Dear friends,
I'm honored that you stop by occasionally to read Unca Darrell. And I deeply regret that I have posted very little in recent days. Believe me, as Mr. Trump is fond of saying, tiny right hand chopping the air, index finger aloft -- Believe me, I'm sitting on a bunch of really good stuff. Absolutely first class stuff. The best stuff ever. Everybody says so. But life is more important than blogging, and I have reached a point where . . .
I'm not sorry about the duties that call me away from blogging, mind you. Things I am called to do in service of my church and family, primarily, are far more important in the moral economy than my ragged opinions about this, that, and the other. God has also called me into service as amanuensis (look it up) for a Christian writer with an interesting and, I suspect, important book on a topic of substance and moment. This is a late-in-life blessing for which I am grateful.
In the secular realm, I am also working to mount a photo exhibit in a downtown venue. Agreement in principle to do an exhibit is settled, but much remains to be negotiated -- date, time, terms. When the exhibit goes up, you will be the first to know. Again: This is a blessing; I am grateful.
All of which is to say that my blogging will be light to nonexistent for some time. Blessings sometimes come with offsetting costs. Recognizing the limits of the form and the writer, and the modest size of my audience, I nevertheless believe some good comes from sharing my thoughts. On good days, entertainment. On great days, enlightenment. Other days, neither of the above.
The hope is always there that somewhere, some time, one reader will walk away from a posting as a better thinker, a better citizen, a better mother or father, a better giver of time and money to those in need, a better child of God. And for men and woman who run The Houston Chronicle, better journalists.
My beat includes, but is not limited to, bashing the eminently bashable Houston Chronicle. I do this, not because I hate journalism, but because I love it. As said at the top of the page, I am sorry about what is happening to newspapers. Much of the damage cannot be avoided; some confluence of computers, the Internet, popular culture, lifestyle, and civilizational decline has robbed newspapers of their centrality and importance.
But much of the damage is self-inflicted. To take the one point on which harping is the only appropriate response, a major newspaper in a major market cannot be taken seriously as a source of ideas and opinions when it religiously refuses to hire and unleash at least one genuine, vigorous, bold traditionalist conservative to write about local matters. (Bill King, for the record, wasn't that guy.) And this is doubly wrong in a city named Houston and a state named Texas, both monuments to conservative and traditional ideas and values.
The management of the Chronicle has to know this is wrong. (If they don't, there is no helping them.) Yet it willfully persists in the wrongdoing. And why not? The progressive project is triumphant in its long march through the commanding heights of politics, academia, and culture. Conservatives have been purged, or nearly so, from many other important institutions. Why should our local newspaper break stride now and hire one, with victory so close at hand?
So as I step back for a while, I will repeat what cannot be said often enough about my main target, our local newspaper: Shame on you.
And I offer this quasi-valedictory warning: Victory for the progressive project is defeat for law, for language, for America and love of America, and for civilization itself. It will bring no happiness, no satisfaction to any, least of all its authors, with the possible exception of those who at the very top -- the 1 percent of 1 percent -- who have captured the power and money.
In time -- meaning, for me, in the old folks' home -- we will read how our nation's top progressives -- heirs of Hugo Chavez's daughter in Venezuela, the Castros in Cuba, and the rotten leaders of China -- have somehow accrued extraordinary wealth. Creating workers' paradises is hard work, so perhaps they deserve it. . The Clinton family scam -- gathering great wealth, untaxed, through a "charitable foundation" -- will be looked back upon as a charming relic of the early days, progressivism's original Hollywood Hillbillies.
As things weaken and fail, progressives will grow even angrier, more strident and demanding, more insistent on blaming the wreckage at their feet -- bankrupt Social Security and medical programs, for instance -- on those whom they hate more than they hate the conventional, old-fashioned barbarians at loose in this sweet world -- namely Republicans, conservatives, and Christians.
Democrats will continue moving ever-leftward. This time a Mrs. Clinton; next time a Bernista, a truer socialist; after him, something worse. Government will continue growing and feeding off the vitality and freedom of its subjects. This time the IRS weaponized against conservatives; next time all other agencies working collectively to silence and punish political adversaries and ideological critics; after that, rule by a caudillo -- a Trump of the left -- commissioned to bring order to the resulting chaos.
Again, to all on the left and, sadly, to all on the right who are proving so ineffectual in resisting them: Shame on you.
There can be no compromise with progressives, and no peace. All negotiation with them is tactical: So long as they can set the agenda -- and they do set it, every day -- they will talk endlessly about how the quantity of money and freedom they demand. There's always tomorrow to increase the ante, so long as the principle is won today.
(Progressives don't set the agenda? Are you kidding? Read the headlines: bathrooms, guns, grievances galore for every real and invented victim group you care to name. Never do we talk about the consequences of living beyond our means, the bedrock principle of abiding by law, the benefits of constraining the size and scope of government (and detriments of failing to do so), or the utility and moral imperatives of the quaint old notions embedded in the U.S. Constitution. Never those.)
The only proper response to progressives is to fight back, and fiercely, and the only useful outcome is to defeat them, utterly and absolutely. So get busy.
And good luck on figuring out how to do it. One hint: The answer is not Donald John Trump.
Until we meet again (and may it be soon),
Unca Darrell
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P.S.: Too gloomy for you?
Let me leave you with a ray of sunshine: Britain may soon exit the European Union. All you need to know to know is this: The world's intelligentsia and nomenklaturia, all the Clever People, all the Right People, are appalled, aghast.
How dare mere citizens -- Brits are subjects, not citizens, but never mind; I'm on a roll here, like Bluto when he invoked the German raid on Pearl Harbor -- how dare mere citizens toss off our beneficent rule? Who will now regulate the size, shape, and curvature of British bananas? Who will be Britain's nanny? Its overseer? Who will force Britain to continue accepting immigrants beyond its capacity to absorb them, and putting them on the dole, with no right or power to demand their assimilation? Chaos is coming! Chaos!
Brexit would be a great victory for consent of the governed, for the rule of law, for healthy nationalism, for love of a country worthy of love (who loves "Europe," really?) for the Anglosphere, for civilization, for boldness, freedom, and common sense.
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