Second Quote From Over On The Dry Side

Louis Lamour, on page 34, espouses further his views of civilized living through his gunslick hero, Owen Chantry: "Civilization is a recent thing, sir. With many, it's still more than skin deep. If you live in a busy community, you must live with the knowledge that maybe two out of every ten people are only wearing the outer skin of civilization. And if there was no law, or if there was not the restraint of public opinion, they would be utterly savage . . .  Even some people you might know well."

What do we learn from this quote, and where do we go from here?

First, children, from the time that they are in diapers, are sinners and little beasts. That is what we have to work with.

Second, our most modest goal is to bring them up right so that they at least have that thin layer of civilized behavior going for them, out of fear of the police, authority figures and fear of public opinion.

Third, a more ambitious moral goal would be to rear up over 90% of children as deeply decent, civilized and law-abiding. These average citizens of the future need to be brought up in accordance with traditional values: raised by heterosexual moms and dads that work, pay taxes, attend church and are middle class. We must not be distracted by debilitating trends like advocacy of gay marriage, the blurring of gender identity for youngsters, or the acceptance of  government-subsidized single-parents bringing up future gang members.

Fourth, to achieve more than basic civilization, let us intrude upon our conceptualization of what is required to raise civilized children. Let us strive to raise them as highly civilized citizens fit to build, maintain and extend a high civilization.

To get there we must rear children as individuators. Their fine, sturdy sense of self-control and sublimation of urges and temptations will empower them to self-legislate civilized behavior and living while self-realizing. They would exercise such superb inner restraint of the unruly self that such crude, complicating interferences of external control from the usual sources will be rendered mostly irrelevant.

A generation of individuator-anarchists, super-citizens living and doing in their cantons where local control is king, would live out their lives in a confederation of cantons spanning the globe. That is the future--it is but a matter of time and effort to get there.