I Feel as Strong as a Bull Moose

Around the perimeter of Harvard Yard there stand a series of brick archways that serve as gates. Among these is the Dexter Gate upon the entry side of which which one may read the inscription: "Enter to grow in wisdom." On the opposite exit side of the gate is written: “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”

Though the Harvard of today has, like other elite schools, transformed it's diploma from a certificate of meritorious scholastic achievement into a mere patent of nobility, it would seem there was a time long ago when it did, in fact, take its role as a university seriously. That role was not to help secure a position in medical or law school nor was it to maintain a recruiting pool for big business to requisition fresh brigades of over-ambitious corporate raiders. No universities once aimed for a loftier goal, to mold great citizens and future leaders.

The fault, of course, does not lie with the universities alone. Among America's best educated and best placed echelons of society there is an endemic culture of moral diffidence and timidity. It is rarely called out, of course, because it has been very successful at hiding behind a mask of tolerance and open-mindedness. Frankly, I am sick of it. I am tired of having the culture, traditions, and norms that made us all who we are consistently denigrated because someone, somewhere, might have had their feelings hurt. The pendulum has swung entirely too far into the absurd and I decided to pour myself into this blog to join the growing backlash to push it back towards sanity.

Like all young boys I went through a series of rebellious phases as a child. I questioned authority, taunted tradition, and defied the rules simply because I resented confinement. The key word there, however, is that I did these things when I was a child. Rebellious tendencies in children are a healthy sign of principled, independent thinking. There comes a time, however, when every young lad must put away childish things and consider his place in society. At the point where a boy stops thinking about himself, who he is or what he wants to do, and begins to reflect on how he can better serve his country and his kind. We live in such a youth (specifically teenage) oriented culture, however, that rebellion alone is all we ever glorify. Duty, honor, and what a prior generation used to call 'constancy' are consistently undermined by an ethic of "what's in it for me?" that masks itself as "freedom."

I consider it my purpose to strip all these self-serving social constructs that the liberal discourse has surrounded itself with and expose their inherent hypocrisy and wantonness.