I’ve written in the past on this theory of society, its villains, and its protectors. I was introduced to it when I listened to a presentation by LTC Dave Grossman[1], USA (Ret), author of “On Killing” who related this story from an old Colonel[2].
“‘Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.’ This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.
‘Then there are the wolves,’ the old war veteran said, ‘and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.’ Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.
‘Then there are sheepdogs,’ he went on, ‘and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.’”
I was reminded today of that analogy when I listened to a speech by Victor David Hanson to Hillsdale College on George S. Patton[3] and the tragic reality of how we as a society view our sheepdogs. Those people who view the dark side of humanity and choose to engage it. Examples he gave in leading up to the discussion were Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgeway, and Curtis LeMay who all had made the mistake of having views in opposition to the popular (i.e., therapeutic we are nice and shouldn’t kill those who are responsible for this mess we are in) view of most of society.
Remember when President Trump ordered the drone strike on the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and how outraged the political opposition was and how this was going to cause a massive Iranian response? Soleimani was the mastermind behind attacks that had killed hundreds and was responsible for Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war. Just because he was responsible, they said, it was just not right to actually target him as an individual. What was the result? After his death there was a lot of Iranian chest-beating, a lot of leftist noise about how a war was inevitable, but really not much more. At the end of the day was Trump’s decision to execute this Soleimani any different than Obama’s to execute Bin Laden, or all the drone strikes he approved against nameless terrorists in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula?
Islamic apologists and supporters of Hamas like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush like to talk about how most of the followers of Mohammed are peaceful, but it is just pure deflection. As Brigitte Gabriel[4] explains in this video on Benghazi accountability[5] most people are irrelevant to the issue of confronting terrorism, whether done in the name of Allah, the Third Reich, White Supremacy, Black Lives, or simply anarchy.
As we look at the tenor of American politics today it seems, at least to me, our young and the most highly educated among us have been trained to be sheep and to fear the sheepdogs. They believe the right government will protect them from the evils of the world. But at the end of the day is the government any different than a simple fence or pen, intended to keep the herd all in one place and make it easier to gather them all up when it comes time to be sheered? To keep up the illusion the pen is there for their protection and that the masters are to protect the weakest in the herd they are taught from the earliest time the government will care for the weakest, and must always be on guard of the sheepdogs. (e.g., Defund the Police will lead to safer, more tolerant communities.)
The DNC has leveraged this with great success, suggesting they are the bravest of the sheep and those mean sheepdogs are just out to destroy the herd. That works, at least until a real wolf appears. So, to avoid having to confront a real wolf, they create problems that seem solvable but really don’t seek rational solutions as long as those problems keep the herd moving in its endless circle around the field and inside the fence.
For example, poverty. Since the beginning of recorded history, there have been those who’ve been doomed to live in poverty. Today, in America, that is equally true, although what is classified as poverty today would almost certainly be well above the survival standards of yesteryear. With the crash of an overleveraged stock market in 1929, the government has taken increasingly expensive steps to help the poor us. In the 1960s while expanding our role in an unwinnable war, and racing the Soviet Union to the Moon, President Johnson and Congress created the “Great Society.”
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson and the Congress (2/3 majority Democrat) got to work overcoming the resistance of the Southern Democrats to significantly expand America’s support for the disadvantaged and underprivileged. They created Medicare and Medicaid, training programs for the unskilled and illiterate, and priority placements for the underprivileged to provide them a helping hand up, educational assistance, and welfare programs for the poorest of the inner cities. Of course, to administer all these programs and the redistribution of America's tax dollars they established sizeable new bureaucracies, which have continued to grow and flourish over these past five decades, as have the criminal abuses of these programs. Human greed being what it is, whenever free money is available there will be those who attempt to gain that wealth for themselves.
But let’s stop for just a minute and ask ourselves one simple question. Have all these programs and all the redistribution of wealth or the expansion of Government debt served the needs of the poor and the quality of life in the United States to achieve their stated purpose, or have they simply been a tool to increase our individual dependence on the government as it moves to eliminate our faith in God, or our faith in family and our faith in each other as a vital aspect of life in America? Have these programs, and all the other programs like the “War on Drugs” or the ebb and flow of criminal incarceration helped the poorest of the nation, or eliminated the racism of those who believe they are superior to others based on the color of their skin? By the way, it doesn’t seem to matter what the color of someone’s skin is for those feelings to exist.
As we devolve from a nation-state with a unified vision of ourselves and the world, into an amalgamation of tribes at some point there will be too many sheep for the sheepdogs to protect and the wolves of the world will fall upon those flocks and gobble them up.
[1] David Allen Grossman is an American author and trainer who conducts seminars on the psychology of lethal force. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army.
[4] Brigitte Gabriel is a Lebanese-American conservative author, anti-Islam activist, and founder of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America.
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