A Statement of Philosophy

I alluded on my very first day of publishing this site to previous efforts I have made in keeping an online column. My favorite was a weekly affair I managed for several months in 2000-2001 or thereabouts, called The Reality Principle. Most of my work vanished when the site went down (woe betide those who forget to check their email). Nevertheless the idea itself was useful, as a focus for asking questions about major issues.


To wit: the Reality Principle states that everything which exists does so for a reason, hence it is folly to attempt to undo or alter anything which exists without understanding and addressing that reason. Obvious, no? Yet how rarely does anyone in our culture say so. Liberals and Conservatives alike move to institute great change in a short sequence of time, before the news cycle makes their arguments yesterday's arguments. The gay marriage debate, on which I have written extensively here and here, is a perfect example of scorched-earth, to-the-barricades, apocalyptic-vision debate. It may be that the centrality of the issue warrants such rhetoric. But it's easy to see that it's produced a great deal of hysteria and name-calling, even among those who understand one another.


And that's something of a side issue. How can we intelligently debate a war? How can we consider whether a military effort against a nebulous enemy is going well or poorly, based on what information those fighting the war see fit to provide us? Moreover, how can we have discuss this without appreciating the efforts of anti-guerrilla warfare that have come before: our success in the Phillipines 100 years ago, the British in Malaya, the French in Algeria, the Russians in Afghanistan. We have heard nothing from those whose supposed task is to inform us about this context. All we have heard, and without anything that could be called analysis, is Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. Whether this represents the fundamental ignorance of our citizenry or our media is open to debate.


My purpose, therefore, will be to write about the reality that is otherwise buried. This is a subjective statement, and I therefore choose to confont my bias. I lean to the right. Doing so satisfies my education, experience, and emotional touchstones. However, I also find that leaning to the right easier allows me to look at truth-on-the-ground, as opposed to Macro-Historical Truth or Progressive Truth. While both sides violate the Reality Principle when it suits them, the Left does so with less guilt and less appreciation. This is a function of their worldview, which tends to look to the past to distinguish it from the promised Future, as a way of demonstrating that the present is too much like the former to be allowed to continue.


But it should not be construed that the purpose of this site will any longer be dinging the Left (though it will probably happen). There are plenty of sites that do that just fine, and on the linksheet they will stay. Henceforth I will be interested in looking for reality, and letting it stand as such.