What Will It Take?

“The news is all bad, but it’s good for a laugh.” – Tom Paxton, “Jimmy Newman”

How strange, to be quoting an old communist peacenik at the opening of a column he’d surely despise! But then again, the “W” in my name – the middle initial, for those too crippled by arthritis or gout to run their thumbs along the words as they read – is generally taken to stand for weird. I suppose I’ve earned the reputation.

There’s no point to following “the news” any longer. “The news” is in your backyard. At least, it had better be...and you had better be alert to it.

The day before Election Day, I wrote and posted this:

A tactic that succeeds will be repeated, intensified, and emulated.

Violence is increasing because it gets the violent ones what they want. Remember what I said in large font at the outset: A tactic that succeeds will be repeated, intensified, and emulated. Violence is apparently working for those who employ it. That is, its practitioners’ gains outweigh its costs and risks.

Violence didn’t always succeed. Sixty years ago, it was common for an assault that took place before onlookers to be answered by counter-violence and the placement of the attacker in a jail cell: not always, but often enough, and with consequences severe enough, to hold occasions of violence to a socially endurable level. For various reasons that is no longer the case, while the prospective gains from violence remain what they were.

Violence works whenever it’s not met by a swift defense and appropriate retribution. It worked for Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s Brown Shirts. The lesson is not lost on those who mastermind American politics.

I shan’t minimize the immense significance of what occurred on November 8, 2016. It might have indicated a mass awakening to the danger the Republic faced. But we still face that danger. Our nation’s internal enemies have merely resorted to more violent tactics...and those tactics are working.

Today at Free North Carolina, we have this:

Americans agree with President Donald Trump's defense of Confederate monuments, and few think getting rid of the statues will lessen racial tensions, a new poll shows. The Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday found 50 percent of registered voters agree with Trump's tweet it is "sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments."

As this is from Brock Townsend, in whom my trust is unbounded and for whom I have limitless admiration, I’m sure it’s absolutely correct. I didn’t even bother to check the links. Feel free to do so if you’re more inclined to be skeptical.

No, my problem is with the significance of the findings. A majority of those surveyed are on the president’s side of this contretemps. Perhaps the majority is even larger than the survey suggests. (Is Richard Dawson still around? Perhaps appropriately large cash prizes would help us to find out.) Yet the monuments continue to be destroyed – in some cases, by municipal or state governments. Why?

It’s actually quite simple:

continue reading: http://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/2017/08/what-will-it-take.html