Common people will have common faults, and their common sense will just mean embracing the kinds of things that make sense to common folk. It's only those kinds of things any government can do whose legitimacy is broad-based, for the common people are by far the most of them. Democracy was never meant to be for the great and the good; that's aristocracy, which has its own faults. They are worse faults: the Arabs say, "The mistake of the wise man is equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools."
So they'll drink too much, and some of them will cheat on their spouse; they'll have some prejudice, sometimes, against the people who are different. But they won't leave thousands of American citizens stranded in Afghanistan, or sell the place and all its ancient liberties to a totalitarian China. They won't murder millions like Mao did to try to make some titanic change. I'm not one of them, but I'll ride with them. My loyalty is always to them: as decent as they can be, as free as they can be. May God keep them -- He must love them, having made so many -- and may God defend the right.
6 comments:
Off-topic, a note for Tex...I think you mentioned you'd read Heinlein's 'Tunnel in the Sky'....FYI, I just put up a review of the book here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67200.html
Language is being used intrumentally rather than according to commonly understood meanings again. This is done to get the emotional valence of a word while smuggling in a different idea. Such redefinition is common to cults. For an extreme version, communists were very successful in repurposing hymns and old folk songs in every land in order to convince people they were on their side and understood them.
In this case, freedom being weaponised means "trying to prevent our side from doing what we want" and democracy means "what our side wants to do." Continuing to muddle together the concepts of "threat to our power" with "threat to democracy." It is particularly evident with tyrants. Which suggests...
Language is being used intrumentally....
Sometimes it's used to outright lie. From the linked-to article: Don’t forget that the organizers of the Freedom Convoy have called for the overthrow of the federal government....
No, as Mason knows full well. The truckers have called for Trudeau's resignation. Calling that an effort to overthrow the government is an example of why the the press as a whole, and so many of the guild's members individually, have so little credibility.
My commander at a remote site in Alaska had a position about another industry that's applicable here with only a little editing: I'd rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother in journalism.
Eric Hines
I brought up the article once and then it insists that I subscribe to the Globe and Mail before I can re-read it. So working from memory, two things jumped out at me. One is that the author holds that for many the use of the word "freedom" means the maintenance of "white supremacy". That would only be because of the lies that people such as the author have been given a national platform to tell. The other was that he seems to think there's a problem in considering that one of the important function of government was to protect property rights. Perhaps a few homeless people could invite themselves into his home to set up long-term residency and discuss the matter with him.
"This is done to get the emotional valence of a word while smuggling in a different idea" That was very nicely expressed.
A couple of days ago Jordan Peterson called Trudeau a teenager. Here is what an Indian diplomat had to say about Mr. Trudeau, in a few short and very sharp words : https://twitter.com/i/status/1490906405851004930
I just had this talk with one of my son's last night,that ordinary people are a reservoir of sanity compared to the elite. We were discussing MK Ultra among other atrocities.
I never cared much for William F. Buckley, something with him seemed off but I did like his quote- “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty,”
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