Rafts

Bill Whittle, perhaps the most common-sense essayist I’ve ever read, is back and he has something I think will interest all of you, my faithful readers.

He’s stretched beyond the long-form essay and has written a book. The first chapter is up now and it’s well worth reading. Here’s a taste:

So here we are at Point “A,” otherwise known as “the present.” And most of us want to get to Point “B,” a land of freedom and safety and peace, where our children can play out in the flowers with the bunnies and the baby deer, where everyone leads rich, fulfilling lives and every man and woman is master of their own destiny.

The arguing starts when we begin to plot a course from Point A to Point B.

I have a mental map of the world. So do you. So did Lenin, and al-Zarqawi, and Winston Churchill, and Attila, and Ronald Reagan. Everyone has an internal map of how the world works.

The problem is that we get rather fond of these maps. Some people get so fond of these maps that they do nothing but sit around in the dark depths of the chart room and compare maps. If they see something on another map that seems to agree, more or less, with what they have sketched out on their own, they feel vindicated. This is human nature. I do it, and you do it too.

People will sit in the chartroom, and argue about their maps, while the ship of history rips out her keel. But as the arguments rage hither and yon down in the chartroom, as maps and cartographers are bandied back and forth like trading cards and people come to blows over mapmakers dead a century or a millennium before, there does remain one small, unassuming little token of hope. Not much really — just an action so simple and obvious that we overlook it time and time again.

What can we do to end this arguing about which way to sail and on what map? How can we tell where the reefs and channels really are? Dear God, is there nothing we can do to get an answer among all these authorities?

Well, there is something we can do. We can get up from the chartroom of theory, this dungeon of pointless debate and argumentation, and go upstairs and stand on the bridge. We can look at the world as it really is, and draw new maps as we go on.

When you use your common sense, your personal experience, over any of the so-called “social theories” being sold at fire sale prices, you are looking out the window and seeing whether or not the map matches the coastline. If it does not, then it doesn’t matter how credentialed or tenured or respected the cartographer is or was -– he is wrong. He says river delta; there sits a barrier reef. Wrong!

Next map!

It’s not a quick read but I think it’s satisfying and, more importantly, a challenging read. Head on over there, then come back and tell me what you think.

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