The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword

Many citizens are sitting on the sidelines of the battle between the Progressives and the Tea Parties. They would much rather stay out of the battle and just live in peace. Complaining about the divisiveness, they say there is just too much politics, that the groups are too extreme.

The two sides split bitterly when we abandoned the foundation of our country’s laws: The U.S. Constitution. The Tea Parties are simply a group of Americans who never left that ground; it is the Progessives who’ve lied and manipulated to drag America off her foundations and back into the wild, to a time when there was no rule of law, when the common people were illiterate, and tyrants and elite bureaucrats ruled.

Writers like Walter Lippmann insist that it is impossible for the common people to rule. Thomas Jefferson warned democracy was only for the educated, and Ben Franklin predicted that once people learned how to vote themselves money, democracy would disappear.

Money is the most corrupting of all the influences. Charlotte Bronte was right when she wrote in Jane Eyre, “Most people will do anything for a salary.” Even Paul Revere was criticized for doing business with the Tories during the American Revolution.

Average people live by the axiom that you never discuss religion, sex or politics in company, mixed or otherwise. We are warned that if we make our opinions known we jeopardize our jobs and our futures. That’s enough for most people to clam up.

The Progressives aren’t holding guns to our heads. They’re dong something worse – they’re creating bureaucrat laws and holding that legislation to our heads and then defying us to criticize or complain about it. They abjure us to be good little children, read our Bertrand Russell and Ring Lardner Jr., and go along to get along.

My friend and editor J.D. refuses to get involved for fear someday he might have to pick up a gun. If he were to pick up his pen, now, and others like him, no one may need to use a gun. It would be nice if we could avoid bloodshed(!). The longer we refuse to get involved, to write those letters to the editor, to Congressman, to Senators, or on our blog, the more likely we are to come to actual blows.

In China, and in former Stalinist Russia, dissidents were regularly hauled off to prison, where they were starved and tortured. A far cry from the mere boycott of the Hollywood Ten during the McCarthy era, in which Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney were among the champions who recognized communism’s danger.

We are now witnessing the retribution for the McCarthy era. In Hollywood, there is a dearth of creativity. Movie marquees are a rehash of old, classic television series, remakes of successful films, and the usual, mindless, scatological, and foul-mouthed kids’ movies. They’re protected by the First Amendment of the very Constitution the Progressives wish to destroy.

Unless we speak up now, and teach our children to read and not just recite, the canon of Western Literature will disappear entirely. No one will be allowed to follow in that tradition and no one will want to because principles are simply too expensive a luxury for the average American.