The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
—Edmund Burke, Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire, 1784
As deceased talk show host Jerry Williams used to say when confronted by a series of whack jobs, ‘They’re out there’.
You may have heard of one Lynda Waddington, who wrote recently:
There’s a mantra quickly repeating in my head: “Please have a badge. Please have a badge. Please have a badge.” It’s a steady heartbeat as I begin a conversation with a shop clerk and reposition myself so I can peer over her shoulder.
I’ve already seen the bulge in his jacket, and it’s clear from the size and shape that he has a holstered gun. Now my eyes are quickly scanning, hoping to find a law enforcement badge clipped to his belt.
…
I do not know this man, have no knowledge of his profession, personality or character. I am unaware of his mental state, of why he feels the need to carry a weapon into a bookstore. Frankly, I’m not that interested in his reasons right now. My mind is too busy filtering through the various scenarios that could be taking place. They flick before me like movie trailers, and I watch, casting some aside and mentally marking others for further consideration.
There’s no badge — at least not one I can see. And my inspection of him has not gone unnoticed. I rotate my handbag so that more of it rests toward the front of my body and gently pat it. It’s a tell by women who are packing heat in their purse. Many do it without thinking, a subtle check of hard steel through the leather. My touch is greeted by the bristles on my hairbrush, but no one else knows that.The man recognizes the gesture, his eyes briefly flicking to my own before he moves past us in the aisle.
I still don’t know him, and the movie trailers increase. He could be the stalker, searching for his mark. He could be contemplating a robbery, or seeking someone to abduct. He could be an off-duty police officer, or even one that is undercover. He could be paranoid, thinking the world is out to get him or knowing someone truly is. He could be a fugitive, a drug dealer, a rapist or the owner of a sporting goods store. He could be a million things.
Thanking the clerk, I walk toward the YA section and my children. We won’t be spending money in this store today. We will be leaving as quickly as I can get them through the door, away from the man.
Tip of the fedora to Darleen Click who has some choice comments here. [and check out the Comments section, as well — they're always worth a read at Protein Wisdom].
Leaving illegal aliens aside [and ‘in the shadows’] for the moment: too many people, like this dingbat, who reside within the borders of The United States are not Americans.
Sure: legally, they are ‘Americans’, but, in their hearts and minds — in their Souls — they possess none of that unique Spirit that has animated this country since the 17th Century, that can-do, fearless attitude which took a wild and savage land and made it the center of Western Civilization, a beacon of Freedom and Ordered Liberty, and a refuge from Tyranny.
So many of our fellow countrymen are mental weaklings who place more trust in the government to meet their physical and spiritual needs than they place trust in God and in themselves as free men and women.
This Waddington woman’s Paranoia is the product of a Society that has given up on Right Reason and has derided and forsaken Moral Imagination, both of which are necessary for a constitutional republic to survive. She is a Dupe and a poster girl for the retardation of the American Spirit. Her irrational fears are the result, the final product, of Ignorance — a freely chosen decision to remain blind to, and stupid in the face of, Reality. And she is most certainly not alone. Nay, she may be part of a majority.
I fear for her children, but retain some hope because, like all of us, they are in possession of that great gift of The Creator: Free Will.
So if we mean to resist the wicked things written on the sky, if we are to set our faces against the totalist and nihilist wave of the future, we must renew the sources of our moral imagination. I do not mean that we should repair to doctrinaire ideology; to the contrary, we should abjure the narrowness of ideology and improve our liberal learning — which is something very different from today’s liberal politics. Paul Elmer More once remarked that the able conservative statesman possesses a certain quality of imagination which is of high service at times of crisis. That sort of imagination — and not political imagination only — is what American conservatives must employ if they aspire to erase the wicked things written on the sky.
—Russell Kirk, The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written on the Sky
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
—Edmund Burke, Letter to Thomas Mercer.
