Political propriety or timidity?

Leftists have made much this past week of the supposed vandalism and threats made in the wake of the traitorous health care law passage. Most well known conservatives have decried any such acts, or even the thoughts of such acts.  They have made the collective point that violence is never an appropriate response and should always be shunned.  Now, I am certainly not advocating any maliciousphysical actions or verbal.  Rather, I am merely taking issue with the logic my fellow conservatives use when decrying all use of violence, at all times, in all places.

This past week marked the 235th anniversary of a speech by Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry, the most famous line of which is “Give me liberty, or give me death!”  The entire purpose of his monologue was to entreat the listeners to take up arms.  Would those who say that violence is never an acceptable response to the loss of freedom condemn Mr. Henry?  I dare say that would be silent in his regard as history has shown that warfare, in its variety of forms, was a necessary response to the indignities he and his contemporaries suffered.   Why then, do my contemporaries so quickly renounce the natural end of a political irresolution that places a bounty on the very lifeblood of the human soul: freedom?

The past has shown, time, time and time again that governments are predisposed to ever increasing in size, and, as Thomas Jefferson noted, “as government grows, liberty decreases.” When words fail to stave off the ever encroaching tentacles of liberal bureaucracy, what recourse is there?  I ask this as a sincere question.  Violence must always be the last recourse, lest any new government be born of anarchy and fratricide.  Those who have said they would never resort to physical confrontation would seem to have already answered it for themselves.  Such statements give tacit acquiescence to the opposition.  For them, liberty gained or preserved in such a way is to expensive as it might come at the cost of their temporal skin.  To them, I offer the words of Samuel Adams; “If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Robert Heinlein, a favorite author of mine, also broached this topic directly.  I will leave you with his poinient fictional dialog between a civics teacher and a student who approached him with the statement “violence never solves anything.”

“But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned. One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”

“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?

They had tangled before — since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”

“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

Just Total War (part one of three)

The notion of war is as old as mankind, itself.  The first fistfight, never mind the first murder, was nothing more than warfare at the smallest level: a single man against a single man.  The desire for conquest leading to conflict is part and parcel of our fallen world.  Therefore, it is, occasionally, entirely appropriate to engage in warfare, and concurrently, we are compelled to discover the proper circumstances and limits to that destruction.

Liberals would like to simply ignore the reality of war and its horrors, but adults don’t have the option of closing our eyes and plugging our ears.  I am sure that Augustine of Hippo, for instance, was very discontented to contemplatSt. Augustine of Hippoe the idea of organized mass violence, but it is necessary because it is a state in which man constantly finds himself. 

In his analysis, Augustine attempted to perform a Biblical analysis on the subject, thereby making concise and coherent rules on the propriety of engaging in warfare: the “Just War” (or Jus Bellum) theory.  [insert left justified: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Augustine_of_Hippo.jpg ]

“Just War” has many aspects to it, both in determining when to go to war, how to fight it, and when to stop.  Most of his conclusions are seemingly self-evident to a civil society, i.e., war is a last option (but still an option), it should be fought only to correct a wrong, not to create one, don’t fight past the point of victory, et cetra.  However, a fine analysis shows, I believe, a far broader permissibility, nay, requirement to war than a casual viewer might think.               

This leads me to another philosopher on war: Carl von Clausewitz.  Von Clausewitz was a military strategist in the Prussian, then Russian armies.  Like Augustine, his tenure of service required great thought on [insert right justified:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Clausewitz.jpg ]why, when, and how war should be conducted.  However, von Clausewitz was far more direct in his writings.  To wit: war is a tool used to bend another nations will to your own, and that the bloodier and more destructive the war is, the shorter it will be, actually saving lives in the aggregate.

Most find von Clausewitz and Augustine miles apart in their approach and application, but I do not.  I find that Clausewitz’s view fulfills the requirements of Christian charity that Jus Bellum theory attempts to employ, and will show how in the next installment, and will then show how it is a necessity to follow “Total War” principles in all our conflicts, especially our current troubles with the Muslims.

Suck it up Crybaby

Calhoun’s Ghost

The Emancipation of Education

  As President Reagan so eloquently said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” 

 This sentiment typifies the precious nature of instructing our young and forms the basis of my utter contempt for the very idea of public education prior to adulthood.

                                                                     

At the heart of education is indoctrination.  Now, this is not inherently a negative thing.  Rather, it is a simple recognition of reality.  The propriety of that indoctrination is wholly informed by who is doing the indoctrinating.  When a parent does it, it is almost universally for the moral betterment of their child.  Even when the ideas the parent are trying to inculcate in their offspring are dubious, the intent is for their good.  Government, however, has no such beneficent moral structure in mind.  Government is an amorphous and amoral entity whose inclination, as history has taught, is to increase its size and employ policies toward that end.  In terms of education, that means instituting curriculums that, instead of providing knowledge so an individual may be self-reliant, subjugates the mind by denouncing individual achievement and notions of objective truth.   Even ex-KGB officials now readily confirm that their infiltration and manipulation of education was a key strategy in their desired conquest of the West. The KGB and the brain washing of the West    UTube

In practical application, I believe there should be virtually no public schooling of the young.  That responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the parents to either take care of directly through home schooling or through the market place via private schools.  The latter would instill competition among educators where many different facilities offering a variety of educational methods would vie for the parents’ dollars.  Only those children who’s education has been virtually completely abdicated by their parents should be placed in a publicly run infrastructure.

 

Commiserate to this must be, of course, must be a new understanding of how schools are funded.  If the vast majorities are to be educated privately, the right of parents to keep their money to pay for this must be recognized.  I am not advocating for school vouchers, though that is a huge step in the right direction.  Rather, the money should not leave their hands in the first instance.  All vouchers would do is create unnecessary bureaucratic overhead and waste money.  The only government involvement should be to insure that children are indeed receiving some type of education and are acquiring skills in reading, math and science due to the inherent national security interests that the next generation be well versed in those subjects.  The only people taxed for primary education are those parents whose children, through their dereliction, must be placed in public schools.  The freeing of capitol would remove the shackles from around the feet of loving parents and provide for an engine of ingenuity and societal advancement unseen in human history.

Suck it up Crybaby

Calhoun’s Ghost