Is the pen mightier than a wet noodle?
Dear Columnists, Commentators and Pundits:
"Clueless" defined: one of the current crop of common adjectival pejoratives. While the application is obvious, the target is so disfunctionally ignorant and implicitly stupid so as to be incapable of what the pointy-headed would refer to as "Deductive Reasoning 101." Certainly, the derision goes, one with a mere modicum of intelligence would posses a keener sense for the obvious. No one wants to be clueless. It takes a special person to admit to being clueless.
Color me clueless.
Why do you do it?
For starters, I'd blame Al Gore for inventing the Internet, the Solomon's Mines of resources, with new-found instant access to the finest intellects, providing life-changing opinions and perspectives for anyone with a mind sufficiently open to welcome a new thought. In my business, how did we ever live without it? We came. We read. We learned – and likewise tried helping others to see the light. Epiphanies less traumatic than Saul's blinding road trip to Tarsis may be more important for what they have produced than the details of how they happened. Subsequently, as a talk show host, I invited my new-found writers to visit my show to work their magic on the audience: Jim Bovard, Tom DiLorenzo, Joe Sobran, Harry Brown, Rep. Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Ward Connorly, Samuel Francis, Nat Hentoff, Reed Irvine, Tibor Machan, Wendy McElroy, Stephen Moore, Paul Craig Roberts, Lew Rockwell, Tom Sowell, Jacob Sullum, Vin Suprynowicz, Gore Vidal, Walter Williams and many others have regularly carved out time to inform, inspire and, on many entertaining occasions, piss off liberal or conservative listeners (or both) from San Francisco to Dallas to D.C. Regretfully, Sam Francis and Reed Irvine are no longer available.
So why do you do it?
I read Joe Sobran's eloquent piece on the passing of Samuel Francis. As with many guests, we never met except on the air three times he was on my morning show in DC some years ago. "Beautiful Losers" became part of my personal "Continuing Education" program. Sam introduced me to the beautifully apropos term, "The Stupid Party" and taught me about "Anarcho-Tyranny." Reflecting on Sam Francis, the curmudgeon-esque interviews and the void left by his passing, the question first appeared: why do you do it?
After all, isn't The End inevitable? Not only the death of an individual but of the Republic? We all agree "things" run in cycles. "Government" is a thing. A "constitutionally limited republic" is a thing. We have read about the 200-year average life span of great nations and how America is several years overdue. Doesn't most every worthwhile columnist rail against the Empire in some way, employing their verbal scalpels to fulminating machetes disemboweling both the subtle and the obvious transgressions of government, the erosion of freedom, lost rights and, left unchecked, impending doom? And despite all the reams of writings and warnings and precedents and evidence – historical, hysterical and anecdotal – haven't the transgressions continued unchecked? Is there any bona fide reason to believe they will stop? Ever?
So why do you do it?
These so insightful, informative, inspiring pieces – does the choir require another great sermon? The truly needy audience is busy contemplating the saving grace of "American Idyll." What appreciative readers see as a compelling rain of intellectual cruise missiles on the enemies of liberty, the Establishment, along with Joe and Jane Sixpack, see a BB gun fired at a charging rhino.
Is it for karma? Posterity? Is it self-acquitting: May the Written Record for the Ages proclaim "See? We told you so!"
Or is it desperation? Is the infestation of government's regulatory termites so massive and unrelenting, inexorably chomping away at the base of our constitutional cornerstones, that in the end, you realize we are ultimately powerless to overcome the aggressive ignorance and contagious apathy to stop it? Isn't to continue like telling to the tide "Don't come in!"?
So why do you do it?
Boredom? Ego? Paycheck? Idealism? Patriotism? How about Orwellian? "We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
Please understand I write with all due respect and honest inquiry with no expectation of an answer necessarily – nor to say the question is rhetorical or merely existential. Just the recognition we all lead busy lives and have other priorities. On behalf of the audience, thank you for sharing. Thanks for your brains, your talent, your efforts.
But still…why do you do it?
February 28, 2005
