More on National Defense

On Memorial Day 2013, I wrote a piece titled "The Right of National Defense." If the piece had a "money quote" it was,

None of our government institutions <...> can over the long term defend our nation without a major change in thinking within our nation about our nation. What kind of a nation do we want? What kind of Western civilization do we want?

On this Memorial Day 2016,  I'd like to expand on that a bit. To start, of course, our situation as a nation is even worse now than it was just three years ago. The progressive-controlled institutions that dominate intellectual life and expression throughout the West are in full pedal-to-the-metal mode to ensure that the West does not, indeed, defend itself. They argue more openly than ever before that we do not deserve to defend ourselves, that we have no "right of national defense."

As the calamitous Obama reign draws to a close, we see him and his minions and enablers hurriedly doing all they can to sow confusion, to undermine, to generate division and, above all, to promote self-censorship: we have gone well beyond "political correctness" when we have the President, Hollywood, the wise ones of all sorts of institutions telling us that we are bigots and haters for insisting on something so basic as that there is a male sex and a female sex, and that they have differences. Those who see no benefit to society arising from transgender bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower stalls are reviled, boycotted and deemed despicable.

We see this same assault on those who want a functioning immigration system that serves the interests of our country. We have, for example, a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who has had the temerity to suggest that we should and must defend our southern border from the ongoing invasion of millions of illegal crossers. For him to utter such things means, of course, that he is a racist.

It has come to this: if you want to prevent illegal black, brown, and white aliens from taking jobs and tax money from black, brown, and white citizens, you are a racist.

The progressives have done what they always do to words: make them mean whatever they want them to mean at a given time--as noted in this post here.  "Marriage," "gay," "liberal," "gender," etc., no longer have fixed meanings; we even see our progressive overlords wanting to do away with the words "convict" and "felon,"

The Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs is eschewing the terms “felon” and “convict” when officials refer to individuals convicted of crimes, opting instead for less “disparaging labels,” Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason announced last week. 

The Office of Justice Programs plans to substitute terminology such as “person who committed a crime” and “individual who was incarcerated” in speeches and other communications as part of an effort to remove barriers that officials say hinder progress of those who re-enter society after completing their prison sentences.

On another front, of course, we have the constant harangue, as I noted in a prior post, over "cultural appropriation." I wrote last November that,

"Cultural appropriation" terrorists share some common features with "Global Climate Whatever" terrorists. They ignore the history of mankind. Just as mankind has struggled ceaselessly against the brutalities of Mother Nature--Gaia is a blood thirsty goddess--mankind (oops, can I still use that word?) has advanced by borrowing ideas across cultures, ideas that provide solutions to the common problems faced by people regardless of culture. Who built the very first house? I don't know, but I am grateful to him/her/zat/zim/bim. 

Can we assert that cultures influence and get influenced by other cultures? Otherwise, I guess, Africans should not get polio vaccines because those did not originate in their cultures?

Getting back to the original theme of "national defense," it seems that in Prog World only certain cultures have the right of defense. We should all applaud, for example, the isolated tribe in the Amazon or on Papua that shun the outside world. Believe me, I think that's fine; if people do not want to be bothered, they should not. I, furthermore, admire the valiant Zulus and American Plains Indians who fought bravely against the inexorable tide of Western civilization. That was their right of defense; I respect them for exercising it.

I would argue that Western civilization also has the right of "national defense," at least as much as does a tribe in the Amazon or on Papua. Just as the Japanese have the right to exclude whomever they wish from Japan--try immigrating there--so do the citizens of Australia, the UK, Canada, Israel, the US, etc. As I have said so many times that I am becoming a boring old hack, believing in the values of Western civilization does not mean that we have to write a suicide note for that civilization. We, for example, do not have to acquiesce to the jihadist invasion now underway in Europe solely because we believe in such human rights as religious tolerance. I repeat, the Magna Carta and the Constitution are not suicide pacts.

On this day when we honor our dead, we should remember that the West, too, has the right of national defense.