Francis Bacon, the 16th Century English philosopher, famously said, “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune…”, more recently Jonah Goldberg has said, “To love is to fear, because love demands that you invest your faith and happiness in something or someone outside of yourself and that is a kind of surrender. It is a surrendering of your narrow self-interest to something that ultimately you cannot fully control…”.
If you have been paying attention at all to what’s happening in this Country you have noticed a great deal of anger coming from the political Left and Right.
It has been suggested that psychologically anger is internal fear projected outwards.
I would agree that this is a good explanation for the anger coming from both sides but for different reasons.
For the Left, at least as it has been constituted since Obama, the fear is not that they’re losing their country, because for the Left this Country is not the one, at least as currently organized, they want to live in to begin with.
Their 100 year old love affair with Socialism and Communism, their relentless assault on our Constitution and civil institutions, their desire to “fundamentally change” this Country all argue against a love for America.
It has been noted that you generally do not want to fundamentally change someone or something you love.
So why the fear and anger from the Left?
It can’t be the fear of losing a Country they despise.
No, it’s the same fear shown by the leaders of the French Revolution in their murderous rampage, the venal mindless fear of losing their grip on Power.
Until 2016, and again in 2024 they had been refashioning America in their desired image and sensing that they were close to the completion of their work, and were prepared to crown first one and then a second hand picked candidate.
And then the unbelievable happened. Twice. Something that the Socialist/Progressives thought so impossible that they publicly mocked it and tried every dirty trick to stop it.
But both times they were confronted by an angry and awakened electorate who were tired of being lied to and lied about, tired of watching the small but principled group of elected leaders in Washington who genuinely love this Country and its people marginalized by sell-outs in both Party’s to an out of control statist collectivist government.
But what of the fear on the Right?
For those principled few I believe it to be the fear of the loving Father or Mother, Husband or Wife, who has been told that their spouse or child has contracted a deadly disease that is life threatening.
Most parents or spouses will do everything in their power to save the one they love.
They will sacrifice an organ, give their blood, donate their own bone marrow to stop the progress of the disease destroying their loved one.
Which one of these fears will eventually win out?
While we are no longer the self-reliant Country that rejected Woodrow Wilson and his Socialist/Progressives statist vision of America, we are a Country with access to a constantly fact-checking electronic network that makes it nearly impossible for the Left to hide except from their most brainwashed and committed members the truth of who they are and how they feel about this Country.
Having their lies uncovered they will have been found to have committed the worst offense an elected official in a Constitutional Republic can commit, being more concerned with personal power than with the health of the Nation and the wellbeing of the people they took an oath to protect. And their followers will have committed the grave sin of ingratitude for the Country of their birth.
I will end with another quote. This one from Jonathan Swift the Irish writer.
“A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention by falsely speaking to deceive and injure your neighbor”.
They have injured us long enough.