Better than I

Some of the people that I read I do so because they're good at ferreting out nuggets of information that I miss. Some I read because they're so damn funny, some I read just to learn new insults. And there are some I read simply because they are able to take what seems to be plain information and put it in such a way as to make it crystal clear. Bill Whittle. Kim du Toit. And the reason for this post, Francis W. Porretto.

Threats to Americans' well-being, our freedoms, and our accustomed ways are multiplying all around us. Our unease, compounded from weaponlessness and uncertainty, grows in proportion. Scant wonder that so many are so angry about federal inaction over border control, the nonexistent tracking of foreign visitors, the vacillations and switchbacks in our policies toward Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, and our seeming flaccidity toward Muslim propaganda against us. We are being made to fear outcomes that seem ever more likely with the passage of time.

Worst of all aspects of these fears is that we know, at some level, that the ultimate confrontations with the things we fear cannot be averted -- and that those burdens will not be borne by the forces of the State, but by us private persons whom the State has striven to render defenseless. For the threats of our time are diffuse threats, potentially omnipresent, modulated by individuals and small groups. That's the salient property of both "gradualist oppression" and "low-intensity warfare."

A diffuse threat can only be met with a diffuse defense: a people in arms.

I discovered Mr. Porretto some years ago, and I continue to read his blog on a regular basis. He's on the blogroll. And I would suggest to each and every one of you that you go read his latest essay.