A tale of two flags

The return of the "totalitarian id"

Walking and driving around my neighborhood and other small exurban and rural communities, I notice a lot of flags flying. Many are the national flag.

Many make explicit reference to our nation’s sesquibicentennial.

Other homes “proudly” fly the “pride” flag.

I have not seen any houses flying both the national flag and the “pride” flag. Perhaps surprisingly, polling reveals that the type of people who tend to fly the “pride” flag do not actually feel pride about being American. Then again, this would explain why the two flags are never seen together.

It is remarkable how much correlation there is among social-cultural issues. The same people tend to loathe America, Western civilization, Christianity, Christians, Judaism, Jews, whites, men, heterosexuals, capitalism, neatness, punctuality, diligence, accomplishment, politeness, responsibility, and so on. They tend to admire the most dysfunctional people: thieves, rapists, terrorists, murderers.

Initially, I wanted to align these dimensions with a worship of entropy (disorder). I realized this was not quite accurate. Instead, the left requires an external source of order because they are not able or willing to regulate themselves.

About 12 years ago, I was talking with one of my colleagues, a fellow professor, at the end of his class. He had just collected old-fashioned homework submitted on notebook paper. Some of these sheets had been torn from spiral-bound notebooks. The paper carried a margin by which it had been bound to the notebook, with many small holes for the wire. This narrow margin had a perforated edge which the students could have torn off, but many did not do so.

In order to make the stack of papers a bit neater, the professor was engaged in carefully tearing off the perforated edge, and throwing the slivers of discarded paper onto the room’s carpet, to be laboriously vacuumed later by a janitor. There was a trash can within easy reach, but the professor chose to dump his trash on the ground. This incident was memorable, as you can see.

People who cannot or will not govern themselves require a totalitarian government to supply the basic standards of society. Perhaps this explains the cultural left’s infatuation with the world of jihad and shari’a. The romance is not mutual, however.

One of the Founding Fathers asserted that the recently composed Constitution of the United States was only suitable for a moral people, none other. I cannot say confidently that we still are a moral people.