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!