John Fleming's Comment In Search of a Cornerstone @ AMERICAN DIGEST

July 26, 2013

John Fleming's Comment In Search of a Cornerstone

People have talked about a coming "singularity", where afterwards everything is different.

There's a group of people riding the accelerating high-tech wave towards the future. But if that's you and you fall behind, it's ever-harder to catch bup. An ever-smaller cohort of high-productivity people are being forced to carry along with them an ever-growing collection of dependents for whom an aspirational attitude and determination are useless. The cultures are in some sense separating, witness VDH's C&C of the affluent Left Coast, with the falling backwards Central Valley.

I do not know if the singularity means the connection between the two becomes permanently broken, with the techies leaving behind the dependos. Or the singularity will enable the dependos to get back into independent, aspirational, productive lives.

I do not like this emerging nostalgie de la boue born of hopelessness. It stretches the connection between us all to the breaking point. Some seek to hasten and to profit from it, but there are always little men who scheme to be kings of their own ragtag dominions.

There is a puzzle before us. We are at the beginning. What are the steps to re-instill an aspirational and moral culture to all our people? What pieces, and in what order? And how do we keep the vandals from ever-scrambling our efforts? We must not fall into civil conflict, but perhaps we will have to teeter at the abyss before there can be an American Awakening.

An American Awakening. A rejection of the addiction of dependency. An embrace that all your neighbors and countrymen are at Liberty to pursue their own happiness without your interference. Shared civic virtues that a civil society cannot be made unless each of us does what we can to make it better. Opportunity is available, for those willing to work for it. Putting off gratification today, that our children will inherit a better world from us.

Is there one tiny cornerstone piece that we can agree upon today? Is there one new idea, or old idea made new, that can seize us all, to build upon? Aspiration seems a good start, but for what? we have generations that have not known the blessings of Liberty, only the soma of dependency. The banishment of envy as policy. The source of all meaning and value is what each person does with what they are given. It is not what you have or have not, but what you do with it. And we will secure for all of us the Liberty to decide for ourselves.

We must begin a forced rejection of the crack dealers of dependency. Trust not in men, but trust in God to provide the Blessings of Liberty.

-- John A. Fleming at July 16, 2013 9:28 PM

Reader's comment on The Left's New Boy-Toy Posted by gerardvanderleun at July 26, 2013 7:33 AM

The first awakening is hopefully underway. As more and more Americans lose all faith in the media and hollywood to remain unbiased, the left loses hold of control over information. Over these last 45 years their propaganda and disinformation have shaped the American public to the point that a completely incompetent and anti-American president was elected, because of the color of his skin and because it "felt right".
Of course academia played a huge part in this dumbing down and shaping of the psyche, but as hollywood implodes and the media continues to reveal itself as totally biased, the new dawn comes.
Meantime, many of those who supported obama are also realizing how badly they fell for his lies...Look at the unions, for example, and how they're shocked at what obamacare is about to do to the working class.
I can only hope that all of these Americans wiping the sleep from their eyes are able to focus on exactly who has been lying to them for 45 years, so that they can begin anew with a clear vision of what America stands for, what it has always stood for, in spite of the inevitable failings and mistakes along the way...
Individual freedom, but e pluribus unum.

Posted by: Uncle Jefe at July 26, 2013 8:56 AM

Major Kong, it will occur when thigs really start to fall apart. \
\
Something will snap, and things will get quite bad for a while. That's when things will start to change, because the system will just stop, and despite government promises, and people's desires, the shackles will fall off.

They might be replaced with even stronger and local dictatorships, but people who want their freedom back will be well-armed, angry, and probably extremely unwilling not to fight. That WILL make a big difference. Americans like to go on and on about their toughness, especially on the internet. It's sometimes hard not to roll my eyes, but not all of it is an act. Things WILL change.

As for the collapse of power and society, practical skill will become supremely important for a while, and again, Americans who want their freedom back are actively acquiring skills and, again, will have a lot of local power because of this.

They'll be so well-armed that it's unlikely that they will become resources/slaves of the community. The biggest problem will be electrical power. I could wish you had a bunch of small, risky, shatteringly unsafe, but productive backyard nuclear power plants.

Good luck.

Posted by: JB at July 26, 2013 3:57 PM

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Forced rejection? Huh. And with an ever growing segment of the population learning to be helpless, cheerfully wearing their shackles, and choosing to remain ignorant, how exactly is this to occur?

Posted by: Major Kong at July 26, 2013 9:02 AM

Put not your trust in princes,
in mortal men who cannot save you.
When they die, they are buried, and their powers and their plans are buried with them.
Happy is the man whose guardian is Jacob's God, whose hope is in the Eternal One.

Posted by: Fat Man at July 26, 2013 9:54 PM