PrintApril 22, 2008
Madness and Political Life
"We have now sunk to a depth where the restatement of the obvious is the duty of intelligent men"
- George Orwell.
How often do we have to return to the words of Orwell to make sense of the world today? There is madness in our lives, and it neither seeks nor wants a cure. Great nations are altering their economies, impoverishing their poorest subjects, condemning their progeny all in support of the lie of global warming.
Is it not obvious, by now, that a cyclical climate change is part of the history of our planet? (Has that not been obvious since we knew about the ice ages?) And is it not obvious that we do not even know whether the planet is growing hotter or colder? (What if the real problem turns out to be global cooling? Then we have no time to lose in doing all we can to heat up the environment and increase our individual carbon footprint.) The depressing part of all this is that otherwise sane people seem invested in catastrophic silliness. We are reduced to restating the obvious.
Is it not obvious, by now, that a cyclical climate change is part of the history of our planet? (Has that not been obvious since we knew about the ice ages?) And is it not obvious that we do not even know whether the planet is growing hotter or colder? (What if the real problem turns out to be global cooling? Then we have no time to lose in doing all we can to heat up the environment and increase our individual carbon footprint.) The depressing part of all this is that otherwise sane people seem invested in catastrophic silliness. We are reduced to restating the obvious.
There is madness in race politics as well. Most black Americans have their votes bought by new masters who need their votes to stay in power. The historical precedent for this was in some Southern states many decades ago, when blacks were brought en masse to the polling places, given a silver dollar, a barbeque sandwich and a Coke. These buyers of black votes were not the friends of blacks but rather their oppressors, the orchestrators of Jim Crow, the members of the very same political party which now owns African-Americans as electoral chattel still. It is no longer a nuanced question whether ghastly public schools, fatherless homes, government housing projects and welfare mentality consume lives whole. No great intelligence is required to grasp the dimensions of black hopelessness. We are again reduced to simply stating the obvious.
Evil, violent people have sworn to kill us, to destroy our society, to impose a totalitarian theocracy upon us, to end Israel, to corrupt our democratic institutions, to insinuate themselves by the millions into those nations that have been our traditional allies -- yet political leaders of the Left find it impossible to seriously condemn these, our sworn and mortal enemies. Why?
There were Americans during the Second World War who opposed America entering that war, but when Japanese carrier aircraft devastated Pearl Harbor and when Hitler declared war on us, we all became Americans of a single, sensible mind. We may have had differences about how to win the war, but we did not share them with our enemies. No journalists tried to get a "scoop" revealing the date of Operation Overlord or the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma Code. We were fighting for our survival and our children's future. Now, too many of us are required to restate the obvious: Those who hate us, who enslave women, who murder Christians and Jews are our mortal enemies who must be defeated.
There were Americans during the Second World War who opposed America entering that war, but when Japanese carrier aircraft devastated Pearl Harbor and when Hitler declared war on us, we all became Americans of a single, sensible mind. We may have had differences about how to win the war, but we did not share them with our enemies. No journalists tried to get a "scoop" revealing the date of Operation Overlord or the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma Code. We were fighting for our survival and our children's future. Now, too many of us are required to restate the obvious: Those who hate us, who enslave women, who murder Christians and Jews are our mortal enemies who must be defeated.
Universities have become havens of official intolerance and bigotry the likes of which American society has seldom experienced. More galling is the fact that almost everyone encourages young adults to go to college, that parents and students spend vast amounts of money for this education, and that even more billions for university education is funded by taxpayers. Yet university administrators and professors seem overwhelmingly hostile to America, to Judeo-Christian moral traditions, and even to honest science (as in the case of global warming or arguments on the utility of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.)
Our universities have almost morphed into an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The dangers of a monolithic and totalitarian system of education in a democracy are obvious to anyone but the willfully ignorant. We have sunk to a depth where restatement of the obvious is the duty of intelligent men.
Our universities have almost morphed into an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The dangers of a monolithic and totalitarian system of education in a democracy are obvious to anyone but the willfully ignorant. We have sunk to a depth where restatement of the obvious is the duty of intelligent men.
What can we do? That is to say, what we those of us who care about truth and the survival of our culture and civilization do? The voices of the mad echo through our culture. The curiosities, lusts and furies of the moment seem to gobble up the whole interest of society. We who care have only our words, our minds and our prayers to console us.
But perhaps that is enough. George Orwell wrote his brilliant lines more than fifty years ago. The world seems to be inching ever closer to his fictional Oceania, but we are not there yet. We see pretty clearly the contours of the Inner Party of Leftist elites in our nation, but we defy them and mock their lies still. Most encouragingly, men and women still enlist in our armed forces, endure hardship and separation, and come home confident that they have done something good. What Orwell wrote was grimly true, but, perhaps, if we keep doing our duty - restating the obvious - we will, like Churchill, never surrender.
