Pajamas Media

I know there is a fair amount of dread out there right now. We’re ramping down one war, and ramping up another; the threat of total financial collapse seems actually possible; the moral decay and loss of decency in much of society is endemic and spreading… Good Lord, we’re seeing famine, pestilence and death… lions and lambs lying down together, plagues of frogs from the skies! – and no one seems to know exactly what is happening.

And a lot of people are starting to think that it’s hopeless. My friends, it’s not hopeless. It’s dire!  But it’s not hopeless. It’s never hopeless.

You see, people have been here before. Not us, but other people. The great conceit of the modern age is that this is, in fact, a modern age. But it isn’t.

Let’s start at the top: with Barack Obama. Is he:

A. A Muslim-sympathizing, neo-Marxist true believer, who sees America and Capitalism as the principle barrier to fairness and world peace?

Or B, is he merely an empty suit, an unwitting pawn of much larger, hidden forces?

Or C,  simply a self-obsessed, incompetent narcissist who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

I’ve given this a lot of careful thought, and I think the real answer is yes.

He is a product of his time; a product of a civilization that has been dynamic and successful long enough for its prosperity to feel inevitable and indestructible. It’s not even really his fault. It has always been pretty clear from his record who he is and what he believes, and we elected him because the country was in the mood for a “progressive” president.

But Progressivism is not progressive – it’s ancient. Cyclical. It’s circular. It is, in fact, the symptom and the eventual cause of impending collapse.

In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.

I said that what we today call Progressivism is in fact ancient and circular. Don’t believe me? Well, the great roman orator Cicero, speaking in defense of his friend Sestius, around 55 BC, said – quote:

“Gaius gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw the state treasury would be exhausted.”

When a society – after generations of hard work, sacrifice and hardship – reaches a certain level of prosperity, “Progressives” like Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo, Rosie O’Donnell and Gaius Gracchus – that last Progressive died in 121 BC – assume that the prosperity is endless, and push for more and more people to get more and more goods and services for less and less work. Why? Because – as today, in America, as with the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottomans, the Mongols, Rome, Greece, Eqypt, Babylon… They do it for political power. They live for political power. This “Progressivism” is ancient, recurring, tyrannical and ruinous.

And we voted for it. Just like the Romans did.

We can see from Cicero that throughout history, the disease is always the same – too much security and prosperity breeds laziness, narcissism, resentment and entitlement.

So if this is the cycle of civilization, and we see these same recurring signs around us in abundance today – how can there be any hope?

There’s hope because we are Americans. We’re different. Not genetically – although we are in fact the world’s mutts and that is an enormous strength. No, we are different, unique and exceptional culturally – because unlike the Babylonians, the Eqyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Turks, the Spanish, the French, The British and all the rest – we have actually done it. We have created the political tools to limit power and reward hard work, and we have lived with them for almost a quarter millennia. It is only by restoring and strengthening these truly progressive, but now-called conservative ideals that we can break the cycle of history.

How?

Well, first, we have to know how we got into this mess in the first place.

This time around – our cycle – the rot began to take hold in America due primary to a group called The Frankfurt School. Keep in mind that the Frankfurt school is merely a product of where they appear on this great wheel of history – there have been dozens of civilizations that had their own “Frankfurt schools” in languages now lost to history.

But right after World War One, in Frankfurt, Germany the Institute for Social Research – they wanted to call themselves the “Institute for Marxism” but that was too on the nose – was left wondering why the world communist revolution — predicted as a certainty by Marxist social science – was not leading to the international revolution of the proletariat, the actual common working man.

And they figured out that capitalism – damn it! – was providing enough comfort and material gain, enough of an increase in the working man’s standard of living – that it just simply wasn’t going to happen. Ever.

Now, one kind of person might look at this and say, hooray! People’s lives are getting better – guess we weren’t needed after all.

But not these guys. These guys felt they had to bring heaven to earth.

And so they asked themselves: if the vanguard of the revolution wasn’t going to be the worker, then who would it be? And the answer they came up with was: the dispossessed.

The Neo-Marxist revolution would not attack the capitalist economy – that was too successful. The target of the new Marxist revolution would be the Culture.

Marxist philosophers like Antonia Gramsci, and later, Saul Alinski – personal hero to such present-day fellow travelers as Chris Matthews, Hillary Clinton and, of course, The President of the United States – started to create narratives – stories – about America. This rapidly evolved into a philosophy called “Critical Theory” and the idea of Critical Theory was to attack the dominant culture – that would be us – from all sides, simultaneously.

For instance, Black Americans would be told that their labor built the entire country, while White Americans merely sat back and essentially stole everything. Black slave labor did build the cotton economies of the Southern Confederacy, but the entire Confederacy had less factory capacity than New York City alone.

Nonetheless, many black Americans today have been taught that all of this belongs to them and not the truth, which is that that they were, and are, an integral and essential part of the group effort that built this country together.

Likewise, women are told that we live in an evil patriarchy, where all men are tyrants and potential rapists, determined to keep them in a form of domestic slavery, instead of being their partners and helpmates and husbands and protectors.

Gays are told not that this is one of the most inclusive and forgiving societies in the history of the world, but rather home to knuckle-dragging, murdering Neanderthals – when in plain sight, across the seas, one and a half billion Muslims routinely hang or stone or crush to death innocent people merely because of their sexual practices.

And on and on.

And when you try to argue against this social weapon of theirs, this Narrative, this lie that they tell again and again, well then, prepare for their counter-attack, which is called Political Correctness – the attempt to put the argument out of bounds before it can be had.

They use terms like Hate Speech and Racism. They want to put our arguments and rebuttals out of bounds so that they don’t have to hear them or deal with them. They have to exclude those arguments because if they don’t, those arguments are going to kick their asses and they know it.

And by the way: charges of Racism only work on decent people. You go up to a Klansman or a Nazi and call them a racist, and they say “duh!” Of course they’re racists. They’re proud of being racists. But you go up to someone who is not a racist, a person who finds racism appalling and disgusting, and tell them what they are saying is racism – even when it not only isn’t racism, but is in fact the opposite of racism– well, they’ll shut up. Mission Accomplished.

The objectives of the Frankfurt School, of Gramsci and Alinski in their assault on the culture, were laid out in detail and were very clear: Eliminate not only the voice, but the very idea of reason. Destroy history. Delegitimize shared morality. Medicate instead of discipline children. Promote the idea that problems are so complex that only elitists, experts and academics can discuss, let alone solve them. A later pair of American Marxist philosophers developed what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy: overwhelm America’s social systems – welfare, health care, immigration, etc. by telling people they were owed things, and by intentionally overwhelming them, cause them to collapse – leaving nothing but smoking wreckage, and no where to turn but to the government.

But above all, for this Frankfurt school strategy to work, it needed to foster resentment, envy, hopelessness and despair.

And it’s been spectacularly successful.

My fellow Americans… we are in an information war, a battle of narratives, and if that analysis is true then you and I are the last best hope of the last best hope. We are, together, soldiers in this narrative war for America and for civilization.

So can we win?

Of course we can win!

Let me tell you where we are right now. We’re on the Titanic. Now hang on! There are some amazing things about that night that not many people know about. Things that give me hope.

Some people know that if the lookouts aboard Titanic had spotted the iceberg as little as five or six seconds earlier, Titanic would have been able miss that wall of ice by a few feet and would have survived to come home.

But very few people know that if those lookouts had spotted that iceberg only five or six seconds later — Titanic still would have survived. You see, Titanic was designed to remain afloat with up to five or her forward watertight compartments flooded – but not six. Had the lookout on Titanic seen that iceberg only a few seconds later, she would have hit it straight-on. It would have crumpled the bow, and a few hundred people would have been killed in the collision – but she would have stayed afloat, and instead of 1,490 people drowning in those icy waters, she would have limped home to New York, been refitted and repaired, and continued to do what she was built to do: bring people to America – to freedom. She represented what was best in us: vision, industry, ingenuity and hard work. That ship deserved to come home.

Some people misinterpret this to mean that there were a few seconds where Titanic could have been saved. It’s just the opposite. There were only a few seconds – ten or fifteen seconds – where Titanic could have been sunk. That iceberg went right down the side of the ship, staving in compartment after compartment. Progressivism is doing the same thing to our culture: flooding academia…movies…television…news media…comedy…music…government policy… damaging and flooding, one by one, the social institutions that kept this ship of freedom, ingenuity and prosperity afloat.

Like an iceberg, the danger from progressivism lies beneath the surface: the slow erosion of the work ethic, the fostering of division and resentment and unearned entitlement, the abandonment of the entire idea of decency and morality – all of this beneath the placid surface of simply claiming to help people.

My friends, it far too late to avoid this ancient iceberg, this giant dark wall that has sunk civilization after civilization under the calm disguise of compassion and concern. We cannot steer around it. If we are to avoid that fate, there is only one option left.

We need to ram the iceberg. We need to hit it head-on. We need to put in all the power we have – all of the power – and go right at the heart of that monster. Because everyone talks about what the iceberg did to Titanic, but no one talks about what Titanic did to the iceberg.

You see, I know something critical about this iceberg out in front of us, and that is this: that iceberg is hollow. It’s hollow.

Even the people who believe in it most strongly know it’s a lie. That’s why they have to lie to you about what they believe. They know, in their heart of hearts, that this philosophy has been the ruin of civilization in every one of the countless times it has been applied. They know – consciously or not – that in the last century alone their ideas have cost the lives of no less than 150 million people executed, or starved to death, to bring this paradise to earth.

And unlike the brave and selfless men and women that daily risk, and often give their lives in defense of freedom for their fellow man, these people believe in nothing greater than the sound of their own voice and are willing to die for nothing.

What would Bill Maher, or Janeane Garofolo, or Rosie O’Donnel be willing to give their own lives for?  Nothing. Nothing.

It’s hollow. That iceberg is hollow. And we need to ram it, and we need to ram it now. It’s going to crush the front of our ship, and severely damage us as a culture – but we will survive. And by surviving, we can repair the damage and make ourselves better than we were.

We, for the first time in human history, have an example of what a free society looks like. We, for the first time in history, are children of the only real progressives in all of human history. And we, for the first time in history, have the technology that allows common people to talk to each other, to encourage and inform each other, and to make an end run around the suicidal elites and their suicidal, dying media organs.

We can do it. And we’re gonna do it.  We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.

There is a concerted effort afoot on the part of big-state socialists to paint the Tea Party as a bunch of dangerous, hate-filled radicals with a bunch of crazy new ideas that go far beyond the pale of the traditional American political mainstream.

Let’s ask some reasonable men – because the Founding Fathers were surely the largest collection of reasonable men ever gathered in one place at one time in history – what they thought about the issues raised by the Tea Party movement.

For instance, what did they think of a powerful central government?

George Washington:

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

To those who say, well, the Government has to force you to buy something you don’t want. It’s for the greater good! Here’s William Pitt, 1783:

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.”

Thomas Jefferson, the most intellectually brilliant man to ever hold the office of President – Barack Obama excepted, of course – had this to say in his First Inaugural, accepting the reins of that power:

“A wise and frugal government – (wise and frugal, my God how we have fallen) A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”

Did the greatest mind in American history have any other radical, dangerous thoughts on the encroachment of government and uncontrolled spending?

Jefferson, 1782:

“On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?”

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816:

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Spencer Roane, March 9, 1821:

“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.”

Thomas Jefferson, 1824:

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”

1824! If Jefferson was outraged at the extent of the federal government in 1824, then that’s good enough for Bill Whittle in 2010. You see, unlike Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann, I don’t think I’m smarter than Thomas Jefferson. But Ed and Rachel and Chris and Keith are here to tell you that protesting this government takeover of the auto industry, the financial industry, the insurance industry, the housing market and now the nation’s health care is a wild and radical idea!

I’ll tell you what else we Tea Party supporters believe in: we believe that the Constitution is Law. In the same way it’s the Ten Commandments and not the Ten Suggestions, we feel that the Constitution is law. When the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was asked where she drew the Constitutional authority to force people to buy health insurance, she said this…

And, famously, a few days ago, Democratic Congressmen Phil Hare, from Barack Obama’s own state of Illinois, had this to say about the source of his legal authority to make people do things they don’t want to do…

Now, if you took your responsibilities and your oaths seriously, I would be forced to at least respect the offices you hold, Madam Speaker, and Congressman Hare. But it’s obvious you don’t. So listen carefully, Nancy and Phil, to what better people then you can even imagine being had to say about the source of your authority:

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last…. A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. “

Alexander Hamilton, Aug 28, 1794

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”

Patrick Henry

“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Thomas Jefferson, 1774.

And finally, what about the dangerous, wild-eyed, hateful and threatening allusions to violence? What about that un-American, unheard of, unprecedented repudiation of the genteel nature of politics, as represented by the calm and rational rhetoric that came from the left during the Bush years? What did the founders have to say about defending freedom, by force if necessary?

One of the Framers of the Constitution, John Dickinson wrote:

“We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers (“irritated ministers” – I love that; that’s spot-on) or resistance by force. Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.”

Or this, from Patrick Henry , 1778:

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

Of all of the things I have seen since this movement began, nothing has tickled me the way blogger Kent McManigal has with his updated take on the famous Gadsen Flag, widely popular at the time of the Revolution and making a strong comeback in the Tea Party movement. Here’s Kent’s flag:

Time’s up, guys. I know you Irritated Ministers and the defenders of the rich and powerful in the news media loathe and despise the Tea Party because you fear it. And you are right to fear it! It’s coming! It’s coming to take the country back from you big-state, anti-freedom elitists. Time’s up.

Here are some final words to take us out.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787:

“The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.”

John Adams, 1765:

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”

Benjamin Franklin, July 4, 1776:

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

And then there’s this:

“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787

And finally, from Samuel Adams – for all you big-state control freaks, Tea Party slanderers and the entire staff at MSNBC:

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Those are the wild-eyed radicals I stand with, and those are the ideals that I hold that are under assault. What about you?

I’ve just spent most of the week on the road covering an incredible story. Suffice it to say, for the time being, that I feel better about the country’s future than I have in a long time. The details should air on PJTV next week.

It’s been a tough week. Here’s a little something that might help in the meantime, while I get caught up…

At CPAC last month I had a chance to meet a lot of young people; really remarkable young people. College students mostly (and I don’t know what they’re putting in the water at Fordham University — Go Rams! — but for God’s sake, can we bottle it and put in the elementary school’s drinking water?)

College kids, a few high school kids… and two remarkable 14 year olds named Cole Campbell and Lyda Loudon. They have a website called THE FUTURE SPEAKS! and if you sometimes fear that the next generation is irretrievably lost, you should head over there and read their latest, which you can find here.

This may be the second or third link post in the seven year history of Eject! Eject! Eject! but you keep an eye on these kids. They are going places, mark my words.

And so now we have it.

I thought I might need to try my small part to cheer people up and calm them down, but for once I have underestimated the American people.  People, by and large, seem not only calm but absolutely determined. Everywhere I have looked this morning the reaction seems to be more or less the same: a nation of steely-eyed missile men. These Marxist bastards have no idea what is coming for them. No idea.

Laugh while you can, Monkey Boys.

What passed last night is a long way from the single-payer, socialist dream its supporters secretly — and not so secretly — really want. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to imagine a bill more perfectly constructed to tee off everyone: Conservatives hate it for it’s regulation, cost and explosive growth of government; liberals hate it because it forces people (so far, so good!) to buy premiums form the hated private insurance companies. (What the–!)

So, in terms of limiting the practical and immediate damage, holding it here — just holding it — is important and essential.  Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have an IQ of 130 — that would be combined between the three of them and you can get to 150 if you throw in Biden — and so they actually believe that a few months from now, they will be able to add single-payer to this goat rodeo, this bloodbath, this circus of incompetence conducted by this museum-grade confederacy of dunces. It got them a bill that requires people to pay for private insurance — which I am, of course, utterly opposed to on every level — but that is way short of single payer and we MUST hold the line here and not an inch further until reinforcements arrive in January. And they will. In numbers that will astonish and amaze the most optimistic among us.

We need to understand the great lesson we have learned about these people in this debate. Barack Obama is, to the liberal cause, a politician that comes not once in a decade, or once in a generation, or even once per century. Barack Obama is, to them, a once in history opportunity for progressives to control this country, and they will fall on a forest of swords to achieve those ends because this is the best chance they have ever had or ever will have to permanently shackle the people to the state. They know that this Health Care fiasco will cost them the House and now perhaps the Senate in November, but that new Congress will not seat until January and in the ten months between now and then they will, I predict, start an orgy of legislation that will make this Health Care circus look like a tea party.

But it seems to me that they have spent every dime of political capital in the bank and have done nothing less than awoken from its long and deep slumbers the American Giant, who in attempting to sit upright discovers the Lilliputian threads that have been staked into the ground with finishing nails and who looks around, blinking and disoriented, fatter and softer and much, much poorer than he was when he last opened his eyes back in 1941, but possessed now as then with a terrible anger and capable still of mighty exertions.

So, to the short term: everybody knows that Reid and Pelosi and The Lightworker himself, obviously, are all hoping to use this bill as the foot in the door for the stuff they really want:  a single-payer National Health System, or at least the “public option,” which is simply single-payer on the installment plan. We can’t let them get that. Going forward, we can’t let them get single-payer, or cap and trade, or amnesty, or any of it.

We can learn some lessons here. We have to. One lesson is message discipline. What is message discipline? I’ll give you an example:

What’s in a Big Mac?  Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun! That’s what’s in a Big Mac. We have got to understand that saying NO! to this socialism is admirable and essential, but that from now on there has to be a counter-narrative to what these Marxists are selling, because like it or not the human brain is wired for stories — that’s how we learn (and why the real fight is not for Washington but rather Hollywood — but that’s a story for another time.)

If we want to win on health care, or any other issue, we need to have an answer to what they are selling and that answer needs to be as simple and comprehensive as the Big Mac slogan.

Our position on health care?  Two tax incentives, health accounts, crossing state lines, tort reform, competition on an auto insurance bun. And if we don’t learn how to do this we will lose.

A final thought on this darkish day: much is said about the “inevitability” of these kinds of legislation, that once enacted they are impossible to repeal or roll back.

This kind of thinking is self-fulfilling defeatism and has to stop. ANY law enacted can be repealed. We repealed a constitutional amendment, for God’s sake. From now on we must change our message from one of limiting government growth and spending and regulation to one of reducing it.

It is true that no nation has in the past ever recovered from the cycle of entitlement, moral decay and aristocratic rot that we find ourselves in. But it is also true that no nation — not one in history — was established precisely in opposition to these cancers. It is also true that never before have common people — otherwise known as the Host Organism — had the means to speak directly to one another, as we are here. It is true that if there is to be an historical exemption to the Cycle of Civilization it is only here that it will occur, and it is also true that the concepts of Free Will and Destiny are antithetical to one another. One of them is true and the other is not. It is my belief that you can chose to abandon Free Will and chose to believe in destiny and historical inevitability, or you can take the risk to believe instead that there is a new world populated by optimists and dreamers, but dreamers with rifles as well as quills and parchment… People who have never surrendered and for whom the very idea of defeat and despair is anathema.

That’s a choice I make every day. What we see before us is the result of lost elections and redemption will come from winning elections. Mark these words, my friends: We are going to whip these Marxists out of their little commie boots!

We’ve covered quite a few topics on TRIFECTA over the past year — three a week adds up! — and it occurred to me that we don’t get a chance to talk too much about who we are and where we come from.

So I thought I spend a segment that just dealt with Your Humble Hosts… just a few personal questions to let you get to know us a little better. You can find that trisected warmth here.

Next up: BEYOND THE BURNER… some thoughts on Harrison Ford and my encounter with Indiana Jones in the skies over Southern California.

In 1977, during my senior year in High School, I went to a drive in theater and  sat on the roof of a station wagon to see a movie called Star Wars.

Star Wars was set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away – only it wasn’t. It was about a farm boy from Tatooine – who was really a farm boy from Iowa – who meets a Corellian pirate with a fast starship – who is really a high school jock with a hotrod – and together they set out to rescue a Princess from Alderaan – who, again, is really just some snooty girl from the big city.

And it was just great fun. That movie changed the world.

Then, four years later when I was at the University of Florida, I saw a movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark. It featured a daring, adventurous, brilliant American explorer named Indiana Jones who roamed the world stealing things in the name of science.

And it too was just great fun.

Now, if you’re looking for that spirit of adventure – that sense of freedom and euphoria with just enough of an element of danger to get the blood flowing, then you cannot do much better in the real world than flying a small airplane. It’s been my passion all of my life. So imagine my delight to discover that Harrison Ford — the actor who of course portrayed both Han Solo and Indiana Jones — he and I both share the same passion for the challenge and transcendental freedom that comes with being a pilot.

Now a few days ago, Mr. Ford was doing an interview and casually mentioned how deeply he loved the freedom of flight:

“Learning to fly was a work of art,” said Mr. Ford. “I’m so passionate about flying I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger. Flying is like good music; it elevates the spirit and it’s an exhilarating freedom.”

Like good music, it elevates the spirit and it’s an exhilarating freedom. Exactly right.

But the days of elevated spirits and exhilarating freedoms are coming to an end here in America. Because Harrison Ford – the quintessential American actor playing the archtypical American rebel and adventurer, can no longer use his own money, his own time and his own freedom to hop in an airplane and fly up the coast for the proverbial hundred dollar hamburger. Not if Wendy Buckley has her way!

Dr. Buckley, proprietor of carbonfootprint.com, located in fine old Worting House on Church Lane in Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom, has publicly called Mr. Ford’s personally funded search for an elevated spirit and exhilarating freedom “unnecessary.”

She goes on to say that “Flying is a huge source of carbon emissions and making unnecessary journeys by plane can no longer be seen as responsible to our environment. Stars like Harrison Ford need to embrace the huge opportunity to lead by example in the battle against climate change – reduce their overall lifestyle carbon footprint and carbon offset those unavoidable emissions.”

Now Mr. Ford, you will be pleased and surprised to know that Dr. Wendy Buckley herself can help you in this regard because at her website you can in fact purchase absolution at the bargain rate of $25.61 per ton of carbon emitted. What a remarkably selfless and helpful woman.

Mr. Ford, I’d like to speak to you now not as a Hollywood celebrity and not even as a fellow pilot, but rather as the actor that was able to find within himself that exceedingly rare alchemy of rebellious charm mixed with fundamental decency and innocence. I’d like to speak to the person who has captured the American spirit in the characters of Han Solo and Indiana Jones in a way that has never been surpassed, and which brought you – deservedly – the resources to buy and fly your own airplanes and experience the exhilaration that you and I and very few others can actually comprehend.  

I am asking that man to do the right thing, to stand up and publicly invite Dr. Wendy Buckley of Worting House in Basingstoke, UK to share a moment of our pilot’s euphoria by taking a very long flying leap off of a very short pier. Mr. Ford, stand up and tell Wendy Buckley to Pound Sand!

From Dr. Jones to Dr. Buckley: just say, “This is none of your business! It’s a free country!”

Remember that little expression? “It’s a free country!” Remember when that was a common response to these petty tyrannies? Remember when any time anybody tried to tell you what you could and could not do we didn’t just whimper and apologize we used to turn to them and say, “Who died and made you king? This is a free country! I’ll do what I damn well please!”

Does this matter? Yes it does. Because freedom of action and personal responsibility are welded together, two sides of the same coin. When we are free to do as we please we become the kind of independent, self-reliant people who will step up in emergencies. And when we surrender our will to other people who live to tell us what to do, we then become dependent on being told what to do all the time.

My brother Steve is a year younger than me. Right around age 13 Stevie used to take a tent, his dog and a shotgun and hitchhike from our home in South Florida out into the Everglades. He’d usually be gone or two or three days. Did my mom worry about him? Yes she did, but on some level I guess she preferred to raise an independent boy who was living his life to the fullest rather than perpetually trying to defend a life-long infant.

A few months ago I heard in passing that Steve had been on his way to work one morning when he passed a car that was on fire with the driver still inside. He pulled over, grabbed his crowbar, smashed the window and with the help of another passing citizen pulled her out and saved her life. He never thought to mention this to me. I found out about it second hand a few days afterward.

Or parents raised all of us in the way that most American kids used to be raised: to be free and independent and capable of acting on our own initiative when the moment called for it. We rode in the back of pickup trucks and station wagons, we played on monkey bars and carousels and big old swing sets that we used to endlessly try to go all the way over on. We got hurt, and banged up, and we learned our lessons, and our survival rate did not seem to be significantly lower than the kids today, who, if they go outside at all, play non-competitive games on rubberized surfaces with anxious parents hovering a few inches away ready to catch them before they hit the ground.

How are these kids going to turn out? Well, a couple of months ago, I had to have my car towed from my parking garage. The man with the tow truck, named Eddie, pushed from the front while I pushed and steered from the side and after we got it on the truck he thanked me for the effort, to which I replied, “what am I going to do – just sit there and watch? Well, as it turns out, most men in Los Angeles do just sit there and watch. If it’s raining, these grown men will sit in the car while Eddie pushes – for a hundred yards down a slippery street. His number one call is to go out and change a tire: change a tire for grown men who just don’t know how.

So what does this have to do with Harrison Ford and Wendy Buckley? Well, Americans like Han Solo and Indiana Jones are free men. They are brave, resourceful and kind. And they take the initiative  – that’s what Americans used to know how to do in their bones. . They do not wait to be told what to do because they do not have to be told what to do. They know what to do.

Back in Dr. Buckley’s home, Great Britain, a little girl recently burned to death in her apartment as a result of what started as a smallish fire. A few brave men tried to enter the building to save her life, but they were forcibly prevented by the police – who not only did not go in to save her but in fact barred the way of the men who tried to.

When it was over, the police were congratulated by the police chief – a man no doubt after Wendy Buckley’s heart – who after all only wanted to prevent the additional loss of life that may have occurred should those men had attempted a rescue.

So the question is, ladies and gentlemen, which kind of world do you want to live in? A world where a little girl dies in a fire, along with perhaps two or three other heroic men who tried to save her? Or one in which that girl’s one chance at life, and a future, and children and grandchildren, was taken from her by policemen guarding her from individual action on behalf of the safety-minded nanny state… this horrific, faceless state identified only by the condescending smile of those acting out of the greater good… that cradle-to-grave, busy-body, do-gooderism that condemned that little girl to death and prevented by state force the free-will decision of those heroes who chose to risk their own lives to save another.

That kind of society is coming here. That ethos is growing daily here – in the last bastion of human freedom and initiative. Each year, fewer and fewer people – good-hearted people – will take the initiative to enter a burning house or car – or even change their own tires – because we allow people like Wendy Buckley to tell us what we can and cannot do with our own time, our own money and our own freedom.

If we surrender to these people, personal freedom and bravery – they are welded together – will wither and vanish, just as it did in the Soviet Union when this same sort of people finally got the power they live for. When Han Solo made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs, no doubt some bureaucrat was there to say that the Kessel Run should never be made in under 18 parsecs as it’s wasteful of fuel destructive to wormholes. Would Han Solo take that? Wasn’t the entire point of Star Wars the fight to make it a Free Galaxy? What the hell is the point of a Free Galaxy if you can’t do the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs when you feel like it? If you want to be a slave to the Imperial Bureaucracy, just come out and say so.

You’ll no doubt be pleased to know that the Heritage Foundation has, for the first time ever, has downgraded the United States of America from being a free country, economically, to being Mostly Free – in the same company as Chile, Bahrain, The Netherlands, Mauritius, Lithuania and Botswana.

(click to enlarge)

Oh, and culture lovers, just in case you can’t see the obvious: the reason the first three Star Wars movies were so terrific, and the second three sucked so bad, is actually very simple. The first three were about rebels, shooting guns and driving fast, and speaking with American accents. The second three were about politicians, discussing treaties and holding court, and speaking with British accents.   

It’s coming. But we can stop it. If we have the will, we can stop it. We can still do it, if we chose to: here in the land of the mostly free, and the home of the occasionally brave.

Just when you think these cads, louts and blackguards cannot get any more sleazy, intimidating or appalling… you discover that they can. And do.

Is the Democratic strategy to chew and drag this awful health care fiasco over the line really to try to eliminate as many members of congress as possible in order to reduce the number of ‘yes’ votes needed? Rep. Massa says that is exactly what is happening.

Steve Green, Scott Ott and I try to respond. I say try, because this is passing the realm of what is possible to parody. Probable content warning for adolescent humor and appropriately inappropriate Tweets.  

You can watch it in all its juvenile glory here.

Today’s Afterburner takes a look at the Nanny State’s attempt to control the actor who played the two most iconic, rebellious, adventurous characters in movie history. Harrison Ford has been chastised for flying “unnecessarily.” Would Han Solo Take that? Would Indiana Jones? Why should we have to take it?

The link is here. Full text tomorrow, and on Wednesday, I’m going to start a small segment called “behind the ‘burner,” developing a few of the ideas a little further.

Hope you like it.

[I am going to start publishing the text of the Afterburner's sometime after they appear on PJTV (I tried to do it before they appeared once, and the text got the link and not the video!)

[I'm slowly trying to move the best of the old archives over here to the new. Mostly that consists of the SILENT AMERICA essays, but there were a number of pieces that I really liked, and this is one of them -- courtesy of a request by an old friend who was looking for it.

In a month or two I'm going to be putting out two compilations of previously unpublished materials: SEEING THE UNSEEN: ADVENTURES IN CRITICAL THINKING and AFTERBURNER! VOL. 1.

This will be in the former. It originally appeared in late July of 2006.]

There was a time – and being born in 1959, I am old enough to remember it – when the idea of Civilization needed no explanation or defense. Everybody knew what it meant. The very idea of Civilization was tied to another term, now likewise mocked, and that term is Progress.

Progress was the idea that society was moving forward, upward, toward higher goals – better medicine, faster transportation, the brutality of hard labor replaced by stronger, then smarter machines; abundant energy, increased wealth and leisure: all of these things were greatly desired, and society was proud to provide them, proud to show them off in World Fairs and Expos and in the mythology of the movies.

Now “progress,” and “civilization,” are ironic terms, in sneer quotes, muttered with that pathetic, bored tone of cynical nihilism started by the narcissistic brats that I have been ten years behind for my entire life. Today, I try to exercise and watch my weight only so that I may live long enough to see the last of these radical hippies die in their sleep.

The entire concept of Civilization has been deconstructed, and vilified, so that by having the audacity to defend the ideals of Civilized behavior you a branded a racist or a Nazi or even a conservative. Why all the hatred? Why are so many people so ashamed of the most amazing Civilization that has ever existed on the face of this planet? What the hell have these people been taught to make them think such transparent nonsense?

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I believe that human beings are interchangeable.

By this I mean that had Baby Billy been dropped off in the heart of the Amazon rainforest and raised by Yanomami tribesmen (and according to my mother there were times when I was in real danger of this happening), I would have spent my youth learning to hunt monkeys with my bow and 6ft. long arrows, and generally hanging around the shabono sleeping in till almost 6am.  Likewise, if Baby Kopenawa had my parents, he’d probably be cranking out online essays at irregular intervals and shooting instrument approaches in experimental canard airplanes.

I don’t believe such a thing because I want to (although I do)…I believe it because to me it seems like coastline rather than map. I believe it based on the fact that wherever I look I see a full spectrum of multi-colored barbarians and savages, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, a rainbow of the brilliant and the civilized and the decent. Rwanda and Bosnia are on different sides of the planet, and their citizens as different-looking from each other as humans can be, but the horrors each perpetrated during the last decade should put to rest forever the idea that a few millimeters of melanin can save us or doom us one way or another.

There may in fact be some genetic component to intelligence, but if there is, I believe it pales compared to the effect of culture – and by that, mostly I mean the luck of the draw regarding your parents. In fact, I’ll bet my life on the fact that I can make astronauts and engineers out of any healthy babies of any color. I know I could make murders and rapists out of anyone, and that this is far easier to do than the former.

So when we talk about the entire idea of civilization, a simple glance at history shows we are not talking about race at all. At various times in history the leading civilization has been black, yellow, brown, or white, and the barbarians lined up to tear down those civilizations have been of every color as well. So to make claim that one culture is civilized while another is not is somehow racist is patently ridiculous on its face. Anyone who claims otherwise is trying to shut down the argument because they know they cannot win it on facts and logic – which to some of these people are also racist. But facts and logic don’t give a damn what they think…facts and logic exist whether they like it or not. So do I, and I don’t give a damn what such people say, either. This intimidation tactic has silenced benign, well-meaning people for too long.  How would a real Nazi respond to being called a racist? Hitler, dude, you’re like a total racist! That’s a compliment to goose-stepping sons of bitches. That’s a badge of pride for them. Only decent people are deterred by such rhetoric…and that is the entire objective. It works. But not here. Not anymore.

It’s not the hardware, it’s the software. It’s not race, it’s culture.

That’s what I believe.

There is a full-court effort to tear down civilization these days, to make ridiculous even the very idea of civilization, and that is a fight worth rising to. Because the unseen rhizomes of civilization – the impenetrably vast and intricate connections that exist out of our view, beneath the surface of our blinkered daily existence – produce so much that is good and necessary and completely taken for granted that to lose it would be to lose what makes us fully human.

And I don’t want that to happen. Do you?

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Let’s start with the obvious save the sublime for a moment….

I like to fly. Lots of reasons, but here’s one of the best: there is a moment during an instrument departure when – just for an instant – your head breaks out of the clouds but your body still feels engulfed in the mist.  For those amazing few seconds you have a real, stationary frame of reference, and the sensation of brightening whiteness, followed by that incredible rush of speed as you punch through the top of the cloud deck, and the cotton turns to a blur as it roars past your ears…well, that’s worth the work it takes to do such things.

On the last day before my Instrument checkride, I departed from Santa Monica airport with my flight instructor to my right and my gorgeous pilot girlfriend in the back seat. We were given a clearance to climb to 4,000 ft. out to an intersection called SADDE. I expected we’d pop right out of the thin marine layer in a few seconds, as we usually did. But nooooo. This was several thousand feet thick – and dense. I can tell you in all honesty we could not see the wing tips ten feet away. It’s like the windows were painted white. Flying on instruments is just like regular flying, only you can’t see anything.

So barreling through the air at about 180 mph, I began my right turn towards SADDE. A glance down at the Turn Coordinator, a nice standard rate turn to the right, airspeed’s good, the engine seems happy…and then I notice that the Attitude Indicator – also known as an Artificial Horizon and my main view of the world outside – is showing me in a turn to the left, and increasing – fast. 

Turn Coordinator showing right turn…Artificial Horizon showing one to the left. And in that instant, I felt something grab me by the toes. It was the sharp, tearing claws of panic, working their way into my shoes. I’ve had two engine failures in my flying career, and both of them were immediately followed by this same sick feeling. That fear has to be stepped on right now. If you start thinking about the hundreds of JFK, Juniors I’ve read about and all the airplane wreckage scraped off mountainsides like the one I was approaching then you are already most of the way to being dead.

Craig, we got a problem here. That was what I said, if in a vocal pitch that only dogs and flight instructors could hear. The turn coordinator and the AI are telling me different things!

He turns and looks at me calmly. Bummer!, he says casually, showing why the vast majority of CFI’s are not killed in training accidents but rather choked to death, found with finger-shaped bruises to the left side of the neck.

Then he gave me the best piece of advice I have ever received.

Kick its ass, he said. And that was it.

But that was all I needed to hear. God damn right! I’ll kick its ass!

That’s a decision you make…a decision to not be ruled by fear and panic. It is a decision to take all of those hard-wired instincts that have brought us so far – the fear of falling, the rising desire to just call for help then curl up in a ball – and put them away. Forget what the seat of your pants is telling you: that’s an express elevator down to an NTSC report with your name on it. The Attitude Indicator shows a turn to the left. Turn coordinator shows a turn to the right. But! Both the heading indicator and the whiskey compass also show a turn to the right. The A.I. – my only intuitive look at the world outside – is lying to me. I force myself to realize it is outvoted. We’re not turning left, like the little airplane wings on the little horizon in the little picture. We’re turning right.

This is the essence of training: the ability to do the right thing, not the instinctive thing. It is the voluntary placement of the human above the animal, the cerebral cortex above our reptile brain, which can be very LOUD in times like these.  It is, in the end, a call to trust: trust your instruments, trust your airplane, trust your training and ultimately to trust yourself. This willing shift, this prying the claws of emotion from the inner voice of reason… this is the very essence of civilization. Trust what thousands of people have literally given their lives to teach us, even if it goes against instinct, survival and fear. Trust… It’s what makes the whole thing work.

Meanwhile, I need to notify Air Traffic Control that we’ve got a problem.

Socal approach, Experimental One Echo Foxtrot has a failed attitude indicator. 

One Echo Foxtrot, roger. Do you wish to continue the approach?

No sir. What I’d really like is for someone to get a really big f***ing ladder and get us out of this mess.

Affirmative, One Echo Foxtrot will continue inbound on the ILS to Burbank.

One Echo Foxtrot, roger.

It’s much, much later that I wonder how and why the human animal – which when you get right down to it should really only need enough brainpower to make a sharp stick to throw at a gazelle – has enough reserve neuron connections to build a civilization so complex that a hairless ape like myself can chase a set of white needles across a four-inch instrument, while hurtling blind a mile up in the air at 150 knots without leaving nail and bite marks on the plexiglass. But, somehow, that’s what I did.

A few minutes later, I could see a patch of ground directly below, and then, after a little more needlework, we popped out beneath the layer. There, dead ahead, were the flashing approach strobes…Burbank Airport, right where those damn little white needles said it would be.  Truth to tell, I was actually slightly to the left of the runway centerline, and Craig, my mute flight instructor in the seat next to me, was slightly to the right of it. That is a hell of a feeling, coming home to civilization, to an airport beacon right where it was supposed to be, to leave death up in the grey soup just this once with a weird, indescribable, clearly paradoxical mixture of burning pride and deep humility.  

How many people were there with me that day? Not just the obvious two – Dana and Craig, who’s support kept my monkey brain in the back of my head to return to throw pooh another day. How many guys were watching me on radar, keeping me separated from far, far better men and women who do this in their sleep up there? How many people did it take to make the instruments, to mine the silica for the glass, to tap the rubber for the wires? Who laid the asphalt on the runways, who built the filaments in the approach strobes, and who attached the ceramic tips to my spark plugs? And how many millions of other unseen connections had to be made to allow me to do, routinely, and on a middle-class salary, what billions of dead men and women would have given a lifetime to taste – just once. In those few minutes I just told you of, I stood on the shoulders of millions of my brothers and sisters, not the least of which were two sons of a preacher from Dayton, Ohio – now long dead but with me in sprit every day. I was atop a pyramid of dedication, hard work, ingenuity and progress, following rules written in the blood of the stupid and the brave and the unlucky.

I had tossed myself a mile into the air and landed safe in this Web of Trust.

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Civilization is a loaded word, defined more often than not by its opposite: Civilization vs. Brutality. Civilization vs. Lawlessness. We’ll deal with both of those later. But for now, can we take a few moments to peel away the tiniest corner of the vast unseen web, to consider the depths of the Civilization we have built – Civilization vs. The Primitive?

Take a primitive society as an example – the Yanomami, say. Their primitiveness does not convey any moral disadvantage – there are millions of brutal people hidden in the folds of every civilization – nor does it provide them any moral pedestal either, for primitive people spend far more time at war, and suffer far greater violence per capita, than civilized people do. But one can call such a society primitive not only because the tangibles of civilization are absent – the cities and power grids and transportation lines — but because of the lack of complexity of their Web of Trust.

In a tribe of thirty individuals, with infrequent contacts with what are essentially the same neighboring tribes, a member of the Yanomami may perhaps extend his trust to a few dozen people. Perhaps there is a witch doctor who attends to the spiritual needs of the entire village, or some herbal specialists in certain families who can be relied upon more than others to relieve pain and mitigate the symptoms of illness. The hunting may be done by a smaller group, gathering by another…but when all is said and done the number of people you connect to is remarkably small. It is this close-knit aspect that appeals to many Western romantics, who admire the sincerity and human closeness provided by such cultures…that is to say, they admire it from a distance, in the pages of National Geographic say, or on the Discovery Channel. Needless to say, there is not a person in the West who subscribes to either outlet that cannot more or less immediately pull up roots and go and live the rest of their lives with these noble, authentic, warm, Third World people. And yet they do not. And it’s not hard to see why, for they too are in love with the standard of living that their civilization provides – a civilization some of them, certainly, profess to despise.

Every time two people come together and trade, wealth is created. Out of thin air. By magic. Every trade, every bit or work done by every human on the planet increases the complexity and order of the whole, and thus makes it more valuable. This is a rich subject, one we will return to in a following chapter. But for now, suffice it to say that if I, as a member of a hunter tribe, make great spears and crappy baskets, and you, as a gatherer, make beautiful baskets and miserable spears, then when we exchange my spear for your basket both of us walk away richer.

Every trade, every transaction, increases the total wealth – for both parties. In a primitive society, where there are at most a few score connections among the people in that society, there is very little wealth, and very little leisure. The simplicity of those connections is plainly obvious. But how much more complex is Western Civilization?

If you could hear each of these transactions – trade and trust relationships – would that help? Tribal life as the sound of stones thrown into a pond at irregular intervals; a small village the clicks of Geiger counter; a city the buzz of a hive of angry bees… and the whole of our incredible, magnificent Western Civilization the clear, pure tone of a tuning fork.

This complexity is absolutely taken for granted. No one sees it. Ah, but Grasshopper…that is because you choose not to look.

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Let’s look at Western Civilization at its naked pinnacle, at the height of its sheer fabulousness: Oscar night! It’s almost time for the Best Supporting Actor award!

Let’s start with the obvious: The amazing set, the stunning lighting, the beautiful people – not just American stars, but world-wide phee-noms. This culture reaches around the world. It’s a fair bet that every other crazed Jihadi getting lathered up for a good round of beheadings in Iraq or Afghanistan or Malaysia is wearing a Spider-man T-shirt of a Miami Dolphins cap or a pair of shorts with a Nike slash or one of the millions of other little trinketss mass-produced as easily as skin cells falling of the body of a sleeping Goliath.

But let’s peel away layers, shall we? One by one?

What about the television network that allows us to watch such things in the comfort of our homes? How much work did that entail? I work in television; I know how television and computers work – in theory. I could no sooner build a television or a computer from scratch than I could walk to Hawaii. I would be utterly incapable of manufacturing the most simple, basic component of a computer – one of the keys, say, or the on-off switch. Completely, and totally beyond my ability.

How many people did it take to make just one plasma TV screen? Just one? Not just the people that assembled it – how many people that made the components of that plasma set? How many people does it take to make just the little green power LED? That’s not done in a hut somewhere. And let’s not even begin to imagine the work needed to build the transmitters and fiber-optic lines, the satellites and launch systems, the local cable service, and their lines, and the repair technicians, and all of that.

I routinely have to enter a major communications ground center to arrange satellite uplinks to New York from L.A. Imagine a wall two stories tall and  fifty feet wide, each with a perfect, brand-new color monitor – several hundred in all – on which is every show being broadcast over only a single satellite system. Hundreds of programs, in scores of languages, going up and down from satellites 22 thousand miles high – the entire world talking all at once, and those giant gold statuettes only one little window among hundreds, and thousands more unseen.  

And the world yawns.

Peel another layer: somewhere, a man is walking across a poured concrete floor, inspecting huge generators that power an electrical grid that simply boggles the mind. None of this lighting or TV happens without it. In much of the world, electricity is still non-existent, or rationed to a few hours a day. Not here. And this generating plant relies on water being pumped through likewise unnoticed underground arteries, being watched over 24 hours a day by anonymous men and women up along the 5 Freeway, not watching the show because if they did there would be no show.

And another layer: Outside, a man stands on the street talking into a radio. His job is to coordinate the few hundred limousines lined up like rail cars at a switching station. No show without them, or their drivers. Or the people who run the gas stations that keep them running. Or the mechanics that repair the engines.  Or the people that deliver the ice to the 7-11 to fill the champagne holders.  Or the people that delivered that champagne in trucks, moving through the city at 3 am. Or the people that made the tires for those trucks. Or the Portuguese Engineers Mate, 3^rd class, who is attending to a potentially dangerous hydraulic leak on the container ship that brings the tires into Long Beach. 

And another layer: That man, on the radio? He presses a switch, and inside that radio a connection closes. That connection is made with a very small amount of gold. That gold was mined by another man in South Africa. That minor was fed by a cook from Thailand. That cook’s mother was saved by medication developed by a pharmaceutical lab in Philadelphia. One of the biochemists who developed that medication is alive only because of a pacemaker made in North Miami. The man who empties the trash in that medical office is a big fan of Andy Garcia, and one of his favorite movies is The Mean Season. And one of the reporters in the Miami Herald Newsroom in The Mean Season was…me.    

And it never stops…ever. It just goes round and round. Any permanent break in the Web of Trust and the Oscars… go away.

But back to the show: Oh, look! George Clooney has won! Let’s see what he has to say? Uh-huh. He’s talking about how brave Hollywood is. For going out on a limb and speaking up against the repression machine. Yes, there he is, like all courageous dissidents: worth millions of dollars, his every utterance fawned over by armies of reporters and millions of admirers, telling us about the incredible courage it takes to speak up in Bushitler’s Police State. 

He’s just come off of two, brave, brave adventures, you see: one where the heroes are pampered, high-powered television executives, who, in a time where they rigidly controlled all of the information going out to the vast majority of voting citizens, bravely stood up and refused to acknowledge that many of them were members of an foreign-controlled organization devoted to the destruction of their nation, and championed their unwillingness to take the same oath of loyalty required by the most destitute new citizen or the most simple farm-boy soldier. My God! What heroes!

But the award is for his moving and nuanced role as a representative of the American government, and it’s complicity in the illegal assassination of a kind and deeply moral Arab leader who only wants his wealth to be shared by his people, before being killed by rapacious, soulless American businessmen who only live for chaos and war because it helps line their pockets.

And the next day, this brave, brave man will wonder with a straight face why “liberal” has become a dirty word in America.

Of course, this is to real bravery what a painted flat is to a solid steel bank vault. Sure, McCarthy was a blowhard and a bully, and while there is such a thing as “treason,” “un-American” behavior would be beyond my ability to define. But the fact is, he was right. There were hundreds of people determined to undermine this system and replace it with one that has shot 100 million people in the back of the head at midnight in underground torture cells.

Fifty years ago.

Now, as it turns out, only a few years ago, a film director was stabbed to death on a street in broad daylight. He was not threatened with being fired by his own company. He was not being asked to sign a loyalty oath. No, Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death, and a note left on the knife blade embedded in his chest, because a filmmaker dared to speak his mind about something that actually involved real risk to himself. That sounds like genuine bravery to me.  Will our intrepid free-speech champion be covering that one next, I wonder? I suspect not. Those murderers are, unlike Joe McCarthy, still alive. There is a particle of real danger attached to making such a movie. Perhaps this brave, courageous, Clooney voice will turn next to playing Boss Tweed, or perhaps the Teapot Dome scandal with bring him Oscar gold in the years to come.  And in the end, who are we to judge a man’s courage, when he has already proclaimed it so loudly for himself.

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There are a few people who were not watching the Oscars that night, who I would like to take a brief moment to call your attention to.

Paul Smith wasn’t watching George accept his award for bravery. Paul wasn’t watching that night, because three years earlier Paul got on top of an Armored Personnel Carrier outside of Baghdad International, and provided the covering fire that saved his Brigade Combat team. Paul was killed during this action. How many people know about his bravery?

William Walsh missed the show too.  He and some of his buddies were huddled in a stinking hole on Iwo Jima, and when a Japanese grenade came in to join them, Bill threw himself on it without hesitation.  Here’s the really sad thing: Bill’s sons and daughters didn’t see the show, nor did any of his grandchildren, because he didn’t get to have any children or grandchildren. He was 23 years old. We share the same birthday, I found. But I had to look for him.

Andrew Jackson Smith was a Negro soldier in the Civil War. He apparently did not suffer any doubts about the worth of the nation that had held his people in slavery. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for risking his life to defend…a flag. Because of Corporal Smith, the regimental colors did not fall. That doesn’t mean much to people these days, but Smith was ready to die for it. He believed in this country. It took until July of 2001 for him to receive the recognition he deserved – a shameful lapse. But the wheels of justice, while turning slowly here, did, in fact, turn.

We can go on and on and on – all through 3,461 current Medal of Honor recipients. Not one of them could be named by any schoolkid in a hundred.  Add all the other awards for gallantry and you have a small army of heroes, all unremembered by the huge majority of the population. And ask any combat vet, and he’ll tell you that only a sliver of the daily acts of sacrifice and heroism go reported, let alone recognized. For every Medal of Honor winner there are tens, perhaps hundreds, who have shown the same courage unsung. These people gave their lives for us…for this country and this Civilization. They gave their lives so we could live in the freedom, security and prosperity that alone allows us to be so callow, so cynical, and so relentlessly ungrateful to those who have sacrificed on our behalf.

We don’t see these things because we choose not to see them.  But we not only have movie awards, we have movie awards season. Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG awards, People’s Choice…it goes on and on and on.  A civilization that is this debased when it comes to who and what they glorify is in some trouble.

And it is deeper than even that. It is not just the unseen heroes. It is the unseen, anonymous people that make this whole thing work. Right at this exact instant, there are men and women making sure that you have clean, safe water. That your aspirin is safe, and works as advertised. That you can pick up a can of food in any store in the country and eat whatever is inside it without a second’s worry about its danger. Armies of people, millions of people, get up and go to work every day to make sure that all of the transparent, unnoticed and unsung strands in this Web of Trust function.

And even when you are all alone, in the wild, as far from the Web of Civilization as you can possible be, it is still there with you: in a body free from the parasites and diseases that have killed legions unimaginable, in a body free from pain, from the deformity of unset broken bones, in titanium hips and pacemakers we give not a second thought to. It is there in the mental bridge, the bridge only the designer sees as he looks across a chasm, before the first rivet is driven. Civilization is in our hearts when we stand around a water cooler with people from all across the globe: ancient enemies, perhaps…people our ancestors have fought with for centuries and millennia, and who we now replay Saturday Night Live routines for before heading back to our cubicles to refine a little more order out of the chaos.

So mark these words, for this is not something beyond our control:

Civilizations fall because people bitch and complain when the electricity is off for fifteen minutes, and never give a thought to the fact that it has been on for their entire lives.