E-Book Release
The 2022 midterm elections are roughly a month away. We have been busily scrambling to get this book released in time for readers to have the opportunity to review what we have put together in the hopes that it will inform and educate those of you planning to vote in the upcoming elections. Taking a departure from the format of our first book - "Unwashed Philosophy: A User's Guide For Our Imperfect Union" - we assembled 17 essays spread out across four unique categories and closed with an epilogue intended to put a personal touch on our closing arguments about the current state of the nation and the clear and present danger to our Republic if "We, the People" don't come together to turn this country around.
Below, I have inserted the epilogue (approximately 3,000 words). I deeply and sincerely believe that a free republic needs a multi-party political system, and I accept and embrace that these Parties will necessarily be at odds over the details, philosophy, and ideology that inform their political positions. What I cannot accept, and what none of you should accept, is that any political conflict could ever be resolved by destroying the nation that put these Parties in power only to take power away from the people they were hired to serve. We can get back to arguing between Left and Right ideologies when the new Congress is seated in January 2023. For now, both sides need to come together, temporarily at least, and into the November elections to dispose of those in power trying to destroy everything that has been done to bring America to this place in the history of humankind over the four centuries it has taken to get this far only to squander it because of the vanities and self-indulgences of the ruling classes.
As much as our political Representatives have pushed us into a self-inflicted Civil War of their making, the real Civil War that confronts us is between the governing and the governed, and only a civilians' peaceful revolution at the ballot box is going to pull this nation back, collectively, from going over the cliff's edge and driving the nation into the abyss.
Epilogue: Poff / Bushmills
When my first book project, "Unwashed Philosophy: A User's Guide For Our Imperfect Union, first got underway in 2019, the world was a very different place than it is today as I bring this one to a close. My motivation for writing that book was shaped by a personal ambition to prove that, after my third stroke and the loss of my ability to read or write without assistive devices, I was still capable of functionally interacting with the outside world and putting my love of writing to good use. A funny thing happened, though, on my way to achieving that goal; not very long into the project, the book took on a life of its own, and I wound up just going along for the ride.
I quickly came to three stunning revelations; I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did about a great many things, about a great many things I thought I knew, I was completely wrong, and about literally everything, the profitability of misinformation and disinformation knows no bounds. Trying to wrap my head around this, it occurred to me that my own experience is reflected throughout modern American culture and society. Coming to grips with this truth, I was reminded of a quote my writing partner in crime, Vassar Bushmills, uses often and will show up again later in this epilogue, that goes like this: "The saddest person is "one who is lost, only don't know he/she is lost, because they are not seeking to be found." as we approach the 2022 midterm elections, this frames rather nicely the crossroad at which we find ourselves standing as a nation.
Many years ago, I coined a phrase - forgive me, I have a personal passion for quotes - that goes like this: "Abstinence from sin may bring you closer to God, but it is the devil that accompanies you on that Journey". I was reminded of that quote during the research phase of the Old Testament and the history of the 60s generation. I was reminded, as well, that the aggressive pursuit of the last several generations to displace a belief in a higher power than government with the notion that government is the solution to every problem had brought us to this point in human history.
That first book was released on Amazon almost a year ago to the day from the release of this new book that moves beyond the history of how America came to be, the mess we have made of it in the centuries since, and things that should be considered going forward. I intentionally ended it roughly six months after Joe Biden had been in office, purposely leaving out his politics and policies. Things got so bad so quickly that it was immediately obvious a follow-up book was going to need to be written. This is that book.
The essays we have put together here by Vassar, and I endeavor to wrap some perspective around what has happened in the two years of the Biden administration and the rabid far-left push toward Progressive Fascism that has unfolded before our very eyes. I say with all the seriousness I could muster that if we do not destroy the forces working to collapse the American Nation and scatter its wealth and resources- physical and human - to the four corners of what is planned to be a universally Socialist world, the human race may well take five millennia to put itself back together. equally possible is the chance that we succumb to Total annihilation and wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth in service to the worst of our vanities and self-indulgences.
We are already fighting a civil war within the borders of the United States, to one degree or another. The risk of global confrontation is one world leader's petulance away from taking all of us with him or her. Two well-known observations need to be considered as we approach the midterm elections of 2022; all politics are local, and in the matter of Elections, you get what you voted for. While the corporate and political ruling classes are busy dehumanizing the rest of us for profit, the most immediate thing we can do is step back from the temptation to disengage from the Democratic process or just vote the way you always have. The American political system has been corrupted by not only special interests but also nonprofits and NGOs. The chasm between those who govern and those who consent to be governed has never been wider.
As I pass the baton to Vassar so he can have the last word in this book, you should know that I titled this book "Vol. I" because, God willing, we will be back to review the work of whatever version of Congress we get in November 2022 and look ahead to whatever work there will be to address the continued work of saving the country heading towards November of 2024. Accordingly, let me leave you with this homemade quote were you to consider between now and November 2022:
"Both political parties are dead; they don't have opposing ideologies. Rather, they have joined together to reject their oaths to submit to the will and consent of the governed. Vote in November accordingly."
[Bushmills]
In August 2011, I penned an essay titled "Picking At Scabs On The Ship Of Fools", kicking off a new site called "Unified Patriots," which was made up mostly of a group of Baby Boomers, all born before the Beatles came to America. None of us seemed to fit in with the modern vision of the wunderkind who managed RedState.com at the time. Learning why they didn't like us would be called a "teachable lesson", hence the title. Three of us were locked out, so we created a site, "Unified Patriots" (2011-2022), that was more representative of our generation's perspectives, vis a vis not only what we were staring down then with Barack Obama and his handlers (Alinsky-ites) plans to re-make (take over) the United States...
...but also highlighting our experiences, which were wide and varied, and our inherited perspectives about America's underpinnings going back to the Founding...noting how we were losing it among the younger generations.
Think of this as a fundamental "How Things Work" equation.
After Baby Boomers, there is a connection, from GenX, through Millennials, and now GenZ, that has been diminished as an element of our "To Be American" culture since the 1970s. Finding this decline's roots in Education, Communication, Pop Culture, and even modern ideas about "Family-Time"; joint meals, church, extended family gatherings, where those cultural exchanges take place, to the very meaning of "Family"...many of those post-modern changes appear to have been by design, while in the broadest sense of Natural Law, are not "survival enhancing" for any culture. They were designed to benefit only a select few.
World history is replete with examples, from the rise and fall of royal dynasties lasting mere decades to empires lasting centuries. Each collapse contained forms of natural degeneration, which led to eventual self-destruction, most often based on their abuse of power, privilege, and class indifference...and more often than not over a relatively short time.
I often invoke a 3-generation rule for these collapses, or roughly 70 years, which is not biological, but administrative, the best 20th-Century example being the Soviet Union, which went from feudalism to world power to bust from 1918 to 1992...which I was lucky enough to study about in college in the 60s, then actually be on the ground there when their Times Square ball finally dropped for the last time in 1992.
I like to compare their generational law as applied with the United States, which is in its 235th year and only now facing existential choices royal dynasties probably never considered since all their royal variants were from the top-down while ours have been from the bottom-up...by design.
All of those royal states died from variants of the same "survival endangering" gene that eventually kills its host....as a law of nature.
By contrast (and this can be proven), America is unique because our Founders had found (stumbled upon? Divine intervention? or simply discovered, as scientists in a laboratory?) a survival-enhancing gene hidden to those 5000 years of royals and was able to place it into a code of law that would enable each succeeding generation to "re"-discover its healing power anew with each succeeding generation.
A La Liberty
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to explain this, as representatives of a generation who'd been there, done that, to a group of Gen X’ ers and Millennials who also have advanced, even law degrees, but the most they can relate about their life's experiences is having taste-tested at least seven (count them) seven single-malt scotches?
My Boomer generation is probably the last generation to understand the importance of appreciating the shoulders we've been standing on these past 300+ years. So I take this aspect of history very seriously, partly because we've all touched as many as five (5) generations, gathered from tales at grandparents' knees, holiday family gatherings, and leafing through family Bibles and old picture albums. And history books (encyclopedias) give context...all stuff families no longer seem to do. Or share.
We Baby Boomers can now see the last pages of our life stories being written and the need to up the ante on encouraging a new awakening to youngsters to repair and replace the broken parts of our national anatomy...which is found in the heart-and-soul of America, and not in its institutions in the front offices of government.
This includes many Asians (mostly Chinese) and Latinos (mostly Mexicans) who have been here for over 150 years, six-plus generations, and remarkably more than you know are fully invested in "being American" (ser Americanos), not to mention African Americans who have been here over 340 years, many of whom, a majority I'll wager, who are still church-going, family-oriented, values-centered middle-class Americans, and who are facing the same issues of our culture sliding into the abyss.
America wrote the book on acculturation. Not Google.
So we had a mission to put "Unified Patriots" out there to the public. And with no corporate backing, "UP" acquitted itself pretty well for the next decade, until the 2020 election debacle, when this national split between "establishment, conservative thinking" with the more grassroots-based populist thinking came to a head.
Since November 2020, everyone has known this is a fight for national survival between America Version #1, 1787-2020, and a new untried America Version #2, only with much of the old establishment GOP wondering whether they can get on with the new Marxist-Fascist version of America #2 because they sure don't want to rub elbows with the country rubes Trump brought back into the picture.
This fact puts America's younger generations in the same kettle of fish as those 5000 years of royals always found themselves in when their gene pool turned stinky (think William and Harry...and the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate.)
Preserving our history and presenting it in the cause-and-effect manner in which it occurred as a good laboratory science...is the true value in this Grander Plan to restore America...and my principal purpose here is just to sit on people's shoulders and whisper in their ears. And we did this for free at "Unified Patriots". Benjamin Franklin sat in on the Declaration of Independence debates in 1776 and the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was the senior ombudsman in both ("quality control" if you prefer) simply because he could add enormous historical depth to the issues they were discussing. None of those documents' printed words are his, but his essence is found in both.
If you think of America's creation as a happenchance (a fluke) or a lab experiment, I remind you the nobility of Europe by 1787 believed it a fluke, only one that had to fail.
(I argued that case in 2021 in an essay titled "Science vs. Natural Law and The Thin Red Line", which David Poff was kind enough to include as a chapter in his book, "Unwashed Philosophy: A User's Guide for Our Imperfect Union", available at Amazon, and a set-up for this volume which attempts to carry forward the themes of that book. Look for it.)
But that lab experiment began with about 150 years of small, single experiments in Virginia and New England, each of them forming their local governments and each building up their own identities, some based on farming, others on trade and small business, and each with their brand of religion, albeit Protestant. Primarily English, there were also small German and Dutch laboratories.
How they all came together as partners , and never forget this, was the growing interference over their local control and their earned money by the royal houses than ran England from 1607-1776. The colonies were stimulated to join together not by goodness but by evil intentions by the royals in England, who purported to believe they owned them.
People today forget (it's rarely taught anymore) that other European monarchs had placed their royal seals on all the adjacent properties in North America; the French in Canada and the Spanish in Florida and the West, and both had carried out major explorations into America's interior, laying claim to all the lands west of the Mississippi River. It would take the better part of three generations after the United States was formed in 1787 to fill in that map. The French would lose Canada to the English with their Seven Years War in 1763, the North American part of it was called "The French and Indian War", in which the American colonies played a pivotal role in defeating the French plus recording how George Washington first gained his reputation as a military commander.
The coming together of America began over the next decade, 1763-1774, all because England wanted the American colonists to pay their "fair share" for the cost of that war with France. Suffice it to say that no European royal house was ever solvent in the legal "bankruptcy" meaning of the term. They were notoriously in debt simply because, by rank and education, they had never earned an honest nickel in their lives. If they needed more money, they simply taxed more, such as taxes on tea; resulting in our Tea Party, which was planned and executed by my head-and-shoulders most-favorite Adams, a cousin of John's, named Sam, who did try his hand at brewing beer, but was America's prince of what I routinely referred to as "Dark Alley" planning in the years leading up to the Revolution.
Most of my generation knew this stuff, but current generations don't unless they've read about it in Schweikart and Allen's Patriot's History of the United States, for it is rarely taught even in public schools these days and certainly not with much rah-rah! enthusiasm, and was once even required core curricula in public universities when I attended in the 1960s.
But across the board, there is much more than just a handshake across the generation's lost years. And it's more than just a loss of facts and information. There is a loss of knowledge about "how things work" are connected, and nearing three generations, there is a loss of knowledge about how those things are passed on. Schools no longer do it, kids are no longer encouraged to read.. real books...and no one in families tells them about the shoulders they stand on or how their family came to be in America in the first place....in part because they no longer know, and soon will no longer care. The saddest person is "one who is lost, only don't know he/she is lost, because they are not seeking to be found."
So, for this day only, I want to wax poetic about the experience, wisdom, and adultery (Radar O’Reilly), which 80%, perhaps even more, of the political blogs on the internet simply don’t have, and maybe cause great harm because of it.
In the matter of the original essay, "The Ship of Fools", did I mention that internet political blogging began to hit national prominence in the Obama years? Coincidence? Or that most of its key practitioners are GenX or younger? Or that many of those pundits have a real-world resume almost as thin as Barack Obama?
That’s right, all they know is recent politics or some subset, like law. 9/11 is ancient history to many.
The Ship of Fools is a 15th Century allegory that has continuing relevance in our modern world, for that seems to be where the disgruntled seem to take their ball and glove and go when they can't have their way, turning over the field to their enemies. Jonah Goldberg comes to mind. It also seems to be the home of the snide, the condescending, and the mocking.
Sadly, many don’t go out to this ship on their own. Many are led or enticed, and these we have to try to rescue.
In 2011, in a private email by a known internet blogger, I received, “If Romney gets the nomination, I’m outta here.” Holding himself out to be a leader, he seemed to be asking others to hop into his rowboat, oaring out to the Ship of Fools as well. Twelve years later, we're hearing the same refrain about Trump running again, DeSantis trying to squeeze Trump out, or vice versa, as if we were even remotely still inside a "politics-as-usual bubble". I see no outreach to that 80% of Republicans, including former-Republican Independents (and 60% of Americans in general) as if to say that this political-opinion class now defines ALL politics, and the People haven't a goddamned thing to say about it!
Only on the "Ship of Fools" will you find such thinking.
More important than the emergence of a thumb-sucking wing of conservatism, however, is that they're accompanied by millions more know-nothing voters, younger citizens who had never involved themselves in even common-sense politics before or, absent military service, ever even been taught about loving red-white-and-blue America. Their politics and patriotism are by echo, and whoever gets to them first gets them.
Fortunately, we have people like Dan Schultz and his @PrecinctProject, who was preaching street-level, door-to-door 'Get Out the Vote' in 2010 (when I watched him present his plan to Herman Cain) and his invitation to become Precinct Committeemen to broaden grassroots involvement, to take over the GOP from the street level, and Scott Pressler, a street activist, and his @ThePersistence, both of whom are working with Steve Bannon's War Room.
This is the upside, but it needs to be contagious and become generational.
I see very little lip service given these efforts from the talking heads that represented the old, or the new RedState.com, for, to be perfectly honest, no fame can be gained by winning by direct appeals to the bottom, or working one's way up, which, not that many years ago, in my generation, was how actually one did move up, by learning "the business" from the bottom-up, gaining the support and respect of the people who he/she worked alongside, collectively building and holding their customer base.
Today one does that with face-time marketing.
Today, because my Vietnam War generation is passing at a more rapid rate (I'm at the front end, born in 1945), and the following generations are being reduced in numbers of children born, numbers of families that stay united, numbers of families that church together, or even sit around the dinner table and talk together. All continue to diminish.
I have seen only a few wordsmiths (Limbaugh has passed, RIP) who take note of the chords that Donald Trump struck with the working classes.
What people miss about the rise of the 2010 Tea Party, enlarged by the 2016 MAGAs with the arrival of Trump, was that its core were Boomers, mom-and-pops, retired factory workers, and many of them were rescued by Trump because they saw what a mess they'd made with their owns kids.
Today most of them go by the name of "MAGA" because Donald Trump provided those 2010, 2012, and 2014 Tea Parties with the one thing they did not have while taking back Congress for the Republican Party: a national leader.
And between 2017 and 2020, we were treated with a progression of Boehner’s, Ryan’s, and McConnell’s, who never, never got the depth of the evil that the Democrats had in store for the American people. Then, in 2020, with Republican states (GA, AZ) complicity, all over the country, millions of votes were stolen, with one express purpose; to provide a permanent haven for those wastrels on the 'Ship of Fools'.
One more thing... Regarding "Natural Law,"...Conservatism can be played on several levels, but 'Wahr' on only one.
The American people came to fight and win a war. Nothing more, nothing less. They did not come to joust. They did not come to jockey for a better position on the next go-round.
The conservative political pundit class has been befuddled as to how to herd these cats or manage them. Or even predict them. There are no statistics, no analytics, so Karl Rove can’t help. There are no templates to pour over, so RedState, Hot Air, and Town Hall also are grasping for new clues. What to do? What to do?
For the sake of God and Country, avoid children acting childishly. Loose Lips Launches Ships…of Fools.