Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Death awaits us all, and everything in this world that we love will someday pass away. How cheerful. What a lovely way to start a column. Why would any sane person read further with such a dismally sepulchral opening?
Certainly, each of us as individuals face real tragedy as our loved ones and our own bodies sometimes falter and fail. However, our society has been so comfortable, wealthy, and secure for so long that, as a people, Americans have largely forgotten the harsh realities of struggling just to survive.
This munificence is a blessing, purchased for us by the generations who suffered to build this Republic, expand to the Pacific, endure World War I, survive the Great Depression, triumph in World War II, and prevail in the Cold War. But nothing lasts forever.
Since we de-industrialized (thank you, Globalists), Americans have not grown wealthier each generation. We have stagnated. But, we have done so at a very plush level. Outside of the worst Blue cities, electricity reliably flows, groceries fill store shelves, crime is the exception rather than the norm, and we maintain a high degree of trust within our society. American-style poverty is, for much of the Third World, something that they can only dream of one day achieving.
Only two significant attacks have rocked our territory since the Westward expansion, Pearl Harbor and 9/11/01. Each of these provoked wars that were mostly victorious and were largely fought on other people’s land.
Because of all of this success, most Americans have forgotten what life really means for most human beings both long ago and far away. As a society, we have not needed to make real sacrifices just so that we and our loved ones can eat our next meal. Most living Americans have no personal experience of fighting for our lives just to exist for one more day.
For decades, there has been a widening buffer separating the stable comfort of our shared lifestyles from the blood, sweat, toil, and tears necessary to procure it. This has blinded us to the reality that survival and success, must be earned.
We have to be hard-working, tough, and talented enough to succeed. We must sweat, get our hands dirty, endure wounds, and spend ourselves to exhaustion in our fight for ongoing existence.
Paradoxically, but predictably, generations of inherited peace and prosperity has encouraged an explosion of delusional maladaptation. The cosseted children of privilege have not had to face the harsh-but-true realities of this world. They have, as a group and individually, been sheltered so much that they have little lived experience to leaven their utopian theories and decadent dreams. Instead of experiencing reality, these hothouse youths and infantilized adults inhabit their own fantasies and deny anything that does not fit their prejudices.
One of these realities is warfare. Nuclear weapons have retarded the fighting of General War since 1945, but war in some form is inseparable from the human condition. The opposite of war is not peace. It is all-too-often surrender.
War is not usually discretionary. It is most-often necessary for a nation’s survival and ongoing freedom. Damning anyone willing to wage war against active enemies like Venezuela’s Maduro, Iran’s Khamenei, Russia’s Putin, and China’s Xi can be suicidal. It is not war-mongering to fight an essential battle. It is survival.
It is perilous for an apartment dweller to ignore the outbreak of fire in a neighbor’s apartment. Behaving as if that conflagration is not a matter for concern is a self-destructive betrayal of our natural human survival instinct.
Endlessly appeasing Dictators is a recipe for ultimately becoming enslaved by them. We need not try to nation-build Western societies wherever we fight and win. We merely need to kick over their anthill and destroy those leaders and ruling factions who insist on being our enemies. Giving power to their domestic enemies is more than enough, especially if these new regimes do not themselves become our enemies. If they do, we can and should again kick them over; repeating until the message is conveyed.
Our world is a dangerous place. Evil exists, and in human form evil has and does create Hell on Earth. Evil abides no limits. It expands until it is fought and defeated.
This is what we must now do, defeat evil. Many Americans are discussing Iran as a “forever war” less than one week after the opening of hostilities. Instead of indulging in such indefensible nonsense, we must be patient and struggle through to victory, “for the duration”. We must be willing to pay all of the many prices necessary to secure victory; that is, if we want a real victory and not a Pyrrhic one. Anything less than such a complete commitment imperils our survival.
