Whoa, my friends. Let’s take a pause, here.
I am second to none in my belief that Gramcian-Alinsky-style Leftism is — and has always been — a profound, even existential threat to the free West, built as it is on Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian heritage. And that the subversion of the West’s language of morality, and the gaming of its legal, media, cultural and educational institutions is both ongoing and relentless. And that this threat is paticularly acute in the middle of a world war and during a period of financial instability.
But when we start imagining declarations of martial law or needing to emigrate, we mirror the Left’s ‘paranoid style’, wherein Bush and Cheney are most certainly building a police state and will create a provocation allowing them to suspend the results of the upcoming election — one surely featuring rigged Diebold voting machines — and remain in office, triggering a migration of entertainment industry refugees from Hollywood to Canada and France . . . well, you get the idea
Don’t get me wrong. These things of dark imagination are all possible, and I’m as concerned as everyone else about the Oprahfied-statist kudzu strangling the initiative, self-reliance and autonomy from American life. And I’ve no doubt that the creeping veto power of judges and bureaucrats over economic activity, what we can say, what we can do and how we can live would, over time, be a dystopian anathama to Belmonters, if it isn’t already.
We all know the dangers. But let’s focus on what we can do. The Founders gave us all the tools we need, but do we — or will our children — still know how to use them? How many of us are involved, beyond amateur punditry, in serious and significant grassroots political activity? How many helicopter parents decline to challenge the indocrination going on in our schools because it may jeopardize getting junior into the right college?
It was never supposed to be easy, it was never supposed to be without personal risk, as those Belmonters who have served can attest to the rest of us. The twilight struggle, and all that. To paraphrase a cliche, we have met the enemy, and it is our own indolence and sense of entitlement.
