Believe Them When They Say That You're Killing Them

The Grinds of Socialism Run to The Coarse

Hussein Ibish wants me to take “the unmistakable lesson from the modern Middle East” which is: “When people keep saying they’re fantasizing about how great it would be, and feel, to kill you, believe them.”

Well, no; I'm not going to take much in ethical lessons from the stark irrationality of tribal and religious feuds never touched by Western reason which, by the way, is the genuine essence of all political dispute in America, today.

Western reason, for and toward Western man: the understanding of metaphysical distinction of his conceptual capacity; each individual's way, method, and device of making his life, which is naturally compelled as his very own. From this; distillation of a politics in which every individual human being is free, compelled by nothing but every sunrise to live the day to his own best among his equals in freedom to live their best at expense to no one but them.

This Western idea was the founding concept and intellectual motive of America, and no matter how badly it was ever treated since it first dawned, it is nonetheless the finest and most productive way of life ever abstracted in human history. It should be the aim of everyone who loves human life, "the people," "the American People," or any other presumptive grouping beloved by the advocate.

The plainly-grasped idea of freedom is well-enough understood by tens of millions of Americans who also understand that government is its opposite. It's no mere "conversation" to people who know that the root element of government is force. More and more, they take the principle to heart and mind: if they cannot reason their way to freedom, and if force is the ruling principle of dealing with each-other, then, in the ringing admonition of Nancy Pelosi, "People are going to do what they're going to do."

So, the real question isn't so much whether people will fight, but whether anyone should, and why. It wouldn't occur to me to compare American politics with "the modern Middle East" (a crashing non sequitur) for the reasons outlined above. The vast cultural differences in basic philosophy make it a pointless diversion. An honest concern with America must take up the irreconcilable conflict of individualism (the basic American idea) vs. collectivism.

Individualism is politically manifest as freedom. Without a great deal of honest and effective philosophical guidance (certainly not as much as it requires or deserves), the very idea of freedom yet survives as a sort of gut-level apprehension in enough Americans that it frightens people who are not opposed to violence in principle. It's just that their own offensive violence (by the state) is rationalized by presuming other people's values (e.g.; "the common good").

They don't mind using force for what they want, and it outrages them when they're threatened with opposition on that principle. (They don't consider whether it would come to any of this if only they would leave people to their own lives on their own powers.)

Sooner or later, all socialisms grind down to individual life at levels where every human mind understands the violations of its own function. It always comes to moments when the self-conscience takes a sideways glance at itself with a question like, "Is this really for real?" More: the explicit socialist grind of the question is in how it occurs with inescapable press. It's not about a favorite sports team or motorcycle and the force of the state cannot simply be agreed to disagree.

Americans are coming to the grind with unprecedented press, now. It will do no good to snarl at them in rote partisan tones over shibboleths like "Trump" almost as if they haven't watched obviously socialist mobs laying waste to cities everywhere with virtually official impunity and certain ideological imprimatur of academia and media.

Americans, being convinced that freedom is the best way for all humans to live, must necessarily by basic nature and their ethics deny all socialist authority over anyone's life. In a politics more evidently resorting to force at every turn, all serious discussions of violence must account for the essential values at stake that would even bring the matter to such attention.

To the extent of obsessions with violent rhetoric and fantasies (not to mention "sheer pornographic sadism") located exclusively on the "right-wing"; they may be regrettably unpleasant. I certainly think so. It's terrible that American life should come to this for any of us, and it's my earnest hope that the basic conflict of our time could be resolved without the catastrophe of which everyone is afraid, now.

Ugly as they are, they certainly reflect a defensible moral outlook of defense of real, live, individual people against the force of government and most certainly; the outlook of people constantly more politically aware of the long socialist dream of subjugating America. All this is available to all common sense, and undeniably important to understanding American politics now, what could happen, and why.