What happened to parades is what happened to America

A reader writes to The Thinking Housewife:

Your views of our culture, and of traditionalism in general, are simply arresting. You wrote:

“A parade was once for honoring or commemorating heroes. Now parades are for freaks, misfits, sluts and monsters. It must be overwhelming for children.”

I had never realized this myself. I am young, so the parades of today are all I know. But the truth of this is abundantly clear. Reading your site makes one realize that the West of today is bizarre, and our extremist corner is a sanctuary of sanity. When I see sentiments like this, it suddenly dawns on me that, save the traditionalists, no one else, no one mainstream, is giving them voice. That is frightening.

Laura Wood’s remark makes me realize something I hadn’t thought about before. It reminds of the joy and exultation I felt on a couple of occasions in my youth marching in parades. A parade is a ritualized expression of the consciousness that life is good, that we are a part of it, and that we are participating together in it, which lifts us up into a collectively shared joy. And parades today seem mostly about promoting freakdom and anti-life.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2011 03:12 PM | Send