Another sophisticate has spoken out, and bravely.
"I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's not as bright."
So said Stephen King. He is a writer of horror I hear, though I have never read his books.
King's bold words passed scarcely noticed, near invisibly in fact. (Only Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters spread the outrage.) The reason is because they are not at all remarkable. Such courageous thoughts spew regularly from those who ride booted and spurred over this tottering edifice we call Western Civilization.' There is hardly a mover and shaker residing in the ivory towers of academia or among our literati who does not share the same views as Mr. King.
From their talk, from their vast outpouring of books and articles, from their appearances in the media, from their endless self-absorption, from their spittle-flecked sputtering hatred and disdain of the common man, one would get the impression that these types are the very upholders of all that is sweet and honorable in our culture.
One would be wrong. Such men are the destroyers of civilization. Like competent parasites they take every advantage of a society created and maintained by their betters. They drain as much vitality as they can, replace it with a crude solipsism and work to crush the husk that remains. Their lives are ones of soft comfort and padded ease. For in all their degrees and learning and rhetoric and billions and billions of words they have learned nothing worth knowing. For all intents and purposes they are barbarians.
Civilization does not rest upon their shoulders, it rests upon the shoulders of men with guns.
"We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf." (George Orwell)
When it arrives, who will defend what remains of Western Civilization? Will the likes of Stephen King step up to the plate? Will Pinch Sulzberger and Ward Churchill and Ted Kennedy don battle fatigues and utter their cries of war? Will Bill Clinton and his minions marshal armies and command troops? Will the professors at Yale and Harvard give great speeches about the noble profession of arms?
You already know the answer. Worthless men like them will be swept away. All their works and words, seemingly so valuable in this age, will be as dust.
The coming Age of Iron will be met as such times are always met, by men with guns. When it is over, when the forces of barbarism have at last receded, the new civilization will be ushered in by these men, the men of Yorktown, of New Orleans, of Chapultepec, of Gettysburg, of San Juan Hill, of Saint-Mihiel, of Guadalcanal, of the Ardennes, of the Chosin River, of Tet, of Desert Storm, of Fallujah.
For it is those men and their guns who have carried upon their shoulders our American nation. It is their ancestors throughout time and space who created and supported Western Civilization, of which we are a part.
