You know, I think it is long past time that we dust off another good word that has been little used for too long:
barbarians. [ bahr-bair-ee-uhn ]
noun
a person in a savage, primitive state; uncivilized person.
a person without culture, refinement, or education; philistine.
(loosely) a foreigner.
(in ancient and medieval periods)
a non-Greek.
a person living outside, especially north of, the Roman Empire.
a person not living in a Christian country or within a Christian civilization.
adjective
uncivilized; crude; savage.
foreign; alien.
ORIGIN OF BARBARIAN
1540–50; < Latin barbari(a) barbarous country (see barbarous, -ia) + -an
The idea of the barbarian is essentially that which is foreign, that which is strange. Barbarism is often posited as that which is foreign to, different from civilization. We who are civilized see that which is foreign and strange to us, that which is outside our experience of treating other people civilly and respecting their property rights. What we are seeing in our Democrat controlled big cities and states is barbarism, in that those who are rioting, committing arsons and assaults are strangers to the founding principles of this nation: individual freedom, individual responsibility and the ownership of private property.
I am not a big fan of public art. Some committee commissions an artist to create something to enhance our lives somehow. Yeah. Right. Have you noticed most of the "art", publicly funded these days, is somewhat hideous? Some of it looks like random piles of rusted junk, salvaged from the nearest scrap yard. I'm reminded of at least one museum exhibit where the "artist" conceptualized a wastebasket, overturned with trash spilling out of it, which when seen, after hours, by the museum's janitorial staff, much like the boy in
The Emperor's New Clothes, recognized it for what it truly was and proceeded to clean up the mess!
Art, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder, but that doesn't give me the right to hitch a rope or a chain to any public art I might not like or agree with, and tear it down. But we have seen statues of saints and abolitionists, ripped from their pedestals and/or defaced, because they somehow offended the new barbarians. Our Founding Fathers may be next. Some barbarians are threatening to "blow up" Mount Rushmore. If the barbarians have their way, they will eradicate as much US history as possible, tear down our society as it exists and substitute anarchy in its place.
But, anarchy is not the ultimate goal. It is means to an end. We've seen the like before, in 1920s Germany, where the populace became so sick and tired of crime in the streets, and the debauchery of society, that they welcomed a government that promised law and order, if they would only commit to the government the power to make things better.
Coincidentally (?) this was also brought about by defunding the police, so that there would be no domestic force to stop them. The Nazis then substituted community enforcers. From their "community". Beware, lest we fall into the same trap.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Barbarians At The Gate? No. They are inside the walls. Inside the city. Where they will be infinitely harder to root out. But, let's at least call them what they are:
The New Barbarians. Foreign to our democracy. Foreign to our culture. Foreign to liberty.
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