BURKE CONNECTED WITH QUIRKS

"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you." Edmund Burke
 

Yes, I know. I started my last post with these lines and now I start this post with the same quote.
And this is why. We all have our own 'quirks', right? Well, one of my quirks are the images which certain songs produce in my mind.
Some of you may remember a Canadian rock group of the late eighties up to about 1990 called The Pursuit of Happiness. Maybe you also remember an album they made titled Love Junk. It has quite a few songs which get me to think of London as it once was and might still be again, although probably not within my lifetime given how horrifically insane a majority of our cousins seem to have gone.
That is, London as the hearthstone of such liberty which, back around 1990, seemed like it was on top of the globe. I remember how happy I felt that English is not only my native language but my ancestral language on my dad's side. When I imagine these songs as musical backdrops to the above quotation, I actually choke up. No, really.
And I choke up all the tighter when I'm back in 2022 and I remember that England (not Scotland, at least not as much) has gone insane with xenophobia and that we here in the States still have a long, hard fight ahead of us to get democracy out of the woods and onto the sunlit uplands where, for the first time in recorded human history, democracy will be multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith and, I guess, multi-gender (although that last is something I barely understand at all!)
Then will we see that freedom is not zero-sum but something which acts in such a way that, the more rights and freedoms (and yes, corresponding responsibilities to maintain and strengthen these things) we all have, the better off we all are! With the possible exception of those who need someone to bully to feel they're alive.
Our way of life is not and should not be defined by letting just anyone get rich and overly powerful but by the ancient Biblical promise that 'every [person] shall be under [their] own fig tree and none shall make them afraid'. And let's remember that every person means just that. Everyone of every color, ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation. And faith in every person having a voice and in the rule of law to ensure that no one is stifled who does not seek to promote division based on one of the factors I have cited. And that when power changes hands, it does so without bloodshed.
We now know we fight against fascism; what I outline here is what we need to recall as what we fight for! A truly level playing field, no one compelled by dire hardship to what is essentially slave labor,  freedom of faith for all under the law and no retribution from speaking uncomfortable truth to too-complacent power! This doesn't mean power shouldn't argue with you; we need to expect that. But also remember that argument means just that. Ad hominem/mulieram attacks should not be part of that, nor should ethnically or sexually based epithets be considered argument!
'Fellow' pale males who think you entirely earned your positions, tell the rest of us why and how you did so, but be prepared to be reminded of helps you may have had absent to others not male and not as pale.
On the other hand, let me remind those on my political side, calling out lies and liars for what they are is not gutter politics. Right now we need to fight bare-knuckle, but we don't need brass ones. We need to shout out truths from the housetops and thereby drown the lies.
Remember what is best in what we who speak English have given the rest of the world. For those things, let us fight unremittingly until democracy's new day fully dawns!

A FATEFUL HINGE INDEED!

"As long as you have the wisdom to keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever [people] worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you." Edmund Burke

It is, and should be, debated how true that is or how true it's ever been. Not only for the USA, but for the English-speaking world as a whole. We should be able to debate that, and other political questions, with both passion and civility, always with the awareness that our opponents may well have something worthwhile to say. How difficult that's been for at least since the Clinton administration speaks unhappy volumes about the crumbling of our freedoms--and who's doing nearly all of the crumbling!
But let's set that aside for the moment as, in two days' time, we come to a seriously fateful hinge.
I see the great 'gifts' that the English-speaking peoples have given to the greater world as these: first, the equality of all before the law and no one, not even the Crown, (let alone any president!) being above it.
Second, representative democracy and the idea that, given enough truthful information and time to digest it, we are all capable of participating in it. Third, that democracy is also a process, one which might never be completed but is all the more worth pursuing. Fourth, that certain freedoms (I think FDR's Four Freedoms is an excellent summing up of them) are the God-given rights of every human being on the planet!
To all of you who have yet to vote in this election: whether we in the English-speaking world will have a rebirth and expansion of those freedoms or whether we, having turned our backs on what we gave the world and, indeed, the truest sources of our own greatness, will decline into richly deserved obscurity and contempt, is now on all of you. Yes, you.
You cannot not decide this time. Indeed, 'not deciding' is a way of doing just that--opting for the way towards obscurity and contempt. Whether you like it or not (and I'm pretty sure most of you don't) this question hinges on your choices on Tuesday.
If you do your duty to your country, your civilization, your language and our common faith and vote straight Democratic, then you will point the way towards a rebirth of the spirit of freedom and equality for all of us. You will be a sign to our cousins across the Pond (in England, not Scotland as they've stayed canny and sane) to continue to recover their senses. You will be a wonderful source of frustration to foreign autocrats who still dream of making themselves emperors and a beacon of hope to those who know how much further democracy has yet to travel.
But if you are feckless and either vote for so-called 'Republicans' or try to dodge the question by not voting, you will open further the path which leads to the varieties of English becoming actual separate languages and thus to the end of anything called 'the English-speaking peoples'. The autocrats around the globe will be cheered as they point to us and say, "See? Didn't we tell you so? They were always in it only for the money and the excuse for exploiting poor folks like you." They will say this in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and, yes, Riyadh as well. Not only that, but it will shake democracy elsewhere.
Shills for autocrats and slave-masters will say all the louder, "See? Freedom is zero-sum. More freedom for them (fill in the blank) means less freedom for you."
'France' originally meant, 'land of the free people'. How does it feel to think that French might then be freedom's primary language? Or, maybe, Spanish? Those two languages, especially French, love logic, so maybe they can save freedom if we turn our back on the gifts we've given the rest of the world.
Maybe with the help of the still-sane Scots--renewing an old medieval alliance.
Some will remind us, we've been here before, and they'd be right. But there are two signal differences between now and when one-party Jim Crow rule was reinstated across the South: first, back then, most of the world didn't have its eyes on us. Second, the parts of the world that did, most of them actually thought the peckerwoodies were doing the right thing! Neither applies now.
In any case, the choice is on you. Either towards a future which can still be bright for more of us if we do our part, or back towards an already-failed past. And let me remind y'all in passing that the 'Republicans' have no solution for inflation either. All they want to do is further enrich the already obscenely rich and satanically greedy as they try to take your benefits from you!
Choose wisely on Tuesday. Vote straight Democratic. At all governmental levels from local to federal.