In “dissident” circles there’s a debate that goes round and round the mulberry bush about whether or not a good strategy to “fight back” against “the regime” is to have children and a family or not. On the one side, family and child rearing is depicted as a weapon of the womb, creating a new (hopefully numerous) generation of people with our ideals and values that will outnumber and push out those who carry water for Wokeness. On the other side, there are those who say that such really doesn’t matter much on the political level. Numbers, they say, are somewhat meaningless if you do not control the institutions, the media, the flow of money. If you do not have these things then your children, numerous though you make them, will simply be coerced and seduced into the program of the regime by its money and power. Both sides I’ve here presented I’ve not done justice. I’m only skimming the surface in the most barest of ways of each side of their argument. Let it be enough.
There’s a book called “The Tartar Steppe” written in 1952 by Dino Buzzati. It’s about a military man stationed in a far off garrison on the edge of the empire, waiting for the invasion of the barbarians. The barbarians, who, it turns out, never come (at least not during his service). The protagonist becomes emotionally invested in his role as the first line of defense for the empire. He sees himself as a hero in waiting, keeping himself constantly ready for the day of battle so that he can fight with honor against the horde and defend his homeland. Others, his comrades in arms, his school chums from back home, they serve their duty to the empire and then go home, start families, get jobs. Not our hero though. To do that would be to miss out on his chance to be a hero. To go home and never have engaged with the enemy would make his entire service moot. He has, in essence, succumbed to the sunk cost fallacy, he’s already spent so much of his life waiting on the barbarians, he’d best wait some more to make sure he actually meets them. If he never fights, what was the point of his sacrifice?
Odysseus, on the other hand, never really even wanted to fight. The entirety of the Odyssey is just him wanting to get back home. To see his wife, his son, his dog. In so desiring he became the greatest of heroes, whose name we speak more frequently than Achilles or Hercules. Odysseus does his duty, certainly, but it is out of love for what he has and does not want to lose. It is not for vain glory, or adventure, or revenge. Achilles fought for vain glory and revenge, and he, though half-god, died for it. Hercules, too, did his greatest adventures, his 12 labors, for his own spiritual edification and redemption for murder, a far more noble goal than glory or fame.
To my mind the argument outlined in the first paragraph misses the point entirely. To have heroes at all you must have something worth fighting for. To save America you first have to love it and you cannot love it without loving the people that make it up. Anything else and you are simply fighting to fight, and that will never end for the fight itself is the goal. You are essentially no different from the social justice warrior always in pursuit of progress, because the fight itself is where you find your purpose. You love nothing in the real world except yourself, and the glory that you believe can be won by beating back the barbarians. So, if you get what you want and do defeat your enemy you will not bring peace, only more fighting, you will turn and fight those who were previously your friends (as so often happens on “the Right” already) because you cannot be still, because you love nothing outside yourself. There is no difference in a Rebel without a cause seeking revolution on the Left and a Hero without a cause seeking glorious battle on the Right.
If you cannot love a woman and children enough to not want to go to war you can’t ever be a hero. You may be an Achilles, seeking vain glory, and dying and causing death, sure. But you can’t be an Odysseus unless in your heart you really just want to be with your wife on the farm.