A.J. DiCintio
An antidote for Sixties lies: Part Two
By A.J. DiCintio
This essay examines a few pernicious sixties lies and reveals how, especially for young people, ideas expressed and examples set by America's 19th century romantics can serve as an antidote to them.
Part One places its focus on "Free Love," "Everybody's beautiful," and "You can be anything you want to be."
Part Two continues the task, stating openly it doesn't come close to completing it.
"antiwar"
The ambiguous nature of this term comes to light when we consult dictionaries to find it can mean "opposition to a particular war" or "opposition to all war."
One wonders, then, how many cowardly, expedient liberals who think of themselves as described by the latter definition prefer the ambiguous term "antiwar" as a means of avoiding the precise but clearly metaphysical "pacifist" and "pacifism," because using those terms would inevitably result in their being denounced as fake materialists and cowardly hypocrites.
(For a very brief but effective exposition upon the metaphysical nature of pacifism, see Orwell's "Pacifism and the War," Paragraph Four.)
In contrast to the behavior of liberals, who will deny anything, even the word "liberal," in the name of hastening the triumph of the "revolution," is the honesty of 19th century romantics.
For example, Thoreau and many of his transcendentalist contemporaries opposed the Mexican War not because they were vaguely "antiwar" but because they regarded that particular war as immoral and said so openly, while the gentle Walt Whitman supported the North's position in the American Civil War with such deep fervor he wrote Beat! Beat! Drums! a "pro-war" poem whose brutally truthful, bone-chilling imagery makes Sherman's unforgettable comparison excruciatingly real.
"make love, not war"
This is another example of the sophomoric drivel that oozed from the minds of sixties liberals whose "free" and "open" schools never taught them about the horrors that occurred in 1940 when fifty million Frenchmen merrily sang faites l'amour, pas la guerre only to see their country ruthlessly blitzed in 45 loveless days by Nazis chanting (in perfect, centralized government loving unison) bilden Sie Krieg, nicht Liebe!
However, while those schools do mention Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Serbia, and Sudan, not a single liberal has ever chosen to put the effectiveness of "make love, not war" to the test by shouting it in person to groups preparing to commit genocide either in those diverse nations or elsewhere.
Not that anyone ought to be surprised; for liberals have never been big about laying it on the line.
For instance, liberals love Thoreau when they read "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be."
But as soon as they notice that the next sentence, "Now put the foundations under them," doesn't include the phrase "using other people's money," they immediately denounce America's greatest champion of individualism, whose aversion to governmental power was exemplified by his building his cabin at Walden Pond with his own hands and dollars, as a racist, fascist, anti-environmental freak.
"the nanny state is the good state"
Every liberal heart (including the radically beating one of the current president) believes this simple sentence states a profound truth.
But unlike British columnist Polly Toynbee, not a prominent liberal can muster the courage to say it, preferring, instead, in worse than lap-dance fashion, to excite the public with intense but heatless invocations of insubstantial nonsense, for instance, about airy hope and vacuous change.
Of course, it's not surprising liberals choose to obscure their deep love of the nanny state. After all, in every form it has been tried, it has been an abject failure.
The experiments of the 19th century's benign, Utopian nannies failed miserably, if, almost always, laughably.
The various communist versions immediately devolved into a psychopathic Stalin, Mao, troika, or gang of four nanny, in total, responsible for 120 million deaths, a number that would have risen into the billions if the model of North Korea's starvation/death state nanny had prevailed.
The fascist version just as immediately transformed into a psychopathic, genocidal, maniac war mongering nanny of 40 million deaths.
And the Western European democratic version of the nanny state?
Well, accompanied by arrogant applause clapped by head-in-the-sand European neo-socialists and their neo-conservative brethren as well as true-believing American liberals, it appeared to hold together for a few decades . . . only because industrious countries on the continent stupidly have been feeding the coffers of nations that wallow in the moral slop that is the essential characteristic of the eternally over-spending, over-borrowing, devaluing, defaulting social democracy nanny.
However, the days of deception are now over; and despite the protestations of bumbling One-Europe Pollyannas, the debt burdened, bank devastated, over paid, under producing, red tape choked, unemployment sickened, future ravaged, EU Parliament-infected European nanny states have become One Hell of a Mess States whose euro alliance is certain to fall apart one way or another.
In contrast to the dangerous, destructive nonsense that characterizes the nanny state, Thoreau, in harmony with America's brilliant Founders, made this simple assertion:
"That government is best which governs least."
But never foolishly idealistic so that he could be taken in by the lure of anarchy or extreme libertarianism, Concord's most famous resident went on to say that only when "men are prepared for it" will they live under government that "governs not at all."
No ideology-worshipping intellectual softy who could blithely ignore the realities of human nature that Henry David Thoreau!
But then he is also the man who eternally reminds us of the existential fact that while government is necessary, it is people, ultimately, through the sweat of their faces, the genius of their minds, and the driving force of their spirits, who protect their rights, get things done, and create wealth:
"It [government] does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished. . ."
So here is the reality regarding the sixties nanny state lie:
We can believe it in spite of its being just another of the big lies spewed throughout history by arrogant, catastrophe-creating, aristocratic frauds.
Or we can side with honest thinkers such as Thoreau, who surely knew Jefferson spoke truth to the ages when he argued that the people are the only guarantors of their rights, especially the rights of life, liberty, and individual pursuit of happiness.
To side with the greatest creative spirits who have ever lived or with power and money loving hypocrites who never met an immoral means to an end they didn't love. . .
That is our choice regarding all contemptible lies, including those that have plagued this nation since the sixties.
© A.J. DiCintio
May 20, 2012
This essay examines a few pernicious sixties lies and reveals how, especially for young people, ideas expressed and examples set by America's 19th century romantics can serve as an antidote to them.
Part One places its focus on "Free Love," "Everybody's beautiful," and "You can be anything you want to be."
Part Two continues the task, stating openly it doesn't come close to completing it.
"antiwar"
The ambiguous nature of this term comes to light when we consult dictionaries to find it can mean "opposition to a particular war" or "opposition to all war."
One wonders, then, how many cowardly, expedient liberals who think of themselves as described by the latter definition prefer the ambiguous term "antiwar" as a means of avoiding the precise but clearly metaphysical "pacifist" and "pacifism," because using those terms would inevitably result in their being denounced as fake materialists and cowardly hypocrites.
(For a very brief but effective exposition upon the metaphysical nature of pacifism, see Orwell's "Pacifism and the War," Paragraph Four.)
In contrast to the behavior of liberals, who will deny anything, even the word "liberal," in the name of hastening the triumph of the "revolution," is the honesty of 19th century romantics.
For example, Thoreau and many of his transcendentalist contemporaries opposed the Mexican War not because they were vaguely "antiwar" but because they regarded that particular war as immoral and said so openly, while the gentle Walt Whitman supported the North's position in the American Civil War with such deep fervor he wrote Beat! Beat! Drums! a "pro-war" poem whose brutally truthful, bone-chilling imagery makes Sherman's unforgettable comparison excruciatingly real.
"make love, not war"
This is another example of the sophomoric drivel that oozed from the minds of sixties liberals whose "free" and "open" schools never taught them about the horrors that occurred in 1940 when fifty million Frenchmen merrily sang faites l'amour, pas la guerre only to see their country ruthlessly blitzed in 45 loveless days by Nazis chanting (in perfect, centralized government loving unison) bilden Sie Krieg, nicht Liebe!
However, while those schools do mention Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Serbia, and Sudan, not a single liberal has ever chosen to put the effectiveness of "make love, not war" to the test by shouting it in person to groups preparing to commit genocide either in those diverse nations or elsewhere.
Not that anyone ought to be surprised; for liberals have never been big about laying it on the line.
For instance, liberals love Thoreau when they read "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be."
But as soon as they notice that the next sentence, "Now put the foundations under them," doesn't include the phrase "using other people's money," they immediately denounce America's greatest champion of individualism, whose aversion to governmental power was exemplified by his building his cabin at Walden Pond with his own hands and dollars, as a racist, fascist, anti-environmental freak.
"the nanny state is the good state"
Every liberal heart (including the radically beating one of the current president) believes this simple sentence states a profound truth.
But unlike British columnist Polly Toynbee, not a prominent liberal can muster the courage to say it, preferring, instead, in worse than lap-dance fashion, to excite the public with intense but heatless invocations of insubstantial nonsense, for instance, about airy hope and vacuous change.
Of course, it's not surprising liberals choose to obscure their deep love of the nanny state. After all, in every form it has been tried, it has been an abject failure.
The experiments of the 19th century's benign, Utopian nannies failed miserably, if, almost always, laughably.
The various communist versions immediately devolved into a psychopathic Stalin, Mao, troika, or gang of four nanny, in total, responsible for 120 million deaths, a number that would have risen into the billions if the model of North Korea's starvation/death state nanny had prevailed.
The fascist version just as immediately transformed into a psychopathic, genocidal, maniac war mongering nanny of 40 million deaths.
And the Western European democratic version of the nanny state?
Well, accompanied by arrogant applause clapped by head-in-the-sand European neo-socialists and their neo-conservative brethren as well as true-believing American liberals, it appeared to hold together for a few decades . . . only because industrious countries on the continent stupidly have been feeding the coffers of nations that wallow in the moral slop that is the essential characteristic of the eternally over-spending, over-borrowing, devaluing, defaulting social democracy nanny.
However, the days of deception are now over; and despite the protestations of bumbling One-Europe Pollyannas, the debt burdened, bank devastated, over paid, under producing, red tape choked, unemployment sickened, future ravaged, EU Parliament-infected European nanny states have become One Hell of a Mess States whose euro alliance is certain to fall apart one way or another.
In contrast to the dangerous, destructive nonsense that characterizes the nanny state, Thoreau, in harmony with America's brilliant Founders, made this simple assertion:
"That government is best which governs least."
But never foolishly idealistic so that he could be taken in by the lure of anarchy or extreme libertarianism, Concord's most famous resident went on to say that only when "men are prepared for it" will they live under government that "governs not at all."
No ideology-worshipping intellectual softy who could blithely ignore the realities of human nature that Henry David Thoreau!
But then he is also the man who eternally reminds us of the existential fact that while government is necessary, it is people, ultimately, through the sweat of their faces, the genius of their minds, and the driving force of their spirits, who protect their rights, get things done, and create wealth:
"It [government] does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished. . ."
So here is the reality regarding the sixties nanny state lie:
We can believe it in spite of its being just another of the big lies spewed throughout history by arrogant, catastrophe-creating, aristocratic frauds.
Or we can side with honest thinkers such as Thoreau, who surely knew Jefferson spoke truth to the ages when he argued that the people are the only guarantors of their rights, especially the rights of life, liberty, and individual pursuit of happiness.
To side with the greatest creative spirits who have ever lived or with power and money loving hypocrites who never met an immoral means to an end they didn't love. . .
That is our choice regarding all contemptible lies, including those that have plagued this nation since the sixties.
© A.J. DiCintio
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
