Surviving the Political War

by Glenn Fairman


A quick cursory glance at the television informs us that we are at a culmination.  It is readily apparent that anyone who was honestly receptive to our moral suasion arguments had either been emboldened to embrace our rhetoric or had broken ranks and joined our opposition's.  And for good or ill, those who remained fixed in their indecision were as those in Dante's outer vestibule -- who made no decision and took delight in that amorphous neutrality.  For such timid souls, we reserve only the scorn and pity for men who cared not enough to be thought of as being either hot or cold -- men who languished at the frontier of lukewarm moral regard and gave more quarter to the satiation of their comforts and appetites than in the weighty prospects that attend the search for the Good Life.

For those who are philosophically wedded to the conservative caste: men and women who trust in the wisdom and light from the ancients or in that Eternal City, the political war we have enjoined upon has never been our default perspective of reality.  Believing that we are destined for a greater patrimony, our eyes are by nature affixed to our families, our loves, our churches, homes and private temporal legacies.  Although scripture would provoke us to be a light unto the nations and adjure us to yet strengthen that which remains, we are under no illusion that humanity's quest for political paradise is either possible or desirable.  

Our fervent opponents, however, live by the collectivist epithet, "The personal is the political," and routinely orient their utopian loadstone by the unwavering star of utopian altruism. The Left, for the most part, believe that we who combat their attempts to wrangle humankind as a monolithic force towards some abstract  end are in a general sense deluded, demented or malevolent.  Moreover, the temporal articles of faith that motivate this vanguard are sleepless, while we happily decompress between battles-- rousing only when the barbarian threatens to beat down the gates.

That being said, we must therefore adopt the singular vantage point of Watchers on the Wall.  More than ever, our society has triggered a demographic tripwire wherein those who are either maleducated or who nurse at the teat of the expansive state are so numerous as to now have the ability to sway our republic into a democratic cascade towards a collectivist future. As unpalatable and exhausting as such a posture of relentless engagement might sound, this is the prophesy for an America which has fallen under the spell of a technocracy of academics and amoral politicos, who for all intents and purposes are as foreign to the traditional American zeitgeist as any alien life form.

Whatever occurs, I shall be content that in some way I manned the breach in some rational and meaningful way and will continue on in the pursuit of the enduring pillars that make laughter, life and the quest for philosophical and political coherence possible.  Growing weary of the filth and calumny, the stink and the repercussions that attend grasping for the golden ring of power, it will be good for a time to focus on the practical and beautiful things that happen so miraculously around us and to give my soul a good moral scrubbing in the bargain. Life is so much more than politics, and the fact that we can readily discern the sublime amidst the tawdry and callow speaks to the supreme knowledge that this was a perfect world once that was marred by a darkness each man must contend against deep within.  Whatsoever happens and whatever befalls us, those who love this surpassing luminescence shall indeed abide.

"...The dream is ended: this is the morning."   --C.S. Lewis, "The Last Battle"

Glenn Fairman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/surviving_the_political_war.html

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