Earlier this week I wrote about North Dakota’s extraordinary referendum to ban all property taxes. Quite predictably, the state’s residents reacted to it in a very ordinary way: They defeated it by a wide margin.
This isn’t surprising since people, especially conservatives, are generally uncomfortable with revolutionary ideas. Well, good ones, anyway. This is why only a third of colonists supported the American Revolution; the rest had to be dragged along to the Promised Land kicking and screaming. It’s also why our Founding Fathers were not conservative — or Conservatives.
Assenting to thoroughly stupid but fashionable ideas is a different matter, however. And this is why 67 percent of North Dakotans also agreed on Tuesday to allow the abolishment of the University of North Dakota’s “Fighting Sioux” nickname and Indian-head logo.
In fairness, it should be mentioned that the pathetic, politically-correct NCAA had threatened the university with sanctions if it didn’t comply. Really, though, not only would the sanctions not be that severe, whatever happened to the old American spirit of spending “millions for defense, not a penny for tribute”? Today we spend millions for social engineering, but I guess a penny of sacrifice in the sports arena is too much to ask.
What’s so silly about this example of tribute paid to our cultural Barbary Pirates is that the “Fighting Sioux” is a type of tribute to the tribe in question. The nickname isn’t Drunken Sioux or Wimpy Sue or Indians Will Sue, but something acknowledging a virtue: the Sioux’ reputation for being brave warriors. Is it better if all Indian references are stricken from our cultural landscape, as if Indians never existed?
What’s so tragic about this is that it’s another example of refusing to stop the leftist onslaught on our culture. And it won’t stop unless we stop it. This brings us to something many traditionalists don’t understand about the left.
Modern liberalism is defined by opposition to conservatives, and you can’t appease someone who is always unhappy and simply likes to fight. You cannot trade a cultural Sudetenland for peace in our time. For, with liberals, as the name of that old James Bond film goes, the world is not enough.
And here’s how it works: Liberals mount an attack on Traditionland and bring conservatives to the bargaining table to arrange terms for peace. Conservatives, being the credulous, friendly Cletuses they are, figure that reasonable people compromise, so they’ll meet the invaders halfway. Now, first, this overlooks that it is the left that started the war — without, mind you, any reference to a conservative violation of Eternal Law (Truth), which relativistic liberals don’t believe in — which is the only thing that could justify a violent overthrow of man’s social laws. Moreover, it ignores that it doesn’t matter if you give the invaders half of what they bray for, 30 percent, 15 or even just 1.
For they will launch another invasion a few years (at most) hence, and ask for more territory.
And the process will continue until Traditionland is no more.
You see, as G.K. Chesterton said, “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” And you don’t assent to mistakes.
Ever.
You don’t compromise your way to tyranny. And you don’t prevent mistakes from being corrected. This is why North Dakotans got things backwards: They should have voted to ban property taxes and keep the Fighting Sioux nickname. You don’t bend to perverse NCAA will; you resurrect that Founding Father spirit, band together and bend the NCAA.
Getting over this naïve desire to compromise and accept half a lie is easier if you understand something else about leftists: They haven’t reached a very high stage of moral development and thus are like children. And you don’t reason with children.
You discipline them.
You simply say, with manly firmness, “No!”
Oh, this doesn’t mean you can’t mount reasoned arguments. But we traditionalists have been doing that for ages, haven’t we? Question: has it made a lick of difference with the left? Do they respond in a reasonable manner? Or do they react emotionally?
Like children.
Reasoned arguments are for the fence-sitters who can be swayed and those in the choir who may want to more effectively sway them. They aren’t for people who can’t be reasoned out of a position because they haven’t reasoned themselves into it (hat tip: B. Franklin).
So, getting back to fighting for the Sioux, here’s how we should react. We should double-down. We should tell the left that not only will we retain “Fighting Sioux,” we’ll give some other school’s sports teams an Indian nickname every time they complain. Let them stick that in their peace pipe — alone at the bargaining table — and smoke it.
