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FOLLOWING HORSES AND MEN |
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Written by Dr. Joel Wade
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Friday, 14 September 2007 |
Back when Osama bin Laden was alive, in one of his diatribes
he said, "When the people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they naturally
gravitate toward the strong horse" - meaning that people like power, and will
prefer following a leader or movement who can defeat others.
This is true, of course, as far as it goes, except that we
are not horses.
People do not follow horses; horses follow people - when
those people are strong and clear. When
they are wimpy and ambivalent, a horse will follow someone else.
This is the world of primal animal instincts, impulses, and
feelings. A predator - animal or human - will smell fear and attack; or smell
strength and the resolve to fight, so will reconsider. Prey will smell danger and flee, or succumb
to fear.
In our day-to-day world, people can easily lose sight of the
fact that we do in fact live in a world of these primal instincts and motives.
This is how liberals can decide to appease terrorists, or some conservatives
and libertarians can decide to avoid a confrontation in favor of "minding our
own business."
This was the great tragedy of Vietnam.
The single most dangerous consequence of our loss in Vietnam
was our loss of intimidation toward our enemies, and the loss of safety that we
inspired in our allies.
Before our loss in Vietnam, we had a surplus of
"intimidation capital" that we wielded as a country. We had won WWII, had held
off North Korea and China and the Soviet Union in the Korean War, and had drawn
a line with Communism.
After the Democrat Congress betrayed our allies in South
Vietnam, our enemies and allies smelled the weakness that had come to represent
our country; our enemies were emboldened, while our allies felt much less
secure that they would benefit from our strength when they needed it most.
It is when there is such a vacuum of clear, strong moral and
rational leadership that people follow horses.
The non-response to all of the terror attacks upon the West
in the 80's and 90's are what bin Laden, when he was alive, cited as showing
the US as a weak horse. If we were to abandon Iraq and betray our allies there,
we would be showing the world the face and the smell of prey.
This is just human nature, and we are all closer to this
than we care to believe. It's easy in 21st century America to
believe that we are all so very civilized and beyond such barbaric forces. But
without the threat of force, there would be no legal system, no political
system, and no civil rights in America. They would disappear overnight, taking
all of our hard won civilization with them.
I can remember when I was a kid, at one point I grew a foot
over a couple of years. I had been one of the smaller kids in elementary
school, and therefore sometimes the brunt of bullies and other jerk bigger
kids. Somehow, without doing anything in particular, kids stopped doing that to
me. Why?
Because I was bigger than they were!
Nothing else had changed. I was the same kid, doing about
the same things, but somehow magically I was no longer one of the targets. I
looked too dangerous now to risk it.
A friend of mine was closing up his shop one day, and found
across the street a small gang was hanging out by his car, leaning on it, and
acting tough. He was alone. There were about seven or eight of them. Had he
gone over to them and asked politely if they could move so that he could get in
his car, he could have put himself in grave danger - he would have been seen as
weak. He would have smelled like prey.
Knowing better, he attacked. He stormed over at them,
yelling and swearing at them to get the @$%!! away from his car. Surprised, and
smelling the danger of an unpredictable enemy, they backed away apologizing,
and headed off to hunt for more inviting prey.
In America, we have such a beautiful legal system, with such
honorable and trustworthy law enforcement (not perfect, but compare it to
anywhere else in the world), we don't often have to confront these forces in
their full violence.
But we are facing enemies in the world today who live in those forces, are governed by
them, and who have to abide by their
rules in order to hope to survive.
We have allies who also are much closer to this world of
primal instincts and motives than we are, and they have to consider them as they try to build something better. They
know that without sufficient force to create order and stability and to support
a system of laws that people can depend on, these primal instincts and motives
will rule their world, with violent and deadly consequences.
The only thing that can keep them from having to follow a
horse - the basic animal instincts of predator and prey - is the credible and
reliable threat of force from a strong and clear rational and moral agent
against such a violent, irrational, and emotion driven world.
Today, that moral agent is us.
But here at home we are also waging a political war against
the forces on the Left, who would have us abandon the use of force and use only
diplomacy and appeasement to address our enemies. These are people who have
forgotten the law of the jungle, or imagine that it is possible for it to
magically disappear for all time, if only the US would stop pushing people
around.
These are the same people who told me in grade school to try
and make friends with the bullies, or to practice basketball or something so
that they would like me better. They are the same ones who would have had my
friend open a dialogue with the thugs on his car - and put him in the hospital
from being beaten by a gang of predators.
These are the people who would have us open diplomatic
channels with our enemies in Iran or Syria -- or even the leadership of al
Qaeda(!) -- who want only to kill us.
Even as the people on the left are ruled by their own
feelings and impulses, they cannot see how close to the surface the more
ruthlessly violent of those impulses are in much of the world. They can't
believe that these impulses are fundamental elements of human nature that we
must continually and forever act to constrain.
Because they can't see these impulses as fundamental
elements of human nature, they think that they must be secondary phenomena that
are caused by something - poverty, or
oppression, or inequality - in one way or another caused by us.
The problem, I believe, is not that the left doesn't have
the capacity for either abstract thought, or concrete and practical thought. It
is that there is a disconnection on the
left, between the concrete and the abstract.
On the one hand they see the concrete human suffering and
register that. On the other hand they have very abstract ideals to which they
devote themselves. But what is missing is the connection between the two.
As Adam Smith noted nearly 250 years ago:
"The man of system... is apt to be
very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty
of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest
deviation from any part of it.... He seems to imagine that he can arrange the
different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the
different pieces upon a chess board." (Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 233-4;
quoted from P.J. O'Rourke, On The Wealth
of Nations, p. 117).
A conservative (generally speaking, of course), sees the
practical human problems, feels compassion for his fellow human beings, and
wishes for their lot to improve every bit as much as the liberal.
Why the conservative has a more accurate world view, is that
they then see the connection between the
real effects of more abstract actions in the world, and choose to focus on
the actual cause and effect between the concrete and the abstract.
In other words, liberals want to change the world for the
better, but they do not connect their abstract cause with its concrete effects.
The feedback loop, particularly involving the basic socialistic and pacifist
tenets of their ideal, is broken.
This is why you will not hear apologies for a rotten economy
and the rise of Islamic Fascism in Iran from Jimmy Carter. It is why you will
not hear apologies for or even an acknowledgement of the bloodbath and
inhumanity that followed our betrayal of South Vietnam from George McGovern or
John Kerry.
They do not connect their abstract ideals with the concrete
effects of those ideals. They will not apologize for what they do not see.
And of course the ideals of the "Anti-War" left today would
lead us to a concrete bloodbath that they cannot see. Nor can they see the
abstract gains in the war on terror through the concrete fighting, building,
heroism, and human losses in Iraq.
Nor can they see how following their feelings and impulses
to avoid war, to avoid the necessity of protecting America through the use of
force, would put us in the gravest of danger.
They can't see it - or won't see it. They are on the back of
a horse they do not or will not control. This is a horse that must be broken
with moral clarity and resolve.
Tribal wars and terrorist attacks may be won by purely
primal animal forces. But civilization is won by men and women with the heart
and will to think it, to build it, and to fight for it.
Come and sign up on my
e-mail list at my website, www.virtueofhappiness.com
, for a free bi-weekly "e-zine", with concise - and realistic - tips on living
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