PrintWe Know Why We're Fighting
If the world is spinning out of control, allow me to make a small observation: we know why we're fighting. It may seem a bit ethereal if you're right now down to your last roll of toilet paper, but it does rebalance perspective.
This little community of ours at the American Thinker and those freedom-minded people all around us share a common understanding of the world. I'd say we've all reached the conclusion, an epiphany, that there is something greater than ourselves, beyond the limitations and corruptions of man. For many of us, this has been the recognition of the divine. For others, it is the realization that each individual life is a priceless and unique moral package with inviolable autonomy. However we found ourselves here, we share a sense that we are connected by a moral plane not created or imagined by man's rules and governing institutions. When things get wobbly, like now, we catch our breath and remember what's important. Are our parents safe? Our children? Our friends and neighbors? In a moment of clarity that each one of us has experienced, what we have fades into the background, and whom we have around us surges to the fore.
It is during these most challenging moments in life that it is easiest to see how lost our political opponents are. Their understanding of human life is so completely coiled into their self-conception as political units in a political system that the smallest perturbation in their political world destroys their moral world entirely. I devilishly enjoyed the sight of wailing Hillary-supporters in 2016 who looked absolutely crushed on live television when President Trump won, but the better part of me pitied them, too. They have constructed an existence for themselves that is so devoid of meaning or inner strength that they are unable to survive gentle rumblings beneath their feet without shattering before us all. This is why they are dangerous; they will do absolutely anything to prevent those feelings of being unmoored from consuming them. It is why their "good intentions" always lead to chaos, why people who prattle on endlessly about saving others have more blood on their hands this last century than all the great murderers in human history that came before them. It is why they still champion Venezuela-style nationalization of all industry even after Venezuela's socialism has long past killed itself. It is also why they never learn but instead indulge themselves in an endless, infinite loop of suffering. Their socialist projects fail, and they answer that failure with more socialist projects. It's a maddening spectacle to witness.
Chinese communism created a virus that is threatening the world, and Western socialism seeks to spread it across free societies. Secretiveness, centralized authority, and denial of any semblance of civil rights prevented Chinese doctors and journalists from revealing a health emergency to the world before it was too late. Now that it is too late, Western socialists use this crisis as an opportunity to encumber their own nations with greater secretiveness, centralized authority, and further denial of civil rights. As always, socialist authoritarianism begets crisis, and crisis begets socialist authoritarianism. And a very real virus that will continue killing thousands will produce an even deadlier virus that will someday kill millions more. It is in this circle of hell that the left lives, and it is why we fight leftists tooth and nail every step of the way. But again, at least we know why we're fighting.
We did not create our government to give us permission to live; our government lives only by our permission. Most of us come from people who escaped government coercion of some kind by seeking freedom in America, whether that was many generations or only a few short years ago. We have ancestors who sought religious freedom or economic freedom or simply the freedom to build something new without permission from a ruling class. Our ancestors made it across the ocean, trekked over the Appalachians, and built lives in the frontier wilderness all on their own. They did so without ever needing Nancy Pelosi or the socialism she insists on using to control us. As bad as things are right now, at least we know why we're fighting.
It is also why we often see the heroes around us make themselves known only now. When your existence is entirely political, you cannot afford to be quiet. Political correctness and virtue-signaling demand your participation at all times. It is why Twitter is dominated by the left, why Hollywood celebrities insinuate themselves into every debate, why socialism creates endless "causes" and no solutions. For people who believe in something beyond themselves, though, there is no need to appear heroic for appearance's sake. Those who are called simply answer. It is why the Knights of the Road are saving America right now and why we could not care less about the Jokers in Congress. Not one truck-driver has stayed put until promises of future reward are guaranteed. Not one driver has held America hostage until we submitted to his demands. Those are the actions of China, of Nancy Pelosi, of the Democrats in America, of the Labor Party in the U.K., and of socialist parties throughout Europe. The Knights of the Road drive five hundred miles a day, face an increasingly closed off America for food and sleep, and get right back up to do it again and again and again. Like the Pony Express of old, they're the ones keeping America connected and alive, while Congress works so hard to do the opposite. Like the grocery store stockers and restaurant employees and blue-collar laborers who are all struggling to keep America afloat, they prove once again that it is the American worker, not the American talker, who will win this war against the Chinese virus and the panic it causes. Like any American who sees duty and sacrifice as part of a higher calling, they know why they're fighting.
So, take a moment, if you can, and remember how much worse it could be. We could be going through this troubled time without any sense of who we are, where we've been, or where we're going. We could be so trapped in a prison of the mind that we never discovered meaning beyond politics. We could be so lost right now because nothing sacred keeps us strong. We could miss a moment to be heroic while no one is looking. But we won't...because we know why we're fighting.
