AMERICA’S COLLAPSING COURAGE

   USA! USA! USA! Screams the crowd, as the president mounts the podium to begin his speech. A thousand memes are launched with monster trucks, girls in star spangled bikinis, black rifles, beer, and the giant flag of good ol’ ‘murica. So much posturing on the right, even over the top adulation, yet conservative courage is in decline. I will probably get hate mail for writing this way, me being a (sneer) Canadian. I encourage you to  finish this article, think on my words, then hate me if you wish. The survival of the west is dependent on understanding this American decline, the shadows grow long, the time is short.

I think that the first step to understanding is to define the terms. The words bravery, courage, and boldness might all be listed together in a thesaurus; but there is a subtle difference to their meanings. When I hold the USA up as a model I due so because the battle, politically at least, is over in most other places that were traditionally considered western civilization. I am also not claiming that those in the USA lack bravery, and certainly not boldness. Courage, true courage is a different thing

The dictionary defines courage as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty. This definition gives us a clue to the failing courage in these difficult times. Difficult times; it feels funny to even write that sentence. Is the world facing difficult times? If that is true then, when hasn’t the world been facing difficult times? Wars, famines, diseases, etc have plagued mankind throughout history. The USA has stood as a bulwark of freedom through many troublesome times in the world, and the US is a fairly young country. 

Yet in the face of fairly simple woes, the very concept of America is withering and dying. Time to dig deeper.

 Mental strength, in a nutshell, is the ability of an individual to effectively deal with stressors, pressures and challenges. Not just deal with them,but find strategies to perform to the best of their abilities irrespective of the circumstances. Athletes, if they want to compete at the top of their game, must be mentally strong. any doubts, or thoughts of weakness in the mind, and they have already lost. Blaming others, feeling sorry for yourself, sour grapes, etc are a few of the indicators of mental weakness. It is not hard to see how this has played out in the last 60 years, it has not only become shameless to “play the victim”, it has become downright fashionable. Blame flies everywhere; race, socioeconomic levels, parenting, entertainment, education, etc Blame is flung everywhere, and the only non-target is the individual, by design it is all kept on the “collective” level. Not one person is told to just suck it up, make the best of it, and march on. So much for being “progressive”, all we’ve done is create generations of people that refuse to take responsibility; for anything, everything is now about the group you identify with

Moral strength, this one is trickier, as we’re way beyond just having a “can do” attitude. Moral strength is in the realm of right and wrong, good and bad, sin and righteousness. Moral strength is outside the venue of “progressive” thinking (more on that later), it surpasses thought itself, and gives a “reason” for even putting in the effort to think at all. In these “post-modern” times, moral strength has been surpassed by raw emotion. Moral strength can be synthesized, outside of reality, through an act of superficial and artificial virtue. Real moral strength can also be sapped by a “sinful” placebo (again, more on this later)

 It would be so easy at this point (since were looking at the word “moral”) to just go on about “God being pushed out of schools” or “illegal public prayer” or “10 commandments banned from courthouses”, and there is certainly something to be said about a nation at least loosely following a moral Christian standard. No, we need need to dig deeper than that

What does it mean to be right? What is this “moral high ground” that people talk about? You see, we’re in a confrontation with the people who believe that all the old nationalistic and religious values of the past can casually be thrown out and replaced. They believe that the world will be a better place when old dogma and history is trashed (the pulling down of statues is not random). All will be replaced with, well, they’re not sure really; at least the average leftist is vague on the concept. All the leftist wanna-be’s know is that everything must burn because the past had evil in it. This whole phenomena may be a topic for a future article, what  we are going to concentrate on here is the method by which the left is destroying the moral strength of the nation. To best understand the method, let’s now combine the ideas of mental strength and moral strength into one word: conviction

Conviction is a powerful word, and it provokes powerful feelings. To be convinced gives forward momentum, a power flows from the surety, the assuredness gives strength. To be confident is to be solid, lack of doubt makes one decisive and bold. On the flip side, to be constantly doubting everything, is a weakness. That is the secret weapon of the left, not in confrontation, but in confliction. The neo-marxist professors have been flogging the concept of “critical theory” for 60 years. The evil intellectuals on the left would never lower themselves to confront a flag waving American and argue wether or not they were free. The intellectuals stand at a distance, and sneer, “what is freedom?”. No leftist professor,  (making a good salary in the American universities) would  debate, “is communism good”. The debate would always devolve into “is there such a thing as good?” There is no winning with this, even Christ Himself, when He declared to pilot that He was the Truth; pilot, the roman ruler, simply muttered “what is truth”.

I guess what I am trying to convey isthe fact that this confrontation has come down to a war against reality itself. To the left, not only are old traditions and statues at risk, the foundation of reality itself MUST COME DOWN. That is the only way that the abortion of anarchy in Seattle can be explained. A bunch of wet-their-pants idiots think they can form an “autonomous zone”? They actually thought that would end well? The thing that gives most people a head shake is that the media and the authorities blessed the whole thing with a shrugging indifference. An Amish farmer sells raw milk, and the power of the state falls on his head, we MUST have order! A transexual demands the right to dress as a satanist priest and read a story book to your children in a tax funded public library? DO NOT judge or criticize, try to be more open. Really, when you boil it all down, the whole thing is a war about reality itself. And that my friends, is the crux of the thing. That is where the crippling blows fall, without stopping; on normal sensibilities. Normal beliefs, normal feelings, normal life

You see what they’ve done is made youfeel dumb, uneducated, and unsophisticated. You have sold your courage cheaply, to the managerial and “scientistic expert” class. You sold them your convictions so you could just “get along”, you handed them the first absurdities against truth for nothing. You gave over truth for lies, just in the hope that the crazies would actually be satisfied. And now, as a society, you’re just not sure. All the talk of racism, transphobia, islamohomopedoickoweirdoyoosickoophobism, you’re not sure of yourself anymore.  Well, the damned communists seem pretty sure of themselves, they are convinced that sucker punching old ladies for “the cause” is just fine. You see? All the dang flag waving in the world won’t patch up the hole that a lack of conviction leaves behind. That is the Neo-marxist’s biggest coup on the normal folks inhabiting Western Civilization, they made you doubt, the very concept, of a decent society built on freedom and equality. I promised to get back to the subject of moral strength, OK

I wanted to mention that all moral strength is a cascading energy, both up and down, within an individual, but also as a group. Here is a historical example of upward cascading moral strength, bravery feeding bravery in the ancient times, when
men fought toe-to-toe with sharp iron.

In an ancient Saxon shield wall, or make it a greek phalanx if you want, moral courage was expected. Locking shields, filling in the line, yelling expletives at your enemy, taking a blade to the face.  You’re doing this, so put your heart into it, be brave. Bravery fed on bravery. There was no room for moral doubt here, you got rid of any doubt while you sharpened your weapons. No moral (or mental) weak links were tolerated, one coward in the line endangered everybody in the group. Only conviction can swing a blade decisively. That explains an upward spiral of positive bravery and conviction, what about the downward?
As an example of downward spiralling moral conviction I have no shield wall stories, just a scientific study involving a group of plump women, and some milkshakes; and ice cream. The women were split into two groups, both were given delicious milkshakes. The first group were told how sinfully full of calories the delicious milkshakes were. The second group enjoyed their creamy beverage (the same yummy stuff) and told how slimming and low calorie the treat was. Both groups then got complimentary tubs of different flavoured ice cream. Which group do you think consumed the most ice cream?

 If you guessed the women who felt all virtuous about their low calorie shake you’d be wrong. The idea of a virtuous shake made the one group subconsciously virtuous about consumption. The women that thought they had “blown it already”; pigged out. Like I said, a cascade effect.

Here in lies the key as to why our society is losing its collective mind. People want to FEEL virtuous, but they don’t want to put in the thought and effort to BE virtuous. In fact, the majority of people have been taught to question even the concept of “virtue”. The ideas of sin, guilt, shame, virtue, righteousness, etc were dumped from all post-modern teaching and thinking.   Most of the people who are marching and siding with the BLM or ANTIFA have grown up hearing how awful normal people are. All whites are racist, the planet is dying, you’re living on stolen land,etc this is a giant hammer of guilt. Then you’re given a chance to atone, to yell, march, fight; nobody is interested in the actual FACTS. Even everyday liberals react violently, and attack anyone who doesn’t go along with this neo-marxist nightmare, because by doing so, the liberal feels virtuous, and that atones for the feelings of guilt. Once reason, logic, truth, faith, and reality itself are sacrificed on the alter of feelings, then the mob is complicit in everything the (quasi-religious) totalitarian movement devolves into; everyone is too morally broken to object. If you’ve ever wondered why people went quietly to gas chambers, guillotines, or firing squads; while multitudes of others quietly watched? Wonder no more

So what does one do? Well, it’s simple, but difficult. Just be “that guy”. Y’know, that guy who won’t mouth a platitude just to get along? That guy that questions everything that the crowd just “knows” to be true, simply because the whole crowd is going along? Be that guy that isn’t afraid to tell some mealy-mouthed liberal that they’re full of shit. Be the guy that will shop for an extra hour to find a product made in their own country,take a chance on a mom n’ pop diner and shun the “chain” restaurants, or help out a neighbour instead of giving to a UN approved “charity”. But most of all, put the work into finding where your “line” is, find the root of your moral courage, get some conviction. Set aside the fake guilt of being the “wrong” colour, or having a “wrong” opinion. It’s time to just get “ornery” with the fake liberals and snowflakes, and understand that those in the shadows who pull their strings are pure evil. While your doing this searching, studying, reading, etc you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. The world has always had problems, evil on the earth has always been there, but so has the good.Maybe it’s time, America, to search for the old paths, ones blazed by good men trying to make a difference. Maybe if we all humbled ourselves, seen our mistakes, looked to God, vowed to do better, the light of the old paths will lead us in a new direction.

-Ranger