Till We Have Faces

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

I don’t have the urge to break windows, or to reform anyone. Forgive me if I regard as mildly insane proposals — usually “libertarian” - to sack the political parties and implement all these liberating reforms which promise to result in instant wonders. I don’t believe it. So far as I’m concerned, the Great American Machine has rolled on unchecked for so long no one has seriously questioned a moral reform — let alone understands the need for one. Ronald Reagan was the only leader of this last century who slowed it down, and that by only a notch or two. Every effort he made to strengthen the Fat Man through exercise and diet produced a maniacal drive to correct his evil Republican “excesses.” We’re like an alcoholic, and we’re going to hit bottom.

As a nation, not as individuals because, as a Nation, we have spurned our heritage.

This quote from The Bunny describes precisely how I see the times:

Obama and the Congressional Democrats exemplify this fatal blindness [described by Wilhelm Roepke]. Faced with an Iran beavering away at becoming a nuclear power, a debilitated industrial sector, huge unemployment, massive debt held by foreigners, massive trade deficits, an unstable European economy, vulnerability to oil supply disruption on the part of primitives, massive influx of illegal aliens and their attendant burden on welfare and criminal justice resources, an open-ended war over control of real estate that isn’t worth having, expensive military support of ungrateful, equally-capable Europeans, domestic Muslim subversion, fatal confusion over the nature of Islam, unacceptably high rates of black crime, and widespread black rejection of America as a worthwhile object of allegiance, they put every joule, kilowatt, and erg of their political energies into the pointless evisceration of the finest health care system in the world.

For whatever reasons, I have been around courthouses and law enforcement and government folks my whole life. Ask me about government: I can tell you precisely how it works — the real story, not the horseshit Democrat story. And I’ve watched it change since the Sixties, just as I’ve watched our nation change.

On that note: I had a Republican father who worked in a predominantly Democratic organization. It’s not entirely honest to say that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. It would be more accurate to say Republicans have had no real stake in the basic machinery of government. Well over half the prosecutors I have known in my life vote Democrat, even if they run in a local race as Republican. Believe me, I can count the number of government Republicans I’ve known on my ten fingers. The Democratic Party’s lock on American government has been firmly in place since the 30s. If the Republican Party sinned by becoming “big government”, they did so in the name of self-interest. Nixon, for example — a lawyer and strategist of the first order - bought power with incredible expansions of the federal government. He knew how it worked. He didn’t try to kill the memory of Roosevelt. He tried to use it against them.

No, it didn’t work. He didn’t stand a chance. But it made sense in that time and place, even if it violated Republican principles. I’m not trying to justify Nixon’s politics. I’m saying that’s where things have gone. Beating Cheney with a cat o’pasta tails won’t change the predominant historical inertia of 20th Century American history.

Class Warfare: How Public Servants Became Our Masters

Speaking of the great Stimulus, have you seen any of its works? Do you know anyone working a Stimulus job? Where did the money go? Do you know?

I don’t either. But I know this:

Government services will be cut at every level. Potholes will deepen, infra-structure problems will worsen, pension plans will become insolvent, school systems will declare bankruptcy, police and fire protection will be reduced, etc. etc. You will be “nickled and dimed” in terms of new fees and taxes. Public unions will strike, providing further disruption. But when there are no funds, there is nothing to gain. Is Government at All Levels Falling Apart?

How do I know this? Because unions have grafted sabotage techniques into the business of public service. Public employees of today are as stupid (“well-meaning”) as any union man who ever lived — probably worse. WR’s Walking Horse has written several pieces on public unions. You should check them out. Unions are a regressive, negativee force that ensures our economic degradation. Is it safe to say that?

But there’s more than just that breaking the back of American society. I will name only a few of the cancers that are killing YOU:

*Drug Addiction. We can’t fix it, so people say “legalize it”, which is advocating slavery, suicide, and destruction. Illicit, recreational drugs, such as alcohol, carry a high potential for evil. To accept legalization without considering that society may have an interest in crushing them is to become accomplice to murder. I say, ‘Go ahead and legalize them.’ How could you make anything worse? You’ll pick up the karmic tab, not me. I am being truthful; you aren’t. Please don’t bother telling me things will get better when they’re legal. I don’t have time for fantasy. Either do you. It just hasn’t caught up to you yet. It will!

Result?

Resignation. I wait for you to see what you refuse to see. I have no choice but to wait for you to pull your head out of your ass, which will most likely occur when you have to start defending yourself. When you’re face to face with what you now call “individual choice”, you will feel just as stupid as you are being.

*Class Warfare. I will never forgive the Democratic Party for launching full-scale class warfare in America. That is a genie that won’t go back into the bottle, and it’s an evil sonofabitch of a genie.

To covet my neighbors’ property is a form of insanity — just as, in fact, drug addiction is. Once people can openly assert resentment and envy toward their neighbors’ property, bullets cannot be far behind. The key to maturity and prosperity is not to resent them, but to change your own consciousness. Literally, lives have been remade by such simple things as keeping a clean house, or keeping promises, or tackling your job instead of running from it. The secret to wealth is energy; concentration; meditation. This is what God gave you: the ability to solve your life’s puzzle. You grow in strength and power as you solve your life’s problems.

Just as drug addiction is giving your energy to Satan, so is resentment. You cannot move forward when you are a loser. It’s the law.

*The Displacement of Center. Equilibrium is the Secret of the Great Work, say the alchemists, with good reason. The Left has had a vested interest in snipping America’s balls. What I have observed first hand since my childhood in the Sixties is the “success” the Left has had in attackng American patriotism, family life, and yes, CONSERVATIVE SOCIAL VALUES. . Let’s face it. They have enjoyed the high ground where this Marxist platform is concerned:

Abolition of the family! … The bourgeois family will disappear, in the course [of history] as its supplement [private property] disappears, and both will vanish with the destruction of capital. - The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. The Abolition of the Family, Larrey Anderson.

Each of these things lead back to the same cause: Consciousness, and the primary sin of our time is that no one wants to be responsible for the consequences of consciousness (what was measured, in times past, by the Ten Commandments). It’s so much easier to blame someone! Even Libertarianism falls into this trap. Frequently you hear protestations against social conservatism. That is akin to twitting the doctor who attempts to treat your cancer. Social conservatism is a reaction to the attacks — sustained, relentless attacks — waged against America over the last century. Social conservatism is not a cross to bear. It is an energy. It is hope. It may manifest clumsily, but it is a lusty answer to the suicidal impulses that have knocked this society off its center. Ultimately a conservative like me is the best friend you’ve ever had:

Hearth — Family — Country — Loyalty

Old bastards like me provide a foundation for you to rest on. I do not try to pretend that I am a rogue unit. I am an American. I owe the duty of loyalty and hard work to you. If I do not supply that duty, you have reason to call me on it.

And, if the best I can do is get stoned or sell drugs, please! Love me enough — be brave enough — to take me out of circulation for awhile so my soul can heal. Don’t be a chump and tell me about individual freedoms. You don’t know what freedom is, if you evade your duty.

I do not agree with my Randian friends that there is ‘no such thing as society.’ Man is more than a political animal, as Aristotle called him. He is a social animal; a psychic animal; a dreaming animal. He is not some atomized unit whose thoughts alone belong to him. His relationship with others — society — mediates, tests, and tempers his very thoughts, his words, and his deeds. To deny that is to deny reality. Have you never read a really good novel, my friend? Never fallen in love? Never spoken hastily? Caused no harm with your attitudes? Really? I have met Jesus! It’s a miracle!

You don’t have to be either a genius or a New Ager to see that even your thoughts are not totally your own. How much of you did you make? How much do you control the functions of your lungs, liver and heart? If you are being honest, you will see that there is not very much of you at all that’s yours. Like it or not, we call come from the same Mother Board, and the Mother Board is not yours to control. That also is a form of insanity: this belief that whatever you want to do is just fine.

You will pick up the tab, my friend. Trust me on that.

I’m trying to draw your attention to something we all know and see and feel but don’t necessarily say out loud: the world is experiencing a case of insanity. Where and when it started is not necessarily known to any mortal, and I would caution you, O ye of conservative and libertarian faith, to not reflexively blame it all on progressivism. Being shortsighted about your alleged superiority may only add to the problem, after all.

Man is also a moral animal. His thoughts, his words and his deeds are either good or evil, not because of his individuality, but because there are other people in this world.

No, Sir, I have no desire to break any windows. I am very peacefully happy that I do not have to protect anyone other than myself, and I don’t fear death. If I die this week that is fine by me. Those who love me would miss me, but that would be true whether it was this week or next month. I have nothing to prove to anyone. I know who I am, and what I’m about. And this little thing we have going in the world right now — false worship, false moral, false economics - I have felt it in my bones since I emerged from the womb.

I have a pretty good idea what is coming socially, and I am utterly confident in saying that Libertarian nostrums won’t change a thing, any more than Hope and Change could. The roots of this thing are in the deepest psychic structures of man, and the one man who knew most about was C.S. Lewis, who you might want to start reading.

Here is what I advocate: reform yourself. Grow into a man of God. Quit making excuses.

Discover your moral and social connection to the living being we call earth.

And love those you love with all your heart.

They will certainly need it.

Just as you are required to give it.

That Hideous Strength

Till We Have Faces

Till We Have Faces