“Remember, a healthy diet won’t help you live longer. It’ll only seem that way.”
Winding down my Sunday after publishing yesterday’s post, I dialed up Fox News on SiriusXM and listened to “Life, Liberty & Levin.” Mark Levin’s second featured guest was playwright and author David Mamet, a rare voice of patriotic reason in a craft poisoned by progressivism.
Mamet’s new book, Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch, comes out tomorrow. Levin spoke with him about that, of course, and the conversation turned to motivation — why has he chosen to apply his considerable creative skills to bucking this American Marxism?
In the answer that followed, six words stood out to me:
“Someone’s got to bell the cat.”
David Mamet is not, in the conventional sense, a warrior. Not everyone is, or can be, but with the talents he has he informs, entertains and inspires. As Robert Green Ingersoll said of Thomas Paine, he’s “still a soldier in the army of freedom.”
Revolutionaries take many forms. They live among us, some wielding a pen as ably as others raise the sword. Neither can fill the other’s role; both are essential in the cause of Liberty.
Someone’s got to bell the cat. I’m sure you can deduce why I found a certain resonance in that.
Every now and then something important gets by me. It may not be truly significant, at least in The Big Picture, but often I’ll miss something in the present that I’ve valued, noted, tracked or emphasized in the past.
On March 19th, The Ohio State University won a national title — for the second straight year, OSU Pistol is Intercollegiate Pistol National Champions. The Buckeyes won air, sport and standard, capturing the overall (open) team championship.
That’s no fluke. This is the program’s sixth national team title and its third in the last four seasons. Ohio State also has won six women’s pistol championships, most recently last year.
OSU fields a competitive rifle team as well, though it’s yet to win a national title. Deb’s the one with long-gun braggin’ rights in our household — her West Virginia University Mountaineers have taken the NCAA Rifle National Championship a record 19 times, almost twice what any other team has won.
From 2014 through 2017, OSU wore the pistol crown and WVU won rifle, so Deb and I had a lot to crow about together. Unfortunately (and uncharacteristically), West Virginia hasn’t won a title since.
At least WVU’s mascot still carries a gun.
There’s a good chance you hadn’t heard about Ohio State Pistol’s national championship — I mean, it’s the sort of news that mainstream media judge unfit to print. Hell, you probably didn’t even know that schools still have pistol and rifle teams, assuming that anything involving guns has fallen to the wokeness that infects college campuses (and in many cases it has).
That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m here. I regret that I’m two weeks late passing it along.
Since returning to Ohio we’ve had a ball seeing people we’d been away from for a year. We’ve been separated from some folks even longer than that, thanks to all that “pandemic” bullshit. Late last week we ran into a guy we hadn’t seen in over two years, and we had one of those typically intense catch-up conversations.
We’d last crossed paths in the early days of shutdowns, lockdowns and “pandemic theater.” Like many of us, in the beginning he was cautious — not fearful, but acting rationally based on the limited information he had.
And like many of us, it didn’t take him long to see what was really happening.
The Holy Narrative changed each time a new decree was issued. So-called “guidance” was shamelessly inconsistent, breathtakingly dishonest and didn’t come close to having the advertised effect on cases, hospitalizations and deaths. It became abundantly clear that while the virus may have been real, every single mandate was being used as a cudgel against true Americans who cherish Liberty.
Clearly this was about political control, not public health. It was subjects versus citizens, pitting those who operate out of fear and feelings against those who favor facts and freedom. It was a manufactured crisis giving the Left license to express unreserved hatred of those who dared object.
And so our friend made a decision, a choice available to all of us — he refused to comply. Ordered to stay home he went out. He stopped wearing a mask. He breezed right by signs presuming to shackle his Liberty and he ignored barked orders to leave the premises.
Rarely was he challenged. Not once was he detained.
“It was liberating,” he said to us. Deb and I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. We’d experienced the same thing.
He went on to describe reactions from people startled to see him barefaced at the height of Mask Hysteria. All stared. Some scowled. A surprising number, witnessing his example, pulled their own masks off, looking almost embarrassed to have been caught wearing one.
Those people realized they had the power to disobey. That’s how change happens. That’s how Liberty is preserved — by the act of exercising it.
Later he decided that he had to get away from central Ohio for a while. So he got in his truck and started driving, ending up, of all places (and unbeknownst to us), in The Ozarks.
“I was amazed — it was like a different country,” he said, shaking his head. “The people there were living normal lives, completely unaffected by all the bullshit.”
Yeah, my friend, we know. That’s a big reason why we’re moving to The Ozarks.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB