Dear Readers (all five of them),
Where to begin?
Of late, some mention has been on this so-called “internet publication” about the destruction of public statues by barbarian idiot children. Let me make this very fucking clear. To allow THE MOB to rip down a single statue, whether it be of total prick or not, is simply beneath contempt. It is an entirely separate question from whether the statue should be removed and placed elsewhere – perhaps into a museum, or storage, or wherever else – and should, in all cases, be answered with a resounding NO by any rational mind.
This wickedness must be opposed BY FORCE. There is no moral equivocation that can be made. Grow some goddamn balls and enforce the law. It is YOUR DUTY as elected magistrates to prevent any alteration to any public statue, flag, memorial, etc without lawful democratic procedure. It is not the statue you are defending. It is no less than the RULE OF LAW itself.
Remember, while today THE MOB makes demands to which you are sympathetic, tomorrow they may make demands to which you are not sympathetic, and what then? The impulse to destroy admits of no boundary. Anyone vaguely acquainted with the darkness of the human heart would surely agree. Revolutionary fervor feeds on itself and expands into vertiginous mayhem.
Already there is rumor that Boston will take down a statue of Abraham Lincoln – the man who drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, mind you – because it is racist (apparently). In Great Britain, they have vandalized a statue of Winston Churchill because it is racist (apparently). They are clamoring for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi (also racist). The heads of the various Columbi across the land have been rolling (all racist). They tore down a statue of Jefferson – Thomas goddamn Jefferson – in Oregon.
And would you like to know something? Probably all these men were racist by our modern standards. And would you like to know something else? SUCK MY DICK.
I have nothing left to say to you creeps anymore. This shit-show makes the Salem Witch Trials look like the pinnacle of sanity.
So, allow me to reiterate. To all you governors, mayors, provosts, and superintendents – to all you limp-wristed, lily-livered, lesser sons of greater men, the heirs of a nation your hands could never have built and your minds could never have conceived – look deep inside your souls, dredge up a smidgen of moral courage, and DO YOUR JOB.
And that brings me to my next point. Why thus? Why any of thus? Why now and why with such astonishing rapidity?
Here is my belief. What we are witnessing in our cities and in our streets, what is regularly displayed from our elected officials, media personalities, and business leaders is nothing less than a catastrophic failure of moral education. It is a problem decades in the making, and as a really real history teacher (with a really real history degree) I observed this first-hand.
What passes in our schools as virtue is merely a mushy sort of “niceness”. Just be “nice” to be people. That is all that is required to live an ethical life, some say. But niceness is not a virtue. It is better to think of niceness as a manner, a style, a way of doing things. One can be virtuous in a nice or not-a-nice way, but what is of importance is always virtue. Think about it. There is a “nice” way to lie and a “coarse” way of telling the truth. But which of the two is right and which is wrong?
Sometimes the right thing to do is clearly not “nice”. Sometimes the right thing to do is hard and severe. Standing up to a bully often involves an awful lot of not-very-niceness. But it is the right and proper thing. Courage, honesty, fortitude, temperance. These are virtues. And how they are woefully lacking by anyone in places of authority or power these days. We are a nation run by cowards, under assault by lunatics.
Here is another, perhaps more timely illustration.
Racism is wrong opinion. Dishonesty is wrong conduct. There is a difference between those two things. Insofar as opinion matters at all, it matters in the degree to which it influences our actions. A racist worldview may (or may not) influence a person to commit evil, but spreading falsehoods – even in an endeavor to oppose disreputable opinion (such as racism) – is always and in-itself evil.
It is fucking unbelievable that I must even explain these things, yet here we are. A disturbingly high number of people can no longer recognize right from wrong. They confuse good intentions with right conduct, and their self-flattery and assurances of their own moral standing allow them to commit heinous and duplicitous acts – from attempting to “cancel” whomever (for whatever), to deceiving the public, to smashing windows, to torching business, to debasing themselves in wretched displays of self-flagellation.
I am beyond disgusted. I am beyond outraged. Understand, by God, this witless destruction is merely one expression of the sinister forces sowing havoc in our midst. There is a nakedly visible desire to erase and reformulate all knowledge according to the schemes of a few. The statue wrecking is a part of it, the rewriting of history (a la 1619 Project) is another, the suppression of incorrect books and films is yet one more.
Our understanding of the present depends in no small part upon a basic understanding of the past. To the Woke Authoritarians, and to the progressive minds who midwifed them, the rich complexity of history acts like a stubborn anchor upon their grand designs. So much the better that it is compressed into incoherent simplicity and adorned with emotional appeals. Almost everything that has ever happened, so they claim, is due to an underlying race struggle, in much the same way Marx reduced the entirety of history to an endless class struggle.
This is false and incredibly dangerous.
As if to perfectly encapsulate these concerns, I have just been apprised of a new arrival into the English language. It is called Anti-Stemitism, and in case you are unaware, this term describes the bewildering desire to reconstitute or outright cancel the STEM fields of study, otherwise known as the hard sciences. Why? Because they are racist, of course. 2+2=4? Racist. The Pythagorean Theorem? Racist. Such axioms and theories were cooked-up by old white men – didn’t you know? – and therefore their content is “problematic”.
To such activists, I say GO TO HELL. You have no right to rob future generations of the accumulated knowledge of man. Anyone excusing or forgiving this behavior has lost the moral high ground. They have been swept into the sewer. It is time we reminded them of this fact. Do not let these maniacs drag down well-meaning but otherwise weak and morally confused people. Stand up to them. Oppose them. Find whatever words you think may put a dent in their moral certainty.
Ask yourself this question: Is keeping your job worth losing your country? We, who tread amidst the Woke bubble, must seek to burst it. Perhaps we will fail miserably. Perhaps the time for words has passed. But we must try. Never forget, you have right on your side. Do not hesitate to express – clearly and manfully – your revulsion at this cultural and intellectual vandalism. Plant the seeds of doubt where you can, if you can. And may God go with you.
Whatever else we do, we must start standing athwart the forces of chaos. It’s time to GET MAD you sons-of-bitches. Or what passed for yesterday’s “normal life” will remain forever a distant and irretrievable dream.
Sincerely,
James O’Flannery
P.S. I tried but cannot seem to finish my Mongol Hordes lecture. My blood is up these days. Maybe next week.
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