Sunday, November 20, 2005

Liberty

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the
habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing
all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

-- Fisher Ames (Essay on Equality, 15 December 1801)
Works of Fisher Ames, W. B. Allen, ed., vol. 1 (256)

Fisher Ames (1758-1808), was a Congressman from Massachusetts in the First Session of the Congress of the United States when the Bill of Rights was formulated. It was Fisher Ames who, on August 20,1789, suggested the wording of the First Amendment, which was adopted by the House:
Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience.
Fisher Ames shared his beliefs concerning education:
Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble... The reverence for the sacred book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and, probably, if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind... In no Book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant, and by teaching all the same they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith.
(America's God and Country
By William J. Federer)

The reason that someone speaking like Fisher Ames will make a Leftist snivel is that language can become text which can become law, which is the basis of the rule of law and so a civilization that cultivates culture. That cultivation is opposed to the Leftist tendency to primitive tribalism in which diversity is said to be identifying with and running with whatever Herd one happens to be in.

But if you are white then typically you're not supposed to try to create your Herd or run with it. Instead, you are supposed to herd all the other Herds and tend to them in various ways, as supposedly they cannot tend to themselves and are the hapless victims of their environment, history and so on. Here is an example, take the Leftist identity politics typically applied on American universities with respect to men and women. A few posts down, there is some history about veterans and some of the things that were typically gone through by men sans some gory detail. It is possible to spin that into identity politics and the basis for "Men's Studies" at the university. Perhaps one could begin with some propaganda and emotional conditioning based on collectivism, e.g.: "Men have always had the toughest and most risky jobs, dangerous I say! Why, all throughout history it has typically been men that have had their arms and legs blown off and then there's the torture and the psychological trauma. All of that just because women manipulate them into fighting to protect women, too. So now you can see some of the discrimination of it all, all throughout history. Women are healthier then men as the result of the discrimination that continues in current times, you think that girls are generally the children being drugged with ritalin? It's women who can kill a man's offspring if she feels like it. And...blah, blah, blah!"

It's not that difficult to play with Leftist identity politics to distort things in a propagandistic way that relies on emotional manipulation and group identity. Conservatives have noted that the American Left is guided by the contradictory themes of radical collectivism (I feel a little sad because I'm in this group that gets discriminated against.) and radical individualism (My rights! My rights!). So while feminists admit to social bonds in the sisterhood some feminist notions are also based on a radical individualism that has been divorced from social relationships, plain social facts and even social/physical bonds. This is the radical individualism that feminists have relied on to support the choice of killing their little ones.

To begin to make use of the same methods masculinists should get together at universities and gather round to study themselves intently to get better at sniveling about "their history." Then it would seem that something affirmative must be done for them as a group. (They could shift between collectivism and individualism as necessary, never really admitting that we are rather social individuals.)

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