It was a cool windy day on the Canadian prairie some 2000 years ago. The smell of looming snow was in the air; you could almost taste it in the humid chill gusts that swept the vastness of the plains. The small stunted aspens that cropped up here and there in lonely clumps had long ago been stripped of leaves and the grasses had a tired bleached appearance. Overhead the last chevrons of geese raced southward born on the northern wind.
To the group of four young Blackfoot Indians peaking over the crest of a hill, winter and geese were the last things on their minds. Fear; frigid and palpable, was what overwhelmed them. They’d been sent out several days ago to scout the immense region just south of where their tribe, a vast assemblage of warriors, women, children, and old folks, were making their way westward. Having gathered together after the Buffalo season, they were now headed home to the friendlier stretches of prairie within sight of the Rocky Mountains.
To the young men though, it had become suddenly doubtful that they’d ever see the gray-blue shapes of the mountains again. Two kilometers away, and creeping steadily closer, was a party of forty or more people moving steadily and deliberately closer. It was that approaching group that filled the four Blackfoot Indians with a mixture of terror and hate. Even from 2 kilometers away, the distinctive formation and garb of Prairie Cree was unmistakable; and that, spelled death.
Fast forward 2000 years to a world that has little resemblance to the prairie where the Blackfoot and Prairie Cree battled on and off for centuries. Mars Rovers creep over the surface of the red planet, jet airliners transport hundreds of millions of passengers yearly, and communications are virtually instant to every corner of the planet. With the disappearance of the world’s aboriginal peoples, be they blonde warriors from Norwegian fiords or the Mesopotamian tribes, has come the loss of some of our most basic and critical survival instincts. Modern humans see themselves as “above” the ancient and more base impulses that informed the group of four Blackfoot that they had better flee.
Those four Indian males were, by modern standards, bigots, chauvinists, and racists. To them, Cree were to be hated. Cree were lower than animals and the very ground they walked on was defiled. The Blackfoot camp was festooned with the scalps of Cree victims and Blackfoot men were free to abuse and use the many young female Cree slaves who labored in the Blackfoot camps. In essence, Cree were bad, Blackfoot were good. To think otherwise would spell death and subjugation. Racism, bigotry, fear, and hate of the enemy were the most basic and critical of survival intuitions. They were necessary in a primitive world. They were necessary to endure.
Today those base instincts are shirked as “primeval”, and “unenlightened”, and in most cases this is rightly so. They are viewed by modern “tolerant” society as signs of weakness, as signs of ignorance, and as signs of irrational fear. But, the fact is that modern humankind has become so “civilized” and “sophisticated” that it has become a belief that all peoples, cultures, and religions are equal and compatible with Liberal Democracy, and that to question this creed is tantamount to Neanderthal logic. At its most insane, post-modernism means ignoring concrete reoccurring offenses by specific groups, even though those misdeeds literally scream warning.
Those four Blackfoot knew that to ignore their impulses would spell death. Today, we are told that our base impulses in many regards are to be ignored. When our eyes and ears see and hear evidence day after day that a culturally or religiously identifiable group is a danger to us, we are told to ignore what we see. We are told to shove aside those thoughts because they are, after all, “primitive.” We are told to drive out of our being those primal instincts that kept our ancestors alive, and which enabled them to recognize a foe when they saw it. Essentially, the carrier of this creed, "Progressive" Utopianism, has given society a collective lobotomy.
We, as a post-modern society, governed by liberal democratic principals, have become sheep. We can no longer name the elephant in the room for fear of being called “bigots”. We can no longer identify a specific cultural or religious group as being incompatible with our liberal democratic ideals because to do so is “uncivilized.” And, we can no longer express, through our courts, legislative institutions, and government agencies, that a specific cultural or religious class is dangerous and anti-democratic because the ghosts of past excesses, like the internment of Japanese civilians during WW2, hold us hostage. And, as has been shown by the massive cultural suicide being committed in Europe, we will go to unbelievably self-destructive lengths to abide by the mantra that all cultures and religions are equal.
Let’s go back to our four Blackfoot men for a moment. They may have been no better than the Prairie Cree whom they feared and hated, but they understood that Blackfoot and Cree did not mix. They knew in the starkest of terms where danger to their kind was. Sadly, that can not be said of the vast educated know-it-all "Progressive" Utopian masses that are the guardians of Liberal Democracy today. Like some androgynous beings without an ounce of common sense, we have allowed our most critical and base survival instincts to be browbeat out of us.
The whole phenomenon has become so convoluted, that despite the fact that one group, fundamentalist Muslims, openly and articulately express their hate of our institutions, democracy, religions, and liberty, we continue to invite them to come and live among us. We continue to talk in abstract terms about a “War on Terror”, when it is in fact a “War on Us” being carried out by fundamentalist Muslims.
We have been taught to suppress that wee small voice inside, that diminutive primitive germ of an instinct that is trying to scream aloud and warn us that mortal danger is just over the next hill.
In an age long ago, they would’ve simply called it “common sense”.
