Several people have sent me links to an article by Rod Dreher on the narrowing of acceptable public opinion, and the suffocating and isolating effect it has on speech and social interaction. When we have an opinion that might run afoul of Cathedral orthodoxy (and there are fewer and fewer opinions one might have nowadays that don’t), and we aren’t sure that we are in safe company (which is to say, you are speaking to anyone but trusted friends), we are increasingly afraid, for fear of serious consequences, to say anything at all.
This is nothing new in the world; indeed it is all too familiar. It is characteristic of two kinds of societies: totalitarian regimes that must suppress political dissent; and nations, fractured by ethnic, religious, or political tensions, that live under the threat of civil war. (Often it is these very tensions that lead to totalitarianism; again and again we have seen murderous intra-national antipathies tamped down only by ruthless tyranny.)
That is what’s happening now all over the West. Europe and Canada, who are aggressively criminalizing dissent, are farther down this road than we are; in the U.S. the penalties for heresy are still, for now, limited to boycotts, media hate-frenzies, loss of employment, and social expulsion. That it has come to this, however, is a clear and disturbing sign that we are moving either toward ever-deepening totalitarianism, or toward civil war.
Perhaps it isn’t too late, though, at least here in America, to avoid both tines of that fork.
In his article, Mr. Dreher gives us the terrifying example of David Hogg, the child-monster that our media and cultural overlords have inflated to grotesque proportions, and who wields, for the moment, intimidating power. Mr. Dreher likens him to Anthony Fremont, the godlike, telepathic mutant child in Jerome Bixby’s horror classic “It’s A Good Life” who terrorizes a helpless village with capricious and irresistible violence.
The comparison is apt: in both cases we have terrible power in the hands of a morally and intellectually undeveloped mind. But there’s a difference too, and a critically important one: unlike Anthony Fremont, neither David Hogg, nor his handlers, have any intrinsic power. It is still only our fear, for now, that gives it to them.
If we want to live free again, it may still be possible to win this war without bloodshed. We have immensely powerful weapons ready to hand, if we have the wisdom to use them. They are simple, available to all, and they can be utterly irresistible when deployed with courage and resolve.
What are they? One is Faith. Another is Laughter.
But the greatest of them all is Truth.
8 Comments
Paul Graham’s essay, “What You Cannot Say” is a good read:
What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They’re just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they’re much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
He also proposes the Conformist Test:
Let’s start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?
If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think what you’re told.
A power is the ability to produce an effect, no? By that measure Hogg and his handlers definitely have power.
Also, who is afraid of David Hogg? I’m not. No one is. What people are afraid of is civil war. They know that any real resistance to the Left is going to involve civil war. Most people on the right, if faced with the choice of civil war and total submission to the left would choose the latter.
Here’s the kicker: most on the right would choose submission to the left over civil war *even if victory in that war were guaranteed*.
“What people are afraid of is civil war”. We are engaged in that right now. The shooting and killing part is not the beginning, it is the beginning of the end of civil war. Ask yourself just exactly who or what among all those prepaid, astro-turfed, not yet confronted sign wavers is going to arm up and stand their ground as willing cannon fodder on behalf of powerful people they will never see. Who will be willingly used by famous activists who shout and urge the ignorant masses onward while the famous activist is whisked away by their own security.
Again, what stops the left will be casualties and those casualties are almost invariably delivered by some branch of law enforcement. There are always a few “Fire Eaters”…to use a term from the American Civil War, who push too far and down they go. Dead bodies underfoot while people are running from the streets to safety makes terrifying video. Let the victory go to law enforcement and the rule of law.
@ Whitewall
Law enforcement will be told to stand down so long as that unrest isn’t disturbing the rich and powerful. I’m at the point where it seems likely that fomenting unrest against the middle class is a plot by the rich and powerful to hollow out the middle class. Creating a Brazilian-esque society cements a separate ruling class with little chance for social mobility. The rich and powerful actually like social unrest, just so long as it doesn’t affect them.
Whitewall you have much more faith in the tax eating law enforcement than I do. If anything they will turn their guns on us to protect “their” pension.
Heck just look at the corruption of the FBI.
Asher – most on the right would choose submission to the left over civil war *even if victory in that war were guaranteed*.
That’s true partly because there’s no consensus on the “right” about positive goals. It’s a good thing that people shy away even from contemplating violence if they don’t have a clear idea what they’d be fighting for.
“It’s a good thing that people shy away even from contemplating violence if they don’t have a clear idea what they’d be fighting for.”
Or for whom they would be fighting.
That’s true partly because there’s no consensus on the “right” about positive goals.
I believe this to be completely incorrect. The reason the right doesn’t want to engage in a winning civil war is that it would involve widespread eradication of the upper crust of the Left. We’re probably talking millions of people. I have had this conversation before, most of the right would rather submit to the Left over the prospect of having to kill millions of them.
It’s a good thing that people shy away even from contemplating violence if they don’t have a clear idea what they’d be fighting for.
If my thesis is correct, people understand the only real goal in fighting the left and are just too squeamish to contemplate it. My impression of most on the non Left is that their main goal is to be the last one eaten by the Leftist blob. The only real strategy for such a goal is to throw other non Leftists to the Left in order to survive another day.
I am not willing to fight the Left because the Left has the neat trick of sic’ing other non Leftists on me.