5.18.19:
9:25 pm:
It would be irresponsible to encourage violence. However, what do you do about people who have no such compunction about using it on others?
For instance, one Congress critter said that the government has nukes, gun owners don't. This is an implied threat of using force in order to settle a dispute. This isn't an isolated example. The pattern reveals itself over and over again. In recent times, there was a threat to jail the Attorney General if he didn't comply with the Congress' demands. Generally speaking, the left has no compunction about using force against those who do not obey.
But what about the "loyal opposition"? What would happen if the threat to Barr was carried out? Do you respond to such coercion with a shrug or a whine?
What I am suggesting here is that the left wins a lot of battles with sheer bluster. Even a modest amount of resistance might do wonders in checking this aggressiveness. Yet, if Trump does simple tweets, these people seem to think that it is unacceptable. "These people" include a number of people who claim to be conservative. How then do conservatives ever expect to carry the day when they won't defend themselves, and even consider self-defense to be unacceptable?
It isn't bad form to defend yourself against outrageous aggressiveness. In fact, it is to be expected of leaders. If the leaders don't have the guts to do so, then they aren't leaders.
8:33 pm:
Errors, errors, and more errors. No wonder I use Grammarly. But Grammarly doesn't pick up certain kinds of errors. Mark Twain is dead. I used present tense, but I should have used past tense for a deceased person.
If there's one thing I learned this past 8 and a half years, it is that I am a lousy writer. But nobody can accuse me of quitting easily.
5:00 pm:
What does this passage in the novel really mean? It is pretty straightforward. Mark Twain believes the average man is a coward. He says that through the character of Colonel Sherburn. Sherburn faces down the mob, and then insults them to their faces. None of them can stand up to him.
The mob relies upon their numbers. But without a man in charge of it, it is beneath contempt, says Sherburn.
So, what is modern liberalism? What is modern conservatism? Are they both mobs without men in charge of them? Or does one have men, and the other doesn't have any?
It would be a sight to see if there was a modern day Col. Sherburn who could face down these social justice "warriors".
1.22.19:
The thought came to me this morning with the corporations starting to run everything in this country, that what this country is facing is-- a type of mobbism.
Mark Twain didn't think much of mobs, and that is what he is commenting upon in this section of his book Huckleberry Finn.
The founders didn't trust mobs, either. That's why the US Constitution was written with checks and balances. You give this up, and you become helpless before the mob. It may take a lot of grit to stand up to the mob, and the average man won't. It's too terrifying.
2.10.15:
Some remarkable and probably quite accurate commentary on human nature.
People looking for better behavior ought to consult this chapter and reflect upon what it really means, for it is probably the truth about people.
"Do I know you? I know you clear through was born and raised in the South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man's a coward.---from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
The mob had come to lynch Sherburn, but they didn't have the grit to do the job. That's because the people who had come were just average. There wasn't a man in the bunch.
The truth is that we are losing the country and not a real man out there to stand up and lynch the rascals responsible for this. That's the bottom line.
Am I advocating lynching? No. But the way people talk are just like what Twain is pointing out. There's nobody out there who will lead it, so they'll just talk it up, because they are just cowards themselves. If they ever did do anything, it wouldn't be done properly, and it would most likely fail. There's nobody who could do this who will do this. That's the bottom line.
Update:
Been reading the rest of Huck Finn. I came across something there that I thought I'd share. It figures in with the observation that money corrupts, and it corrupts that which we cannot afford to have corrupted, which is the church. Twain noted that farmer preachers were a pretty good lot. It had to be because they weren't about money:
He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down South.
To clean up the church, they'll have to get away from money.
