Restatements

     The Future Columns folder is full again, but I find that I can bring myself neither to write about all of it nor to delete any of it without first writing about it. So, as a pale substitute for one of my habitual tirades, here are a few links:

1. How to change the corporate culture.
2. Unfortunately, there are consequences of #1.
3. A much-lauded essay.
4. Why we “hate progressives.”
5. Political anodynes and fundamental pressures.
6. “Burn it to the ground!”
7. You are being replaced.
8. Women’s franchise and societal decline.
9. Invasion in progress.
10. More “white supremacy.”

     All the above are worth reading in their entirety, if you have the time.

     Liberty’s Torch isn’t one of the more popular commentary sites. That’s all right; we have a few hundred Gentle Readers who appreciate what we do, and that’s entirely sufficient. Yet it often strikes me that the preponderance of the current-affairs / political commentary available today simply restates the news. That is:

• A news article about some event will appear at a news site;
• Web commentators will decide that the event deserves their attention;
• Those commentators write about the event – but without providing anything extra, except perhaps outrage.

     Granted that it’s good to “get your mad out,” is that what the typical reader wants and values?

     One of the virtues of the World Wide Web, once it became “two-way,” is that it allows us to find others of like mind. For a long time persons in the Right suffered from a sense of isolation, as the one-way Legacy Media moved ever further to the Left. The Web changed that, in large measure because of the emergence of blogging. With a little effort, it became possible to locate commentators who see things as we see them…and thereby to feel less alone.

     The Blogiverse is sadly reduced from its glory days. Some of us are still here, still plugging away. But the remaining current-affairs / politics bloggers in the Right are more oriented toward simply venting their anger than toward analysis and explication.

     We need more analysis and explication.

     The Co-Conspirators at this little corner of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy allow ourselves some venting, of course. But we also provide, as best we’re able, analysis of causes and explications of probable consequences. I hope we’ll continue to do so, as I expect it’s what our Gentle Readers come here for. The need seems plain enough.

     In one of his most highly acclaimed stories, “Slow Sculpture,” writer Theodore Sturgeon gives us the key to understanding anything:

     “Maybe you’re asking the next question instead of asking the right question. I think people who live by wise old sayings are trying not to think—but I know one worth paying some attention to. It’s this. If you ask a question the right way, you’ve just given the answer.” She went on, “I mean, if you put your hand on a hot stove you might ask yourself, how can I stop my hand from burning? And the answer is pretty clear, isn’t it? If the world keeps rejecting what you have to give—there’s some way of asking why that contains the answer.”

     But knowing which is the right question to ask isn’t so simple. Cool, hard thinking is involved. Acceptance of context and constraints. Knowledge of history. And above all, the determination to see clearly, without hiding inside some comfortable delusion.

     Americans need all of that, in sharply increased amounts. Yet the Left is determined to deny it to us, by any means necessary.

     That’s all for the moment. Just a bit of musing over why we do what we’ve been doing and hopefully will continue to do. Now it’s time (ulp) for me to rev up the lawn tractor and perform my least appreciated chore: “picking up” the back yard, with all its windblown leaves, fallen branches, and dog poop. Back later, perhaps…assuming I survive.