The "Remnants"

Beating Despair

Kim du Toit

February 1, 2007
7:50 AM

I read this post at Kevin’s the other day, and it brought a few thoughts to mind. Here’s a sample of his gloom (excluding all the links):

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of standing up and trying to get people to look. I’m tired of “Global Warming” - the next boogeyman the people who believe that only an all-powerful State can save us from certain destruction (though many will unfortunately have to be sacrificed, of course - eggs and omlettes, you understand) are pushing as the excuse to control our lives. I’m tired of the War on Terror - to some extent a boogeyman itself - being used to build the mechanisms that can (and will eventually) be used to the same end. I’m tired of the War on (some) Drugs™ being used to disembowel the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. I’m tired of politicians butchering the First Amendment. I’m tired of the Courts eviscerating the Second. I’m tired of our institutions of “higher learning” turning out ignorant but politically correct useful idiots in an endless cycle that ever more resembles the swirling of a toilet bowl.

In short, I’m tired of watching Western Civilization commit seppuku with a dull, rusty spoon. No ceremony. No hope of restored honor. No hope.

It was the sentence ”I’m tired of standing up and trying to get people to look” which resonated with me, because I sometimes feel the same way.

But I refuse to let it get me down, because I have the antidote to that feeling, and it comes from (no surprise) Albert Jay Nock. In Isaiah’s Job, Nock writes:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: “I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?”

...and Nock responds that he’s going to be wasting his time: that “the masses” aren’t going to be moved by what he has to say, and all he’ll experience is a profound feeling of failure.
But, of course, Nock has the answer:

“There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”

And that is what keeps me going.

I’m not going to be as vain as to think that my job is anything as important as Isaiah’s. But in terms of what I write on this website, I will say that, by and large, I get most of it right—the rest being either through my own ignorance, or through the issue itself being insoluble. (I know I drive many of my Loyal Readers to distraction over my indifference on the abortion issue, to give but one example.)

What I don’t care about is whether what I have to say is popular, or finds acceptance with many people. The people who do agree with me, fine; the people who don’t are welcome not to—in Nock’s words, ”Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by.”

I am not as patient a man as Nock, though, which is why I don’t allow discussions of a radical nature on this website. (Some examples, again: I’m not interested in debating whether socialism is better than capitalism—it isn’t—or whether pure libertarianism is a feasible form of social order—it isn’t—or whether Hillary Clinton would make a good President—she wouldn’t.)

Of course, this lays me open to charges of creating an “echo chamber” on this website, a charge which was leveled at The Mrs. during a discussion of libertarianism on her website.

Frankly, I don’t care what people call me, or what they think of what I have to say. I say my piece; and those who like, can listen, and those who (don’t) like, can FOAD pass by.

Every so often, I admit, I do feel the way Kevin does. Here’s where it happens.

I look at my traffic numbers, and suddenly realize that my words are reaching a large number of people. But all that does is set me up for disappointment. I might issue a ringing call to arms, that everyone should write to their Congressweasel right away about Issue X; and then, when a total of three (3) letters actually get sent, I get depressed.

Of course, that’s the trap. It doesn’t matter that only three letters get sent; it doesn’t matter if no letters get sent. What matters is that I may have got one, just one person to think about what I’ve written, and be encouraged that he isn’t the only one in the world who thinks the way he does. That’s Nock’s message—and as soon as I remember it, I find tranquillity once more.

Because at the end of the day, Western Civilization will be saved not by great huge mass movements, or by heroic feats of socio-political evangelism. Western civilization will be saved by a whole bunch of individuals doing the right thing, one citizen at a time.

Sound familiar?

comment: Kim is in my blogroll on the right, and this is just another example why I keep him there.. This just struck a chord with me since sometimes I too have a yearnin to reach the "masses" and get dissappointed when I yell "I'm mad as hell" out the window and then dont hear anyone else return it..

But there is a quote that I keep handy:

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."
Mary Anne Radmacher quotes