Tag: pluralism

A Short Word: Coming to America

America is just as much about what you bring to her as what she brings to you.

The damp chill of the long and rainy night had worked its way deep into the ship. Young children clung to their parents for warmth, who in turn slept on bags filled with their family’s earthly belongings. Outside, the thick fog that clung to the ocean waves all night loosened its icy grip in the morning hours in the last of the drizzling rain. Escaping the cramped and dark spaces below deck, three figures walked onto the deck wrapped in layers of worn clothes and long coats.

The father stooped and picked up his young daughter in his arms then fell into step beside his elderly father. They picked their way along the length of the ship, talking quietly about home, their journey, and what’s to become of them. At the bow of the ship, the three joined the growing press of people peering westward through the misty distance toward a hazy and irregular horizon. The city skyline rose out of the sea, a dark and ominous shape.

The young girl pointed at the glint of gold in the middle of the harbor and watched in thoughtful silence as the statue of a crowned woman holding a golden torch high in the air grew steadily on the horizon. She looked up at her grandfather and the tears streaming down his cheeks. She whispered to her father, “Pa-pa, who is that lady?”

He smiled and replied, “She is America, my angel.”

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to.
This is the last stand on earth.”
-Ronald Reagan-

America’s relationship with the rest of the world will always be as much a product of our often tumultuous political climate as it is the practical realities of the chaotic world beyond our borders. The Founding Fathers understood that the forms and customs of their young nation were changing, even as they were being founded, and hoped the future generations would keep the virtues (liberalism, rationalism, and faith) of the old world while abandoning its vices (tyranny, prejudice, and superstition).

While our track record in this regard has been spotty, especially recently, the experiment and evolution of Americanism continues. The fundamental truth of our national identity is as true today as it was one and two hundred years ago: America is just as much about what you bring to her as what she brings to you. As Americans, we must embrace this even as we try to maintain a cultural homeostasis that continues to pursue a better more liberal, rational, and faithful society.

Tyranny, whether it pretend to be benevolent welfare state or openly malevolent dictatorship, remains the greatest threat to our experiment in self government. Prejudice, whether it be in the name of nationalism or openly ethnocentric nativism, is the greatest threat to our experiment in rationalism. And superstition, whether it ape a justified defensiveness or devolves into open religious bigotry, is the greatest threat to our experiment in philosophical pluralism.

America must remain free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Culture of Vice or of Virtue

Why should we care at all about “virtue”? Because people will protest over the political. They will kill over virtue.

Once upon a time, there was a largely peaceful and prosperous country filled with people who believed their most precious possession was Liberty. They believed in living as they pleased, so long as they harmed no one, being left alone, and, in turn, leaving others alone. Most importantly, they believed in a government that reflected these values, staying out of the lives of private citizens who sought, for the most part, to peaceably go about their lives.

These people also believed in working hard, living frugally, and saving rainy days. While it was true that some people did not do as well as others, most people did well enough, and some did very well indeed. When a neighbor needed help, they helped, not because they were forced to, but because it was the right thing to do. Communities thrived  based on compassion and not on compulsion. Society worked, because, by and large, everyone played by these very simple rules.

No, it wasn’t perfect. There were serious injustices stemming from long held racial prejudices that had infested human society since its earliest days. From the question of chattel slavery to the grotesque mistreatment of the native populace, from the internment of law abiding Japanese Americans during the Second World War to the generational poverty machine that has devoured so many minorities, America has an imperfect record.

In America’s defense, where they have done wrong, they have always been voices of reason and virtue that have persecuted those wrongs, and those voices put blood on the line where necessary to set things right. Even in times great injustice, the seeds of change were sewn and, often over generations, unjust practices have been and will continue to be discarded, not despite the philosophy of the Founding Fathers but because of them.

It is part of the American culture to wet the appetite of each generation to make a better nation than the previous generation.

“God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.”
-Thomas Jefferson-

Why should we care at all about “virtue“? Because people will protest over the political. They will kill over virtue. Berkeley, CA, Huntington Beach, CA, and Alexandria, VA prove that the ideal of peaceful pluralism in America is a thing of the past, at least for the time being. Today, two vast political camps dominate the American landscape, motivated by a toxic brew of inflammatory misinformation and entrenched habitual mistrust of “the other“.

Over the last twenty years, we’ve witnessed endless cycles of prejudicial witch hunts and reprisal campaigns of character assassination, with each side trying to break the will of the other to continue the fight, but only ever succeeding in fueling the animosity that inevitably leads to the next cycle of escalation. We’ve finally reached the point in America that rhetoric is finally spilling over into actual physical violence, rabidly self righteous “Antifa” socialists facing off with just as rabidly self righteous “MAGA” nationalists in altercations with increasing frequency.

Sadly, this is basic human nature, revealing its bared teeth and blood soaked hands again, and, given the example of history, there’s little chance of escaping what is likely inevitable at this point. Even though our society remains deeply fractured and ideologically rudderless, both the left and the right have one thing in common. Both believe they are definitively “virtuous“, at least as far as their own definitions of virtue are concerned, making it all the more easy to persecute their opposition.

It is this keen sense of “virtue” versus “vice” that motivates people to action, not political rhetoric, and so long as we live in a country with no coherent shared national virtue, social anarchy will rule.

Unless…

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
-Dr. Seuss, The Lorax-

Take any boring local ordinance or state level legislation, and these same people will barely pay any attention at all. Charge it, however, with the “virtue” of helping the poor or getting rid of needless restrictions on business freedom, then instill the opposition with “vice“, for being indifferent to the plight of the poor or being unAmerican by being hostile to business owners who just want to ply an honest trade, suddenly it provokes both sides to action.

Whether or not a point of law or a candidate are capable of actually saving the country or personally ending inequality becomes entirely irrelevant. The only thing people care about is their emotional response. Political propagandists redefine “virtue” to whatever they need it to be to motivate their base, even if this makes it impossible for opposing sides to discuss things civilly or even at all, and even if it drives people to resorting to physical violence.

The only way to counter this malignant manipulation of the people is to reestablish an objective, coherent, and consistent national virtue, independent of the pundit class of both political parties. Make no mistake, this will not be easy, because there is a lack of a shared political vocabulary, which makes even rudimentary conversations between factions difficult. A larger obstacle still is the sheer number of people on both sides that simply aren’t equipped to engage in any kind of discussion.

Unless we successfully offer a new “American virtue” and corresponding political party to help buttress it, the violence in America will simply continue to get worse, and a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt.

Liberty is For The Win.

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Simple Solution to the Grievance War

To everyone that demands that this nation change to become something it is not, I invite to do the only thing that makes sense: Go away.

The trial of Betty Shelby ended exactly how most people thought it would. The people who convicted her before the trial, convict her now. The people who thought that she was justified in the September 16th, 2016 shooting that claimed the life of Terence Crutcher still vindicate her now. The people that didn’t care before, probably still don’t care now. Nevertheless, the media circus, grievance propagandists, and mouth breathing race supremacists are all still doing today what they were doing the day before Terence Crutcher fell to the pavement, bleeding out the only life he had with God only knows going through his PCP glazed thoughts.

A family lost a father, a son, and a brother. A church lost a member of their choir. And, for Betty Shelby, what was normal life ended forever, as split second choice she made in a moment of fear has tyrannized her for most of a year, and, very likely, will keep her company in the darkness of the night for years to come. The only crime committed in this entire situation has been violence against the truth and the social peace by those who continue to use Terence’s death and Betty’s emotional trauma to perpetuate a mythology of intractable conflict between “minority” communities and “white” American culture.

“We all live with the objective of being happy;
our lives are all different and yet the same.”
-Anne Frank-

Tribalism, as old an ideology as human kind has, is at the heart of this interminable social disease, and there is but one cure for it. The United States is a melting pot, where ethnic traditions and cultural practices can be not only tolerated but celebrated. From Saint Patrick’s Day to Chinese New Year, the America is big enough to accommodate the cultural and ethnic identities of everyone in it. That is part of what makes America what it is. These cultural elements are shared with other Americans and ultimately become part of what it means to be American.

In this way Kung-Fu, tacos, green beer, lasagna, Hip Hop, and break dancing have all become a part and parcel of American culture. For the vast majority of Americans whose lives have been enriched by these borrowed cultural elements, there’s not a second thought given to where these elements came from. Americans just enjoy them as part of being American, as they should. Yet for others, they see anything alien to their own life experiences as somehow being a threat to their way of life, as if every sizzling skillet of fajitas fixings is somehow out to get them and “their” way of life.

To everyone that demands that this nation change to become something it is not, I invite to do the only thing that makes sense: Go away. You have such a problem with burritos, lo mein noodles, Ice Cube, Thomas Jefferson, the rule of law, political equality, the Fourth of July, Cinco de Mayo, Christmas, or the Second Amendment that you can’t even tolerate that other people enjoy them? Clearly this country and its culture are not a good fit for you. Find one of the over two hundred countries around the globe that homogeneously fits your idea of “correct” and go there. This is our culture, our laws, and our country.

Love it or leave it, because you have a right to leave but don’t have a right to infringe on our right to celebrate this diverse, peaceful, culturally rich, pluralistic, and law abiding society. You want to stay in America? Then be American. It’s actually pretty awesome.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW