The Way We Are Now—The Campaign by Clyde N. Wilson • February 28, 2008 • Printer-friendly

A strongly shared sense of right and wrong has maintained a working peace and harmony within many societies over long periods. This is probably what saw the class-ridden British through an empire and two world wars. It is what kept the South relatively free of violent racial strife before and during the War for Southern Independence and most of the time since. If so, we are in trouble. In the U.S. today the ruling elite are without any sense of right and wrong, having only a self-serving agenda, cynical manipulative techniques, and a shoddy and shallow worldview.

American public affairs are present-centered (an adolescent characteristic). Nobody remembers any past record of a politician. No sense of history, even recent history, is to be found. There was a time when the political commentators who were listened to were newspapermen with long experience and credibility. Our commentators now have no moral authority whatsoever and no earned wisdom. They exist only by media hype. A good many are even foreigners.

Thus our “news” is trivial, amorphous, anonymous, and conformist, for petty ideologues who lack any genuine knowledge and moral authority cannot be otherwise. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Who were their parents? How were they educated? What previous record of character and knowledge have they established? These were questions that used to be asked by civilized people as a matter of course before conceding authority. But Americans have managed to wipe out all except the present moment on the screen. Not only are such questions not answered, it occurs to nobody to even ask them of our politicians or “news” authorities.

Here is something that I have been observing for almost half a century now with only rare exceptions. When one puts forth a proposition, whether about current events or history, mainstream intellectuals (and their vast numbers of wannabe-intellectual lackeys) do not answer with argument or evidence. They merely dismiss you as one who is not smart enough to know the accepted ideas; rather like someone who wears white socks to a formal affair. This is particularly true of academics whose thinking usually reflects fashion rather than actual knowledge.

Obama will be President. The gamblers are banking on it. How can he fail? No Republican will dare bring out any of his numerous negative factors—that would be forbidden “racism.” Obama gives millions of people a safe way to express their profound fear of having unrespectable thoughts and their profound hypocrisy—which is itself an expression of their profound and unacknowledged fear of black people.

There are millions of Americans who actually believe that the election of Obama or Mrs. Clinton as President will be a great forward step in history.

A “news” story tells me that reparations for slavery will be a good thing because it will bring about “healing” and “forgiveness.” What can this mean? There is no one alive who qualifies to be healed or forgiven in regard to the institution that ended a century and a half ago. Should money be offered to “heal” wrongs known only in imagination? Alas, reporting on imaginary things and emotions like a supposed future “healing” now takes the place of facts in most of our “news.”

Presidential candidates. Who among them has pietas and gravitas? Who has any true sense of the law and the Constitution? Who has thought about the proper ends of man and society? Who has more than a superficial relationship to the two millennia of Western culture?

I experienced a perfect illustration of the state of American freedom when I went to vote in the presidential primary. After casting my ballot, or rather touching my screen, I was driving along basking in my virtue. Two blocks from the polling place, I was pulled over by a deputy sheriff with a flashing blue light. I was informed that I was in violation for not having turned on my headlamps for the rain (which had barely started) and traveling 3 mph above the speed limit. And this is one of the least regimented counties in one of the least regimented States.

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