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Saturday, June 07, 2008
Maybe It’s Time
You can't talk to Fran for long without some political subject coming up. I've given him a lot of static about it in the past. He's not obsessed with politics...well, not exactly...but he takes it very seriously, pays it a lot of attention, and gives his opinions as much air time as they can get.
Yes, I know, "surprise, surprise."
He considers disengagement to be something like a sin. That has to make it hard for him to hold someone like me, who just wants to be left alone with her shoe collection and her chess set, in high esteem. But he does, and it's confused me for a long time. I asked him about it recently.
"You're a good person," he said, "and that should be enough. Besides, we don't disagree about anything important, just what we ought to do about it."
That was a stunner. If "what we ought to do about it" isn't important, then why is "it" important at all? And as he no doubt intended, it got me thinking.
Your answer to "What we ought to do about it" is a measure of your sense of responsibility for correcting "it," whatever "it" might be. Responsibilities have to be freely chosen; they can't be imposed on you by some other party. So it's morally a no-no to condemn someone for not living up to a responsibility he hasn't chosen.
If politics is important, it's because it can impact your health and welfare, or the health and welfare of others. Each of us is responsible for his own health and welfare; anyone who refuses to pick up that task is punished for it automatically. But what about others? How and why do you choose to take responsibility for the health and welfare of others?
Family members? Okay, I can see that pretty quickly, even if you don't get to choose your family. Your family is your front-line support system when you get in over your head. Take it from someone who has none.
Neighbors? That's pretty much a given too. It's easier for some than for others. Neighborliness is weak in large cities like the one I live in, but that makes it even more important that we city-dwellers act with love toward those who stray into our path. The Good Samaritan didn't ask for his beneficiary's address.
But the farther away someone else is -- in any sense -- the harder it is to feel, and to accept, any bond of responsibility toward him. That might be the truth at the base of the saying that "all politics is local."
I'm beginning to think that maybe it's time to make an effort in that direction. Here's the first bit of "why," courtesy of darling Charles.
Muslims hate freedom of any sort. Don't bother about their protests to the contrary; they have to say that stuff to keep from being regarded the way a decent person regards a dedicated Communist. It's even part of their religion that they must do so. They have several reasons to hate me, if they ever find me. I'm safe from them only because of my anonymity. But I wouldn't be safe from them if they rose to power in America, would I?
Anyone who sticks his head up and talks openly about what they're aiming for becomes a target for them. Fran insisted that I watch this, and ever since I've been following the "proceedings," and noting the associations of the complainants.
These people are dangerous: to you, to me, and to everyone you or I love. They're extra-dangerous to those who speak out against them, as Professor Wichman did. That didn't stop him -- he must have felt a duty to speak -- and that was enough to make me love him. That he lives in Michigan, which has a large and aggressive Muslim population, is infintely more than enough.
Here's another bit of "why," about the most dangerous fraud of the day: "global warming," "climate change," or whatever you want to call it.
The climate alarmists are total frauds. Their whole case is based on speculation and bad software. They've never successfully predicted one damned thing. Mark Alger's post of a few days ago -- welcome to the party, Mark; it's a great bunch, even if no one cares about chess but Fran, Wahrheit, and me -- is a complete bullseye on their position. Not that he's the first: there's a group of over 31,000 scientists and engineers assembled against climate alamism.
The alarmists have done everything they can to silence such "deniers." That's "environmentalists" for you. Total head cases, who put anything and everything non-human above the well-being of us mere humans. I've encountered a lot of them in Los Angeles -- California is, after all, the land of fruits (northern) and nuts (southern) -- and after a few encounters you simply can't believe in either their sanity or their benevolence. Especially when they want to take away my car -- a Mercedes SLK 230 if you must know, and yes, I can and do drive it in heels, and no, I've never had an accident, so please, no jokes about Oriental drivers! -- and leave me dependent on LA's terrible public transportation.
Both the major-party candidates for president believe in this fraudulent "crisis" and are willing to destroy our way of life in its name. Maybe half of Congress believes in it, too. At least they claim to.
Muslims and environmentalists are the top two entries on my personal list of death cults. Death cults want us dead: you, me, and everyone either of us loves. That's more than enough of a reason to pay attention...more than enough of a reason to take up arms against them.
But that's political engagement, isn't it? That's exactly what I've striven to avoid ever since I became an American. It must have sneaked up on me while I was looking somewhere else.
Maybe it's time to accept responsibility for more than just what matters to me personally, and to the handful of individuals I know and love as individuals. Maybe it's time to personalize love of country -- and I do love this country; I came here already loving it -- into something more than a pretty phrase. Maybe it's time to pick up whatever weapons are at hand and fight for something larger than myself.
Maybe it's time for all of us.
Comments
My word. I didn’t really need to be reminded of why I love you. But all the same, wow!
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 06/07/2008 at 10:27 AMI agree, Fran.
Fetiche;
Thank you for your gracious welcome.
And: WELL said!
I agree, one OUGHT to be left alone. It OUGHT to be the default condition in relations between the individual citizen and the state, just as it is in relations between individuals, that the agressor in any given conflict of sovereignty ought to be considered wrong by the simple fact of his/its act.
After all, why should an honest free man, minding his own business, harming no one else, be REQUIRED to be aware of all the myriad mischiefs criminals in a far away city may be up to?
Why should the citizen have to defend himself and his property against the state?
And even more-so against those the state has wrongly (even unlawfully) permitted to invade the nation’s space.
Isn’t it, after all, the state’s primary fiduciary responsibility to defend the citizen against aggression and aggressors?
My Baby Sister is an elected Republican politician (a state senator Out West), and, on the occasion of our father’s funeral, chanced to sit in on a gripe session between my brother and me. And I voiced this complaint.
She replied, “The world is run by the people who show up.”
It’s unfortunate that even in this enlightened age, there are those who consider that the world needs to be run, that it is their right—indeed their duty—to gratuitously intermeddle in the affairs of others, for ANY reason. But there it is.
::sigh::
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 06/07/2008 at 10:44 AMThis is a great start Fetiche.
Do not underestimate the forces at work against you. There remains one aspect of conservatism that runs in contradiction to your new outlook. It’s the one both you and Mark could not help but bring up: “Leave me alone.” It bothered me enough to write of it last week.
Conservatives all too readily learn to live with the status quo. Witness within the GOP: that kind of conservative has elbowed out of the way almost all principled conservatives (McCain sees the latter as against “progress.”)
As contemporary America becomes radicalized faster, the status quo can hardly be called that. Something that recognizes “the status quo enforcer” as liberty’s enemy is needed before the yokes are tightened.
Thus, “CONSERVATIVE” is the wrong banner under which to defend liberty. Something else is needed.
Posted by Pascal (the derivative) on 06/07/2008 at 01:27 PM
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