Tuesday, January 27, 2009

If 6 was 9



Jimi Hendrix's poetical bent ran head on into the coffee shop pseudo-philosophers of the 60s when he gave such a mysterious title to another guitar masterpiece that ends up simply being a reference to the song's 6/9 chords. Heavy Man. Millions of drug supported "deep" debates about the consequences of 6 being 9 were inspired by a guitarist with a poetical bent. I remember some hippie friends at Humboldt arguing that 6 must be 6 because otherwise the entire world of numbers would be deceived! Well, how about if liberal were leftist? We tend to think of them as the same thing when we should separate them. What's the difference? Well, think of war, lower taxes, and nationalism. All three were easily supported by liberal presidents of the past without any betrayal of their party or its ideals. But liberals today have serious philosophical problems with all three. The liberals and democrats of the past were still nationalists. Today, they are globalists. Yesterday, they believed in assimilation. Today, multiculturalism. Two completely different animals. If 6 was 9...

Why is it important? Because millions of people are like my grandfather, who kept on voting for FDR well into the nineties. He thought leftwing progressivism was the liberal progressivism of the past. But the left today is postmodern instead of classical liberal, socialist instead of big government. Leftists today have made a hero out of communist revolutionary Che Guevera, a man liberal heroes like Kennedy and Roosevelt would have opposed. The difference is profound and we need to clarify it and drag it out into the light so Americans can begin to see for themselves the dissonance and hypocrisies of the ruling elite. It is important because younger generations have zero understanding of America's founding values. They do believe that Health Care is a right, but can't explain why. They believe that Global Warming is a serious threat, but have never immersed their minds in Washington's farewell address. It is important for the same reason it is important to know and identify the enemy in the War on Terror. By facing reality we can at least discuss and think about it honestly.

Russell Kirk famously declared that he was a conservative because he was a liberal. The tragedy is that this poignant observation of American society was lost to all but a few intellectuals when it needed to enter into the popular mind. If this happens our new generations will at least be able to question where their ideas come from and see that there are alternatives. As things stand, they are all becoming "liberals" because 6 is 9.

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