This cowardice we’re seeing from American leadership is indicative of a complete breakdown of authority. It is illustrated in the Gospel of Matthew, when it says of Jesus that “he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” The failure is a spiritual one, and it exists in every elected official or other government figure who refused to deal rightly with the evil people among us over the past few days. It exposes their own private moral failures, and signifies that America is truly fallen.
“As I began to contemplate the theater of the absurd that we Americans have been living through in recent days, I found the most useful place to begin was an essay by Sam Francis published in Chronicles 26 years ago, ‘Anarcho-Tyranny USA.’ In this long, thoughtful piece, Francis contrasts the eagerness to criminalize what had been innocent behavior with a reluctance to confront genuine criminality and undoubted threats to public order. Francis wrote:
This condition, which in some of my columns I have called ‘anarcho-tyranny,’ is essentially a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites, the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection of public safety.
It is hard not to read those words without thinking of Americans being arrested for taking their children to the park, going to church, or strolling on the beach; followed a few weeks later by entire police forces becoming passive spectators as rioters burned, pillaged, looted, maimed, and killed. It’s a stark contrast between the media opprobrium directed at ordinary citizens for standing too close to each other or not wearing masks in public, and the excuses offered for those who ignored the conventions of social distancing to smash shop windows and passersby.”
No comments:
Post a Comment