leached out of us like the calcium from our bones, leaving us flaccid, weak and without backbone. Not all of us, but enough of us. And if we can’t get a majority of Americans to misbehave, then perhaps we deserve to lose our liberty. I, for one, will not give up, but I am not so sanguine about my fellow citizens. And I’m even more disappointed in those who claim to support liberty, but who refuse to engage in the struggle simply because they would prefer to present a more genteel opposition. To hell with that! Liberty was never on the side of the genteel. It was always on the side of the rough, the plain, the individual, even if his manners were coarse. We all decend from low places, but look what we have accomplished!
The wonder of American Independence is that revolutions almost never work. It’s my belief that the only reason ours worked when almost every other revolution in history resulted in either failure or despotism is because our revolution featured established and recognized colonial governments acting against the power being rebelled against.
Without the established and recognized colonial powers already in place, there would have been a terrible struggle to take control of each colony even if we did succeed in throwing out British control.
In the War Between the States the same dynamic controlled. No matter who would have prevailed in that war, established state governments maintained their established and recognized authority.
If ever we need to “misbehave,” we will need that same dynamic of operating from established and recognized authority. Do we have such an authority? Currently, the state governments are dominated by federal funding that keeps them dependent and weak. Texas has a separate power grid (needing some careful improvements) and our gold reserves are now removed from New York in within our borders. But the people still rely on federalized banking laws, medicare, and almost every government function at the state level is largely funded by federal taxes. I don’t think “misbehaving” is likely to amount to much unless people are willing to do without a lot of money from the feds. Governors and state legislatures need to get on the stick now and wean ourselves off of the federal teat or “misbehaving” will be doomed as just a bunch of old guys forming ineffective militias.
I’m going to write a longer post on this topic soon, but I’ll touch on it now.
Misbehavior is a relative thing. We on the right are extraordinarily civil. We have tolerated an enormous amount of frankly stupid, vacuous, vicious, and absurd abuse from the left. We’ve been told — if we happen to be white — that we’re racists. We’ve been told — if we happen to be males — that we’re toxic. We’ve been told — if we happen to believe in biological science — that we’re transphobic. Etc.
We’ve tolerated this garbage because we’re polite, but also because we’re fearful. We fear standing out and seeming to be intolerant. We fear hurting people we love who happen to buy the left’s rubbish. We fear losing our jobs or our clients. We fear embarrassing our children. We fear getting our cars keyed.
Conservatives own a lot of guns, and I’m sure most of us at one time or another have wondered what would happen if….
Well, until we’re willing to cause offense — to misbehave in a social sense — we needn’t wonder about how bad it can get. Until we’re willing to speak up, loudly and plainly and in our own names and at the risk of being offensive, we don’t even need to think about misbehaving in any more dramatic sense.
I think we are in a bad place right now, with some really awful, anti-American, amoral thugs running the country. But America remains a nation of normal people, and most of us don’t want what the left is trying to bring us. (And the surveys bear that out.)
Misbehavior now, and for quite some time, requires nothing more than pushing back, verbally, vehemently, without compromise, against every nut who tells you his personal pronoun is “zir,” against every BLM dope who tells you cops murder black kids, against every ignorant child who tells you how great socialism could be, against all the sky-is-falling greens who think it makes sense to bankrupt the planet to avoid a manageable future warming, and against every single rat bastard fascist thug who thinks he has the right to tell you what you can and can’t say.
Anyway, stuff for a future post.
You have this right. That relief bill just passed will be the test for this as it is loaded with exactly the provisions to sort this out. The states that take the money are submitting to the federal control.
Do not discount the power of a united minority that can “cancel” individuals and cause them to lose their source of income. That is economic terrorism, and terrorism works. Even I was recently “canceled” by a judge for a political opinion that a “friend” shared with the judge, causing me to lose a significant source of income from taking appointments for those who can’t afford attorneys. There’s nothing I could do about that act of political retribution. Such appointments are granted by the discretion of the court. I have other sources of income and have adjusted, but it was a sudden shock and had the potential to ruin my family’s standard of living if I hadn’t been diverse in my business. I mean that I lost about $5,000 to $7,000 a month due to political views.
When people see such economic terrorism, they generally choose not to be bold.
When I was in Iraq, we witnessed how twelve terrorists could march into a town of thirty to forty thousand and take complete control of everyone there. How? They would go to a random house, pull the family out and call all the neighbors out to watch while they executed that family. Suddenly, everyone in the town gave their loyalty to the terrorists. Terrorism works. The US forces didn’t threaten to kill families. We just appealed to patriotism and a sense of justice. That works, until random families get pulled out of their homes and slaughtered.
We can’t defeat “cancel culture” and economic terrorism by just speaking out and being bold. Besides the obvious point that it hasn’t had the slightest effect yet, it also doesn’t work on the masses who feel a threat to their families. Conservatives are quiet in the face of this economic and social terrorism because terrorism works.
We need to do more. We can’t argue against the communists. We must destroy their power to make people feel safe again. How do we do that? I have no idea. Trump was partly going the right direction, but he got out-maneuvered by their fraud. Until we figure it out, we will continue to be victims and controlled by them.
TwoThree things.First, I’ll say again, because I really do feel this: I don’t begrudge anyone the decision to keep earning a living and stay quiet. I understand it. Taking care of family comes first, and you can’t do that if you can’t earn.
Secondly, I never said — and don’t think — that talking will be sufficient. It is necessary, but not sufficient. But here’s the thing: until we’re willing to talk, it doesn’t make sense to talk about doing more dramatic things.
Thirdly, I don’t believe that we’ve begun the talking part yet. People are largely uninformed, largely apathetic, largely willing to just go along so that they don’t stand out. We have an education battle ahead of us, and we have a coalition battle ahead of us. Both of those things are essential. Neither of them requires … dramatic action.
Never meant to imply those other quibbles, but on this one I disagree. I think people are afraid to speak out. I don’t think we have an unusual level of disinterest, we have an unusual level of fear.
This social, economic, and cultural terrorism is buttressed by google, facebook, et al. The successful attacks on our society are not random and they are very effective. People are afraid to speak out.
You could be right. But I think there is a huge reservoir of Americans who would speak up if they had good examples — but they never see good examples.
For my part, I don’t believe reason and appeals to fair play and ethics have much of a cache anymore.
And there is no established and recognized authority to lead in making those examples.
Skyler, I’m not trying to be flippant or to minimize the effort. I just think you and I see this from different directions somehow.
Every one of us has a voice. I think we are a nation starving for common sense speech. I hope there will be many Tom Paines stepping up, people fed up and willing to put in the effort to be an example to others.
I’m not saying that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. But I am saying that it’s a lot easier for evil to triumph if good man do nothing. And speaking up is the first thing we need to do, and much more often.
It might not be enough. Speaking and writing and voting and protesting might not be enough. But those things have to be exhausted first, and we’ve barely begun.
And, in our favor: America thinks the left is ridiculous, and doesn’t want what it’s pushing. And the left is too foolish and self-obsessed to see that.
Maybe I’m biased by what I see in 75% democrat Austin. I think that most of that 75% and most of all democrats support all of this nonsense. I think very few democrats think it is wrong. That’s what I see everyday where I live.
Well hell, Skyler. You’re at ground zero. I lived in Austin many years ago, during the big tech boom.
I understand what you’re saying. But I’ve lived in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Colorado — a few other places. I’ve known a lot of common-sense people who just avoid politics. I think they’re out there, and I think they’re going to get sick of the nonsense pretty fast.
It’s always possible I’m wrong, and I’m a notorious optimist. But I remain hopeful.
You know why they’re uninformed? Because of the media they consume.
That’s got to be tackled at some point. I am all in favor of drone-bombing CNN and the Washington Post back to the stone age as a warning to other media outlets to shape up.
Can you do that for me, Mr. Morden?