Francis W. Porretto:

Posted on March 10, 2012 by KG

‘Visions And Tomorrows: Directions’
“…The hour of decision is upon us. It’s time to choose our direction, and hold fast to it..”
This is a wonderful, insightful essay but I’d take issue with Francis P. when he says the answer rests with the young people. My experience, from talking to younger people is that very, very many are now indoctrinated drones. Older people at least retain the memory of what relative freedom felt like and may be persuaded to stand up and fight for it. Tea Partiers are largely older people who want government out of their faces. OWS activists are mostly young and want government to “solve” problems for them. That’s maybe an indicator of the generational difference in worldviews and priorities.

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14 Responses to Francis W. Porretto:

  1. Francis W. Porretto says:
    March 11, 2012 at 02:18

    You could be right, KG. I was thinking of something C.S. Lewis wrote:

    You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness we create in their lives, and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is “finding his place in it,” while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of really being at home on Earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the old.

    Sacrifice comes harder to those who have “made their pile” and had a decade or three to enjoy it. But we shall see.

    • KG says:
      March 11, 2012 at 09:13

      “Sacrifice comes harder to those who have “made their pile” and had a decade or three to enjoy it.”
      Most certainly true.
      But should that pile be threatened or drastically reduced by government actions and/or incompetence the attitude may change.
      A good case can be made either way, I think, but my own instincts tell me that although there’s no choice but to organise against what’s happening-since we can hardly do nothing-the time for choices is over.
      The spark which will trigger major social upheaval is impossible to guess ahead of the event, but the potential number of such sparks is increasing daily.
      When that time comes, will be the time for choosing a place to stand and for each man and woman who stands to decide just how high a price they’re prepared to pay for a final shot at liberty.
      They won’t be very many and they may well fail.
      (and I really, really need to read some C.S.Lewis)

  2. Darin says:
    March 11, 2012 at 05:00

    “Older people at least retain the memory of what relative freedom felt like and may be persuaded to stand up and fight for it. Tea Partiers are largely older people who want government out of their faces. OWS activists are mostly young and want government to “solve” problems for them”

    And that is why the left wants death panels and rationing,the sooner they can ship the older generations off the better for them once everybody who remembers the way things are supposed to be is gone.Insidious isn’t it?

  3. Pascal says:
    March 11, 2012 at 06:00

    but I’d take issue with Francis P. when he says the answer rests with the young people. My experience, from talking to younger people is that very, very many are now indoctrinated drones.

    Compare with

    If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.

    When you wrote what you did Fran, didn’t Orwell’s words ring in your ears? The answer appears to be “could very well be yes.”

    Yes, sacrifice comes harder to those who have made a pile. As a Catholic doesn’t Christ’s words also ring in your ears? (Something contrasted to Camels and the eye of a needle.) The other form of conservative is backing Romney as they backed McCain before him, and W before that. PRINCIPLED conservatives are viewed as more of a threat to them than radical Lefitsts. If Orwell was correct about the proles, he may very well be correct about the inner party too.

    That’s where the other form of conservative plans on winding up. Afterall, since they are silent about how the most radical, the greens, believe that 12 out of 13 must be eliminated, they figure only aces will be selected to remain. And they, by virtue of all they’ve acquired, must be aces, right? Except that they forgot that the other “aces,” the special ones, still need their laundry done and their garden tended.

    Oops!

    Thus, there must be some aces that can also be turned to the light, simply for their own preservation.

    It’s gotta come from a new enlightenment Fran. Conservative ranks need to be filtered. The Republican party needs to be split. Misanthropes need to be seen as pariahs and not saviors. If only there was an on-going series exposing the death culters.

  4. KG says:
    March 11, 2012 at 09:19

    What’s needed is for a few States of the U.S. to make a stand against the Feds. That will provide a very clear rallying point for those who value liberty, independent of the various right factions which fracture opposition to what has become naked totalitarianism.
    It’s one thing to resist alone a SWAT team kicking down one’s door, quite another to join thousands of like-minded people moving to a State and daring the Feds to cross this border.

  5. KG says:
    March 11, 2012 at 09:52

    :smile: We think alike, Oswald. And this, from one of your fellow sci-fi authors, is a beauty:
    “The Second Amendment allows citizens, suicidally if alone, more effectively in large groups, to proclaim: “Vote as you will. But remember, the vote is but one way, and an inaccurate one at that, of measuring real – as opposed to merely theoretical political or judicial – power. You have yet to tally the level of real power. We have the will. We have the means. Together they make real power. Oppress at your peril.”
    Tom Kratman
    http://www.tomkratman.com/rant2ndamend.html

  6. Elijah says:
    March 11, 2012 at 15:52

    I’d have to agree with your opinion KG. Being from that generation I can tell you any understanding of liberty goes flying out the window with the vast majority of my generation.

    • KG says:
      March 11, 2012 at 16:04

      The worst of it (almost) for me, Elijah, is knowing that my generation did the damage during the 60’s. We were utterly clueless, naive and selfish.

      • Pascal says:
        March 11, 2012 at 16:28

        Not all of us KG. I and a bunch of other engineers fought the Leftists on my campus. It was where the first teach-ins took place. But we were simply not organized like they were, and we didn’t realize how much was being funded from the shadows and being aided by the press. As the Verona papers later revealed, it was quite a lot. We on the right made sure to get out and vote and defeat every radical student issue. However, I will never forget this ugly bitch who grabbed a megaphone in an after vote rally. She proclaimed that the only reason that they had lost the vote was because we were ignorant. “We will educate you.” No doubt she was an education major. You know the rest of that story. We went to work to build a better world. She and her ilk went to work and undermined Western education.

        • KG says:
          March 11, 2012 at 16:30

          Yeah, it was a lazy generalisation, Pascal. But very largely true, all the same.

          • Pascal says:
            March 11, 2012 at 16:41

            In that respect I tend to agree with you. I tend to say my generation was misled. Yes they were. But how many were REALLY naive? At some point most who participated had fair enough warning — I’ve almost never met a con-man who did not intentionally give a clue that the option he was offering me was rotten. It’s like they can’t help themselves. It’s their cynicism I think. They wanna believe everybody is as crooked as them, so they make sure the person they’re luring has a glimpse that he’s misleading them.

            In short, am I correct to say our generation was misled? Yes. But the majority did so willfully. Does that fit what you were saying better?

  7. WAKE UP says:
    March 12, 2012 at 12:41

    “…I tend to say my generation was misled. Yes they were. But how many were REALLY naive? ”

    The salient point that got lost in a cloud of pot (just look at any retrospective 60’s doco now…) was that the very things that the so-called dope-enlightened left thought they could/should/would/protest/do were only even conceivable, let alone possible, because of the very traditions and stability of the society they purported to despise. They thought they could destroy it and yet still have the same (relatively) untroubled, privileged lives. Nobody ever got through to them that it was a baby-or-bathwater trade-off. Instead, they were indulged – and in that sense, yes, misled. And we see the results all around us.