Ice cream and manure

Compromise is like mixing ice cream and manure. It doesn’t help the manure, and it ruins the ice cream.

It is demanded that we compromise with the fascists. “Reach across the aisle,” is the term. Don’t cling to your values so fanatically. Give up a little of your cherished freedom, so we can have a little of our cherished tyranny. That’s it. You give up some of your freedom so we can have some of our tyranny.

First of all, compromise isn’t some warm and fuzzy method of getting along with people. It’s a model for selling your soul. Supposedly, we are told, in compromise, everyone is happy with the outcome, because everyone gets something they want. It enables us all to move forward, together. Bull.

Take a bucket of manure and add a teaspoon of ice cream. What have you got? A bucket of manure. Now take a bucket of ice cream and add a tablespoon of manure. What have you got now? You still have a bucket of manure. How does that become, “…everyone gets something they want?”

Compromise is not a process of examining alternatives to find what’s best. That’s called – are you ready for this – decision making. I have ideas. You have ideas. We hammer it out and decide which is the best course. The operative concept here is best. It’s not part of mine and part of yours. It’s what’s best. It may well be all mine or all yours – or neither. Maybe we’ll realize we’re both wrong and settle on something entirely different. Decision making works when people are working toward the same objective. Two or more people with the same objective can hash things out and come up with a course that’s best. It has nothing whatsoever to do with compromise.

Actually, compromise can work in a similar setting, but only with small groups or couples. As long as everyone involved is pursuing the same objective, compromise can be survivable, and even practical. We’ll do some things your way, Dear, and some things mine, and maybe next time we’ll trade off. Okay? Great. Let’s get on with life as married folks.

Where compromise is never survivable or even moral is when the parties involved have different objectives. Let’s say one person wants to preserve a constitutional government and a free republic. Let’s say the other wants to strike down the constitution and establish a fascist dictatorship. How preposterous is it to say we’ll do some things your way, and some mine? We’ll have fascism this year, then you voluntarily step down and we’ll have a republic for a year. Or maybe, we’ll have fascism on the even days, and a republic on the odd. Or maybe we’ll have fascism in the states that start with letters A through M, and…. This is the soul of compromise.

Remember when Bill Clinton said that American were going to have to give up some of their cherished liberties in order to be safe from gun crime? He really said that, and in the most patronizing, snotty way – “…their cherished liberties…”

We cannot compromise with evil. We cannot compromise with poison. We cannot compromise away things which can never, ever be regained. We cannot compromise on moral principles, because once lost, we will have become them – those who demand that we give up some good to make room for their evil.

We will be called extremists. Let’s look at that. There are two parameters to our political premises: the extremity of the position, itself, and the strength with which we cling to it. For example, one might hold an extreme position on global warming and advocate pulling the plug on all power generation on earth, but lack the commitment necessary to volunteer to be the first to freeze to death. On the other hand, one might hold a much less extreme position, such as reducing auto emissions over the next ten years, and be absolutely unshakable in one’s commitment, accepting no compromise, whatsoever.

In most cases, moderation is the same as compromise. Moderation means not extreme in your positions or your commitment. It’s okay to be pro-liberty, as long as you’ll accept tyranny to a certain extent. It’s okay to be pro-life, as long as you’ll accept murder to a certain extent. It’s okay to be for liberty, as long as you’ll accept chattel slavery to a certain extent.

We are told that with moderation or compromise, everybody wins. Horse hockey. If I’m totally evil and you are totally right, and we compromise, who wins? Does Good win by giving Evil something it couldn’t get on its own? Hell, no. Evil wins. No matter how small or insignificant the compromise, Evil wins. As Rand said, “In any compromise between food and poison, only death can win.”

When someone calls you an extremist, it means he can’t refute your position, so he’s going to condemn you for not accepting his at face value, in spite of the fact that he can’t defend it, himself. It means you got ‘im, and he can’t answer you. Have you ever had someone tell you, “You are 100% right, you extremist SOB?” When people agree with you, they don’t give a rip how extreme your view might be. (Hear that, Hannity? Stop condemning our enemies as extremists. We’d better get to be as extreme as they are, or we’re dead meat!)

Barry Goldwater, who is not quoted nearly enough nowadays, said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” [1]

A moderate is a person who lacks the integrity or guts to stand up for something and say, “I’m for this, and if you don’t like it, uncase your colors and start the ball.” A moderate would rather give the victory to evil than to stand accused of being steadfast or confident.

Here is William Lloyd Garrison, an antebellum abolitionist. Quite the madman of his time, by all accounts. But read this and absorb the fire from it. Ponder his metaphors. Apply his commitment to our present situation, and see if our history does not teach us the truth.

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.” [2]

Let us not be moderate. Let us be extremists. Let us be the uncompromising SOB’s they fear with all their miserable, lying, dungheap souls. Let us never give them an inch for which they haven’t fought and suffered and bled.

There is no moderation in shackles. There is no compromise in the bullet marks in the firing squad’s wall. There is no give and take in the noose, or the guillotine, or the gas chamber, or the Makarov slug. There is a point in the process of compromise and moderation when all that has gone before – all the mealy-mouthing and crawfishing and point dancing and semantic slight-of-hand – ends, and the only sound to be heard is the wailing of the widows and orphans, and the wind whistling through the broken windows in desolated factories where free men and women once forged the foundation of the greatest republic on earth.

Sic Semper Tyrannis Rebsarge

[1] Goldwater’s speech accepting the Republican nomination for the presidency – http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barrygoldwater1964rnc.htm

[2] Garrison’s article from the inaugural edition of “The Liberator” - http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/Liberator.html