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Tense times
Yesterday I had a elegant little moditorial written and waiting in the hopper for Fred's approval when the server ate it and let out a tiny burp. I was and still am worried that the good netizens of Rantburgia are reacting to the rising tensions by fighting ... with each other. I worry that we need to be thinking more strategically; I think the time for reacting to the latest attack is past. Our Enemies are more than willing to supply us with atrocities, horrors, and unthinkables.
So what's next? What can we do as a civilization and a website? I worry that I spend too much time behind a keyboard and not enough time convincing my friends, their friends, and their friends' friends. But in the meantime I will just like to encourage my RB friends to remember the big picture. We are few enough as it is and we'll need each other more in the coming years. |
"We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."
Ben Franklin
Something I've been thinking about lately:
Somehow the Founding Fathers managed to work in a common cause despite their deep disagreements on some points. (Not to mention some collossal, um, "personality conflicts". A couple of those guys DETESTED one another.)
They got over that because they had to. They had to form a government and figure out how to make it work. There was a lot at stake and they were facing new kinds of challenges. There weren't a lot of blueprints lying around. So they had to debate and think things through before they reached decisions.
We too are facing new kinds of challenges and a lot is at stake. And IMO we need the same kinds of debates. Acknowledging the risks and likely side effects of potential courses of action -- on Iran, on immigration, on dealing with terrorism and the jihadis. Laying out our assumptions and predictions for others to comment on and evaluate. Trying to get the best 3-dimensional view of the issue we can, which pretty much always entails multiple points of view.
This should be happening in Congress, in the media, in our universities. But it's not. So it's up to us to do it ourselves.
I think that if we put our heads together this way, we might come to some clarity on next steps to take.
What do you think? |
When one gets away from the MSM, the Congress and the 'elites' that think they run this country (wonder if the immigration bill has made a dent in their skulls), one finds that there are a lot of people who are pretty darned sensible and reasonable about what's happening in the world. I experience this daily with the people I encounter at work and in my neighborhood, and I live and work in two of the bluest neighborhoods in one of the bluest states in the country.
People don't like what President Bush has done in the War on Terror because he hasn't explained it very well, and that void has been filled with a lot of untruths and nastiness. But there are plenty of people who understand that the Islamicists don't mean us well, that Sharia is an awful and disgusting way to run peoples' lives, and that words mean a whole lot less than action. It's no surprise at all that our military is the most respected institution in our country today: it's honest, it works for everyone who is in it, and it actually does something every day.
People understand that Saddam was evil, even if they're unhappy about the way Iraq is today. People understand that al-Qaeda is a threat to them, even if they don't know how to respond to that threat.
Margaret Thatcher once said, "people don't need to be educated so much as reminded." As Seafarious and lotp point out, more of us need to connect with each other in the real world. Let's face it, our politicans and our elites aren't going to get it done, so it's up to us. We need to remind each other, our friends, our neighbors -- gently, sensibly, and with the understanding that we're all in the same boat. We will indeed all hang together. The soft voice, the easy reach of reason, and a sensibility that dictates that we lay it out again, and again, and a little at a time, and then a little more.
Americans, Winston Churchill once noted, may arrive late, but they always arrive. |
Posted by: Seafarious 2007-07-03 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=192341 |
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