Reclaiming the Romance of Our Cause

By Daniel Greenfield December 21, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog  

“Put my musket in my hand and belt my sword around me,” a returning French soldier pleads with his comrade in ‘Two Grenadiers’. He envisions his body being buried to wait for the return of Napoleon from captivity. “Then will my Emperor ride over my grave, swords will be clashing and flashing; and armed, I’ll rise up from the grave, to guard my Emperor.”

In Schumann and Wagner’s musical renditions of Heinrich Heine’s poem, the dark tones give way to the ringing triumphant peals of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, as the faith of the resurrected soldier is rewarded with a messianic return of Napoleon and his armies.

Napoleon’s promise to carry on the work of the French Revolution and “liberate” the world had inspired a cult of personality. Beethoven had initially dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoleon. And the famous composer was far from alone in being caught up in his cause.

The German liberal admirers of Napoleon eventually split into nationalists and radicals. Their cultural descendants became Communists or Nazis. Millions were carried away by cults of personality that made mass murder seem exciting and glamorous. Ernst Hanfstaengl, a member of America’s elites, made “Sieg Heil” resonate to Harvard football chants of “Fight, fight, fight!”

Until too many bodies began to pile up, American elites were enthused by the energy of Communism and National Socialism. Writers, musicians, pundits and politicians admired Mussolini, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin as latter day Napoleon who could get things done. Revolutions to topple the order and remake the world would always be more romantic.

And that has never changed.

Israelis, like Americans, have fallen into the folly of arguing the morality of their cause, but the romance of a cause always trumps its morality. America’s cause and Israel’s cause were far more popular when they were romantic rather than when they insisted on their morality.

Morality inspires few people. When you have to argue the morality of your cause, you’ve lost.

Why do so many side with Islamic terrorists over America or Hamas terrorists over Israel? Much like the Nazis or the Communists, Jihadists have made for a more romantic cause. Some of the same Americans who might have gone Nazi in the 1930s instead convert to Islam and try to carry out terrorist attacks in America. Some head to Turkey to travel and meet up with ISIS.

What attracts them? Some of the same things that drew their forebears to the French Revolution, to Napoleon, to succeeding radical 19th century movements, to Nazism and Communism, to Marxist guerrillas and then Islamic terrorists who offer a romantic cause.

What draws so many men and women is not morality, but excitement. Passion, glory, and a willingness to die for a cause can just as easily be turned to evil as to good. Many people however simply do not care. The revolutionary energy of bringing things down will always appeal more, especially to young and resentful people, than defending home and hearth.

Pitting moral and rational arguments against the romance of the cause is futile.

Why complain that the shooting of one drug dealer by a police officer can lead mobs to burn cities, but when drug dealers shoot each other over the weekend, nothing happens? Only one of these allows its followers to march, shout slogans, clash with police and smash things. Only one offers a narrative of injustice and courageous people pitted against an oppressive system.

The heroic narrative is more compelling than the facts. People rally to causes that feel good, not necessarily to those that are right. And when the cause feels good, they rationalize it.

The great genius of the Left has been to position its cause as the perpetual revolution, an endless battle against oppression, and a messianic redemptive battle for the soul of the world. The Left distracts from the fact that it is in power by finding new enemies to fight: police officers, oil companies, misgenderers, or the Jews. A new cause is born and the revolution rolls on.

America and Israel were once revolutionary causes, but as we have found ourselves on the defensive, we have also lost touch with the romance of our causes. Romantic causes are offensive. Defenses, unless they’re last stands for a lost cause, are not romantic. Following Patton’s advice, leftists never defend, they always attack. And conservatives, all too often, defend rather than attack, react rather than act and force the enemy to react to them.

The Left buries its opponents with invective, accusations and smears. It puts them on the defensive. And then rather than articulating a cause, they try to justify their existence.

The first rule of debate is that defending something partially concedes it. A good debater forces the other side to debate its existence. A deeply misguided debater keeps trying to justify his existence and in doing so introduces ever more doubt into whether he deserves to exist.

When Jews argue that Israel has a right to exist, they are really opening up the question to debate. Meanwhile no one is debating whether the ‘Palestinian’ terror statelets have a right to exist. Theirs is a glorious and romantic cause because, in part, they never put it up for debate.

During the Holocaust, Jews tried to argue that they had a right to exist. That argument was mostly lost and few except a handful of humanitarians even felt the need to take it up. A few years later, Jews launched an independent country and defeated the invading Arab armies.

Israel was hated by many, but it was also admired and celebrated as a romantic cause. The country carved out of the desert, built by rugged pioneers, and watched over by shepherds with rifles over their shoulders, was glorious and inspiring in a way that no one could ignore.

American Jews however chose to emphasize the Holocaust: portraying Jews as helpless and in need of saving. Stories of Jews, especially Zionists, resisting and fighting back were deemphasized. After generations of using the Holocaust to teach tolerance, they are surprised that it hasn’t worked and that the existence of Jews is once again up for debate.

Israel once used to play up the risky and revolutionary nature of a country, alone and at odds with much of the region, but its narratives have become defensive. And the more Israel explains that it isn’t an “apartheid state” or genocidal, the more it promotes these same slurs. Defending its own morality is, like most defensive positions, ultimately futile and a losing proposition. The more you defend yourself against an accusation, the more it becomes associated with you.

And the more people decide that there must be some truth to it.

America has made some of these same mistakes. Like Israel, the very things we have been taught to be ashamed of, building a country out of nothing and defending it against all comers, is a large part of the romance of our cause. Leftist smear campaigns have made our strengths seem like weaknesses and have taught us to think of our weaknesses, extending our rules to the enemies that want to destroy us, as our strength. The more we explain how fair we are, the more we open up our fairness for debate and indict ourselves as an oppressive country.

The romance of our causes is there in our histories, all we have to do is reach for it. They are there in the stories and legends that we have dismissed as outmoded and reactionary, discredited by “historians” and derided as parts of our past that we ought to turn away from.

Those are the sources of our strength and point the way to a revival of our nations.

How many American youth really want to stand with evil, and how many are drawn to it because they see no cause of their own country that stirs their blood and makes their hearts beat faster? When their own nation no longer inspires, they will find inspiration among its enemies.

There are American and Israeli soldiers and civilians fighting and dying against Islamic terrorists, police officers slain by BLM domestic terrorists, and yet we hardly know their names or tell their stories. When BLM shouts, “say their names”, they are building legends. We have legends among us. We have causes that changed the world. Yet we fail to express them.

The romance of a cause lies in its passion to change the way things are. When we fail to tap into that passion to change the oppressive way things are at any cost, we lose.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” Yeats wrote. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is not enough to argue that our cause is moral. We must find the passion to lay it out as not only a defense against the worst, but the triumph of the best.

Unless our causes feel glorious, our enemies will make them appear inglorious.  

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

A government of officious martinets

December 14, 2022 By Joe Strader

This is a unique point in our history. Our rulers lack either powerful intellects or great accomplishments. They have no leadership aura, having advanced through coercion and corruption. Both parties’ leaders are mostly empty suits with little to no substance. If one leaves, a new one fills the space without disruption.

Should people of accomplishment or independent thinking sneak into one of these positions, those abilities are deemed irrelevant or attacked. If they were elected, the election was illegitimate. If they were appointed, the appointment was invalid. The powers-that-be must correct the error that people chose someone for a powerful position based on his qualifications.

The feckless leaders have a facade of leadership without substance. The government’s administrative offices can decide what will be done, and they direct the selected leaders as the public face of the administrative decision.

These cardboard standup leaders must be able to look like leaders. They must have a veneer of leadership that is the face the public sees. The real source of political power, the administrative bureaucracy, will assure the people that the new leaders are legitimate..........To Read More....

Dems' Latest Abortion Witness Appears to Be Both a Furry and a Witch

Matt Vespa  @mvespa1  Jul 23, 2022

Just when you think that democrats can't get any more bizarre, they outdo themselves once again..   Anyone who votes democrat after watching these people the last couple of years is certifiable. Same, mature people do not behave like this.  Only the dying modern American Left could have a Witch Trial with a real Witch and with said Witch called as a Witness.   I had never heard of a "Furry" before this article. I have heard of "Bat (expletive deleted) Crazy" though and that is my go to description for just about all the alphabet people and now these nuts. 

This Republic is doomed if these people ever go mainstream. The dems continue to prove time and time again progressives/liberals are mentally ill.   Just when you think that democrats can't get any more bizarre, they outdo themselves once again.The pool of people who support the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent children is mostly limited to the dregs of society, and this specimen is an example.  As to passing a law allowing the extrajudicial killing of a minority the left hates, well, that is and has always been unconstitutional and held up many times. Even with slavery killing a slave was a capital offense, a child - no matter how hated - is no different.

"These antics are the reason why the last ... years of REPUBLICAN governance have been a failure. There's no focus." Why? Because when Republicans have the power, they squander it and when the Republicans don't have the power, they whine and make promises - Sadly, it's the way of POLICTICS. Vote for those who believe in and enforce the Constitution. .............Dems' Latest Abortion Witness Appears to Be Both a Furry and a Witch

College Officials: The Most Witless People On Earth

I & I Editorial Board March 25, 2022 4 comments

(Editor's Note:  I've not been given permission to publish this in full, but I think this is profound, and hope this will get wide distribution. If the authors object I will break this down into a link. RK) 

Day after day we read of cases in which a speaker was shut down on a college campus, a group was denied a forum or chased from the public square, or free inquiry was snuffed out because there might be words uttered or written that could “hurt” someone. Will the administrators and professors who refuse to punish this behavior, and even sometimes support it, ever understand that the invented grievances aren’t about offense but about having power over others?

Just this week, The College Fix reported that a University of Virginia student wrote in The Cavalier Daily that it was dangerous for former Vice President Mike Pence to speak on campus. In the mind of that student, ​​speech that bothers her is “not entitled to a platform.”

Earlier this month, The Fix covered the story of a black, female Christian scholar who won’t be returning to Christopher Newport University after spring semester because she tweeted an unapproved but entirely harmless opinion.

Then there’s what’s become known as the “Yale shout down incident,” in which students protesting the appearance of a female speaker from the Alliance Defending Freedom not only stopped a free-speech event, they also disrupted learning in other parts of the building where the panel was being held. That the riotous, violence-threatening students might be shut out of federal judicial clerkships when they graduate is merely a good start to the punishment they deserve.

Another example from just this month is the story of a State University of New York-Cortland professor who was reported to the school’s bias team – the campus Stasi? – for the offense of stating the obvious, that race relations have improved since the 1930s, and “we should be proud of how far we’ve come as a society relating to race and gender relations.”

Of course this is but a short list. The examples roll in almost daily, and with rare exception, college officials side with the anti-speech bullies, even when the chased-away speakers are on the political left. An overwhelming number of administrators and professors want their campuses to be, they say, safe spaces for those who aren’t as “privileged” as others. They see themselves as guardians of decency, compassionate and caring.

Apparently they’re too dense to understand they’re being manipulated. The student activists who live to interfere with the rights of others through intimidation and, too often, real violence aren’t interested in protecting themselves and others from threats and sad feelings. They simply want to play with college officials as if they are their puppets.

Which is exactly what they have become. Fearful minions. And they’re not even aware that they’ve become useful idiots for trust-fund babies looking for a thrill, and spoiled pre-adults desperate to boost their status.

The activists also enjoy having power over speakers by forcing them to alter their plans under the threat of violence and robbing them of free-speech forums. They violate student organizations’ right to offer their literature on campus through the destruction and theft of their property, and demand suspensions and expulsions for students whose speech they don’t like.

There are occasional instances of campus officials acting as adults. But not enough. Sad but true, most are just too dense to understand what is happening around them.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

Wealthy Leftists Demand Poor White Kids in Appalachia be Taught About Their White Privilege

Daniel Greenfield December 27, 2021 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

The son of a bank vice president decided to teach about “white privilege” to his students in Sullivan County, Tennessee where the per capita income is $28,429.

After he was fired, the media decided to turn him into a victim.

“He Taught About White Privilege and Got Fired. Now He’s Fighting to Get His Job Back,” the headlines blared. A GoFundMe for Matthew Hawn by his sister, a principal in the Tennessee public school system, has already raised over $55,000 of its projected $85,000 goal.

That’s more money than a lot of the locals in Appalachia would be likely to earn in a year’s time.

Sullivan County is 95% white and 2% black. The rate of hungry children in the region is double the national rate and a third of those children live in Sullivan County.

At Sullivan Central High School, where Hawn decided to teach about white privilege, 96% of the students are white, 1% are Hispanic, another 1% are Asian, and the number of black students is too small to count.

41% of the students are eligible for the free lunch program. That means their parents meet federal poverty guidelines. Another 9% qualify for the reduced lunch program which indicates that their parents don’t earn very much.

Even though half the student body at Sullivan Central is low income, the graduation rate is 90% and the students rank in the top 20% for reading proficiency.

You can understand why Hawn, who had taught for 16 years, decided to introduce them to the concept of white privilege.

The article that helped debut Hawn's sob story to the wealthy progressives of the nation who showered his GoFundMe with cash began by describing the "social studies teacher in rural Tennessee" who "was driving to work listening to NPR" which was going on about racism.

It’s hard to envision a better summary of the culture clash between lefty elites and America.

“White privilege is a fact,” Hawn reportedly ranted at his students. “What we are going to do is we are going to discuss how we can help solve the issue of racism in America. What can we do here in Northeast Tennessee?”

Sullivan County and, for that matter, the Tri-Cities area, have fairly few black people. With a 2.4% black population, there’s not many black people to save in Northeast Tennessee.

But Hawn set out to solve racism by teaching his low-income students that America was systemically racist beginning with an essay by black nationalist bigot Ta-Nehisi Coates.

In his infamous book, “Between the World and Me”, Coates had declared that the firefighters and police officers who were killed on September 11 “were not human to me.”

In “The First White President”, the essay Hawn inflicted on his students, Coates raved that "whiteness" was a "bloody heirloom" and that "land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers".

Trump's grandfather, a barber, moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1880s, but Coates and his ilk are as indifferent to facts as the 1619 Project or the rest of the critical race theory establishment.

“There's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had argued.

And being morally right is another way of saying being morally superior to the kids at a rural Tennessee high school, their low income parents, and everyone who doesn’t believe that they, along with America and all white people, are horrible racists who need to be “called out”.

In Coates’ essay, the country’s racist scribe to the racist elite, dismisses the idea of a cultural “backlash against contempt for white working-class people” by elites. And yet what’s happening in Sullivan County as a result of his essay perfectly encapsulates that backlash to the elites who embraced Hawn and have nothing but contempt for the locals standing up to him.

Hawn followed that up with “White Privilege” by Kyla Jenée Lacey, a deranged hate filled rant that has the same relationship to a poem that the 1619 Project does to history. In it, Lacey claims that Hurricane Katrina was "answering the government's prayers of eugenics" and that white privilege is "the acceptance of bombs over Baghdad, but not over Boston."

The social studies teacher was not, despite the mass of media misinformation, fired over critical race theory or introducing obscenities and hatred of America into the classroom. (The Atlantic falsely dubbed Hawn, “The First Casualty in the War on Critical Race Theory”.)

He was fired for refusing to introduce balance.

“Your job is not to teach one perspective,” he was told. "Your job is also not to ensure students simply adopt your own personal perspective. Your job—in teaching current events—is to ensure students learn to seek out and consider varying and credible perspectives.”

At a school board meeting, Hawn was asked, "what other reading materials have you assigned recently that would offer a different perspective".

Reportedly, his response was, "there is no credible source for a different point of view."

The line, familiar from a multitude of media fact checks, Big Tech censorship efforts, and condescending elite propaganda denies that there can be any legitimate point of view other than their own. And that their public service duty is to force their dogma on everyone else.

It’s the difference between education and indoctrination.

The son of a bank vice president wasn’t the victim of a “war on critical race theory”, as a magazine owned by Steve Jobs’ billionaire widow falsely claimed, but of Tennessee’s Teacher Code of Ethics which was, as Robert Pondiscio and Tracey Schirra of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out, a product of an older and more moderate incarnation of the NEA.

All of this has been hashed out at length by educational experts and Twitter pundits.

What has been much less discussed are the class issues in an assault by wealthy media elites on low-income students and parents who must be taught that they and their nation are racist.

Much of this assault is carried out under a cloud of ignorant disdain for the actual community.

At The Atlantic, Emma Green's first question to Hawn is whether there was a lot of "racial diversity".

"I don’t remember there being a nonwhite person at my high school the entire four years I was there," Hawn replies.

That's not too surprising as Kingsport, where Hawn grew up, is 91% white and only 3.5% black.

The lack of diversity is treated as implicitly racist, but were black people really worse off for not living in Appalachia as opposed to Malibu where Laurene Powell Jobs, who controls The Atlantic, lives? The racial demographics are virtually identical in Malibu and Sullivan County, but the politics and incomes in pro-Trump Sullivan County are a world away.

Leftists justify their abuses, like critical race theory indoctrination, by insisting that they’re punching up, fighting the powerful, not punching down against the downtrodden. And yet it’s hard to see the assault on a local school district and its impoverished families as anything else.

Aside from The Atlantic, the Washington Post, owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, and the Boston Globe, owned by billionaire financier John W. Henry have published hit pieces on Hawn’s firing and on Sullivan County’s efforts to protect its students and its schools.

As Hawn’s latest appeal moves forward, media outlets owned by billionaires continue their disinformation campaign against local parents and school administrators, diverting money that ought to be going to teach students into preventing racism from being pushed in the classroom.

Sullivan County is a long way from The Atlantic’s headquarters at The Watergate, the Washington Post’s own D.C. digs, or downtown Boston, but the new ruling class insists that its dictates, enforced by economic pressure, lawfare, and smear campaigns must apply everywhere, even in rural Tennessee. Having heard that a school system merely asked that a leftist activist present more than one perspective on whether America is racist and evil, they have marshalled their battalions and their fortunes and gone to war in Appalachia.

White privilege isn’t real, but the power wielded by the leftist elite is all too real. Behind the false claims of white privilege is the unearned privilege of a ruthless elite which wraps its totalitarianism in moral crusades that are as wickedly perverse as they are self-righteous.

America’s wealthiest leftist elites demand that poor white kids be taught they’re racist. Maybe they can drive by in their hybrid limos and teach the hungry kids of Sullivan County about their white privilege.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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Thank you for reading.

Tags: Race, Racism, recent, Tennessee, white privilege

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

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