The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things are Written on the Sky

A magnificent essay from the inestimable Russell Kirk, who had a hand, along with Bill Buckley, in convincing Barry Goldwater to run for President. It will serve us well to remember - as is the conservative wont - that Senator Goldwater lost that electoral count handily. (Memory is half of history though: the wisdom we should take is that there were many things won that year.)

And so, short of the miracles that John McCain has produced in some small measure in the past, the national Bacchanalia rages on throughout the night. The revelry will continue into the morning, and it will be many years hence, should we survive the binge, that our hangover will commit us to that never-kept promise to our Lord: I shall never behave as such again.

It is worth reflecting that our great forefathers had such a sentiment. Never again would they leave to caprice or chance their sacred rights, which were born not of charity, creed, or demand, but of God, woven into their fiber as much as their physical traits, personality, characters, dispositions. No: they set about their great task resolved, resolved that their bulwark stood in the way of usurpers and tyrants; against the dangerous and nauseating tide of collectivism, and against all infringements of freedom of which this is only the greatest. A people united, not by race or a social order, but by an ideal: the ideal that all men are free unto themselves.

Allow me to restate the Foundation: all men are born entitled to rights that cannot be separated from their persons, but a robust constitution (in the grander and ancienter sense), a moral polity, and a determined progeny are required to maintain the practice of those rights. Woe! -lest we be confused for the Positivists!

The tendency in our world is to be cynical, unphased, expectant of all possible contingencies. Our entertainment industry, to include novels, music, and movies, strives to outmaneuver our wits and turn the plot in just such a way as to cut us off at the pass. I enjoy the thrill like the rest. So it is true that there are natural swings in public opinion, that when two major movements play tug of war, the rope - the polity - will naturally be centered over different points on the ideological ground.

It is also true, as our founders acknowledged, that the natural state of organized society is ordered tyranny. Thomas Jefferson knew that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants", and his colleagues echoed such sentiments. Ronald Reagan knew centuries later that "No generation in the history of Earth has ever tasted freedom, lost it, and then tasted it again."

So the temptation is to believe that we are on a downward spiral towards a tyranny masked behind collectivism, and that there is nothing we can do except perhaps stem the tide.

Kirk's essay cautions against fatalism. Though the religious maxim from Battlestar Galactica rings true - "All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again." - there remains a story to be written. The wisdom here is that we must all assume our parts and play them with gusto, because the story is not yet written. Mr. Marc Henrie, perhaps the greatest talent I have had the privilege to meet, reiterated this with an anecdote about the fall of the Soviet Union. He, an international relations graduate of Dartmouth University, was as shocked as any bricklayer when the Berlin wall tumbled.

I want to be on the record before the results are in: Barack Obama is an incompetent and wholly unqualified waife of a man who is controlled by forces much greater than he, whose ascent is an indictment on our polity, a product and conduit of thuggish politics of the most Orwellian - Tooheyian - variety. I find no redeeming qualities in the man, and can only hope that his election is tempered by modesty in local and congressional seats under his administration. The more frustrated the efforts of his controllers, the better off we will be as a nation.

I intent to expand this essay soon - but for now, another tyranny befalls me: the tyranny of the urgent. Alas - I must watch the horse race.

***

The horse race now complete, it is time to regroup. Michelle Malkin, one of my internet-writing role models, urges tenacity, grit. I propose the same, and hope that the spirit of my pre-election introduction above lends itself to this end. From one of the greatest men to ever live:

"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times." --George Washington

This is an opportunity for us to reclaim the spirit of this land. We are a nation founded on individualism: that all men have a right to the fruits of their industry, and that no man shall ever be compelled to live for another. We have a tradition of charity - a Christian mandate that I take very seriously - but we have a brighter and more unique tradition against compulsion.

I am beginning to think that collectivism, the destruction of the individual, is so coextensive with the destruction of freedom that it is merely an academic exercise to separate the two. At a a minimum, it seems to have been recognized as necessary in all cases that the power of the individual must be obliterated in order for the masses to be controlled. The mob is indeed possessed of a single animus!

For the enemies of freedom, the destruction of the individual is but a means to an end. For us, it is a moral imperative upon which much is staked. Kirk ridicules the notion of human rights - for what other entities would rights attain? - especially as historically juxtaposed to property rights (which, of course, are rights ascribed to humans). "Property rights" sounds outmoded and frankly bizarre to our conditioned minds, but indeed it is an aspect of the simple principle:

A man is entitled to the fruits of his industry. This is the most inalienable right of all. When academic charlatans attempt to paint our Founders as greedy for opposing taxation, they are engaging in the basest sort of revisionism. Branding someone as 'selfish' for the belief that they have the right to keep what they legitimately earn is not simply unfair, it is clearly an attack. The ultimate and inviolable freedom of man as man is cast as an evil - quite a neat turn.

So far, the tactics. But what strategy? Is there some coordinated undercurrent, a sinister force directing the battle?

My answer: I don't know. There are certainly well-monied and evil men with a lust for power that is frustrated by robust individuals who refuse to be controlled. It may be there is a concerted effort, or a subconcious coordination. It may also be the results of what the culture critics call decadence: that for various factors determined by countless variables, civilizations once faithful, strong, and proud, eventually lose their foundation and slip naturally into the rut of tyranny.

Whatever the case: whether our enemy is deliberate and faceless, or a collection of interests and nebulous, or simply an accident of history, I know this:

We must fight.

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.