A Few Shiny Pebbles

Each of us must “sign up” for the cultural war we find ourselves in—for there will be no “cultural draft” until it is too late, until America’s enemies have made a world so violent and so wild that we will all become engulfed in the conflagration. (Actually, I believe that your choice is really much more basic: Do you help yourself and your country by fighting now for what you believe in, or do you stand by and become part of the destruction?)

Ages-old questions have grown imperative. As both a witness to and an active member of our time, how do you define yourself? What is the nature of Truth? Of Human Rights? Of Freedom? Of Evil? Of Democracy? Find the things that you believe in, and actively join the Cultural War.

And once you “join”, the first thing you need to do is to select your uniform.

Uniforms are important: They are a declaration before the world. If you are pro-American, you don’t need to worry about being fitted for the uniform you’ll be wearing in this Cultural War, because the uniforms in this fight are not items of physical clothing, but rather what you might call mental attire. To don your uniform, you must openly acknowledge your beliefs. It is only by wearing your beliefs with pride—only by speaking up, by writing—that you can be properly uniformed in the American cultural war.

Of course, some people make it a habit to rely on polls to determine what mental uniform they’ll wear, which side of an issue they’ll say they’re on. Some politicians will run on one side of an issue, and then, once in office, fight for the other side. It would be one thing if a significant event makes an important change in the issue. A 9/11 can change an isolationist into a warrior. But many politicians declare that they believe in something when they believe the opposite. They justify it by thinking that what they really mean to do is so good, and so important, that they are entitled to lie to achieve their noble ends. Those who believe they must deceive in order to win an election are acknowledging by their deception that the majority of people around them don’t agree with their views, that they cannot declare them openly.

Right now, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House have become openly, even fiercely vocal about some issues they used to deny believing in or that at least they were more circumspect about before. For the first time they believe these views have gained enough popularity across the political spectrum that they can openly wear these views. They openly advocate cutting funds to troops in a theater of war, major tax increases, impeachment, and the Fairness Doctrine in radio, sex education to kindergarteners, and so forth. The 2008 vote will tell us if they have determined popular opinion correctly. If they haven’t, their political strength will be in serious trouble, and they will wish they hadn’t worn their Progressive, Leftist, Collectivist views so openly. If they lose, they’ll stop wearing their ideas so openly again.

In a shooting war, that is why spies don’t wear their nation’s uniform, though they are just as much soldiers for their side as any who do wear a uniform. Spies must travel among people who are their enemies, who believe in another side of the fight, where soldiers in uniform openly declare their side in a war. It is as though when a soldier puts on a uniform he simultaneously puts on a target, he openly takes his risks. This is the reason that when soldiers in uniform are captured by their enemies in a shooting war, they are put in a prisoner-of-war camp, but when spies are caught, they are executed. Spies, working in enemy territory, don’t wear a uniform because they have to pretend to be on the same side as those surrounding them, and that is because they are working in disguise to destroy the very things that those around them believe in. Spies rely on deception. (So do insurgents in a war, who dress in ordinary clothes, which is why they are not POWs by the definition of the Geneva Convention and why they can be sent to Guantanimo Bay).

Now, the uniforms of those of you on the anti-American, or even just on the “Blame America First” side, are extremely complicated. They carry your group identity. You also have to wear a “mask” of the generic “authentic” identity of your group. Your uniform carries a great many labels, setting forth which side of each basic PC issue you fall under. These uniforms and their labels are mandatory, the same way that the burka is mandatory in some countries, and for the same reason. When a woman wears a burka, covering her entire body, including gloved hands, with the only opening a small net-like where she looks out, she becomes invisible. She is not Fatima or Ayaan, she is no one. Equally, in a collectivist viewpoint, Tom or Daniel is not an individual, he is a hyphenated group member. Any member of a group can be substituted for any other member of the group. For example, any black child can take the place of another black child in a class to maintain diversity. It isn’t the individual, Tommy or Diane, who is selected, it is “a black child”. The selection is often by a box checked in an application.

“Authenticity” is everything, but it is not based on individual choices, it is based on group membership. Before anything can be done by either John or Fatima, his or her group membership must be made clear, and only then can his or her eligibility to take that stand or do that action is established or denied. For instance, if you are a Justice Clarence Thomas you are accused of being “inauthentic” because your pro-American-Constitution mental uniform doesn’t carry the “correct” identity group labels.

This gets pretty crazy. Because of various Leftist causes, such as critical theory and environmentalism and animal rights, everything in life is labeled in many ways. This means that the Leftist reach is growing longer each day. As an example, “Dignity” is one of the entitlement labels the Left wants to put on your uniform. Do you know that even if you are a polar bear cub at the Berlin Zoo, and they want to raise you as a pet because your mother rejected you, you’re in trouble. As Ferdy, at the Conservative Cat, pointed out [my emphasis]:

The animal-rights activists have a clear message: the bear should be killed rather than suffer the indignity of being raised as the equivalent of a pet. This dignity bit is serious stuff. We suffer a shortage of organ donors because selling human organs is undignified. Preservation of dignity was the motive for killing Terri Schiavo, and of course, one should not be allowed to hold a job at an undignified wage. [. . .] Remember, a liberal right is something you expect, not something you can do. You have a right to expect dignity. This expectation is so important that your other rights can be revoked at will if they threaten it. We're not quite there, but we're getting closer every day to the point where your right to dignity can revoke your right to life.

Remember that some people are working their hardest to make certain that labels such as that of Dignity be a mandatory part of your uniform. For a Leftist, a label on your uniform, and not your individual identity and circumstances, dictates how you will be treated in a given situation. If they deem that situation is undignified for someone in the group they have assigned you to, then you’re in trouble, you’re not living an “authentic” life. (The Leftists are more than happy to bring the force of law to “authenticize” you when they can get their issues through the courts.)

So, it’s getting trickier for pro-Americans to wear the uniform of their beliefs openly. You may live in an area, or work in an area, or just find yourself in an area in which you cannot wear your pro-American uniform openly or there will be serious consequences. If you decide you that you must lie about your goals and beliefs—realize that you are stating that you believe yourself to be in enemy territory, and you don’t want to openly “wear a target.”

When two of my brothers returned from the Vietnam war, in 1969, they were told not to wear their Marine uniforms on public airlines for the final leg home inside the United States. They were warned that anti-war people might assault them or cause other problems for them. (Both my brothers did wear their uniforms all the way home, but they knew there might be trouble.) There is something seriously wrong when people who are fighting for America have to be careful of wearing their uniform in public. But the scary truth is that we now live in a time when there are more and more places where a pro-American mental uniform is not safe to wear with its decorations and ribbons and badges. For instance, the continuing development of “hate crime” and other such Leftist and diversity legislation means that there are places where you have to hide the ribbon you want to wear on your pro-American mental uniform that proclaims that you believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, or that wishes people a Merry Christmas. Or even if you want to rent your vacant room to a married couple, or keep a photo of your wife in a bathing suit on your desk.

Maybe you are already surrounded by enemies when you openly wear a belief or goal or run for an office on the Republican side in the fight over the future of America—and what does that imply? How much has the enemy already accomplished?

Just a question . . . .

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, Adam's Blog, Shadowscope, Webloggin, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, Cao's Blog, Leaning Straight Up, , Conservative Cat, Right Celebrity, Stageleft, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.