A powerful statement by Malcolm Pollack, at once both personal and objective. I recommend in particular the penultimate paragraph:
We who came of age in the latter half of the twentieth century have lived our whole lives in such ease and peace and prosperity that we have mostly forgotten, I think, how rare, and how precarious, order and peace and safety are — how easily they are lost, and what sacrifices, and what sense of duty and gratitude, are necessary to sustain them. We just take it all for granted — this astonishing edifice of law and tradition and culture and trade and agriculture and innovation and justice and security — as if it was simply a pre-existing and eternal feature of the world. We imagine, lately, that we can just pick at it as we please, pull pieces out of it and burn them, hack away at its foundations, rip out its beams and joists, and crack its pillars without causing it, someday very soon, to come crashing down on our heads.
One does well to recall the wisdom at Hosea 8:7: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
And never forget who has the guns. Is that a threat? No, it's a warning. You do not want a civil war. You will not like it.
Please exercise your historically-informed imagination now so that you won't have to rely on perception later.
Recent Comments