Category: Our Crisis of Cultural Confidence (Page 5 of 15)

Indeed we should, as I’ve said before.

A stirring article by Nicole Gelinas in the New York Post, courtesy of Instapundit.

Fourteen years later, I have nothing fundamentally new to add.

The horror of that day has long since been eclipsed in my mind by the consequent exposure of our own weakness, and our determined unwillingness to squarely confront the enemy that brought such horror to us, in the years since. Our appetite for self-deception and willfully naïve thinking far exceeds anything I’d have imagined. Our foundational institutions, from academia to journalism to entertainment and the arts to government and even our military, have been extensively compromised beyond likely repair by determined ideological termites whose goal of an ever-weaker America is now at hand. The realities of the day did not shake their belief systems, as I had once supposed an attack on our nation would. Nor has the steady litany of attacks in the years since — from London, to Madrid, to Beslan, to Bali, to Mumbai, to Kenya, to Paris, to Moscow, to the Fort Hood shooter, to the Beltway Snipers … the list goes on and on. Nor has the rise of ISIS, with all its attendant barbarity plainly on display for the whole world to see. ISIS operates with free reign because we — The United States in particular, and the West in general — lack the resolve and moral conviction to do anything substantial to stop them. We are now led by people deluded enough to believe that weakness is somehow strength, and that our implacable and barbaric enemies can be persuaded by olive branches and “Coexist” bumper-sticker platitudes. These are people who led us to abandon all gains in Iraq, with our intentions and timetable so clearly advertised that we might as well have hung out a “This territory up for grabs” sign. ISIS is expanding its reach virtually unchecked, and is successfully recruiting from Western populations, for God’s sake — because unlike us, they actually believe in themselves and what they are doing.

Soon, Iran — whose political and spiritual leaders have been unambiguous about their intentions toward Israel, the United States, and the West — will have nukes. They’ll have them because, gullible fools that we’ve become, we’ve effectively surrendered on that front too.

I’ve pleaded. I’ve striven to educate. As have many others, with much greater dedication and skill. At this point, those who can be awakened have been. Those who do not wish to see, won’t.

I’m weary of seeing things I don’t want to see, that few others are willing to see and acknowledge. I have no patience to stand by and watch a slow cultural suicide, nor do I especially want to spend years studying the mechanics of self-inflicted civilizational decline when there are far higher aspirations for this civilization of ours to reach. I have zero respect or patience for PC scolds and their demonstrably flawed multicultural platitudes, whose net effect ends up somewhere between naïve ignorance and willful sabotage. We, who have managed to welcome and happily “Coexist” with people of just about every other belief system in the world, have encountered an enemy that has been pretty clear about its lack of interest in “Coexist”-ing with us, and with our cultural foundations now compromised due to the willful actions of some among us, we are under-equipped to confront that reality and deal with it. We’re in grave danger of losing everything that matters, not because a handful of Jihadist scumbags attacked us on 9/11/2001, but because far too many among us are willing and eager to choose cultural surrender as an alternative to fighting and decisively defeating those rotten bastards.

It seems maybe, remotely possible that in the final, twilight years of this once great Civilization of ours, the lunatics who labored to institute such weakness might, as they finally start to notice things crumbling around them, look back and wonder whether they’d perhaps made a mistake or two — long, long after it’s far too late to do anything to turn the tide. I’m not holding my breath.

We’re a culture in serious need of a reboot, and I’ve turned my efforts to finding a way for that to happen — for some remnant of our indomitable spirit to have a chance to thrive again unhindered. Because in the end, mere physical survival and avoiding playing a part in the fulfillment of a Jihadi death wish for another day isn’t what it’s about. It’s the long-term survival of the essence of who we are that matters. And how that goes … is entirely up to us.

My Previous Years’ 9/11 Posts

2014: 9/11, Thirteen Years On

2013: 9/11, Twelve Years On

2012: 9/11, Eleven Years On

2011: A Plea, Ten Years After: Please, Open Your Eyes ~ Ten Years Later: 9/11 Links

2010: 9/11: Two Songs

2009: Tomorrow is 9/11 ~ My Experience of September 11, 2001 ~ 9/11 Quotes

2008: 9/11, Seven Years On ~ 9/11, Seven Years On, Part 2 ~ 102 Minutes that Changed America

2007: 9/11, Six Years On

2006: Soon, Time Again to Reflect ~ 9/11 Observances ~ 9/11 Observances, Part 2

2005: I Remember

2004: Remembering and Rebuilding (republished here September 12th, 2014)

It’s been ten years since I published my first post here, and in retrospect, I’m very glad I followed that impulse to start writing and publishing. Whether or not this project has been of value to others (I certainly hope it has, to at least a few), it has definitely been of great value to me — as a place to methodically sort out my thinking, respond to things that have troubled my ever-restless mind, and assemble a vision for something better to work toward. However infrequent my writing and posting has been, the cumulative result is a record of my thinking that I’m glad to have, and the process of producing it has helped me to better understand myself and get my bearings, in ways that continue to profoundly shape my life.

I set this blog up in part to express my gratitude for a culture that I love dearly, and am grateful to have been a part of — one that I feel we should be celebrating, even as others labor earnestly to weaken it and tear it down. It has been important to me to counteract the misguided “counter-culture” of bitter, vindictive social criticism that has as its aim to subvert, undermine, and dismantle the culture of liberty I have loved dearly all my life. Moreover, it is important to me to help correct the misconceptions that needlessly place people in the service of such destructive ideas and attitudes, to their and our detriment. I have endeavored to do some measure of that here.

I have also attempted to warn others about the threats we face — from within and without. I don’t know whether I have succeeded in changing any minds. The lure of wishful thinking and self-deceptive platitudes seems to be far stronger than I’d imagined. I now expect there are many people who I’ll simply never be able to reach. Nonetheless, I stubbornly persist.

If there is one resounding conclusion that I have reached and keep coming back to lately, it’s that we’re a Frontier culture in desperate need of a way out — of a new place to escape to. It’s become my mission to find that way out, and chart a practical means by which we can achieve it. This, above all else, is the project I expect to devote much of my energy to for the foreseeable future.

My profound thanks to those who’ve stopped by to read now and then, and thus have joined me for some part of this journey. I appreciate your company, and hope you’ll be with me on the roads yet to come. Amid reasons for despair, I find hope that we shall go on.

This, which I ran across on Twitter the other day, is a profound insight, that has more than earned a permalinked spot on my Quotes page. I have witnessed its demonstration in no uncertain terms, watching absurd nonsense that we failed to reject clearly enough, and perhaps laughed off with the assumption that it would simply go away, instead become set in stone as a foregone cultural assumption. The assertion that someone else’s hurt feelings or fragile sensibilities should trump your right to speak freely and honestly. The notion of a “right” to “free” healthcare, of a “fair share” of what another has labored to earn. The exactly inverted idea that capitalism enslaves but the state somehow liberates. “Progressive” used as a casual synonym for actual, desirable progress. All of it nonsense that must be stridently fought, and all of it now what you and I are naturally assumed to believe.

This is an apt reminder of the price we will pay in the future for ignoring such absurdities now, for not taking them seriously enough to mount a decisive counter-offensive:

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other — until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.

— Ayn Rand ∞

My friends, it’s time for a new project — one that can no longer wait for me to get around to it.

I’ve journeyed through a lot of reflection in the years since I started to become aware of the decay afflicting our essential foundations, self-perception, and cultural confidence. I’ve worked through much of my thinking here and in my Twitter stream. It’s included no small amount of despair at the sometimes hopeless-seeming state of things — despair that I can only say has been made less lonely at least, thanks to the world-changing communications revolution we are living through and may in some ways only dimly appreciate. A burden shared is lightened, and all that. But in the past year or so, something very crucial has changed in my outlook. I’ve turned a corner, and been granted a new view of things, a new and more positive perspective. It’s not that I see the stakes as having lessened — for what’s at stake is truly nothing less than everything that matters most in this precious, hard-won Civilization we are so lucky to call home. Indeed, the stakes are as high as ever. The hour is late. The situation is dire. The outlook is grim. By God, it’s time to come out fighting! It’s game time, in the most important game you or I will ever be a part of.

I say that my outlook has become more positive, but it might not strike you as such. It has begun to seem entirely possible to me that the United States of America — this magnificent, precious outpost of Freedom that I have cherished all my life, that has stood through more than two centuries of history’s cruel challenges — may be on a one-way road to ruin by voluntary national suicide, with no real hope of a turnaround, and our closest friends and allies appear to be in no better shape.

Progressivism is a ratchet. The state’s dominion advances, the right to be left the hell alone is gradually diminished. Reversals of this natural tendency are rare and temporary, ultimately overwhelmed by the net vector toward more regulations and force and coercion, more meddling in our lives and purses. The Founders understood this, before the concept of Progressivism existed under its current banner. I’m only dimly catching up to the stark reality that I believe they saw all too clearly. Even when Liberty thrives, it is in constant danger from the more sinister aspects of man’s nature and aspirations — disguised, more often than not, behind the facade of a conveniently defined collective good.

I’ve lived most of my life believing strongly in our mission to help liberate people around the world who have not had the opportunity to know the blessings of liberty, and I still believe in that to great extent. Where there are people who truly yearn to be set free, such that they are willing to risk everything for it, I want to support them, in spirit and otherwise. But I have also come to see that there are large numbers of people in this world — far more than I had ever realized — who simply do not have a strong desire to be truly and meaningfully free, who in fact would rather like to discharge the various burdens that go with such freedom. There are many, many people who will gladly line up and ask the state to relieve them of their load of worry and insecurity about themselves and their futures, and either don’t feel diminished or don’t mind feeling diminished by the result. You and I (if I may presume), with our zeal for untrammeled Freedom and a culture that sings its praises from the rooftops, are the odd ones out, and will quite possibly never make sense to these others. We may also, in this time and place, be outnumbered.

Friends, I’m an optimist in my heart of hearts, and I don’t want to be one to declare that there is no hope, that the fight is lost and it’s time to abandon ship. This is a fight worth fighting. And in some sense it’s positively absurd that we should even have to fight it here of all places — that we should be expected to cede ground to a political belief system whose proponents like to point out that it exists just about everywhere else. The battle cry of “Diversity!” falls silent remarkably quickly, when it comes to allowing this rare and precious outpost of something different from the rest of the forsaken world to remain unique and different. Suddenly, it’s “why can’t we be more like everyone else?”. Zzzz… Are you kidding me? If I wanted that, I’d have emigrated, instead of choosing to make this land devoted to Freedom and living as you damn well please my home.

Make no mistake: It grieves me to see this. It’s a sad, pathetic end for a nation built by people bolder and braver than ourselves. But such are the mechanics of civilizational decline, it seems. Places meet their end. Ideas seek new frontiers and live on.

So let’s just suppose that everything we hold dear is collapsing in this place and time, and there’s next to nothing we can do that will stop it. What then? And how, amid all of this, can I possibly be feeling optimistic again? Have I completely lost it?

I’ve explored the long-term consequences of this conclusion before: in “Frontiers” (2009), and on The No Fear Pioneer. We’re left with a fundamentally difficult dilemma: What do we do when it’s time to go elsewhere and start the experiment over, but there is nowhere else to go on this Earth? Well, the only answer you come up with is damn near science fiction that doesn’t seem of much help to you, me, or even the next generation, even at the current, somewhat reinvigorated pace of our space ambitions. The obstacles to living, let alone thriving, elsewhere are huge and daunting — possibly far greater than our imaginations are capable of grasping. Success is a long way from today. But it’s coming. It’s our last and only resort. And while we therefore work toward its eventual fulfillment, we also have work to do here, striving for any short-term escape or mitigation of circumstances we can devise.

What I aim to do in this series is share everything I’ve managed to learn or figure out about The Way Out. I aim to help those who share my preferences to find their bearings and start on a course that will save them, that will save all of us.

I’ve titled this series “The Way Out” despite the realization that there is no single answer, but rather a myriad of possibilities. Each of us must ultimately chart his own course, based on his own unique circumstances and wishes. “The Way Out” is all of us, in aggregate, making long-term preparations for our kind to head toward the next place, and doing whatever can be done in the meantime to salvage this one. Each individual route is not contingent on the rest. We will each find our way through trial and error, by getting up every last time and using what we’ve learned to try again. When we find something that works, and that may work for others, we’ll share the benefit of our experience. Having a repeatable process for something is far more valuable than a few end results, and in this manner we may be able to cobble together something resembling one. The hope is that through this approach, we will all find our way to a better place. At the same time, however, you must know in your heart of hearts that your escape is also a uniquely personal matter, and cannot be allowed to be contingent on the success of any broader effort that may fail. It is sacrosanct, it will need to be the focus of your calmly determined efforts for quite some time, and, if you are anything like me, it is not negotiable. We will seek to ally our endeavors when we can. We will walk alone when we must.

Years ago, Bill Whittle (who I owe a tremendous debt of thanks that I will never be able to adequately repay, for all that he’s done through his superb work to save me from giving up in despair) floated the idea of “Ejectia” — an online community where people like us would be able to share our expertise and build a library of practical knowledge necessary to keep this free Civilization up and running. As fans of Bill’s writing, I and many other Eject! Eject! Eject! readers got very excited about the possibility, then disappointed when it became clear that building Ejectia was far more work than Bill and his volunteer elves could handle and wasn’t going to come to fruition, before I finally realized that it wasn’t necessary. What we wanted already exists in some form. It’s called The Internet. It’s social media. Opportunities to meet and connect across vast distances, and the aggregate knowledge of mankind available to anyone virtually for free, already out there and instantly accessible. And I suspect that Bill has reached much the same conclusion — because the future he articulated in “A New Beginning” does not hinge on any single effort. Rather, it is a matter of decentralized, voluntary initiative in diverse and numerous laboratories of innovation — yours, mine, and others.

Don’t get me wrong: There is value in specialized, shared-interest sites around which to network. BillWhittle.com and Ricochet.com, which I greatly enjoy despite finding almost no time to participate, come to mind. But let’s not forget to also leverage already-available general solutions. Twitter, for example, has been a huge boon in enabling me to meet and get to know others with kindred ideas, in ways that occasional blogging never managed to facilitate. We’re going to need to harness tools of this kind, to help us find our way.

I’ve argued against the idea that there is any single unique Way Out, but there is at least one unifying assertion that I do feel confident making: Running is not a strategy. A man who takes action purely in response to what he’s been forced to run from has only half a plan. An effective strategy must be active, not merely reactive. Playing defense alone isn’t going to cut it.

So if we’re not merely heading away from something, what are we moving toward? Bill outlined a glimmer of an idea in “A New Beginning” — the best idea I have yet seen. It is a concept in need of practical, implementable mechanics, but it offers a strong premise from which to proceed. Out-innovating our sclerotic, unsustainable, Industrial Age government institutions with highly adaptive, dynamic, decentralized, voluntary alternatives is the way to go. It’s the only way a free society has ever been able to thrive. Working out the possible mechanics of that, and pursuing other promising ideas, will be the subject of my ongoing posts in this series.

Another assertion I’m going to make is that culture leads, and is in many ways the nexus of our predicament. Bill has stated this many times in recent years, and I think he’s right. Of all that has troubled me, the growth of an out-of-control federal government, and the ever-growing taxes and mandates by which it struggles to sustain its insatiable appetites, are actually not even at the top of my list. The most onerous burden of all is the pervasive notion that we’re supposed to want what’s happening, that it should somehow be considered desirable progress. I cannot account for the myopia of others in embracing such a view, but I know complete absurdity when I see it. Plainly, none of this should be happening if we were on the course we are meant to be on. Thus, The Way Out is, as much as anything, a matter of one’s perspective and attitude. It is a state of mind. It’s about not letting your thoughts, ambitions, determination, or sense of your own bearings get dragged down by the insanity that may well happen to surround you.

I am setting forth a project for us — one to pursue systematically and methodically. The course ahead is a steady, undaunted one. We’re not about to stand still. We’re not just digging in and holding the line. We’re not merely running away from something either. We’re going places — places where others will fear to tread. So stroll down to your engine room and start checking on all systems. Your colleagues in this beautiful endeavor are going to need your contributions. They’re going to need to see your running lights on the horizon off their starboard bow. What you do matters. Running aground is not an option.

If you hear music in this, you’ve been gifted with something extraordinary: that diamond-hard remnant core that Bill has spoken of so eloquently. Whatever you do, don’t let that rare and precious spark go out. It’s everything that matters.

At the center of all this, even amid a worrisome fog of gloom, is what I see as a cheerful and practical, pragmatic approach. I have found that the gloom is at its worst when you’re focused down on the small picture, on reacting piecemeal to the daily inundation of “I can’t believe this is happening” stuff that you’re meant to be overwhelmed and incapacitated by. For all that blogs, Twitter, and the 24/7 news cycle have given me in terms of knowledge, they also excel at cultivating this toxic, bogged-down perspective. The big picture is much brighter than that, and hinges on irrepressible human potential and determination that our adversaries are incapable of suppressing with their petty narcissistic gloom. Our future is ours, and it’s wide open.

What’s in my heart is a combination of calm, methodical determination, and lightness at knowing and joyously and gratefully embracing what I have come to believe my is life’s greatest purpose. It is a gift to have to face this challenge, to get to be a part of the rebirth, the renaissance, of something new and beautiful and worthy of our exertions, however long it may take. We’re working toward building a place where the life of one’s own will again prevail unencumbered, and will have its due chance to thrive and be celebrated for the next long spell until, despite our best efforts, Civilization may again, perhaps inevitably, succumb to rust, and once more it will be time for those who choose to keep its foundational ideas alive to pack up and move on to the next frontier.

A Way Out is possible. I’m devoting my life to finding it and helping others to do the same. This, right here, is my declaration of intent.

I can’t promise answers, but I will do my best to log observations, explain my own path and discoveries, and link to useful insights and resources that I find.

Keep an eye on this series, and you’ll see the outline of my vapor trail. I’ll watch the skies for yours.

Godspeed, my friends. Take heart. Stay focused. The best is yet to come.

On Tuesday, my Twitter feed was abuzz with people applauding Egypt’s president al-Sisi for calling on the Islamic world to take a good long look at itself and clean house. On Wednesday, a brutal attack by Jihadist scumbags who murdered twelve at the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo proved that they didn’t get the memo. Today: hostage standoffs where police cornered the bastards and sent them to their virgins, and it looks as if at least four hostages were killed in the process. Sadly, as terrible as such events are, they are also no longer surprising. It’s what we’ve learned to expect.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s WSJ editorial, “How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack”, struck me as spot-on and is not to be missed:

After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.

This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an “un-Islamic” attack by a bunch of thugs—the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked.

The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from such a grisly episode, it is that what webelieve about Islam truly doesn’t matter. This type of violence, jihad, is what they, the Islamists, believe.

and this:

Those responsible for the slaughter in Paris, just like the man who killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004, are seeking to impose terror. And every time we give in to their vision of justified religious violence, we are giving them exactly what they want.

…

How we respond to this attack is of great consequence. If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.

This would be a departure for the West, which too often has responded to jihadist violence with appeasement. We appease the Muslim heads of government who lobby us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. They appeal and we oblige. We appease leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies. They ask us not to link acts of violence to the religion of Islam because they tell us that theirs is a religion of peace, and we oblige.

What do we get in return? Kalashnikovs in the heart of Paris. The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.

There can only be one answer to this hideous act of jihad against the staff of Charlie Hebdo. It is the obligation of the Western media and Western leaders, religious and lay, to protect the most basic rights of freedom of expression, whether in satire on any other form. The West must not appease, it must not be silenced. We must send a united message to the terrorists: Your violence cannot destroy our soul.

Claire Berlinski, who happened upon the scene of the shooting, wrote an impassioned response:

The assailants are as yet at liberty. I hope they’ll be dead by the time you read this. But if not: You want me too? Come get me. Because nothing short of killing me — and many more of my kind — will ever shut us up.

And if you don’t believe that now, you’ll believe it very soon. Because there are more of us willing to die for that freedom than those of you eager to take it from us. And soon you will find out that those of us willing to die for that freedom are also much better at killing than you.

So come and get me. Je suis Charlie.

On the other hand, there’s this: Ostracized by Cowardly West, Charlie Hebdo Faced the Islamists Alone. The point, I fear, is tragically valid: For all the genuinely well-intentioned chorus of “Je suis Charlie“ today, no one seemed to be saying it when it would have mattered most: before the staff of Charlie Hebdo were murdered.

My cousin wrote gloomily from Marseille:

Our democracy is also slipping away as you have seen. The crazy Islamists are here and everywhere very numerous. They were accomodated, nourished, and now they kill us.

Soon Arabs will be more numerous than native French and there will be a risk of civil war, or of a government of the extreme right that’s no better.

In this moment there is a severe malaise in France, one senses the coming catastrophe but does not dare to believe in it.

JustOneMinute: We’re all forked.

Antonio Martinez, on the widely-seen video of the Jihadists shooting a police officer who lay prone on the sidewalk outside the Charlie Hebdo offices:

Imagine if the free citizen of France who shot this video from the balcony had an AR-15 instead of an iPhone.

I’m at a loss for what else to add at the moment. For my part, I’d hoped we’d have the chance to do far worse than kill the scumbag perpetrators. I’d like us to have had the chance to hurt their delicate feelings some more — to make them feel bad about, and give some further thought to, the primitive, backward worldview they champion.

I feel fresh out of patience. I’ve begged and pleaded about this stuff before. If we haven’t seen enough by now to wake us up from our slumber of self-deception and force us to confront the reality of the enemy we’re up against, I don’t dare to imagine what more it will take…