The horrific scenes of the slaughter of innocent civilians on the afternoon of October 7th in Israel are the harbinger of a world changed completely. Not that it has not been building to this point, but it is the acme of what began on November 4, 1979. On that day, Iranian “students” broke through the scant Marine guard at the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran and began a siege that lasted 444 days until the Inauguration of Ronald Reagan.
Weak men beget bad times, but often bad times beget strong men who in turn produce good times…that is considered by many the rhythm of history. Sadly, we have seen the cycle being repeated through changing administrations in this country over the last 40-years. The pathetic weakness of Jimmy Carter emboldened the Mullahs to make their play – after all they had overthrown the Shah of Iran on his watch, why not humiliate him further? Reagan brought about some stability by exhibiting the will to rebuild our military and ultimately to defeat the Soviet Union. In broad brush strokes you can see the decline that began under Bush I through Clinton that ultimately brought about the horror of the 9/11 attacks that Bush the Younger had to deal with. Twenty years of war later and a cataclysmically bad pull-out from Afghanistan and we are where we are – a desiccated military led by a cynical and politically motivated bloated generalship and admiralty. There is so much to write about in here – the military-industrial complex, the wealth of our political elite, the absolute scam of the Ukrainian venture but here we are mobilizing to go try to support our once most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel.
Through all this, behind the scenes, an unbridled influx of immigration, largely from countries that hate us and our values coupled with an education system so badly broken that with few exceptions, most college graduates couldn’t name one of our rights in the Bill of Rights, let alone point to Ukraine on a map has produced a generation of truly “useful idiots.” Look at just about any college campus over the last few weeks and you will see open hatred of Jews being celebrated. This by the same crowd that bought into the George Floyd/BLM riots during the Summer of Love in 2020. The “rough beast” that Yeats said was slouching towards Bethlehem has been born and “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
The meaning of what has happened is that once again, we are awakened to the reality that for better or worse, we live in tribes. Some years ago, when we were all bloggers, a blogging compatriot of mine, Bill Whittle put out a piece on his site “Eject! Eject! Eject” titled “Tribes.” He wrote it in the wake of the looting that took place in New Orleans post Katrina. He was very clear, as am I, that “tribes” in this context has nothing to do with race. Mobs of Hamas “fighters” disemboweling babies are as racially different as German SS camp guards, but they are cut from the same cloth. The tribes Bill spoke of, and that I want to focus on here are types of people and their world view. In the sobering movie, “American Sniper,” by Clint Eastwood, Chris Kyle, the central character says this: “There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep. Then you’ve got predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They are the wolves. And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdogs.” Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs.
The thing about sheep is they desperately want to belong. They want to be part of the next “thing,” whatever it is and they tend to lack the critical thinking skills to even have the basic level of self-preservation. While there are many examples here’s one: the pro-Hamas/Palestinian?LGBTQ+ protestor. There’s nothing wrong with sheep, but the human version can be quickly turned into wolves – witness the BLM riots. Sheep tend to gravitate to the left side of the political spectrum – they are enticed by messages of government caring for them and rarely consider the cost. Sheep live in denial and do not want to accept that there is evil in this world, especially if in emanates from one of their cherished causes. The utterly inhuman trafficking of the products of abortion by Planned Parenthood, the slaughter of innocents by Palestinians, the destruction of our power grid by so-called “green technologies.” All of these are their causes and cannot be challenged. There’s something else about sheep – they really do not like the sheepdogs. How else can you justify “Defund the Police” movements? These are the people that were on the front lines of the anti-nuclear movement in the 1960’s. Sheepdogs remind the sheep that wolves might actually exist and that disturbs their world view. Sadly, even when the wolves strike the most vulnerable lambs like the teenagers at a music rave in Southern Israel, they cheer the wolves thinking they are validating their own cause.
Here's the other thing about sheep – they can be led by wolves. Sadly, that is what has happened over the last 50-years in education. Pre-COVID I might have said “higher education,” but Zoom classrooms showed all the world what was really going on in our school systems from K-Graduate school. The Summer of Floyd showed us the first real fruits of this effort, but now in the wake of October 7, we see it glaringly large.
While many sheepdogs have the capacity for violence, that is not a prerequisite. Just willing to stand up and tell the truth takes courage and that is the central characteristic of the sheepdog and though they have been sleeping, they are waking up. The Moms showing up at School Board Meetings, the Trustees of colleges willing to speak out and withdraw their funding as they see what has been produced by their largesse. The wolves have been feeding on the sheep right under the noses of the sheepdogs, but I believe that is coming to an end. It must if we are to survive as a republic. The wolves are deeply embedded in the flock now…and those are the home-grown sheep/wolves.
Real wolves are among us in the 8+ million illegal aliens that have entered this country since President Biden took office. As Senator Kennedy from Louisiana pointed out, that is four Nebraskas…four states worth of people, many of them military aged men from countries that hate us. The sheepdogs with fangs had better be ready, because if the world spins out of control and the odds are increasing daily that it will, the old warrior sheepdogs will be on call and on the perimeter.
I wish this were not so, but I am an old sheepdog and I smell the evil in the air. As Lt. Col Grossman wrote in “The Bulletproof Mind,” the source of the Chris Kyle quote: “Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.”
I always ask the old question posed by Tolstoy, “In times like this what must we do?” My advice is simple – understand that there is evil in the world and stand on the side that is opposed to it. Stand with the sheepdogs but make sure that is who they are. In the modern “battlefield” even the shepherds are having a hard time identifying the sheep. But the aftermath of October 7 has given us one very good measure. Have courage and as Solzhenitsyn said, “The simplest act of a courageous individual in not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”
It is inconceivable that even the sheep can be pro-Palestine, especially in Nashville. We need more sheep dogs in 2024.
Having grown up on a sheep ranch in Wyoming, I appreciate your sheep, wolves, sheep-dogs analogy. Unfortunately, in this day and age, many of the sheep are confused about who are the wolves and who are the sheep-dogs. But good old sheep -dogs are nothing if not tenacious, and the wolves can’t help but reveal their rapacious true selves sooner or later.