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January 17, 2010

Out Here Anything Goes

Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses,
Moaning like old men in the hill wind's blast,
The flying sky is dark with running horses,
And the night is full of the past.

(Masefield - Night On The Downland)

Maybe it's New England winter that has me in this mood. It happens, but usually not until late February, which is the most painful winter month. But maybe it's not winter at all.

This week, the despicable Chris Dodd said he was "sickened" by the outlook that Ted Kennedy's seat could go to Scott Brown. Dodd gagged on democracy, don't you see? Then Schumer said something just as vile about Brown, confirming that there is no hell molten enough to reward the evil phenomenon known as Chuck Schumer. These two rodents don't even scurry for the shadows anymore, they exhibit their wet snouts dripping with crumbs for all to see.

There are plenty of others like them. The school of chum feeders around Martha Coakley were just as detestable. Then Obama wiggled a deal with the unions to lighten their tax burden on Cadillac health plans - demonstrating his monarchical disposition and scorn for The People At Large. Next, ACORN and SEIU dispatched their flying monkeys to speer and stomp representative government in places here and there.

Everywhere, the wretched vendettas of liberalism against popular rule, and against decency itself, proved that the Lockean rule of law is being replaced by the Hobbesian rule of Man. To modern liberals, representative government is but one system among many to have their way. There's a moral in here somewhere, several morals, in fact. One that comes to mind is that an ideology which holds, as a first principle, that all values fluctuate, will eventually deform and fluctuate itself to anomie, brutality, madness, corruption and the motives of the beast. Rhett Butler, at the end, went in search of a world of manners and grace, "if it still exists!" Does it? I don't know. It used to.

The Enlightenment, as an epoch and as an attitude, made us what we were, and in some places still are. Five hundred years of struggle, of magic turned to science, of sacrifice, religious synthesis, of dreadful wars and peaceful compromise have pulled and pushed us bleeding to the place called Western Civilization, and its glittering summit in the reality and principles of America. This is where I'm supposed to say "we're not perfect"; if you think so, screw you.

All of the dead, all the nameless people who adapted themselves to the future; and surrendered bit by bit, their cherished but obsolete ideas - and their lives - for the unproveable conviction that their offerings would make a better world, are mocked by this generation of spineless "progressives". By their conduct, they've once again put human nature in the dock, with the old, once-settled trial about Who, Whom?, also known as Hammers and Nails, or Hammers and Anvils. Liberalism is arguing the case that "anything goes" in order to win; that the jury must find the ghastly compulsions of Human Nature guiltless, and its claims self-evident. This is the philosophy, if it rises to that level, of brutes and barbarians.

This is depressing, and alienating. I'm not alone in my disgust and revulsion with our rulers, their groveling factotums and menials, and the howling moral wilderness they've cultivated. The conservative alienation is superimposed on the phony, entirely fraudulent, infantile and legendary melancholy of progressives - the lit-set, the intelligentsia and cognoscenti, their poets and fools, the mythological Common Man - and their rejection of norms and normality, bourgeois culture, and contempt for the wild uncertainties and injustices of a free society. Now, the savage facts of this struggle between two (at least) unreconcilable discontents is this: Once a fighter believes he has nothing to lose in a fight, and everything to gain, anything goes. It's possible, indeed easy, to fight when you're depressed. It is, in fact, necessary.

16 comments:

sig94 said...

The 21st century version of Rex Lex vs Lex Rex contention rears its ugly head again. The coming elections will help determine, perhaps for decades, who or what will rule in America. Frightening.

Anonymous said...

Everything to lose vs Nothing to lose. Who has the passion? Who has the soldiers. Who walks with destiny? We'll see.

Anonymous said...

Rhod, thank you for this post. I am saddened that you do not have a massive national forum.

LL said...

Rhod is one eloquent guy - born of a life of sacrifice for the ideal, betrayed by the beasts in men's clothing.

Very well said. Very profound. Absolutely accurate.

Rhod said...

I think you men know what I know.

Subvet said...

Bravo. Well written. The next decade will show if we can bring our civilization back from the brink of suicide.

Rhod said...

Subvet, anyone who's done what you did and served where you did, could probably do it all by himself.

Toaster 802 said...

I could write an entire commentary post on your words. I might just do that. But for right now I will just stand here in awe of someone who just called the pulse of the sane nation...And myself. And my Bro's. And so many others I know.

Pure gold!

Anonymous said...

You're right, Toasty. Gold.

Rhod said...

Conservatives seem to be developing their own version of the thousand-yard stare.

Quite Rightly said...

Rhod, another masterpiece.

Like so many others, I'm with you in the pain of loss--all around--but especially the pain of experiencing the current fashionable, ignorant, bullying, self-satisfied disdain for the efforts of all the "nameless people" who managed to knit together a decent culture for us to call our own.

I can't find the author, but I remember encountering a quote to the effect that those who don't know about the people who have gone before them are condemned to live as children forever.

And so we have it. We are surrounded by hapless children who have no idea where what they have came from. The worst of them are unfettered by the most basic rules of civilization. The kids in Congress are so removed from their own heritage that they think it's side-splittingly funny when we believe anything that they say.

But they are not everyone.

Curiously, it was on this very blog that I encountered an idea that considerably strengthened my hope, which is to say, lightened the burden of the fight.

It was Goomba's Christmas message. Here's the link.

Look what the people are up to in Massachusetts. I'm thinking its the mounting drumroll of the American Revival. Check out this post, I think Yael's got it right.

Opus #6 said...

There are tons of Scott Brown rallies happening this weekend. Is MA very far from you, Rhod?

When I saw your post title with Anything Goes, my mind took a different turn. Cole Porter wrote a song about that. "Good authors too, who once knew better words, now only use four-letter words, writing prose..."

Rhod said...

QR, the line is from Cicero - to be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be forever a child.

I wish the ignorant were just childlike, but cultural rot has encouraged them to be vicious egotists, and what learning they have, is centered in self-esteem and pathetic romantic ideas about self-worth.

It seems to me that you shouldn't campaign to remove a prohibition in society unless you know why it was installed in the first place, which is a way of comprehending the thinking of people who came before you.

The political class seems intent upon expanding upon the thinking of the political class that came before them, multiplying errors as they go and growing more remote from the population. They like it that way. As you say, though, things are changing. I'll check your links.

Opie,I miss Flappers and Cootie Garages more than I can say. I was young then, puttin' on the Ritz.

CT borders MA, and I could be in parts of MA in just over an hour. Maybe I could sneak in and vote for Brown. Who would know, in all that corruption and tomfoolery?

Anonymous said...

A nice piece of literature. And I agree about the fighter. Like Dylan (Bob, not Thomas) said, "when you ain't got nothin' you ain't got nothin' to lose")

I'm in a melancholy mood as well, but I chalk it up to post-Christmas letdown...

Anonymous said...

Rightly... Thanks for the kind words. Sometimes I'm amazed anybody reads this stuff.

Anonymous said...

Rhod, they'll know you aren't eligible if you don't vote for Pat Buchanan.

And Nick ... who says Sir Rhoderick doesn't have a vast audience? This here blog is pure gold ... which is a good buy these days, I hear.

Finally, Rhod, I'm glad you take the time to bless us (and yes, that's the word) with your thoughts. I read these posts, pause as I go, and let it rattle in my brain. I come away encouraged, so maybe that can give heart to you, as well.

What you are describing is humanity intoxicated with post-modernism. With man as an end in himself, all means are viable.

So ... "Amen, Rhod."