This is my favorite time of year. Fall. College football. Dove hunts. Pig roasts with blue grass bands in the country. My favorite experience of the year, better than Christmas, is my first trip to Charlottesville to watch a football game. Driving up from Richmond, I start to see the Blue Ridge about 7 miles from town. My anticipation grows. I park the car and swing by my old fraternity house, St. Anthony Hall, and see nice looking boys with their hot dates. Short skirts and cowboy boots. “Hello, Mr. Smith,” they say. I love how things haven’t changed a bit and how polite these young people are. I then walk across the storied Grounds, down the Lawn and through the portals of the timeless Palladian architecture designed by “Mr. Jefferson.” Every step brings back a memory. With a prideful heart, I am absolutely giddy. I run into scores of people I know, but don’t see very often. With all of them, there is a story or two of something we did years ago, and we just laugh when we see each other. I round the corner, past the Range and the old Law School, Clark Hall, which encloses a giant mural of “nekid” Romans having a good time. I am in a “nekid Roman” mood, and only a few steps from Scott Stadium. I take a left by the Engineering School. All of a sudden the Blue Ridge are in their full hue, vivid, and an embracing aesthetic. Now, I can hear the crowd. I can feel the excitement. I am so jacked I want to rush on the field and tackle an opponent, especially if he is from a Commie school, like Duke. And then it happens. It always happens. I smell bourbon. Everywhere. I have reached absolute Nirvana and couldn’t be happier.
Yet, as happy as I am about the upcoming 3-4 months, I get dragged down by the complete idiocy of our political class. I have lots of imperfections. Weaknesses for women, tripping old ladies for fun, littering and being obnoxious to name a few. However, I do have one positive attribute. I know how to solve problems and fix things. In order to fix a problem, one must first be able to identify the problem. The issue: why are liberals so god awful stupid?
I did a podcast the other day. In it my nephew and I discussed Ayn Rand and why she thought the German philosopher Immanuel Kant was the most evil man in history. If you have insomnia or are otherwise having trouble getting to sleep at night, I suggest you watch it. The crux of the discussion centered on why people believe utter nonsense when these beliefs are totally at odds with reality and things that they can clearly see with their own eyes?
In C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man, he foresaw a day when mankind would lose its way, and the vast majority of us would be controlled by a small elite making decisions for us. As a young man, I had an “aha” moment when I read the first chapter of Lewis’ Mere Christianity, the section he called “The Law of Right and Wrong...” In essence, Lewis described what others refer to as “Natural Law” and “Human Nature.” God created this “natural” law, and he “put it out there” for us all to see. It is right in front of our faces all the time. Lewis’ point? Without an acknowledgement of basic universal truths, a citizenry won’t be able to think for itself, it will have no foundation or principles and thus will be pliable dough in the hands of collectivist ideologues. In summary, we would live in an Orwellian world where objective reality and universal truths are ignored, and in its place would be illogical nonsense. Welcome to Joe Biden’s America.
Might it be true that we have a generation or two that have not grown up with their parents, schools and institutions re-enforcing these precepts of natural law, otherwise known as Judeo-Christian values? Lewis refers to these principles as the “Tao” in Abolition of Man. It seems that in academia, no one is grounded, especially in the Ivy League, Little Ivies and Public Ivy schools. One can be taught to believe anything, no matter how at odds such teaching is with reality. By the way, Harvard just appointed an atheist to be its new chief chaplain.
Lots of our national political class were accomplished in academics and have excellent language skills, making them “good talkers” and clever liars. Almost all of this class emerges out of academia. It is as though they get a “seal of approval” to go immediately into government leadership positions because they went to an Ivy League school. Yet many, while they “talk good,” are dumber than a box of dumb rocks. Kantian influences flow down from the university structure to our political class. Aristotelian logic has been tossed out the window. Believe what you want to believe, regardless of facts or empirical evidence!
If one doesn’t subscribe to natural law, then there are no moral or ethical constraints. It allows a dufus college professor to lie to himself and believe what he wants, instead if what is real. There is no objective reality and this is why our current political class is so box of dumb rocks stupid. Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to pull troops out of Afghanistan before getting our people and military hardware out? How stupid do you have to be to put sick Covid patients in nursing homes? How stupid do you have to be to think that a man can suddenly decide he’s a woman? Let me tell you; you have to be mind blowingly stupid. After one becomes dumb rock stupid, the next progression when becoming unmoored from natural law is to become one’s own deity. Why not? It is inevitable. These folks then become the tyrants who seize your property, criminalize opposing thoughts and ultimately shoot you.
Back to football. Here is what the greatest quarterback of all time had to say about these matters:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion, and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” George Washington’s Farewell Address.
Like Otis Sistrunk, this fellow never played college ball, and didn’t have his head filled with a bunch of Ivy Tower mush. He learned by doing and not by being told how to think by others. He won the biggest Super Bowl of all time on October 19, 1781. Bigger than when the Jets beat the Colts. Perhaps the greatest man of the millennium; he subscribed to objective realism and the natural law of right and wrong.
By the way, I grew up around the corner from where he did. They say that patch of Virginia ground is the most fertile in the world for growing clear thinking “strappin hosses.” Really, I read that somewhere.
