free speech: hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders

When good is called bad and real bad is ignored or excused, your society is terminal. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

recalling the true purpose of the republic

chesterton of the eponymous fence once opined that “ every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things” and this seems ever more apposite as we find new institutional means to steer the SS western society onto the rocks.

forgetting who the actual bad guys are is societal trouble, but mistaking any who stand against them for the villains they sought to suppress is civilizational suicide.

“where did all the good men go?” asks the dullard who’s been jailing them in droves for doing what good men do and inverting a right to property and self defense into a license to steal because “marginalized.”

this, of course, takes us right back to chesterton and his famous admonishment of those who would tear down fences whose purpose remains obscure to them. perhaps they were there for a reason…

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

for those in the back who seem ill at ease with shape rotation, the “fence” is what is called “a metaphor” and it stands for many, many things including rights, traditions, positive law, and the manifold other instantiations and expressions of evolved civilization and inhabited human stories.

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