Giving our honor to the wind

A scorpion, which cannot swim, asks a frog to carry it across a river on the frog’s back. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung by the scorpion, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown.

The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature.”

Another fable features a scorpion and a turtle. However, in this instance, the turtle survives the scorpion’s sting thanks to its protective shell. The scorpion then informs the turtle that the sting was neither out of malice nor ingratitude, but merely an irresistible and indiscriminate urge to sting.

The turtle then delivers the following reflection: “Truly have the sages said that to cherish a base character is to give one’s honor to the wind, and to involve one’s own self in embarrassment.”

These fables teach timeless common sense values and insights, relative to human nature, all of which is lost on today’s woke progressives, the scorpions in this story, who have literally stung the minds of the young people raging against America. Examples abound.

Instead of emphasizing relationships based on mutual trust, respect, truth and honor with self-control — that is, genuine love — progressives have instead induced hedonistic and licentious instincts encouraging children to explore sexuality in the name of sexual freedom. The results? 

An entire generation of men addicted to pornography who can only relate to women as sex objects, and women who have had so many partners they have become incapable of bonding as they can no longer trust the man they are with. This is an utter disaster for the nuclear family construct, the building block of a stable society, leaving us at the mercy of a socially-alienated generation of nihilists, who believe in nothing and have no purpose in life, and narcissists, who are in love with themselves at all costs.        

Moreover, instead of teaching the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and that our strength lies in the goal of e pluribus unum, schools are teaching children, especially those of minority backgrounds, that they are victims of a political and economic system that is irredeemable. Hence, rather than inspiring hope for the future by inculcating time-honored successful traits, habits and values, educators and social justice warriors are instilling a sense of despair and bitterness induced with rage.  Why? 

In 1831, Alexis De Tocqueville sought to discover why the American revolution was a success compared to the extremely violent French Revolution. The difference? Our revolution sought, with God’s blessing, to preserve individual freedoms via self-governance ensured by limiting the powers of government. Conversely, the French became the victims of their own revolution, literally, as they sought equality by way of forced submission of their individual rights to mob rule based on secular human reason, which inevitably led to a dictatorship. 

The agenda progressives are promoting is eerily similar to that of France 200 years ago: the rejection of our political, economic, religious, and social order by any and all means. That is, the upheaval and tumult in America today is a revolution against American beliefs, values and traditions, which served to keep us alive and afloat all these years as a beacon of light and liberty. 

Hence, the efforts to defund, rather than defend, our institutions of law and order, deconstruct the nuclear family, and utterly reject our values and heritage, will relegate us to the fate of the gullible frog in the fable, doomed to drown, poisoned by secular humanism.

Andy Caldwell is the executive director of COLAB and the host of The Andy Caldwell Show weekdays from 3-5 p.m. on News-Press Radio AM 1290.