tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post4736005505933279401..comments2023-09-01T09:38:54.262-04:00Comments on Dumb Looks Still Free: The SOS listA Jacksonianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-22511556977264323092008-12-05T09:17:00.000-05:002008-12-05T09:17:00.000-05:00I am not expecting Woodrow Wilsonesque forms of re...I am not expecting Woodrow Wilsonesque forms of repression, but the actual decay of understanding what it means to be civilized. We do not address infrastructure, so that we live only on what our parents and grandparents left us. That will kill a civilization as readily as anything else by letting the simple things that extend life go to hell.<BR/><BR/>We are already losing civility in our larger social structure and no longer upholding it as it isn't 'nice': it stifles negative self-expression and you just can't *do* that, donchyaknow? Of course not doing that encourages uncivil behavior and the loss of civilization in a greater sense: we no longer understand civil life, civil government nor civil needs. That, too, is a definition of barbarism - not understanding the needs of civilization.<BR/><BR/>It may not be a fast breakdown, although such things can cascade, but the gangs armed with weapons of war, like MS-13, and those backed by the Red Mafia, point to that slow unraveling of civilized norms.<BR/><BR/>Therefore civility must be enforced in each of our lives *first*, and that requires time, energy, and emotional fortitude as the minions of uncivil behavior are willing to use government to destroy those things. If we do believe, as we state as a people, that these things are our responsibility, then we must do them *first* for ourselves and then seek to spread them outwards and upwards.A Jacksonianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-71268007301212254562008-12-05T01:30:00.000-05:002008-12-05T01:30:00.000-05:00It's bound to happen here again. Dyn-O-Bama (and t...It's bound to happen here again. Dyn-O-Bama (and the rest of us) better be ready to roll.Pasadena Closet Conservativehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05837317472523209555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-13513816263090044032008-12-03T19:54:00.000-05:002008-12-03T19:54:00.000-05:00The disturbing thing is that the antecedents in hi...The disturbing thing is that the antecedents in history do not point to good things ahead. When Rome was no longer an assimilative force, the barbarians worked away at the edges while the citizenry became decadent - going into a societal decay that would not support a common society. While we highlight the debauchery, we forget just how decayed that society was, where the barbarians were the ones fighting for Rome. Without social support the Armies would not only control Rome, but also be unable to defend it. That was a slow process...<BR/><BR/>A faster one was at the end of the Bronze Age where minor shifts in climate, particularly Anatolia but also the Aegean Basin, and a set of interconnected societies no longer keeping up strong connections went under. The Hittites, as they were, would disappear and the later ones by that name had little in common with the former... the City States of Greece would succumb to internal struggles and the coming of the Sea Peoples. Even Egypt was hard pressed for tens of decades, barely surviving that onslaught. Assyria went down, Babylon faltered. When the trade went down it all went down.<BR/><BR/>Spain, by taking in so much gold in the New World was causing a problem with the value of gold and silver: it plummeted. All that gold coming in and worth less and less each boatload. Defenses grew thing and then the pirates appeared to harry Spain. Only by banding together did the other European Nations start to curb the collapse of that trade network. That and the Little Ice Age made things very touch-and-go for a few centuries, all the way up to the 19th century.<BR/><BR/>Now we see worldwide trade problems, wild fluctuations in prices of commodities, and societies that will not confront those who take up war on their own. The result?<BR/><BR/>The return of Private War to start the process of disintegrating societies and their trade networks. Pirates, who never really left the scene fully in the Asian Seas, now return to the Indian Ocean and parts of the Atlantic. Terrorists and pirates are the symptom and aggrevating factor: we do not address their uncivilized behavior.<BR/><BR/>We have forgotten that mercy is due to the civilized only.<BR/><BR/>We shall pay for that.A Jacksonianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-74405857336550108492008-12-03T19:41:00.000-05:002008-12-03T19:41:00.000-05:00Good points. I'm sure Heinlein would agree that c...Good points. I'm sure Heinlein would agree that civiilized society exists because of the willingness of certain individuals to defend it. Uncivilized societies (such as most of our cities have become) are not able to tolerate or inspire the fealty of the individual.<BR/><BR/>We are separated by tribal politics.<BR/><BR/>Civilization is a thin, crunchy coating on the outside; deep currents of wrathful, selfish savagery on the inside. <BR/><BR/>The coating is wearing thin in spots. -cpcold pizzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12358492312125897793noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-13143741588130472252008-12-03T17:58:00.000-05:002008-12-03T17:58:00.000-05:00No government, no police force, no one can protect...No government, no police force, no one can protect the individual when our fellow man returns to the State of Nature to take up all their liberties and wage war upon mankind. We are civilized as we invest our negative liberties into government to protect society, but the liberty of defending oneself may not be divorced from the right to do so: we invest the aggressive, outward liberty to government but that defensive, positive liberty is retained by the people.<BR/><BR/>It is time to take up arms for one's defense as the society crumbles, standards evaporate and our fellow man has no sanction against him for returning to Nature to wage Private War. It is the individual who is to be armed, not society: we are not Spartans. The armed individual creates politeness and civility, thus civilization, when the cost of waging Private War goes from nothing to ultimate cost. Being armed is not the object of society, which is the positive good we create: it is that of the individual to create that society by being armed. We dare not place that into society as that would be an attempt to divorce us from our inalienable right. We cannot trust society to defend us as individuals: that is our own responsibility.A Jacksonianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-53690857522014129362008-12-03T17:48:00.000-05:002008-12-03T17:48:00.000-05:00Piracy. Terrorism. The state of nature where the...Piracy. Terrorism. The state of nature where the strong prey on the weak. That's one of the reasons I moved away from the coast and into the intermountain west where all my neighbors have hunting rifles--usually displayed in the truck windows. "An armed society is a polite society." -R.H. Heinlein.<BR/><BR/>-cpcold pizzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12358492312125897793noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-31540256134027453682008-12-02T13:28:00.000-05:002008-12-02T13:28:00.000-05:00Thank Gen. Honore, USACE - he used it during Katri...Thank Gen. Honore, USACE - he used it during Katrina to refer to the press and it has stuck with me. So many that have an SOS out... they just don't know it.A Jacksonianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-25631906237288966262008-12-02T10:51:00.000-05:002008-12-02T10:51:00.000-05:00Hi -I was wondering what SOS meant. I took it to b...Hi -<BR/><BR/>I was wondering what SOS meant. I took it to be Sack Of Shit, but yours is better, not quite so undiplomatic.<BR/><BR/>Great post, as always. :-)John F. Opiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00445399643146235960noreply@blogger.com