Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Friday, February 25, 2005 Redressing a past topic While googling myself last night, I came across a website that linked to a blog of mine from a year ago here. Since the fellow at Dispatches from the Culture Wars seemed reasonable enough, I left a comment in a current blog of his saying I'd like the chance to revisit the debate. He sent me an email inviting me to do so and his current blog is here. I don't want to leave a long comment so I am replying here for the most part. On a Future Civil war I'm trying to recall the circumstances which first prompted my musings on a future civil war. I believe that it was in watching the Democrats attack the Republicans in the run up to the last election that had something to do with it. But also the general outline of what we refer to as the Culture Wars. I don't think same sex marriage is a provocation to bloody war since I don't believe it can ever succeed in this country. I once thought some 20 years ago that the Abortion issue would be a cause for great violence since it is truly a matter of life and death, but I overestimated the passion of those who are pro-life. It takes a powerfully direct effect on a person to persuade them to risk violence for a cause. Thus, with the ascendancy of the Republican Party, I am less inclined to think that an aggrieved Right will convulse itself into action squads of some kind as I am to see the Left (which has advocated and used violence for decades now, Weather Underground, ELF, ALF, PETA, Anarchists against globalization, and so forth) seek to use violence more and more. But the rhetoric of the Democrat Party has become so heated and violent, the mainstreaming of the Michael Moores and the Howard Deans has ratcheted up the conflict in a visibly unhealthy way. In the last few years I have revisited my study of Rome and in particular the Roman Republic and its demise. There were a series of small steps in uncivil discourse and actions, which taken by themselves, would not have especially harmed the State, but they became a gradualism toward greater steps and reactions which doomed that State’s government. I also note that no long lasting nation or civilization is ever free of periodic convulsions in their populations. Things like decadence, depravity, aggression, desire for power, insecurity, and utopianism frequently combine at certain times and result in savagery. Prosperity gives rise to delusions and folly in people which could not occur when nearly everyone was facing necessity and dire consequences for misjudgment of the world as it is. Rome was incredibly prosperous and growing more so every year when its tensions mounted (and this is before the period of the Emperors and its celebrated debaucheries). Morality was remarkably staid just prior to the time of Caesar. The question is asked, though, whether I would kill for a cause. Of course, I would. It depends on the cause, though, and my physical ability to engage in violence. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in our age of high tech weaponry organization in our armed forces and law enforcers in which different groups could assail each other as they did in Rome or in Germany prior to WW2 between the Nazis and Communists. That is why I consider totalitarianism an obverse to civil war or convulsion. The ability to suppress violence effectively when large numbers of a population have become fighting mad (so to speak) depends on something like a police state. Right now, though, the population is sifting itself out geographically. As someone recently put it, we aren’t a nation of red and blue states. We’re a red nation with blue cities. So Americans are dividing themselves by moving their feet rather than their fists. This is the beginning of the balkenization I was referring to. This clearly helps to alleviate tension in the population. People simply move away from what socially troubles them. How long that can last is anyone’s guess. (Is there any relatively normal and ordinary family man or woman who wants to live in San Francisco now if they don’t have to, or are bound by property there? The city has literally become a cesspool where they spray the streets and sidewalks down at night with bleach to try and wash off the human feces and urine put there by the legions of street people.) At some point, people outside the cities (or in the new cities they create) will no longer tolerate the blue cities and the politicians that derive their power from them. They will seeks ways to secede peacefully to start. Uncontrolled immigration (invasion) has always been a cause of violence. Who can predict a tipping point on that issue, for example? The ruination of representative democracy by the Courts is another serious matter that will have to be redressed at some point; and might inspire violence from the right or left depending on who is more in control of the appointments. Average, ordinary people like me, and most likely like the readers of my blog and Dispatches from the Culture Wars, are not easily provoked to violence. One, we don’t want to injure, kill, or be injured or die; and two, we don’t want to risk going to jail and losing everything we have over some current political pseudo-crisis like some loser, loner crackpot. Someone else said that even in a deeply divided country, it takes a great deal to break the Round Table of civil society. What exactly will that be? I don’t know. I do know it must come or totalitarianism becomes necessary suppress it. I can imagine that if we suffer another 9/11 as great or worse, I wouldn’t bet a plug nickel as to the future health of the Left and the Dems who made it difficult, nay, nearly impossible, to prevent such things through PC laws and undermining military and diplomatic efforts to destroy the terror movements in the world by cowardly attempts at appeasement. Too often now dissent is no longer disagreement, but in fact treason. For example, if it were in my power to succeed, I would be happy to arrive at Michael Moore’s home with my “gang” and politely “suggest” that he relocate himself to another country just as the Sons of Liberty “suggested” that various Tories consider a different climate for their health between 1776 and 1786 or so. I imagine that there may be readers of Dispatches from the Culture Wars who might wish to do the same to me and others like me if they had it in their power to do so. You see, I believe that the Michael Moores break the Round Table when they seek to weaken and undermine this nation’s survival and cause the death of innocents through their cowardice and sedition. Now, I suppose there are those who insist that conservatives undermine the nation and destroy lives by their determination to rely on the aggressive use of force, becoming a war-like state similar to Nazi Germany which can only end in our destruction. That belief is, of course, wildly far fetched as opposed to the belief that the Left and liberals get many innocents killed everyday because of PC laws and the hampering of the police, the military, and tenderness toward criminals, and support of social pathologies. In conclusion, it is clear to me that violence must occur at some point in America. The rabid Left which may number as high as 20% of our people cannot bear losing power as it seems to be doing now. Violent words inevitably lead to violent actions unless somehow defused. Either the cause for violence loses energy through impotence and resignation, or enough fomenters are killed or exiled. It seems to me that this debate isn’t about whether violent civil unrest will occur in America, but over what the cause might be and who will champion violence most or first. posted by Mark Butterworth | 12:39 PM | |
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