Who Will Man the Walls?

By Rich Kozlovich 

I subscribe to the non-paid version of Common Sense with Bari Weiss, and some it's pretty good, some of it's liberal, but it's worth a look or two on occasion.  Weiss resigned as an editor from the New York Times because as liberal as she was, and is, she just wasn't Woke.  And if you're sane, at some point, you can't possibly be Woke enough to avoid the outraged criticism from the most extreme elements of that human plague, that Temple of the Church of Wokeness, Twitter!  

There are no boundaries on the left, and outrage expressed by one insane Wokester on Twitter can destroy a leftist's career.   Real conservatives who are attacked kind of smile, snort and move on for two reasons.  An attack by these loons is a point of honor and evidence they must be doing something right.  And real conservatives totally understand there's no appeasing these misfits, which is why the left keeps getting more radical and the right appears to become more conservative.   

One of the articles that appeared in Common Sense that I thought was worth some time was, The Origins of Woke, with the subtitle, A forgotten satirical book form the nineties predicted cancel culture, by Phoebe Maltz Bovy saying: 

The front cover of the dictionary shows a man, a woman, and a dog, each affixed with labels such as “hair disadvantaged” (he’s balding), “woman of noncolor” (she’s white), and “nonhuman animal companion” (it’s a shaggy dog). None of them, though especially the woman and the dog, would be out of place in a 2022 farmers market. (Again: cyclical fashions.)

The back cover bears a warning: “Be sensitive or else!,” with the follow-up, “Welcome to the nineties. But you better watch what you say. If you’re not politically correct, not even your pet—oops, your animal companion—will love you anymore.”

 Beard’s author bio begins, “Although Henry Beard is a typical product of elitist educational institutions and a beneficiary of a number of negative action programs, he has struggled to overcome his many severe privileges.” And Cerf’s: “Christopher Cerf is a melanin-impoverished, temporarily abled, straight, half-Anglo-, half-Jewish-American male.” 

Privilege disclaimers in the early 1990s! I had to have it.

Her conclusion is that wokeness is political correctness, and political correctness is wokeness which I think is a bit of a duh!  However it demonstrates the fact the left is like rust, it never sleeps, always changing the same old nostrums in ways to make them look new and enticing, and have been doing this forever. 

Kevin Freeman writes this is part of the plan that has been decades in the making.  A plan "to take down the greatest obstacle to totalitarianism the world has ever known: the United States of America."  He makes the point these leftist "elites are neither incompetent nor insane. They are evil, and they are freedom’s enemies." While I agree this is their plan, and has always been their plan, I disagree about their competence or their sanity. No rational competent person could possibly subscribe to such insanity.  They're just evil. 

The reason I said the right "appears" to be more conservative is because the left keeps getting more and more openly radical, so even if conservatives are merely standing still they automatically appear more conservative and moving more to the right.  But real conservatives who steadfastly defied the left for decades are already "the right", and can go no further because conservatism, unlike leftism, has boundaries, it's just that more people are joining them there.  In principle conservatives believe it's fundamental that society must not "lie, steal, cheat or tolerate those who do".  I'll tell you what.  We'll come back to that.

Clarity can only be achieved through definition, which Stephan Helgesen does very well in his article, The Rise of the Unprincipled Left, saying:

 Let's start with traditional conservatives.  By traditional, I am referring to a set of values that have transcended many generations.  Some of them are love of country, respect for authority and the rule of law, trust in our institutions, belief in personal accountability, fidelity to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, trust in our courts (and juries) to fairly adjudicate the cases before them and mete out appropriate punishment to the guilty, confidence in our schools and teachers to educate our children passionately but objectively, respect for our military service members and law enforcement organizations for the dangerous jobs they do, and many more, not the least of which are found in the Christian Ten Commandments.

In the past, those core values have been the touchstone we would go to when we were wrestling with a thorny question.  Would our opinion track with our basic values?  In short, could we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, "Yes, that is my belief, and I will defend it because I am a principled person"?

Now the left:

The left's world is dominated by, as I've stated, a belief in situational dependency coupled with might makes right.  Leftists eschew actual democracy and fear free speech.  They see the forced imposition of their cultural views as a holy crusade, and if anyone dares question that crusade's legitimacy, he is summarily banned, doxxed, de-platformed, ostracized from polite society, vilified, and fired from his job — or accused of being a white supremacists, misogynist, homophobe, right-wing extremist, or domestic terrorist.  Leftists have no qualms about offering up the names of the "opposition" to the media and to municipal, state, or federal authorities for later prosecution or persecution.

The left is unprincipled, period!  It is now, it has always been, and it will always be unprincipled because principles require a stable moral foundation, a touchstone for what we do, what we think and what we work to bring into being.  

The only morality of the left is a morality of the moment.  A morality that can and will shift as the need arises.  They are the "ultimate carpetbaggers — unscrupulous opportunists who would betray anyone and anything to feather their own nests".  And that means do anything to take and hold power over the masses, no matter who has to be sacrificed, and since the French Revolution they've sacrificed over millions of people.  The American left was able to hide who and what they are better in the past. No longer. 

Their claims of "defending our democracy" is a clever rhetorical ruse since they clearly hate "our Republic", which they unendingly work to undermine and ultimately eliminate by destroying the foundation of America's Democratic Republic.  The Constitution.  

We saw that during the false covid pandemic where societies went along with these ridiculous mandates, much of which was imposed by unelected bureaucrats.  These sheep then turned on those who saw these mandates for what they were and refused to bend the knee to this power grab, dehumanizing them and smugly, arrogantly and self righteously approved of granting unconstitutional powers to police which allowed them to abuse the unmasked and unvaccinated.   

This wasn't accidental.  It was deliberate, it was unconstitutional, "it was planned" and it was implemented to impose tyranny on America.  It's time we get that's part of "the plan".  It's time for those who see these things for what they are to have the courage to stand and be counted, no matter how many slings and arrows are flung in their direction.

The cadets of West Point were referred to as that Long Gray Line.   A Long Gray Line that once had an "Honor Code" that said "A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do", with the motto "Duty, Honor, Country", creating an "unchanging path of discipline needed by an individual to follow" and "to lead with character, abide by the Honor Code, and live above the common level of life in order to be leaders of the nation."  

But when society has eschewed the concept of honor that lack is transmitted into every field of endeavor, including West Point, which was demonstrated with the cheating scandal at West Point and how the administration at West Point watered down that code in the way they handled it.  In times past each and every one of those cadets would have been expelled. 

Recent events have demonstrated senior officers, many graduates of West Point, have abandoned all of that, including the Secretary of Defense.  When the people leading those who are supposed to be the defenders of a nation lack honor, and promote those who are equally lacking, who will man the walls and tell the nation, "no one will harm you on my watch"? 

Over the weekend I watched Midway, the 2019 version and it was just as inspiring this time as it was the last time.  Watch it and ask yourself: If that's who we were, who are we now?  This movie depicts another generation. This movie shames the current generation.