Anarchy X: There and Back Again

Several months ago I started out on a personal journey of discovery. Unlike many authors who seem to feel they need to take to the road, I abhor travel, so I decided to turn inward and try to explain, as best I could, what I believe, who I am, and the filter through which I view the world. It’s no small thing to encapsulate a worldview; greater thinkers than I am have filled volumes with better writing than I will ever manage trying to do the same, and making it approachable is even harder. The best I could do was pour my simple knowledge and limited understanding onto this page (yes, even now I still think of it as a page) and hope that it makes some sense and connects somehow with someone. While I would never be so presumptuous as to suggest I have scaled Mount Doom, I do feel confident saying what a long, strange trip it’s been.

This series has been as much an exploration of my principles and beliefs as it has been an explanation of them. In the course of that exploration I have discovered (or perhaps reaffirmed) that I am more William Wallace a là Braveheart than I am Patrick Henry; I believe that everyone is born with liberty, and it is not something that can be given or taken away. At worst, someone can violate my rights, even my right to life; as the movie goes, they can take my life, but they can never take my freedom. More than that, I have found, or at least I hope I have found, some semblance of support for that view, or an argument to be made for support, in two of the sources for much of the political discourse in America, The Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments.

It is possible along the way I have given the impression that I am somehow not proud of my country, or that I am less than a patriot because I do not support every decision that the government, my government, makes; I do not believe that anything could be farther from the truth. I believe there is always, must be, a place for the loyal opposition, and that so long as one is adhering to the core principles that the country is founded on as you understand them then you cannot be said to be unpatriotic. You may be wrong, but being wrong has never been treasonous; if it were, we would all of us be good company for each other in Coventry.

I also believe that it is possible for good people to disagree with my interpretations of these key and critical documents and still be good people. Who knows, they may even be right. I never made any claims to omniscience, nor would I want it; it would take all the fun out of surprise parties. What I do believe is that most people are mostly good most of the time; or as John Agresto put it:

Everywhere we see people fighting for their religion, for their cultural values, for the traditions of their fathers, for their idea of justice. Warped and destructive as they sometimes are, every day we see people driven not by “the economy” but by their creed, their values, their sense of honor. People sacrifice not for things beneath them, but for ideals they believe are higher than they are. And we Americans, with our pride and creativity and sense of duty, patriotism and love of country, are no different.

I couldn’t agree more. I have expressed my creed, my values, and my sense of honor in these posts as best I can. I hope they have resonated with you.

Does that mean this is the end of the Anarchy X series? For now. I promised myself when I started I would take it this far, and now my creativity and pride are driving me to try something new. Perhaps someday I’ll come back to it; after all, America has been around for a very long time, and I expect will be here long after I am gone. Politics, I fear, will last even longer, so I will have no shortage of things to write about.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

(Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)