November’s Indian Summer is my normal time of serious introspection. Frankly, I engage in it as the mood strikes. Yesterday’s bi-monthly 9.5 hour drive was another good occasion for such memory summoning and soul searching.
Hope and Irony. The day before, I attended the 3rd Annual Virginia Educational Opportunity Alliance meeting, I sat at a table with 2 old (myself included) white guys and 3 young black women. The Ladies are starting micro-schools in unpleasant neighborhoods. They’re strong Christians motivated to make their communities better. One has a PhD in Education. They bring real hope.
We two men are Movement Conservatives with decades of experience. Also, as Virginians, we hold our Confederate history and heritage in high regard at the same time we celebrate the victory of the Civil Rights Movement. The two ideas are more than compatible – they’re linked in history with a cultural inevitability, much as W.E.B. Dubois wrote about the essential fairness of Southerners.
We asked about the curriculum and books the ladies were looking to use. To our surprise, none had heard of Voddie Baucham Jr. So no one knew how Baucham destroyed CRT from a Biblical viewpoint. Nor had they read Thomas Sowell, the late Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, or James McWhorter. They hadn’t read Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” – and if I recall correctly – Frederick Douglas’s autobiography.
How ironic.
The old white guys know the bright intellectual lights – who are black scholars. But, that scholarship wasn’t taught in a PhD program in Education.
The young ladies had heard about the legacy of Dunbar High School in DC despite being a segregated school.
It’s ironic that liberal Educrats don’t teach the scholarship that uplifts and enlightens to the earnest, strong young people who are trying to do such good. I believe it is deliberate.
Meaning of Life and Spirit of the Times. The bumper sticker version of such a deep subject is wondering what do the ideas behind being an American, Christian manhood, Western Civilization, the Constitution, or Movement Conservatism mean to normal, everyday folks? What do they mean to a young person earning a minimum wage living? What should every high school or college graduate know about them?
I don’t have the answers. Just mulling the questions. Regularly wonder about why my ancestors took up arms to fight – twice not counting self-defense on the frontier against the Indians – powers far greater than themselves. What ideas were worth fighting and dying for here at home?
Even when I was fit to fight, it would take a lot to make me live up to the Declaration of Independence’s “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.” Formerly, as an Infantry Officer, thought it would take drafting my daughters into the Infantry to push me that hard. Or specifically denying free speech or worship.
Covid showed how far our governments could push tyranny using fear-mongering. I chose to disobey selectively. I submitted where I thought it was a useless fight – like masking on airplanes.
Can the attacks on the Rule of Law in America by the Human Secular Totalitarians and Islamist Totalitarians be reversed by winning elections?
Futility and Fight. Thought about, if I dropped dead, always a possibility at my age with my DNA, how my life would be an unfinished poem. A poem because it shapes words as art. A poem because it expresses emotion – my passion for life. And, if I died tomorrow or 20 years from now, my life’s work would still be unfinished. There’s always another good fight to fight. The race the Lord sets before us to run.
The world won’t notice my passing. That doesn’t make my fight futile. I served like so many nameless legionnaires did their duty over centuries as a small part of a great Empire. Still do – the pen is mightier than the sword, right?
The love I’ve given my family and the lovingkindness I’ve shared matters to those who received it.
I’d like to share more about what I’ve learned in my life and will, but it’s just a tiny portion of all that could be communicated.
The best part is the personal relationship with the One, Only, Living, True, Lord God. It’s best because it defined everything which followed – family, family, family – brothers in arms, friends & church & fellow citizens, faith, and freedom.
Finally, this word of true wisdom. The hardest choice in a memorial service for a Baby Boomer is what music to choose? So much great music in many genres for decades and decades.
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