Do you want to live in a world where people like this decide who gets power over you?

By David McElroy · May 19, 2011

I’ve already discovered that publishing this site means getting interesting responses. And by “interesting,” I sometimes mean “stupid.” I want to share this example with you.

In response to my piece Wednesday morning about not voting, a friend of a friend left the comment above for me on Facebook. How do you possibly argue with people such as this? How can anyone believe he has any chance of using reason to bring them around to understanding individual sovereignty? He’s an (allegedly) educated man from a nice suburb in Virginia, but it’s clear that he’s been so brainwashed by the “civic religion” that he can’t stop and ask why someone might choose not to vote for moral reasons. We can’t win our freedom by hoping that people such as this guy will suddenly decide to start making sense. We have to find alternative ways — outside the political process.

I’m delighted at the intelligence, information and tone of much of the feedback I’ve gotten from you guys so far, but people such as this guy remind me that we’re in the minority. Even if it weren’t a moral issue to me, trying to bring change through voting just isn’t pragmatic. It’s not going to happen.

Oh, and for the record, my name isn’t Dave.

Postscript: The man who wrote the note I’m ridiculing here is a good friend of one of my friends. As a result, my friend has rushed to his defense, insisting that her friend didn’t mean to be argumentative or disagreeable. She’s argued her case pretty heatedly. But I think this makes a further point that’s worth noting. People don’t have to be malicious or mean-spirited to be wrong. This guy is a very decent man who’s just like the vast majority of people in this country who still believe in our civic religion. But those of us who see that this is a moral issue have to point out and ridicule these unthinking beliefs, not to ridicule the people, but the lay the foundation for helping people understand that freeing people from state control is a moral issue, not just one of preference. At one time, polite people didn’t point out the immorality of slavery to slaveholders or to others who defended that repugnant system. We don’t need to make the same mistake today. The people who hold the view we’re talking about aren’t generally evil. They’re just well-meaning, civic-minded people who unthinkingly repeat lies they’ve been taught.

Share on Social Networks

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Related Posts