The Good Patriot: Part 1, the Shield

     With thanks and applause to Irish, I’ve downloaded two videos I think eminently worth the time of the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. Here’s the first of them:

     This is excellent, wholly consistent advice. Our innermost line of defense against the seductions of evil must be our own skulls. We must refuse to allow anything into them that contradicts what we know, from first principles, to be right and true. Unless we take care to maintain that line, what will infiltrate our minds will undermine any other barriers we might erect against the despoilers of America.

     I’d like to add an item to Good Patriot’s shield recommendations: a return to the family structure and traditions of the Forties and Fifties, and the defense and assistance of others who maintain those traditions. Some elements of how that functioned:

1. Breadwinner / homemaker division of labor;
2. Mom as principal connection to the community and the family’s participation in it;
3. Behavioral standards for the kids, including chores and allowances;
4. Family meals (no outsiders nor “devices” allowed);
5. Family holiday celebrations, especially Christmas and Easter.

     Those were the characteristics of strong families in the years before the social, cultural, and political upheavals of the Sixties and Seventies. Mind you, not everything that arose from those upheavals was negative, but their overall influence on familial stability was highly negative. Moreover, the trends set in motion in those decades continued to have pernicious effects. Indeed, they still operate today.

     There has never been a stable society that lacked strong families – and family strength, like bodily strength, must be cultivated through diligent, consistent exercise. Slacking off loses prior gains even faster than exercise can acquire them.

     But why, you may ask, is the traditional American family so important a bastion against decay? For this reason above all others: it constitutes an authority separate and independent from all others. Like a wholesome church, such an independent authority is a buffer against the seductions of politicians, celebrities, and nostrum-peddlers. Why else would the marginalization and destruction of such independent authorities be such a high priority to those seducers?

     I’ll return to this, and to Good Patriot’s followup video.