Lode 10-25

Two more columns from the Lode, printed here with my original headlines:

The Portentous Rejection of Marriage

Don’t look now, but as a portion of American households, married couples are now a minority. It doesn’t take but maybe five braincells to figure out that this isn’t good news. Allow me to elucidate.

First, children are in dire need of the stability that marriage brings. It is hardly surprising that illegitimacy is the single most significant factor in determining whether or not a child will grow up in poverty.

Second, marriage between a man and a woman is still the ideal. True, abusive mothers and alcoholic fathers seem to suggest that the nuclear family is not perfect—but it was never purported to be. Yet both a male and a female presence are necessary. For those who suggest that men and women are only physically different, I suggest you work on doubling that braincell count. Would you really want me and myself—two people now, in hypothetical land—raising a child? You think maybe the little bloke would have trouble relating to womenfolk? Thought so. I reckon men and women are a bit different.

More importantly, things aren’t getting better. Men, traditionally not too bright when it comes to women, are realizing that the “modern girlfriend” will do that which strict morals once prevented all but a wife from doing. Throw in the astronomical divorce rates, three-quarters of which are undertaken at the behest of women, and the “family” courts, wherein a man gets robbed to pay for children he can no longer see when he wishes, and it takes a considerable fool to tie the knot, barring religious reasons of course.

As the western world continues to reject Christ and the morality he and his followers promulgated, man starts to look out for number one, and marriage is tossed aside like a used condom. Post-Christian western civilization is in for one bumpy ride.

War: Antithetical to Conservatism

It has been fascinating to watch loyal Republican pundits explain that while the party has failed to act upon its conservative principles, we must all stand with her because we are at war with terror. Yet fighting the War on Terror is inimical to the ethos of conservatism. Alexis De Tocqueville explains:

War does not always give over democratic communities to military government, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration. If it does not lead to despotism by sudden violence, it prepares men for it more gently by their habits. All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it. This is the first axiom of the science.

Despite Bush’s insistence that America is both free and democratic, he seems to have no problem in destroying liberty through the vehicle of foreign war. For myself, I cannot decide whether he is the most corrupt man to ever disgrace the office of Washington, waging a senseless war only to increase his own personal power, or merely a useful idiot. But from the perspective of a peon in the throes of a paradoxically increasingly autocratic government and dying civilization, it makes precious little difference.

The founding principle of conservatism could be taken from Thomas Paine: “That government is best which governs least.” Conservatism ought to always oppose the expansion of government, and, as war only leads to exactly this, it must be opposed.

There are exceptions to this principle, however: conservatism does not equate with pacifism. When the mother country is being invaded, troops should be called to send the barbarians back from whence they came. Incidentally, as illegal immigrants march across the border at a rate of one every thirty seconds, President Bush clamors for citizenship for all, though he is careful to explain that he is “against amnesty.” And while he reminds us that these illegals merely seek better conditions in the United States, it is wholly unreasonable to suppose that no terrorists are to be counted among the estimated twelve million undocumented aliens within our midst.

Now the base needs little prodding to defend the border. It is not hard to guess which party the Minutemen affiliated with—affiliated as in past tense; complacency on behalf of the president has given Jim Gilchrist, founder of the border defense group, impetus to seek the Constitutional Party’s nomination in 2008. Would Bush only adhere to his oath to protect and defend this nation, Gilchrist and his followers, formerly filled with righteous indignation, would assuredly return to their home in the Republican Party.

If Bush was really and truly concerned with the War on Terror, we would not be leaving the border unsecured. The President has shown that he is bereft of principles, completely lacking in common sense; his thinking is marred with inconsistency. It is manifestly imbecilic to go in search of foreign enemies to destroy whilst allowing those who would do us harm to waltz merrily across the U.S.-Mexican border. In his haste to protect the chickens, Bush has gone to the woods to hunt the fox. But the door to the chicken coop remains wide open.

I do not support the War on Terror for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, by ill-defining the enemy, we risk Orwell’s “perpetual war.” Yet if we are going to defeat “Terror,” a secure border is paramount. As waged presently, Bush’s War on Terror is futile, and only serves to increase the size of the government behemoth. Sincere conservatives cannot and should not support him or the party that once nominated the pusillanimous quisling.