So many thoughts swirl through my mind as I watch the world unfold before me this week. A week when we remember the horror of September 11th, 2001. The media will talk about how we came together and how those whose lives were changed forever by the brutality of a few who hated America.
We have four grandkids visiting us for the next few weeks as their dad starts a new job in North Carolina, and their mom and older sisters put their home on the market so they can all move to North Carolina.
Phrases from my education come to mind as we end the Long-War in Afghanistan.
First, from Abraham Lincoln: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
No matter how poorly the administration executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan the men and women who committed their lives, and their family’s wellbeing should long be remembered. These men and women went into harm’s way to fight a war without end because the politicians who sent them and the generals who led them had no clear vision of what victory was supposed to look like.
Of course, we can’t leave this section without acknowledging their role as citizens, with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Now we turn to the long-pandemic. A virus, in all probability, created by the Chinese Communists and let loose on the world from Wuhan China. It is now just another political tool used by the media and the politicians to gain greater control of the individuals they are supposed to be working for. There are questions about masks, vaccines, booster vaccines, and government mandates/laws to restrict individual choice, under the guise of communal safety.
On some show the other night Geraldo Rivera, in supporting the President’s statements regarding the end of his patience with those who remain unvaccinated he captured what seems the be the position of most liberals. It is the government and everyone else’s responsibility to keep him and his family safe. The world is too complex to ask a father to do what fathers have traditionally done. Those roles must be taken over by the government.
From Leon Trotsky: “The revolution made a heroic effort to destroy the so-called “family hearth” – that archaic, stuffy and stagnant institution in which the woman of the toiling classes performs galley labor from childhood to death. The place of the family as a shut-in petty enterprise was to be occupied, according to the plans, by a finished system of social care and accommodation: maternity houses, creches, kindergartens, schools, social dining rooms, social laundries, first-aid stations, hospitals, sanatoria, athletic organizations, moving-picture theaters, etc. The complete absorption of the housekeeping functions of the family by institutions of the socialist society, uniting all generations in solidarity and mutual aid, was to bring to woman, and thereby to the loving couple, a real liberation from the thousand-year-old fetters.”
As I look at our society, Lyndon Johnson and the other “New Deal” democrats coming out of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era accomplished what Trotsky could only hope for with their creation of the “Great Society.” A society where people were told the state would care for them and the traditions that held a people together were no longer necessary.
In this long-pandemic our government has a new tool, ideally suited, for the social engineering so many in the Democratic party wish to implement. A utopian society where no one ever has to work, and no one ever questions the purpose of government. Where all things are provided, and no government program ever ends. Government expands until all things are run by the elite billionaires and their political Want-to-Be’s.
Thomas Jefferson said: “Educate the whole mass of people. They are the only sure reliance on the preservation of our liberty.”
From all appearances we’ve failed miserably in meeting that goal. We’ve allowed teachers to transition from teaching to indoctrination. Today we wrestle not with the periodic table, but with who can have periods. We teach a new math where how much change should be get back from using a $5.00 piece of paper for a $4.75 bill requires a digital computer rather than a human brain. Pronouns used to be important to replace actual nouns, now they are only important so a 4-year-old choose its sexual preference in pre-school. Liberals used to complain we were falling behind the rest of the world, and would cite homogenous countries like Finland as the example to follow, while supporting the teacher unions who want more money to pass along people who don’t learn because the government is here to care for them, or families have been replaced by gangs as the vehicle for teaching our young social standards of behavior.
Recently there was an interesting observation by Bill Maher, and entertainment personality I don’t normally have much use for. When asked why all the sudden conservative comics are becoming popular, he noted it was because liberals, who he believes are normally more rational than conservatives have changed.
In his words: “I keep saying to the liberals: you know what, if what you’re doing sounds like an ‘Onion’ headline…stop. A lot of this stuff that goes on the left now, it’s, you know, ‘Seattle Votes to Decriminalize Crime. Three-Year-Old Pick Their Own Gender’ is an ‘Onion’ headline. When you tear down statues of Abraham Lincoln in the Land of Lincoln – ‘Land of Lincoln Cancels Lincoln’ – it’s an ‘Onion’ headline.”
This move to the extreme has created a new industry to mock the foolishness of the left. It doesn’t matter if it is “Drag Queen Story Hour” pushed by public librarians, or the attempts to normalize the lives of violent felons while vilifying the police. Each step is another step down the path Alice followed as she looked beyond the mirror.
The funny thing about this movement is not that it is led by radical youth, but it is supported by the supposed adults who are charged with running our businesses and our country. We’ve spent so much energy claiming that the 25-45 years old people are the “key” demographic that now everyone believes they have the wisdom to make rational choices. It is almost as if we’ve forgotten the foibles of humanity and how people will always act in their own perceived self-interest.
Society, and the lives that make it up, becomes curiouser and curiouser each day.
