Saturday, January 26, 2013

If You Still Believe

This is something of a coda to Anesthetizing The Conscience, below. The core of that piece has struck me ever more powerfully since I wrote it, because it expresses the key to political victory for the forces of right:

Compelling the forces of darkness to cast off all pretense and express their ultimate premises where everyone must deal with them.

I can't think of a worthier purely political undertaking than exposing those premises...but there's a precondition: to persevere in doing so, and to do so effectively, you must believe that the purely political means -- speaking, arguing, writing, debating, voting, and the like -- might still be sufficient to win the day and save the Republic.

Do you still believe?


My own belief has wavered in recent years. It often seems to me that the Left has established exactly those conditions in which the majority of Americans will support the continuation and intensification of government-mediated evil despite their clear and unambiguous knowledge that it is evil.

Such persons would avert their eyes from evil in their midst.
They would refrain from coming to the aid of those it assaults.
They would align with it when it appeared to offer personal advantages.
They would rationalize it as "inevitable," and not stay to answer objectors.
And the worst of them would vote for its proponents without any moral qualms.

How many are they? That's the critical question. Are there enough such passive enablers and active supporters of evil to foreordain the defeat of the Right? If it doesn't require a majority to entrench them immovably, how many would it require -- and are we yet beset by a force of that size?

But those are questions about objective circumstances. Perhaps the more important question is about the subjective aspects of the situation:

Do enough of us in the Right still believe in the justice of our cause to press onward despite the appearance of overwhelming opposition?

If you still believe, how many persons known to you personally do as well? Of those who don't, are their reasons objective or subjective?


I can only write these essays on those occasions when I can persuade myself that speaking out as I do might yet matter, even in some microscopic degree. To go on, I must persuade myself that non-violent methods still have a chance of prevailing over the forces of the Left. I must do so rather frequently, these days.

Yet I still believe, at least some of the time. I still cherish a hope that Americans' consciences can be awakened to the evil being perpetrated upon us -- the evil we've tolerated. I return repeatedly to the great voices of freedom, searching for a way to use their insights to strengthen my puny effect upon the political landscape. And now and then, as with the admission cited in Anesthetizing The Conscience, I find myself thinking that our enemies might yet be induced to commit the error of hubris and make a fatal admission of their true agenda.

I believe it's possible when a Mary Elizabeth Williams states the pro-death premise in plain English.
I believe it's possible when an Amy Richards admits to aborting two of her three unborn triplets so she "won't have to shop at Wal-Mart."
I believe it's possible when a presidential appointee states that her favorite philosopher is unparalleled mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung.
I believe it's possible when a presidential appointee is shown to have supported putting sterilants into the water supply.
I believe it's possible when a Scandinavian "ecologist" argues for Stalinism to stop economic growth and reduce the human population.
I believe it's possible when a presidential candidate supports abortion on demand because he wouldn't want to see his daughter "punished with a baby."

And I hold on to that belief as long as I possibly can.


All the same, there are days it's harder than usual for me to believe. Our enemies are clever, adroit at evading the bald statement of their core premises. They excel at manipulating the public discourse, striving always to see that whatever's being discussed is discussed in their preferred lexicon, according to their preferred terms of admissibility. They've succeeded in enlisting the support of the Main Stream Media, a mighty engine even in these days of its decline. And the political machine behind them is unequalled for ruthlessness and amorality, anywhere in the West.

At times, in awareness of all that, I cease to believe. I find myself praying for surcease before the last darkness falls upon us.

The hour has grown dark. If we are to continue on, we must hold fast to our conviction that victory is possible without bloodshed. More to the point, we must reassure one another that we are not few, but many...that no one among us needs to feel alone.

Leonidas's Spartans could hold Thermopylae with a few hundred men. But they were willing to kill without restraint and to give their lives to the last man to see to it. Those are not the conditions for political perseverance, but for the "last stand," the ultimate act of defiance demanded of us because, as Churchill put it, it is better to die free, fighting to the last for a lost cause knowing that it's lost, than to live on as slaves.

Please, please, please: help an old man to hold fast to the hope of victory. Believe. More important still, speak and act as if you believe. Encourage and support one another. Compromise on nothing. Fly the colors of right, justice, and individual liberty fearlessly and proudly.

For as long as the political battle lasts:
No quarter!
No prisoners!
And no mercy!

9 comments:

KG said...

Crusader Rabbit believes passionately in right, justice and individual liberty.
But those things will not be preserved (or regained) via persuasion and the ballot box. The time when those could possibly succeed, I think, are past.
Not least because an enormous slice of the electorate now lacks the ability to reason effectively, having been indoctrinated for several generation by the leftist "education" system. Dialog with such people is all but impossible.
They don't love the Republic - in fact I doubt many of them even know what a republic is or the history of their own. They're dumbed-down foot soldiers in the service of a totalitarian agenda with no respect or reverence for those things which make civil society possible.
Economic collapse won't bring them to their senses or to an appreciation of reality, since their handlers in that event will simply pillage the productive and the prudent in order to continue buying off the barbarians.
You can have civil war and perhaps keep the Republic, or you can cling to the hope of a political solution and almost certainly lose her.
(my uneducated 2c worth as an outsider who reveres what America once was and hopes she can be again)

Anonymous said...

"Do enough of us in the Right still believe in the justice of our cause to press onward despite the appearance of overwhelming opposition?"

Yes. Your efforts matters more than you realize brother.

Thousands of us are with you.

christian soldier said...

I see a rise in the Homeschool movement-
a rise in the number of overt PRO LIFEers-
a coalescing of military officers who believe in the oath that they took--
so- YES - I believe that we need you and all who believe in truth to put on the (=Full Armor (Is 59 and Eph 6)and Occupy Til He Comes (Lk 19)
Carol-CS
Pres/Founder
LA Lutherans for Life..

Ronbo said...

Well said, fellow American Patriot!

In the next act of our current national drama, will the current constitutional crisis be resolved by the political process or by means of civil war?

"Blood and Iron" - I think.

William Stout said...

I am a conservative because I believe in personal integrity and responsibility. That is who I am. I don't want a damned thing from government with the exception of its constitutionally defined responsibilities. What the last election taught me was that there is greater than half of this nation who no longer believe as I do.

These people would rather be a slave to the Federal government than free men and women. They would rather that their children be consigned to servitude than to breathe free air and so they willingly spend their children and grandchildren into oblivion. We are no longer the people who fought the Revolutionary War. We are not the same people who fought the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. We have changed and not for the better.

Better than half of all Americans have declared themselves to be the lesser children of greater sires and so are unable or unwilling to stand on their own two feet and face the uncertainties of the world. There is no leadership in Washington D.C. anymore because those who truly care about the U.S. have long been out of office. Our President does not lead, he follows. Our Secretary of State is incompetent, our military commanders are relieved of their commands by notes passed to them from their aides, and our allies have no idea where we stand because the same people who proclaimed themselves "lesser children" are also running the American government.

Where are the watchdogs of liberty? Where is the fourth estate? The answer to that one is that they have climbed into bed with the left and are now their biggest cheerleaders. In the fight to rob the American citizen of his right to own a semi-automatic rifle the press has held that a weapon used to kill less people than a claw hammer ought to be prohibited in order to save the lives of children. However, it is still open season on the unborn because those children don't count. If the left has a specialty, it is the madness of conflicting policies.

I have long pondered my response to your query and the only answer that I can give you is this: a man's worth can only be determined by his character. For people like us, we have to speak out because that is how we are built. We see the lunacy of the left and realize the harm that their socialist agenda does to our neighbors and we realize how wrong that is. How much more wrong would it be to keep quiet about it?

Silence is not our friend. It only works to the advantage of the tyrant and I will not be the next Martin Niemöller maintaining my silence as our rights are dissolved by an over reaching Leviathan. Once one recognizes a wrong, you bear the responsibility of sounding out in opposition to it. If you do not, then you lose the moral high ground and descend into victimhood.

Anonymous said...

Am I hopeful that things can be turned around peacefully,the alternative will be bloody and long.
That said recently my governor took a stand and vowed to block any and all enforcement of any unconstitutional gun laws handed down by the feds and Obama.
I sent him a letter vowing that I and the majority of my friends will back his stand with our,fortunes,family and lives and we stand one million strong in our state.
Obama and his clowns stole the "never bring a knife to a gunfight" line from the movie The Untouchables.Another line from that same movie applies to our question here.
Q:"What are you prepared to do?"
A:"Everything legal"
Q:"Then what are you prepared to do?"
I have hope things can still be changed peacefully,but I am also locked and loaded incase they can't.
In the fight,
Darin

David343 said...

I am afraid I have to agree with "Crusader Rabbit".

Chris said...

Well, there are two possible outcomes for the USA.

1. There is a sufficient push-back to eke out the republic's survival for about a decade -- until the boomers are well gone, and the GenY (who are generally the children of conservatives: the liberals aborted too many of their kids) move the country in a conservative direction. If the Republicans can oppose Obama until 2014 and then win the senate, you have a chance.

2. The country will go bankrupt, and, given the fascists in charge tend to double down on their wishes (without the cash to pay for it) there is a high chance that the "Red" (flyover) states will secede.

I hope you will get option one. But you may have to fight, or relive the 1930s again -- this time on the side of evil.

Ronbo said...

Excellent comments from reason and fact based patriots of liberty from all over the English speaking world, in reference on a likewise thought provoking article!

Reprinted here is my commentary from "Crusader Rabbit" blog in reaction to a comment by KG:

"This is my thinking as well.

The Left has made peaceful change impossible by means of the hijacking nearly all major institutions in America in the past 100 years – Big Government, Big Academia, Big Media, Big Religion, Big Hollywood, The Big Liberal Arts, etc., etc.

In Internet Speak, a virus has infected our computer and has successfully resisted numerous attempts by the techs to remove it.

What to do with such an infested and useless computer?

Two solutions come to mind.

1. Throw the damn thing away and buy another one.

2. Completely dump the software and upload a proven virus free software.

In political terms this can only mean bloody revolution/civil war.

Of course, today only a few of us forward scouts in the patriot movement can see this truth, but sooner or later the large main body just behind us will see the awful truth.

The awful truth is that many millions of our fellow countrymen are vile traitors who deserve termination with extreme prejudice for their crimes.

The liberty revolution is still in its awkward teenage years: Reform by peaceful means is impossible, but it’s still to early to shoot the bastards.

However, shoot them we will in the end, because the course treason has set for the United States can only end in the complete collapse of the economy, which will inevitably create the anarchy necessary to overthrow the Obama Regime."

Many years ago, back in the glory days of Ronald Reagan and capitalism, an era when socialism was in a world wide retreat, poet Leonard Cohen made a dark prediction: "I've seen the future, and brother, it's murder!"