I came across this essay again this afternoon; it's so good that I decided to share it with everyone. - RobI Drink for the Old RepublicSeptember 24, 2004
by Charlie Bowen | Special to
LibertyForum.org "He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative." - - G. K. Chesterton I drink because the Old Republic is dead and she is not coming back.
Less than one hundred years ago, folks in rural America “paid their taxes” with a few days of labor. It might have meant building a one room school house or fixing the roads, but I doubt there was much complaining. The gatherings were really social functions and beer flowed as stories were swapped amongst neighbors. There was real diversity and real tolerance, for there was a real need for community.
But all that is gone. All of those organic community relationships, fortified with booze, have been outsourced to our rulers. We now pay our taxes, some 60% of earnings every year, to a class of phony paper shufflers churned out by the meritocracy who handle all such ‘community’ things for our alleged betterment. How did we get here and is this progress?
In the early 20th Century, the Century of Progressives, The Progressive movement, this silly belief that an elite of scientists and "professional" managers could do a better job, were taking over the reins of power. They intended nothing less than remaking America and the world in their own twisted sober vision. They promised an end to drunkenness, an end to oppression, an end to war, and later added an end to sickness and disease and an end to want.
But rural people were not interested.
Progressives of the time and still today, hate rural/real America. They hated the one room school house, and pushed for “school consolidation” all in the name of raising up stupid country folk. “It’s a new age,” they said. Soon, the income tax, endless foreign wars, and alcohol prohibition came to rural America.
In order for school consolidation to occur, the Progressives signed on to ‘pave America.’ Good roads would be needed to ship children up to two hours from their country homes to government re-education camps. The great homogenization of America was underway, the Progressives were building a New Man, part Soviet New Man, part Fascist New Man.
Corporations caught on to the movement to pave America and threw in their full support. Be it the Seventh Day Adventists in Battle Creek, Michigan who wanted to sell soul cleansing laxative bran flakes in every corner of the country, or Big Oil, they were all too happy to see America the Beautiful paved over to increase their bottom line. Big Business, those who could master distribution rather than quality, pressed for the access to new markets, and they promised rural people that they too would get access to new markets.
And still, rural people were not interested. The Progressives reasoned rural people were too stupid, hence their apprehension, so they secured monies from the Federal government and took lands by eminent domain in order to build roads. Bond issues were sold to pay for the roads on the installment plan. A cycle of debt followed and the paper shufflers and Wall Street bond traders were happy to oblige, stock brokers were all too happy to rush funding to the masters of distribution, and the wizards of advertising were ready to tackle the mass market.
The farmer faced with new competition needed a tractor, which he could not afford, so he bought one on the installment plan. Soon wives were demanding their husbands buy cars, which they could not afford so they bought them on the payment plan as well. Children were soon asking to go to college, fresh with their consolidated high school diplomas; they had seen too much to envision life at home. College was also paid for on the installment plan.
(Thanks to bond issues for debt financing, the dollar today is worth only 1/18th of what it was worth one hundred years ago, and now everything down to televisions and vacations are paid for on the installment plan.)
The roads also took the children out of town, sapping the countryside of its vitality; the roads took them as far away as Iraq…sent there in order to secure more oil so kids can keep getting away from home. Beer, which came back in 1933, was now in the hands of those who could handle distribution, the Coors, Schaefers, Anheusers and Buschs, rather than the local beer artisan with his respect for the craft. During the Second World War, malted rice became the chief ingredient rather than malt from the amber fields of grain.
America was paved over and the roads brought distribution trucks, indeed. In the land of hemp and beer, soon cocaine, Ecstasy and OxyContin would arrive.
Government policy directed by Progressives has remade America, and the process continues down to this day to urban beer halls where smoking has been outlawed, and the corporate bar, complete with blaring top 40 music, $4 Bud bottles and a clientele straight from a Gap Commercial, reigns. If we, those who still long for the Old Republic, are to retake our government, it will come from our beer halls, as it always has, which is precisely why the family owned pub is being converted into an Applebees.
The enemy knows where we gather.
Debt has piled on debt. The Baby Boomers are set to retire and they will pull their money out of the stock market to pay for trips to exotic places and Indian casinos. They will bankrupt the federal government once and for all with Social Security, healthcare, and claims to free drugs. Parents, too proud to ask their kids for money, will be all too happy to use the government to pick their children’s pockets. Children, bitter that their parents abandoned them to “professional” daycare, another creation of the Progressive, will be all too happy to leave dear old ma and pa in the hands of “professional” care.
Beyond community relationships, the Progressives have destroyed family relationships.
The Old Republic is dead, and I mourn her passing every night with a pint of ale.
The Progressives, with their fancy Ivy League degrees and their silly elections pitting two Yalies from some freak Dungeons and Dragons Club, have been utterly discredited but they still hold all the reins of power and have no plans to relinquish their grasp on the government, multi-national corporations, and cultural institutions.
We have become too lazy and accustomed to solitude to conceive of paying road taxes with a day's labor again. The "professional" cultural commissars have unleashed the most life-sapping programming through the altar of television, Reality TV. Our food is shipped in from all over the country to supermarkets. Rural people have sold their homes to developers of cookie-cutter sub-developments, and moved to Florida. The architectural triumph of the age, the Strip Mall, hurts the eyes and kills the spirit with corporate advertising being the only art we are allowed to see in public.
Progressivism was just one long credit card binge, but it has wrecked our spirits.
The Progressive’s response has been to fortify the spirit with Prozac, Valium and various other Soma competitors, but my counter-insurgency to the Brave New World is fueled by beer and whiskey.
I drink to the day when it all comes crashing down and real America wakes up from this long nightmare and rejects the Progressive religion of the Dries, forcing kids to take Ritalin, stuffing their faces with McDonalds, and washing it down with a Pepsi as soft porn teenage blondes screech on Big Radio.
It is faithful alcohol, for me Irish whiskey, or the fine local top fermented ales, that replenish my will to fight the bastards with every part of my soul. And so I drink, lest I resign to a fate worse than death, the fate of Progressive conformity.
Charlie Bowen/JohnGalt left a life in the Boston Area technology economy and moved to rural Maine with wife, dog and locally brewed ale.
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