Bannockburn, Neighbor Dogs, and SPLC Polling on Political Assassination

I’d like to start this episode off with a selected reading from ‘The Poetry of Scotland,’ edited and introduced by Roderick Watson. Specifically, ‘The Bruce’ Book XII discusses the second day of the Battle of Bannockburn, and is part of a larger poem by John Barbour (1320-1395); written about 1375, it’s the oldest poem preserved in Scots.

My daughter Evelyn says my reading these to her is like a bedtime story, and she loves the accent. But I am not trying to read this poem with an accent! Also, this is a hard poem to read because it feels as though the Scottish accent is being phoneticized into English, plus there are unfamiliar words which I don’t know the meaning of. Nevertheless, it’s a stirring piece of writing, and evocative, and I hope you will enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoy reading it to you.

Besides the poem, it’s been a beautiful, sunny Saturday here in Greeley, and I am working. And since I am working, I woke up this morning to a phone call about a server that had locked up about 3AM and needed reset. That done, I got myself a cup of coffee and set to the task of fully waking up.

Then I heard four of our chickens clucking in the backyard, and looked out to see the neighbor’s dog laying by the shared fence, his head poked through on our side where a plank had come off and fallen down. Evelyn helped me gather up the chickens and put them back in their coop; Solomon helped me put the plank back in place to keep the dog out of our yard and the chickens in it. This was hardly the happiest way to wake up on a Saturday; nevertheless, the fence needed mending, and quick, if we didn’t want all our chickens eaten. And we didn’t, so we fixed the fence.

In other news, Greg Wilson writes for The Daily Wire on 10 June 2022 about how many Democrats and Republicans recently polled would approve the assassination of political leaders they believe are hurting our country or our democracy. Briefly summarizing:

• 34% of Republican men under 50 would approve compared to 44% of younger Democrat men.
• 40% of Republican women under 50 would approve compared to 32% of younger Democrat women.
• 6% of both Republican and Democrat men over 50 would approve.
• 10% of Republican women over 50 would approve compared to 9% of older Democrat women.

The fact that this is the Southern Poverty Law Center doing the polling notwithstanding, I have some questions and observations to share on these numbers.

For one, what do Republicans and Democrats respectively consider harm to our country which would rise to the level of being worthy of assassination? 

For another, how does this question land differently in the minds of men versus women, or those who are older than 50 versus those who are younger than 50?

Still more, I wonder what the numbers would have looked like had “younger” and “older” been broken down further than those either over or under 50 years of age.

Nevertheless, there is a great difference in what Republicans and Democrats consider to be threats to this country, or “our democracy.” Republicans, I would argue, typically have a hardier view of America and our political process. Conservatives typically read more than the drivel that passes for history like the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn, and that lends perspective and a certain calmness, except when we see the leadup to abject tyranny and even Communism being repeated as we have read of it in our history books.

Democrats, meanwhile, see any unraveling or undermining of their Progressive programme – increasingly radically Left – as dire. Thus they scream at the sky over such. And they react accordingly with hyperbole unbounded by the sort of reason which is tempered with a more informed perspective on the annals of recorded human experience down through the ages. But such has been their conditioning, all is awful and now literally the end of the world if they do not get all that they want, all the time, and on every issue which enters their imaginations.

Second, we have the problem of the media where feeding or else starving certain narratives is concerned. The prospect of Democrats losing the House and Senate in November is presented in breathless terms by the status quo fare and its curators as being an existential crisis.

Meanwhile, the aggressive push of measures intended to combat Climate Change, reset capitalism, and promote radical Gender Theory and Critical Race Theory to our children weighs heavily on the minds of many conservatives, and perhaps disturbs Republican women of all ages – mothers and grandmothers – more than it upsets Republican men. This is a sad thought, to be sure; yet there you have it.

Beyond these, there is the problem of a two-tiered system of justice. Whether we’re talking about the FBI or the court of public opinion presided over by the likes of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, and Snopes – many Republican men especially have been put on notice that little to no resistance or complaint will be brooked from them. If they step out of line for even a moment, they stand to lose their careers, livelihoods, businesses, social standing, and prospects of influence moving forward. And when the Democrats especially have also put us now into a recession, this is hardly the time to be jeopardizing one’s ability to provide for their family. So more principled and comprehensive objections are shelved in the short-term while we just hope to keep on collecting our paychecks and putting food on the table.

In conclusion, the SPLC polling should be taken with a grain of salt, yet it is telling nevertheless. I think we can see from it that Republican men feel relatively muzzled and more cautious – compared especially with both younger Republican women and younger Democrat men. So also, younger Democrat men feel emboldened, and younger Republican women are at their wit’s end over what to do to protect their children.

Any way you slice it, the polling of those younger than 50, whether Democrat or Republican, shows that a full third of Americans of both parties could potentially approve of political assassination to protect this country. And what that may mean is that we are dangerously close to a tipping point where heated rhetoric spills over into widespread conflict.

Yet just like Bannockburn and the issue with our backyard fence, everyone has a limit. Sometimes there’s just nothing for it except to admit the proper boundaries have been breached and need re-establishing. Only the good Lord knows what is coming down the pike. But whatever is coming, we do well to pray for our country, and to roll up our sleeves, and to seek a genuine peace with Him while it can be found.

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