0 comment Saturday, May 17, 2014 | admin
I was preparing to write a post in response to a question that is asked with some regularity, that question being: in light of what is happening to our country and to the Western civilized world, what can I do?
The question has been posed here on this blog a number of times, and people ask it in the 'real world.' And it is hard to come up with a concise and relevant answer to those who ask. Once having come to an awareness of the seriousness of our situation, the patriotic and concerned person naturally wants to do something.
Far be it from me to dissuade or discourage anyone from traditional political activism: calling, faxing, writing old-fashioned letters to representatives and to your local paper; attending city council meetings and county council meetings when possible, generally becoming involved in local affairs, networking with others in your locality. At times it's easy to succumb to the feeling that such activism avails nothing, but it may be that citizen efforts foiled the attempt to pass the Amnesty bill last year. Not that the idea of amnesty has gone away; it will be tried again, and we have to do what we can to defeat it as many times as it takes. Somewhat cynically, though, it might be said that the bill was a mere formality; the inundation of our country by illegal (and legal) immigration is still ongoing. As I said at the time the Amnesty bill was being pushed, even if the bill dies, the country is still being swamped by immigration, so the open-borders cabal gets its way regardless, amnesty or no amnesty. Nothing has changed since the amnesty bill was thwarted, at least as regards the demographic transformation of our country.
I've questioned before whether the political process is the only way to effect change. Obviously I don't think it is. Change happens in a number of ways, and politics is often merely a way of validating or formalizing an accomplished fact. If amnesty ever becomes a reality, it will merely be a way of formalizing and legalizing the accomplished fact of the invasion and Hispanicization of America. It will merely put an official seal of government approval on it.
Some desirable changes start at the grassroots level, and occur somewhat spontaneously, as certain ideas and trends sweep through society. The sixties counterculture ideals started with a small fringe group of young people and percolated throughout society, among all age groups and demographics. Unfortunately, the ideas which swept into society in that wave of change were mostly destructive ones, bringing the weakening and near-destruction of the traditional family, of traditional sexual mores, of religious faith, of sex roles, of education, and of standards in general, in all areas of life. These changes caught on because they appealed to the more selfish and baser urges which are present in all of us, so they may be seen as working with human nature. Any change which is counter to old human nature is less likely to spread without coercion.
Political correctness and all the other aspects of liberalism are counter to human nature, and as such, they require much more social pressure and constant indoctrination and enforcement to maintain their hold. PC is therefore not as strong as it may appear to be; it is merely being propped up by an elaborate structure of enforcement.
So liberalism is a high-maintenance kind of system; it conflicts with normal human nature. Egalitarianism, enforced altruism and coerced niceness do not come naturally to people.
All the same, one thing PC has working for it is that it appeals to the vanity of human beings; those who ostentatiously practice liberal attitudes, towards minorities, for example, have the reward of 'feeling good about themselves'. Our liberal society counts racial liberalism as the highest virtue, and people want to be seen as enlightened. Post-modern westerners no longer value sexual virtue, for example, or religious piety, but they value racial piety as manifested in PC and multiculturalism.
So there is an incentive for people who buy into the secular religion of liberalism to maintain their egalitarian, politically correct postures. Many rewards accrue to those who toe the PC line, and conversely, punishments and social ostracism await those who rebel against the liberal orthodoxies where political correctness is concerned. Think: Don Imus, John Rocker, and countless others who fell afoul of the PC code.
But much of the enforcement of political correctness is not in the hands of the authorities, at least in America; it's democratically enforced. Our fellow citizens will often react to punish offenders or to make an example of them. We censor ourselves, and if we don't, someone is ready and waiting to pounce if we don't censor ourselves adequately.
I think, therefore, that one of the most important things we can do is to work, first, to free ourselves from the crippling effects of PC. All of us are, by virtue of living in this society, steeped in PC, and some of us are less aware of how much of it we accept unthinkingly. It pervades our whole society, even in innocuous guises like entertainment and commercials. It's part of the air we breathe.
So the first thing, I believe, is to become more aware of the insidious liberalism that permeates everything, and to weed it out of our thinking and our discourse. All of us are affected by it, even those of us who have been conscious of this issue for some years.
But when I was preparing to write this, I came across a link to a post from Tom's Big Picture, in which Tom gives his very sound suggestions. The whole post (which is one of a series) is worth reading, but here are some of the suggestions:
Tom�s Practical Suggestions for Recovering Victims of Political Correctness to Heal Psychological Wounds and Break the Cycle of Guilt and Oppression for Your Children
1. The media�s main distribution vehicle for mass-consumed politically correct propaganda is television. Turn off the TV. Cancel the cable. Your cable bill sends about 25 to 50 cents per month to every channel on the dial, whether you watch it or not. So you�re subsidizing the filth whether you want to or not. There�s not a whole lot of downside to getting rid of cable once you get over withdrawals: higher quality family time without the tube on all the time (I�ve noticed some people who mute the TV and leave it on all the time, like a security blanket or something), higher SAT scores for your kids since they�ll have to read for entertainment, and more sex. Seriously, studies have shown that TV�s in the bedroom reduce sex frequency between husbands and wives.
2. Ok, I realize most of you won�t implement #1. I�m a hypocrite as well on it, but I thought I�d throw it out there as an ideal. Here�s what we did: we cancelled our cable in 2005. We signed up with Dish Network; there�s even a "family friendly" package that is $20 a month (though not all of the channels, like Nickelodeon, are necessarily healthy). We also got a DVR, where we record shows like a TIVO. Second, and most importantly, we put the Dish Netword receiver on one and only one TV: the one right in front of our exercise equipment. In our house, you must at least be building your temple while you rot your mind.
3. Ok, so maybe #2 is not something you want to do either. At least do the following. Get a DVR, whether Dish or Tivo or whatever. I think a lot of our consumption of unhealthy propaganda is due to mindless viewing of whatever�s on. Now, most people don�t want to watch propaganda, but they will watch it if it�s the best thing on at any given time. A Tivo or digital video recorder allows you to record hours and hours of relatively harmless content (like my wife�s decorating shows, or my shows about "Modern Marvels", exciting documentaries about concrete, plastic, metal and the like). My recorder has more shows of pretty harmless content than my wife or I could ever watch. In addition, you can skip commercials pretty easily, which will reduce your credit card bill by reducing your exposure to want-inducing messages of materialism (believe me, advertising works- I spend a lot of money on it, and not for my health). Now remember, I said the content is relatively harmless, but it�s not edifying either. So instead of consuming media toxins, you are now consuming the equivalent of table sugar, not healthy for sure, but not harmful in moderation. Even some of the "harmless" content will have trace levels of toxin- for example, a documentary about Texas had the obligatory politically correct hand-wringing about slavery. At least in that situation, with a DVR, you can hit the pause button, explain to your children the problem with what they just heard, and start again. If we talk back to our TV�s in our children�s prescence, the damage is mitigated; in fact, being a critical consumer of media content is an important skill to teach to our children.
4. Never, ever let your children watch content from television without your supervision. Even with a DVR, your children may be tempted to watch the commercials. And for goodness sake, don�t let them watch "children�s" programming. Media mogul Sumner Redstone, born Murray Rothstein, owns Viacom, which in turn owns Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and MTV. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are designed to produce future consumers of MTV. Do not be so gullible as to trust an anti-Christian corporation to determine appropriate media content for your children. Your preferred medium for children�s content should be the DVD, where you are in absolute control of a closed circuit on the content. There�s no way they�re going to see a Spongebob commercial while watching Veggietales.
5. Build an extensive DVD collection of healthy content and share your content with others (I leave the means for the latter deliberately vague). I will soon start a project of building a list of appropriate DVD�s on this site.
6. Much of the "science" of psychology is actually pseudoscience. However, there is one psychological therapy technique that is almost universally useful: exposure therapy for curing phobias. If someone is afraid of snakes, they can be cured by handling snakes, almost guaranteed. Similarly, political correctness has made us afraid of our past as a people and culture. We need to dig around in the past, particularly in those areas deemed "forbidden" and "evil" by the media, to discover the truth. As a Southerner, this means, for example, I need to know everything I can about The War Between the States, Reconstruction and the Redemption (i.e. the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments) that I can, from original sources, or at least older sources. I need to know the past as it was, from the people who lived in it, and not from self-appointed censors in our current age.
7. We need a general exposure to our civilization�s heritage. Read good literature, listen to good classical music, and enjoy poetry from the past when poems were real art instead of self-indulgent raw feeds of randomness and obscenity from some idiot�s subconscious.
8. In regards to #6 and #7, it is apparent that we must read to accomplish these things. In music and reading, there is a somewhat painful process of stretching the mind that is required before finer things can be appreciated. It�s worth it. Once you begin to enjoy the "higher bandwidth" cultural offerings of our past, you�ll feel like something�s missing in mass-marketed media. But it does take some effort to read. I will also start media lists of music and books on this site. ''
I heartily agree with his suggestions, especially on the recommendation to turn to old sources, classic works (meaning pre-PC works).
I have also been especially conscious lately that the mainstream media, so-called, are absolutely pernicious in their bias and blatant indoctrination. The content of the news they present, the dumbing-down, the multiculti 'affirmative action' news anchors (are women becoming dominant in the cable news medium these days? It appears so), the suppressing of stories that don't fit the template, the emphasis on 'junk news' and trashy gossip -- really, the cable news channels are worse than useless.
Newspapers, of course, are just as bad, if not worse. And needless to say, there scarcely exists one conservative newspaper in America; one monolithic PC viewpoint dominates all major news outlets in America.
Surely Pravda and Izvestia in the old USSR could not have been more obviously propagandistic than our news media. Sometimes I have to absolutely tune out the TV news channels for the sake of sanity. Even Lou Dobbs, who is supposedly a nativist populist, bows his knee to PC with guests like Janet Murguia of La Raza, and the whiny Miguel Perez who is a regular 'panel' member.
Tune out, turn off, and drop in - to the real world.
I can't stress enough the importance of cleaning out the PC cobwebs that cloud our minds, and of absorbing some of the sanity from the older sources of knowledge and wisdom that still exist. Our predecessors and our ancestors left us a legacy; there is so much we might learn from what they had to say. And these old books are being lost and going out of print in so many cases. I personally collect old books, especially textbooks, history books; almost anything is of value. Those books are our connection to the past. Even old movies have something useful and soul-nourishing to offer.
This is conservatism 101, and yet so many people who claim to be conservatives neglect the past, neglect our centuries-old traditions. That is no kind of conservatism at all.
And once having de-toxed ourselves by avoiding the PC junk food, we can work on helping others throw off the conditioning. Our children and grandchildren, all those closest to us first, and then work outward. Each one, teach one.
This, I think, is as important or more important than the political activism at this point. We need to clean house at home first, and then move outward. That's the best start we can make. We all influence or affect somebody in our circle, and they in turn can go out and do the same. It has to start with each individual and ripple outward.
Forum comments here.
The question has been posed here on this blog a number of times, and people ask it in the 'real world.' And it is hard to come up with a concise and relevant answer to those who ask. Once having come to an awareness of the seriousness of our situation, the patriotic and concerned person naturally wants to do something.
Far be it from me to dissuade or discourage anyone from traditional political activism: calling, faxing, writing old-fashioned letters to representatives and to your local paper; attending city council meetings and county council meetings when possible, generally becoming involved in local affairs, networking with others in your locality. At times it's easy to succumb to the feeling that such activism avails nothing, but it may be that citizen efforts foiled the attempt to pass the Amnesty bill last year. Not that the idea of amnesty has gone away; it will be tried again, and we have to do what we can to defeat it as many times as it takes. Somewhat cynically, though, it might be said that the bill was a mere formality; the inundation of our country by illegal (and legal) immigration is still ongoing. As I said at the time the Amnesty bill was being pushed, even if the bill dies, the country is still being swamped by immigration, so the open-borders cabal gets its way regardless, amnesty or no amnesty. Nothing has changed since the amnesty bill was thwarted, at least as regards the demographic transformation of our country.
I've questioned before whether the political process is the only way to effect change. Obviously I don't think it is. Change happens in a number of ways, and politics is often merely a way of validating or formalizing an accomplished fact. If amnesty ever becomes a reality, it will merely be a way of formalizing and legalizing the accomplished fact of the invasion and Hispanicization of America. It will merely put an official seal of government approval on it.
Some desirable changes start at the grassroots level, and occur somewhat spontaneously, as certain ideas and trends sweep through society. The sixties counterculture ideals started with a small fringe group of young people and percolated throughout society, among all age groups and demographics. Unfortunately, the ideas which swept into society in that wave of change were mostly destructive ones, bringing the weakening and near-destruction of the traditional family, of traditional sexual mores, of religious faith, of sex roles, of education, and of standards in general, in all areas of life. These changes caught on because they appealed to the more selfish and baser urges which are present in all of us, so they may be seen as working with human nature. Any change which is counter to old human nature is less likely to spread without coercion.
Political correctness and all the other aspects of liberalism are counter to human nature, and as such, they require much more social pressure and constant indoctrination and enforcement to maintain their hold. PC is therefore not as strong as it may appear to be; it is merely being propped up by an elaborate structure of enforcement.
So liberalism is a high-maintenance kind of system; it conflicts with normal human nature. Egalitarianism, enforced altruism and coerced niceness do not come naturally to people.
All the same, one thing PC has working for it is that it appeals to the vanity of human beings; those who ostentatiously practice liberal attitudes, towards minorities, for example, have the reward of 'feeling good about themselves'. Our liberal society counts racial liberalism as the highest virtue, and people want to be seen as enlightened. Post-modern westerners no longer value sexual virtue, for example, or religious piety, but they value racial piety as manifested in PC and multiculturalism.
So there is an incentive for people who buy into the secular religion of liberalism to maintain their egalitarian, politically correct postures. Many rewards accrue to those who toe the PC line, and conversely, punishments and social ostracism await those who rebel against the liberal orthodoxies where political correctness is concerned. Think: Don Imus, John Rocker, and countless others who fell afoul of the PC code.
But much of the enforcement of political correctness is not in the hands of the authorities, at least in America; it's democratically enforced. Our fellow citizens will often react to punish offenders or to make an example of them. We censor ourselves, and if we don't, someone is ready and waiting to pounce if we don't censor ourselves adequately.
I think, therefore, that one of the most important things we can do is to work, first, to free ourselves from the crippling effects of PC. All of us are, by virtue of living in this society, steeped in PC, and some of us are less aware of how much of it we accept unthinkingly. It pervades our whole society, even in innocuous guises like entertainment and commercials. It's part of the air we breathe.
So the first thing, I believe, is to become more aware of the insidious liberalism that permeates everything, and to weed it out of our thinking and our discourse. All of us are affected by it, even those of us who have been conscious of this issue for some years.
But when I was preparing to write this, I came across a link to a post from Tom's Big Picture, in which Tom gives his very sound suggestions. The whole post (which is one of a series) is worth reading, but here are some of the suggestions:
Tom�s Practical Suggestions for Recovering Victims of Political Correctness to Heal Psychological Wounds and Break the Cycle of Guilt and Oppression for Your Children
1. The media�s main distribution vehicle for mass-consumed politically correct propaganda is television. Turn off the TV. Cancel the cable. Your cable bill sends about 25 to 50 cents per month to every channel on the dial, whether you watch it or not. So you�re subsidizing the filth whether you want to or not. There�s not a whole lot of downside to getting rid of cable once you get over withdrawals: higher quality family time without the tube on all the time (I�ve noticed some people who mute the TV and leave it on all the time, like a security blanket or something), higher SAT scores for your kids since they�ll have to read for entertainment, and more sex. Seriously, studies have shown that TV�s in the bedroom reduce sex frequency between husbands and wives.
2. Ok, I realize most of you won�t implement #1. I�m a hypocrite as well on it, but I thought I�d throw it out there as an ideal. Here�s what we did: we cancelled our cable in 2005. We signed up with Dish Network; there�s even a "family friendly" package that is $20 a month (though not all of the channels, like Nickelodeon, are necessarily healthy). We also got a DVR, where we record shows like a TIVO. Second, and most importantly, we put the Dish Netword receiver on one and only one TV: the one right in front of our exercise equipment. In our house, you must at least be building your temple while you rot your mind.
3. Ok, so maybe #2 is not something you want to do either. At least do the following. Get a DVR, whether Dish or Tivo or whatever. I think a lot of our consumption of unhealthy propaganda is due to mindless viewing of whatever�s on. Now, most people don�t want to watch propaganda, but they will watch it if it�s the best thing on at any given time. A Tivo or digital video recorder allows you to record hours and hours of relatively harmless content (like my wife�s decorating shows, or my shows about "Modern Marvels", exciting documentaries about concrete, plastic, metal and the like). My recorder has more shows of pretty harmless content than my wife or I could ever watch. In addition, you can skip commercials pretty easily, which will reduce your credit card bill by reducing your exposure to want-inducing messages of materialism (believe me, advertising works- I spend a lot of money on it, and not for my health). Now remember, I said the content is relatively harmless, but it�s not edifying either. So instead of consuming media toxins, you are now consuming the equivalent of table sugar, not healthy for sure, but not harmful in moderation. Even some of the "harmless" content will have trace levels of toxin- for example, a documentary about Texas had the obligatory politically correct hand-wringing about slavery. At least in that situation, with a DVR, you can hit the pause button, explain to your children the problem with what they just heard, and start again. If we talk back to our TV�s in our children�s prescence, the damage is mitigated; in fact, being a critical consumer of media content is an important skill to teach to our children.
4. Never, ever let your children watch content from television without your supervision. Even with a DVR, your children may be tempted to watch the commercials. And for goodness sake, don�t let them watch "children�s" programming. Media mogul Sumner Redstone, born Murray Rothstein, owns Viacom, which in turn owns Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and MTV. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are designed to produce future consumers of MTV. Do not be so gullible as to trust an anti-Christian corporation to determine appropriate media content for your children. Your preferred medium for children�s content should be the DVD, where you are in absolute control of a closed circuit on the content. There�s no way they�re going to see a Spongebob commercial while watching Veggietales.
5. Build an extensive DVD collection of healthy content and share your content with others (I leave the means for the latter deliberately vague). I will soon start a project of building a list of appropriate DVD�s on this site.
6. Much of the "science" of psychology is actually pseudoscience. However, there is one psychological therapy technique that is almost universally useful: exposure therapy for curing phobias. If someone is afraid of snakes, they can be cured by handling snakes, almost guaranteed. Similarly, political correctness has made us afraid of our past as a people and culture. We need to dig around in the past, particularly in those areas deemed "forbidden" and "evil" by the media, to discover the truth. As a Southerner, this means, for example, I need to know everything I can about The War Between the States, Reconstruction and the Redemption (i.e. the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments) that I can, from original sources, or at least older sources. I need to know the past as it was, from the people who lived in it, and not from self-appointed censors in our current age.
7. We need a general exposure to our civilization�s heritage. Read good literature, listen to good classical music, and enjoy poetry from the past when poems were real art instead of self-indulgent raw feeds of randomness and obscenity from some idiot�s subconscious.
8. In regards to #6 and #7, it is apparent that we must read to accomplish these things. In music and reading, there is a somewhat painful process of stretching the mind that is required before finer things can be appreciated. It�s worth it. Once you begin to enjoy the "higher bandwidth" cultural offerings of our past, you�ll feel like something�s missing in mass-marketed media. But it does take some effort to read. I will also start media lists of music and books on this site. ''
I heartily agree with his suggestions, especially on the recommendation to turn to old sources, classic works (meaning pre-PC works).
I have also been especially conscious lately that the mainstream media, so-called, are absolutely pernicious in their bias and blatant indoctrination. The content of the news they present, the dumbing-down, the multiculti 'affirmative action' news anchors (are women becoming dominant in the cable news medium these days? It appears so), the suppressing of stories that don't fit the template, the emphasis on 'junk news' and trashy gossip -- really, the cable news channels are worse than useless.
Newspapers, of course, are just as bad, if not worse. And needless to say, there scarcely exists one conservative newspaper in America; one monolithic PC viewpoint dominates all major news outlets in America.
Surely Pravda and Izvestia in the old USSR could not have been more obviously propagandistic than our news media. Sometimes I have to absolutely tune out the TV news channels for the sake of sanity. Even Lou Dobbs, who is supposedly a nativist populist, bows his knee to PC with guests like Janet Murguia of La Raza, and the whiny Miguel Perez who is a regular 'panel' member.
Tune out, turn off, and drop in - to the real world.
I can't stress enough the importance of cleaning out the PC cobwebs that cloud our minds, and of absorbing some of the sanity from the older sources of knowledge and wisdom that still exist. Our predecessors and our ancestors left us a legacy; there is so much we might learn from what they had to say. And these old books are being lost and going out of print in so many cases. I personally collect old books, especially textbooks, history books; almost anything is of value. Those books are our connection to the past. Even old movies have something useful and soul-nourishing to offer.
This is conservatism 101, and yet so many people who claim to be conservatives neglect the past, neglect our centuries-old traditions. That is no kind of conservatism at all.
And once having de-toxed ourselves by avoiding the PC junk food, we can work on helping others throw off the conditioning. Our children and grandchildren, all those closest to us first, and then work outward. Each one, teach one.
This, I think, is as important or more important than the political activism at this point. We need to clean house at home first, and then move outward. That's the best start we can make. We all influence or affect somebody in our circle, and they in turn can go out and do the same. It has to start with each individual and ripple outward.
Forum comments here.
Labels: American Culture, Conservatism, Media Bias, Political Correctness, Revisionism