Back in the good old days the primary job of men was to defend the border. Just like male chimpanzees. And during the Middle Ages? In the heyday of the Franks, in 500 A.D., “the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.”

 

So men had to be fighters.

 

In our day, after two world wars, people have wondered about that. It’s one thing for men to be fighting on the border using spears and arrows; it’s another thing for them to be slinging A-bombs around, as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs this August.

 

Yes, it was a good thing that our fathers and uncles didn’t get ground up in the meat-grinder of an invasion of Japan. But maybe there’s a better way.

 

That, of course, is why God invented sports and peaceful protest. 

 

Back in the day, before he started marrying his six wives, Prince Henry was a dab hand at the fake-medieval tournaments that the Tudors liked to put on in the England of the 16th century. Then there was the day he was knocked off his horse and looked to have died.

 

Now we have the T.V. spectacle of professional sports, so men can enjoy a bit of harmless vicarious war without the princely danger of falling off their horses. At least we used to have it, until our soyboy governors decided that professional sports and church services were too dangerous for free-born red-blooded Americans.

 

So you could say that the warrior spirit has been tamed in two stages, from predatory warfare to knightly tournaments, and from tournaments to sports.

 

There has been a similar progression in politics. Back in the day, poltiics was revolution, with brave men risking their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in a bloody rebellion. Now we have the activism culture, with well-born twenty-somethings LARPing revolution with their elite-condoned “peaceful protests.”

 

And so the young guy in the alley two blocks away from me in North Seattle was happily crafting plywood wooden shields a week ago when I went by on my morning walk. And in Portland, Oregon, the peaceful protesters of Youth Liberation Front went to Laurelhurst Park to “practice fighting with shields” according to Andy Ngô.

 

Antifa brawl with Portland Police in residential part of SE Portland. The Youth Liberation Front earlier gathered in Laurelhurst Park to practice fighting with shields. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/bIbYvFqyho

 

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 8, 2020

 

In other words, it’s not just princes and sports fans. Even lefty soyboys like a bit of rough-housing.

 

But peaceful protesting? Can we agree that the drama in the streets, with damage to government buildings and downtown businesses, is rather excessive? And that maybe it is time to go from the semi-civilized “peaceful protest,” the political equivalent of the medieval tournament, to the activist version of professional sports.

 

I think that by Jan. 20, 2021, all right-minded people will agree that it is time to appoint a National Commission on Mostly Peaceful Protesting and discover a way in which young lefties and wokies of good family can engage themselves in professional political sports. I see the Commission coming up with a proposal for two professional leagues, the National Protest League and the American Protest League. No wait. We can’t have national and patriotic names. Let’s call the leagues the Oppressed Peoples League and the Allies League, after the three layers theory that America consists of oppressed people, allies, and white oppressors. The team names could start with Antifa Activists and BLM Victims. They could battle away on regular football fields with their custom wooden shields that would display their team escutcheons, like the Antifa flag symbol and the BLM clenched fist. I dare say that instead of goals there will be monuments and police stations on the field: two points for a toppled monument; five points for a police station.

 

Right now, I’m sure that our lefty friends see no need to civilize their mostly peaceful protests: they are having too much fun. I mean, when the ruling class gives you free run of the city -- or at least downtown -- and turns a blind eye when you practice your shield combat in a public park, you take that as encouragement, and you amp it up until… Well until what?

 

I’d say you amp it up until you find that the American people went 55-45 against you in a presidential election and handed the House back to the Republicans.

 

And maybe not even then. Don’t forget the Sixties. After the Sixties riots Republicans won five of the six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988. Only then did the Democrats cry Uncle and send the brilliant Bill Clinton out to promise on a stack of Sister Souljahs that, really, honestly, he was a

New Democrat. And he really meant it after Hillary bollixed up the nationalization of healthcare and Newt Gingrich turned the Congress Republican in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.

 

It might take today’s lefties a bit longer to figure it out.