The Trolley

The Trolley:

Peggy Noonan has written a deeply felt and moving column entitled "A Separate Peace." The reference is to that dishonorable tactics of unreliable allies in war, who are supposed to stand up and fight alongside you, and instead cut themselves a deal with the enemy and leave you fighting alone.

She begins with a feeling, which she says she cannot prove, that the whole world is falling apart.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

I'm not talking about "Plamegate." As I write no indictments have come up. I'm not talking about "Miers." I mean . . . the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn't think so.

But this recounting doesn't quite get me to what I mean. I mean I believe there's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming.

Well, it is. Every young man and woman reading this who isn't preparing to fight as well as to think and work had better stop and take stock.

Noonan seems to have woken to this feeling but lately. She wonders in awe how anyone can deal with it.

I think those who haven't noticed we're living in a troubling time continue to operate each day with classic and constitutional American optimism intact. I think some of those who have a sense we're in trouble are going through the motions, dealing with their own daily challenges.

And some--well, I will mention and end with America's elites. Our recent debate about elites has had to do with whether opposition to Harriet Miers is elitist, but I don't think that's our elites' problem.

This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

That very well may be true, about the elites. But not all who remain optimistic are those who have failed to notice. Some of us noticed a long while ago, and began to prepare.

What does it mean to prepare? First it means to look around, take advantage of the clear moment to see what you can see. Then it means to look back, to see how other men in other generations have dealt with this and worse. Then you put them together, the new troubles and the old power, and you start making a plan. You begin to match strength to peril.

I look at Peggy's list, and think this: Cloning doesn't bother me. Nukes and epidemics have the same answer, already well underway: an end to the cities, and a return to a more rural life. The suburbs and the exurbs are growing fast, as is the population in plain rural areas, and it is there that you will also find a political culture that tends toward the resiliance needed to survive a crisis. The collapse of order in New Orleans only matters if you live in a city. Those outside handled it better.

The old cowboy skills -- cooking under the sky, knowing how to find and clean drinking water, a neighborly watch on each other's backs -- they stood us tall once, and they will again. The economy? Small businesses, not big business, are the road to wealth. There was a time, during the industrial age, when economies of scale required vast workforces at central locations. The information age doesn't require that; and the just-in-time shipping it enables means that even industrial production facilities can be distributed. It's also true for farms. People are part of something bigger, but still own their own business and means of production. This reality also produces a politics, even as the old labor union model did, one that operates on the assumptions of the yeoman farmer. Jefferson's model.

Homeland security? We press the governmen to do better, but we also form the Minutemen. We volunteer for service. We've been passing "shall-issue" concealed weapons laws across the country these last decades, precisely because we saw society threatened by crime and mayhem and determined to set it right. Crime rates are now at a historic low, especially in the carry states. When those wheels come off, we'll be there to pick them up and put them back on.

The political culture has soured. Senators do seem owned, and the court has lost its way so far as to produce Kelo. Well, you can see the reaction: the porkbusting project as to the one thing, and the absolute refusal by the People to accept a crony nominee to the Supreme Court. It's too important. The wheels are coming off. So we make them get it right.

If that is not enough, and things start to fall apart in a serious way, it will mean that we move to more active measures. For now, we're willing to let the political class continue to manage things. Later, you may see more of us stand for office. I've been hearing a lot about the need for a "populist" scouring of the state. You just may get to see one. It won't look much like what those calling for it are expecting. It will be people like us, who have decided that the government cannot be trusted and must be remade. If we have to have a Constitutional Amendment to prevent Kelo from stealing people's homes, we'll do what we have to in order to get one. If that means standing for office and giving up the life we'd prefer, so be it. That's James Jackson's model.

Things that go south in a serious way will be met with a serious response. We'll form lawful militas to keep order if the government breaks down under disease or disaster. We'll volunteer for government-led efforts if they need us, or form private companies to take care of the jobs the government can't handle. Companies like Wells Fargo used to be, when Wyatt Earp worked for them.

What comes, comes, but however hard it is we shall stand and fight it. It is our way, as it is our heritage.

We are the Sons of Liberty. We have nothing to fear. When death comes for us, we will pass into that world of which so much has been written, where there is no fear but love and all love is without pain. If we have done our duty, we will leave behind us those we have bred or trained in the ways of America. They will take up our cause and bury our bones, and our names will be their warcry.

There are names like that written in gold, below. The men they trained will give them voice. They are warriors, heros, and riders of bulls. Perhaps there is a name like that on your lips as you read this: Washington's? Jackson's? Your father's? Another?

So what is there to fear? Live boldly. This is America, the home of the brave.