Deconstruction is a weapon of the left, which seeks to separate cause from effect, and in politics by the nature of the success of bite-sized pieces, deconstruction rules.
We generally talk in terms of issues as opposed to goals, for example. What is our goal? No one knows, but they’re sure of their positions on abortion, gay marriage and taxing the rich. The purpose of doing this stuff gets lost in a haze of dogma and emotion.
In this type of environment, it’s easy to fall into the mistake of allowing the opposition to define the discourse. If you let them set up the issues, and you react to those, then while you may have an “answer” for their propaganda, you don’t have a direction.
Republicans in particular are lost because they are defending what’s left of a once-great society. In order to not get overwhelmed by the singular focus of the left (on equality) and the multiple conflicting demands that are inherent to any party that represents a majority, Republicans have focused on a few fields of battle, most notably placing business before ideological equality imperatives.
However, the left is like a laser: it is polarized. It has one issue, equality, and as a result it has a position on every issue, which forcing each and every single possible choice into being a rabid support for equality. In fact, the left is a “my way or the highway” bunch: they have one ideal, and if you don’t support it, you are considered an enemy.
The right doesn’t really have a similar lightning rod because as a majority it isn’t interested in polarizing issues. It wants a lifestyle, a normal life that rewards the good and pushes the crazy out of the way, and challenges all of us to do our moral best.
I have in the past suggested the term “Mayberry” as a code word for what we want. This mythical village existed on the Andy Griffith Show and for many Americans, represented what they idealized: away from the urban horrors of both Archie Bunker and Sesame Street, in small-town America where values were consistent and wholesome.
The Mayberry mythos has several parts to it. The first is the location; the second, the population; the third, the lifestyle; and the fourth and final one is that challenge to do our moral best.
- Location, location, location. Mayberry is a revolution against the idea that cities are too big to fail, and that having many different people doing many different things is not chaos but a comfortable collage of harmonious differences. Mayberry is a large town or small city, away from the coasts but not too far other places, probably with a population between 20,000 and 500,000. This range is the level at which humans can live together and not be on top of each other, and not be so anonymous that horrors are ignored.
- The population. The future residents of Mayberry are not Archive Bunker. They don’t want to tell you how to live. But they don’t want you to tell them how to live. Like most ethnic groups, they prefer their own, which is majority American nativist (English, German, Dutch, Scots). They like blonde children, because blonde is “our” color, and they like having a shared heritage that is more similar than different. This is not to say that they want to harm others, only that they prefer to socialize with themselves and don’t want to be forced to include everyone.
- The lifestyle. People in the modern world want more intense, varied, sensual and expensive lifestyles. People in Mayberry prefer the simple pleasures in life not because these pleasures are so good, but because the more intense pleasures end badly and aren’t that fun in the first place. Thus, the reasoning goes, what you find in life is not the activity, but the growth of yourself and the time you spend with others. You cannot substitute for having real experience by going to trendy clubs, buying fad products, and being in the news. You need real experience, and that’s forged through normal living and normal pleasures. Hope you like fishing, whittling, football, knitting, horseback riding and hunting, because this is what people in Mayberry do.
- The moral challenge. The point of this rather unexciting lifestyle is that we are here on earth for a purpose, whether granted to us by some mythological God or like most things, derived using our common sense. External things like socialization, wealth and popularity cannot substitute for inward things like moral courage, honesty, pride, honor, genuine affection and generosity. These come from having a soul at rest with itself, and that state comes from challenging oneself to rise above the animal nature of life and aspire to goals beyond the material. Everything has a point in Mayberry, and the goal is for each person to rise to a point of moral clarity and to get to know themselves. This is in part why people in Mayberry insist on so much free time, simple living, and a somewhat churchy focus. It’s about growth of the soul.
Mayberry will not satisfy everyone. Nothing does, and those things that require the greatest willpower and intelligence to appreciate are the rarest, not the commonest.
It is indeed a vision of hell for liberals. They hate majorities, they hate well-adjusted people, they want to replace internal moral challenges with external reward programs, and to be frank, they hate white people and blonde people. To them, it would seem boring and difficult.
But to those who see the world as a chance to be more than a body and more than another soulless consumer gulping down junk in an attempt to find a purpose in this world, Mayberry is a delight. A rare oasis of sanity.
Even more, it represents the American and European dream: we will go to new places, forge for ourselves a good living, and then enjoy that by raising our kids with the lessons we have learned. We do this so future generations can build on what we have fought for, and exceed us.
Welcome to Mayberry.
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As I read this I’m about to go to the opening party for the Republican party headquarters in our little old downtown. The Democratic party headquarters never closed. I’m going to see Mayberry people. I’m not one. I’m a confused antinomian soul who just kind of dislikes chaos more.
Want to see the contrast between Mayberry and its discontents, stay in Utah for awhile. That’s where I grew up. You have the good, strong LDS people there, big-time Mayberry. They’re not all white and they’re not all Republicans, either. But when people break away from the church, they completely go the other way, at least for awhile. They’ll either join a “true believer” cult or they’ll trash the LDS Church up and down and act the opposite, drink the koolaid of the Left, anything to strike back at those who hurt them.
I came to realize that people talk themselves into all kinds of things, and that it’s better to rest upon a moral framework, rejecting what you don’t like of it but helping it to stabilize things.
I’m pretty sad that the media are all jackals of the Progressives now. The empire is crashing down. The thing is, that empire is not the truth about who we are, either.
it’s better to rest upon a moral framework
There you go. I don’t believe the Bible in inerrant. I just think it beats the crap out of every alternative that has been posited in the last 2,000+ years.
Ugh. I just went. The people who showed were weird and like, all starched up and… ugh… The few who looked normal were scared like me. Very few people were there. Women in their polyester work clothes with their very common looking frost jobs in their hair walked by smiling and looking down on us. A city worker drove by holding his thumb down. The guy giving the speech said we’ve got the wind at our backs. Oh, it was all wrong, all wrong!
I’ll just be talking quietly to my friends about why I’m voting for the Republican.
These parties are vehicles for our needs, which means we should support them with the idea that they’re going to work for us, which is why the best Republicans don’t cheerlead the GOP but whip it like a recalcitrant water buffalo.
People react badly to their upbringing if it went wrong, but I think you’re right, a moral framework is good. However I don’t think it’s about what we ‘like’ but what is sensible because it produces good results, just like in a science experiment or building a gadget. Do what makes good. The rest is white noise.
I had to look this up, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antinomian
It makes sense, my view of it is that morality should be a goal not laws, and maybe that’s the state of grace. I certainly don’t trust the established morality, which is 50-50 pacifism and control.
This is well written Brett. I am 24 and have lived a lie my entire life. I was raised to be independent and tolerant of other peoples actions. I was taught to trust the government to always do whats right. Any actions against these beliefs was wrong and extreme.
Well once I was able to break free and really do my own research it helped me free my soul a bit, and quite honestly has led me here. Amerika is the fall of the Republic , and is about to become a much more brutal place to be. Unfortunately, too many people will never wake up to what the truth is, and will continue to fight over gay rights, Kim Kardashian , and whether or not 9/11 was a government planned attack.
Peoples minds are beyond recognition at this point, and anybody who is anti-establishment is now labeled as an “extremist”. I am a die hard constitutionalist, and we’ve got a hell of a fight in front of us. I want to thank you all for being able to put into words what I would like to express on a daily basis.
Mayberry is a delight. A rare oasis of sanity.
That, right there, is why the suburbs will never be driven under by the Progs. In Randian terms, they are Galt’s Gulch.
You may consider voting for Hunter Wallace for president. Hunter’s “OccidentalDissent” is All about Mayberry. It’s just not a teevee show anymore, it’s Gospel Truth.
Aunt Bee bakes the best apple pie this side of heaven. That’s what Andy & Opie, and Hunter’s side-kick, Jack Ryan, say.
Tell me more about this apple pie you speak of. If it’s as good as my grandma’s upside down cake, we may prove to be unbeatable!
@ Ted Swanson
Thank God for grandmothers and ladies who still know how to bake. Yes, there’s an unbeatable quality to them. You just gotta love ‘em.
It is located at 36°30′3″N 80°36′34″W (36.500756, -80.609311)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Airy,_North_Carolina)
Looks real boring. It needs a medical marijuana dispensary, adult book store, gay marriage clinic, planned parenthood, Jewish mosque, McDonald’s, needle exchange, Thai massage parlor, Slutwalk, Muslim synagogue and Costco before I’d even consider spending a weekend there.
Don’t forget the Amnesty International Superstore, the Foreign Aid Agency, the Food Bank, and the Wind Turbine Farm.
There’s probably much more, missing, too, that doesn’t immediately signal its lack.
[...] do we want? I propose this; see if you agree. I want Mayberry: a traditional society of towns and small cities, unified by a values system and a heritage, in [...]
Beautiful article, but would brown haired and brown eyes white people be allowed too? :)