How will we explain this weird age to future generations?
By J.B. Shurk
How to explain this age without reason to those who inherit our folly? Math and logic and common sense are all dead.
If they were not, we would not be watching Marxist socialism and communism succeed after a century of death and economic destruction
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A hundred million lives lost have not been sufficient to teach the lesson. Poverty and oppression have not tarnished the socialist mantle. Loss of personal freedom, so that the State may have more room to live and dictate from corrupt capitals, has not awoken human minds to the attendant misery that all socialist control inevitably brings.
Science is dead, too. How else to explain how tyrannical states like China have found common cause with "free" states throughout the West in demanding that all men accept the false prophecy that hydrocarbon energy is leading to our imminent apocalyptic doom? Princes and kings and presidents and priests point to infallible intellectual authorities to prove that carbon dioxide, and therefore all modern industry and commerce, is killing us all. And yet appeals to authority have never been so empty and therefore evil.
Independent and dependent variables are not tools for a cloistered elite. The scientific method is not secret knowledge for the clergy. Measurements of temperatures and trace gases, of sunspots and glacial accretion are not mysteries understood only by the privileged. We used to know that education and knowledge were more valuable than gold because any person with either could exploit those who lacked them both. It has never been easier to use an elementary education to understand the world around us, yet never have more people clamored for an intellectual aristocracy to do our thinking for us.
Two decades after the most violent attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and we are still too afraid of the commandants of political correctness to mention our enemies by name. We would rather be murdered than resist the tyranny of speech control. We would rather keep our thoughts to ourselves than risk speaking truth out loud. How will we explain to the future that we have been fighting "terror" for twenty years? Terror is being forced to make the decision to jump from the window of a skyscraper or burn alive. Terror is watching your countrymen, men and women who may have been strangers minutes before, hold hands as they dropped to their deaths.
Islamic supremacy is what forced them to make that choice, not at all different from the Saracen blades that have decapitated journalists or the grooming gangs that have raped young girls. And yet, even though journalists have been beheaded and our most vulnerable countrymen tortured, we silence ourselves. We reinterpret the First Amendment into nonexistence. We decide that language, upon which all thought relies, is truly to blame. We gladly castrate ourselves, so that we can become eunuchs to our enemies' cause, rather than offend the sensibilities of those who claim to be offended. How do we explain to our beneficiaries why we submitted to evil, turned away from those who threaten all we hold dear, and instead disciplined ourselves?
Maybe now is the time when we decide, for the benefit of all who come after us, that we will no longer abide the lies from our government or the assurances from unelected bureaucrats who claim that everything will be fine if only we cede them more power. Maybe this is the moment when we at last realize that many of our friends have been our enemies and many of those who claim to speak for us have been slowly destroying our souls. Because there really is no greater threat to human freedom than an emaciated human spirit. That is what our leaders have been accomplishing for so many years with our tacit approval. We have allowed them to disrespect our liberty because we have had such disregard for our own moral worth and purpose.
Maybe now is the time when we remind our family and neighbors that truth and virtue are vital to a free people, and though we will inevitably come up wanting, it is our constant aspiration to both that will keep us prosperous and free. Maybe now is the time when we realize that laws against speech are antithetical to true liberty, and those who would use such laws against us are not our friends but our enslavers. Maybe now is the moment, before the age of freedom disappears, when enough of us refuse our new chains and burst forth with a pronouncement to the world that rebellion to tyranny truly is obedience to God, that our silencers will be fought, that Marxist-socialism will at long last be destroyed, and that we are just as willing as those brave generations in the past to lose our lives for the privilege of protecting freedom for the generations sure to come.
How to explain this age to those who inherit it from us? Perhaps it will be remembered as the pivotal moment in human history when men and women of character and strength and great perseverance set down a marker for human freedom in stone and cemented it so deeply in the Earth's crust that it stands as testament for all history to come. Perhaps this is the age by which all others will be defined and judged. Perhaps.
By J.B. Shurk
How to explain this age without reason to those who inherit our folly? Math and logic and common sense are all dead.
If they were not, we would not be watching Marxist socialism and communism succeed after a century of death and economic destruction
< >
A hundred million lives lost have not been sufficient to teach the lesson. Poverty and oppression have not tarnished the socialist mantle. Loss of personal freedom, so that the State may have more room to live and dictate from corrupt capitals, has not awoken human minds to the attendant misery that all socialist control inevitably brings.
Science is dead, too. How else to explain how tyrannical states like China have found common cause with "free" states throughout the West in demanding that all men accept the false prophecy that hydrocarbon energy is leading to our imminent apocalyptic doom? Princes and kings and presidents and priests point to infallible intellectual authorities to prove that carbon dioxide, and therefore all modern industry and commerce, is killing us all. And yet appeals to authority have never been so empty and therefore evil.
Independent and dependent variables are not tools for a cloistered elite. The scientific method is not secret knowledge for the clergy. Measurements of temperatures and trace gases, of sunspots and glacial accretion are not mysteries understood only by the privileged. We used to know that education and knowledge were more valuable than gold because any person with either could exploit those who lacked them both. It has never been easier to use an elementary education to understand the world around us, yet never have more people clamored for an intellectual aristocracy to do our thinking for us.
Two decades after the most violent attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and we are still too afraid of the commandants of political correctness to mention our enemies by name. We would rather be murdered than resist the tyranny of speech control. We would rather keep our thoughts to ourselves than risk speaking truth out loud. How will we explain to the future that we have been fighting "terror" for twenty years? Terror is being forced to make the decision to jump from the window of a skyscraper or burn alive. Terror is watching your countrymen, men and women who may have been strangers minutes before, hold hands as they dropped to their deaths.
Islamic supremacy is what forced them to make that choice, not at all different from the Saracen blades that have decapitated journalists or the grooming gangs that have raped young girls. And yet, even though journalists have been beheaded and our most vulnerable countrymen tortured, we silence ourselves. We reinterpret the First Amendment into nonexistence. We decide that language, upon which all thought relies, is truly to blame. We gladly castrate ourselves, so that we can become eunuchs to our enemies' cause, rather than offend the sensibilities of those who claim to be offended. How do we explain to our beneficiaries why we submitted to evil, turned away from those who threaten all we hold dear, and instead disciplined ourselves?
Maybe now is the time when we decide, for the benefit of all who come after us, that we will no longer abide the lies from our government or the assurances from unelected bureaucrats who claim that everything will be fine if only we cede them more power. Maybe this is the moment when we at last realize that many of our friends have been our enemies and many of those who claim to speak for us have been slowly destroying our souls. Because there really is no greater threat to human freedom than an emaciated human spirit. That is what our leaders have been accomplishing for so many years with our tacit approval. We have allowed them to disrespect our liberty because we have had such disregard for our own moral worth and purpose.
Maybe now is the time when we remind our family and neighbors that truth and virtue are vital to a free people, and though we will inevitably come up wanting, it is our constant aspiration to both that will keep us prosperous and free. Maybe now is the time when we realize that laws against speech are antithetical to true liberty, and those who would use such laws against us are not our friends but our enslavers. Maybe now is the moment, before the age of freedom disappears, when enough of us refuse our new chains and burst forth with a pronouncement to the world that rebellion to tyranny truly is obedience to God, that our silencers will be fought, that Marxist-socialism will at long last be destroyed, and that we are just as willing as those brave generations in the past to lose our lives for the privilege of protecting freedom for the generations sure to come.
How to explain this age to those who inherit it from us? Perhaps it will be remembered as the pivotal moment in human history when men and women of character and strength and great perseverance set down a marker for human freedom in stone and cemented it so deeply in the Earth's crust that it stands as testament for all history to come. Perhaps this is the age by which all others will be defined and judged. Perhaps.
