There, but for the Grace of God, Go I…
How close to the precipice are we? How near the fatal fall do we tread, often unaware of the danger?
There are many ways to fall, equal to, or perhaps even surpassing the avenues by which we might rise. As numerous the opportunities, so too the risks, whether those be economic, spiritual, social or legal, we all spend our days within a hair’s breadth of catastrophe; this is an immutable truth of life.
Yet we move ahead, day by day. Dwelling on risk doesn’t ameliorate it any more than repeating a lie makes it true. Awareness is prudent, but fixation is counterproductive, leading one to exaggerate danger, poisoning both outlook and mindset. Wise caution is soon replaced by phobia, and planning becomes warped, as irrationality exerts a stronger pull than evidence.
Without this fearfulness, intrusive government would be an impossibility. Rational thought would prevent the hyperbole from taking root, leaving the elected “heroes” without an audience. This is an integral part of the American Experiment, the willingness to accept risk in exchange for freedom - to manage danger rather than be defined by it. This mindset is a powerful inoculant against overreaching government, and for the greater part of our nation’s history proved quite robust and effective against authoritarianism, whether of the Left or Right.
So much of our modern way of life is governed by the decisions of people far removed from us (geographically, experientially and ideologically). In our system, we ultimately bear the responsibility for the government we get when we fail to engage in the process.
While it is true the majority have plenty on their plate already, (work, raising families, etc.), to abandon the caretaking tasks necessary for a representative Republic to operate as intended, results in the mitigation of all the other work we do, as those who fill that vacuum reliably do so for reasons very few of us share. Some for the pursuit of power, others for wealth, and still others to fill an unnamed emptiness where their soul might have once resided.
We now find ourselves in a new world, where self-reliance is derided as selfishness, or “toxic masculinity,” by people who know nothing of self-sacrifice, delayed gratification or the age-old concept of giving before taking. The incestuous relationship between the vocal accusing class and the compromised politicians they have ushered into office have brought us a social structure where fear has been commodified, with entire industries grown up around its manufacture and trade.
Fear is necessary to the business of dependence. Unless made afraid, men and women of good character will make their own choices based on their own beliefs about right and wrong, whether those beliefs stem from religious conviction or mere pragmatism. This reveals the beauty of the American system; the source of one’s beliefs approaches irrelevance in comparison to the free exercise of those beliefs, as their value is based on the results downstream of those beliefs (good or bad) not a predetermined outcome dictated by others.
This is independence. The ability to put one’s own beliefs into practice and live with the results. If tyrannies of any variety are to gather strength, they must disrupt this equation, by placing a thumb on the scale for either risk or reward - buying support with over-generous and frequently wrong-headed government largesse, or forcing compliance under threat.
When we decry a life of timidity, those of us still aware of the liberties intended for us from our founding generation are vilified, smeared, and increasingly targeted both physically and economically. When we point to the unprecedented success enjoyed by participants in the American Experiment (by birth or immigration), the errors of our forebears are trotted out as proof of our complicity; laying at our feet the full responsibility for wrongs committed in other eras, under dramatically different norms and mores, most of which we ourselves have not merely rectified, but also atoned for in waves of blood.
Today is Veteran’s Day, 2021. Our enemies are not idle. Our history is systematically warped by agenda-driven ideologues seeking to delegitimize that which they cannot refute. Our resistance to this crime of the humanities is treated as supporting the worst elements of human nature as they occurred among earlier generations. Slavery (long since abolished), Jim Crow laws, (studiously cleansed from our legal system) and Racism (relegated to the salons of elitist fantasy) are nonetheless resurrected, Zombie-fashion, in an attempt to pretend they are still with us, in all their virulent power, altered perhaps, but undiminished in strength.
Indeed, the latest gambit from the revisionists claims the virulence of racial “otherism” is more powerful than ever, because it has finally been recognized as inherent to a single race -Caucasians - who are most often entirely unaware of their genetic fallibility as they crash about the world oppressing other races, exploiting their privilege to retain their ill-gotten wealth, stolen of course from the very targets of their unconscious hatreds. The targets (who are not victims) now demand to take from those who have committed no crime simply because “equity” requires it.
The ludicrous nature of this assertion is evident to even the dullest among us, but challenging it is conveniently declared to be further evidence of its truth, and worse still, an act of aggression that demands an in-kind response. This is the pretext-driven agenda that permits extreme violence against ideological opponents, provided the victim is labeled “privileged,” and the perpetrator a member of an aggrieved minority. We learned about this in Grammar school - it’s called “getting even,” a concept once almost universally condemned.
This is the true infrastructure the Democratic Party is funding with our tax dollars. They are building superstructure for a sick and twisted reanimation of the worst abuses of history. They have their eyes on that which they did not earn, don’t understand and cannot replicate, so, like envious children, they snatch it from the hands of someone else, rationalizing their abusive behavior with absurd claims of “doing justice,” redressing past grievance by committing worse grievances anew.
I’m a veteran. I served in the United States Army and gave my Oath, not to a government, a President or a political party, but to the defense of the eternal and immutable principles evinced in our organizing document, the Constitution. Our founders wisely chose to elevate the “why” over the “how,” enshrining our inherent rights (given by our Creator, not our government) as the measure of good government. Violate the “why,” and the “how” is automatically irrelevant. This is the best preventative against the Left’s “ends justify the means” argument, and for me, as with other vets I know, is the hill we’ll die on.
Over my years I’ve seen many nations fall, and it is no accident they all shared one trait - their loyalty was to those who made the laws, not to the principles that gave those laws legitimacy. Consequently, as those lawmakers fell short (as all men do) the laws they made fell with them, having no underlying principle for support.
On this Veteran’s Day, I remind all, we have an obligation to prevent the destruction of the principles on which our system relies to follow the path of justice. This is how we avoid the easy slide of vengeance, or fall victim to the predations of avarice.
When a government falls, the collateral damage is often unspeakable. Today of all days, take the lessons of failed nations to heart, remembering always, “there, but for the Grace of God, go I.” This is why I served, and why the Oath I took will not expire until I do.