How the Corrupted Seeds of Discontent were Rooted in Ancient Soils

Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Feb 12, 2021 at 16:27

Dr. Pipes:

This observer was still (in that day) in the early stages of tertiary learning about how the political soil of Americanism had been plowed over and over again; and the history of activism showed early stages of the process we now know as cancel culture, which was already appropriated by the new children of dissent.
In that day, those that received the postal invitation of greetings from the President (Nixon at the time) either manned up or got travel visas for Toronto or wherever; nobody within the acquaintances of the time thought going was all that great. When the lottery gave this observer a better 'pass' than the college did, admittedly, there was relief.
In a little later frame of time, another wartime event commenced what this observer calls the next step to the real offense that would lead to a more complex staging of hostilities (1973 Yom Kippur War), then the View Nam conflict took on a lesser sense of global priorities and the Middle East became the more disconcerting center of antagonism towards bringing the world to war. Then emerged Iran. Which was now worse; communism or Islamism? Only time, it was thought, will be the arbitrator.
Now, we know, fifty some years later, time has not made all that much of a distinction; dissenting voices are still trying to finish off freedoms once thought invincible in America; and new crops of students of the school of '1984' philosophies are still being cultivated to keep everyone off balance; all prepping for the third round of global hostilities. And communism and Islamism are still wrestling to see whose philosophy will win out and which will survive (as if living in a new dark ages is considered living) after the likely nuclear exchanges decimate any remaining normal societal environment.
Ultimately, if nothing else came out of your attempt to retain any sense of civility in the former way of American citizenship, we now have a means of glimpsing what it used to be like so we can advise our grandchildren and other heirs (the crop of the future?) how the American revolution only worked when believers in freedom retained the civility to keep freedom alive. We do not see that happening now.

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