America as Wet Clay

Follow me into the Wayback Machine, Sherman, to a time when schools had the youngsters make things out of clay to show their parents. In my time, the most common thing made was a vaguely dish-shaped thing that was usually called an ashtray. In these enlightened times, I’m sure they are not called ashtrays any more.

(Are little kids still allowed to make things out of clay today?)

They were taken home, ooohed and aaahed over by doting parents and put away, to be taken out on infrequent occasions to show the kids as they were growing up what their little hands once made.

As I remember, we were not told to make an ashtray, it’s just what came out … it’s easiest to take a piece of clay and make a flat, round shape with edges that curled up. Some of my classmates aspired to something else and made figurines. I opted for an ashtray, but a nice one … with scalloped edges.

What does that have to do with America, Sherman? Give me a moment to switch the focus of my analogy.

The Left in America is in ascendance today. And the Left has always been an admirer of uniformity. After all, what good is knowing what is best for people if you don’t tell people what is best for them? And get them to do what you want? And once we know what's right, shouldn't everyone get on board? The efficiency of making one kind of suit, one kind of car, one kind of diet, one size of toilet flush, one kind of medical care, one kind of school is obvious to the organized mind.

Despite popular myths to the contrary (cf. “The Organization Man”), Americans have traditionally been diversified, much more so than other cultures. Some call it rugged individualism; others believe that we should be left alone to do our own thing. That approach to life leaves open the possibility of individual inequality and failure.

The Left in America has traditionally admired other countries and other governmental structures which directed the lives of their people a great deal more than our government did. Most of them have been oriented toward socialism. For quite a while the Left admired the communist system, and quite a few still carry a torch for the Cuban model.

There were plenty of admirers for Stalin’s and Mao’s rule, even after the bloody abattoirs were exposed. The New York Times has received Pulitzer prizes for covering up mass murder. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Even our founding fathers were admirers of some species of tyranny. Jefferson was an ardent admirer of the French Revolution and the attendant Terror. It’s an admission of the truth of Stalin’s observation that for some people “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” I hope not to be part of that group of people.

The Left sees that United States as a piece of wet clay that they finally have the power to mold into the shape and form they would like. Their midway model seems to be socialist Europe, but the ultimate goal is Communism without Stalin or Mao. They believe they have the wisdom to so regulate the lives of men that history will end.

What’s interesting is that the fluidity of America, with its relatively undirected economy and culture can change and adapt without fracturing. Each of us can mold our own lives just as the young once did with their little pieces of clay. But once the clay is dried, it cannot be re-shaped. The more structured a culture is, the more brittle it becomes. Like an ash tray … while it was soft, it could be anything. Once it’s formed and structured, it can only broken. What are we going to do with that beautiful ash tray that the children of the Left are designing once we find out that smoking is not good for you? It’s too late to make a figurine. The only thing that we can do is break it; and that makes a hell of a mess.