Rebel: Opposing or taking arms against a government or ruler.
–Merriam-Webster Dictionary
What is a rebel today? It's hard to even say, because those who fancy themselves "rebels" all look alike. The title "rebel" has become sexy today, so even those who have no beef to pick with the big government like to think they are somehow rebelling. Government has grown so large and powerful under the Obama administration that people feel like numbers, and most don't even stop to think why they feel like numbers. So they go to desperate measures to stand out.
But standing out isn't as easy as it used to be.
Who really stands out today?
TRENDING: To DEI for
It used to be that the flower children were the rebels. But then when the peace and love they were fighting for became mockery, they fizzled.
John Stuart Mill pretty well put the pot-smoking beatniks in their place when he said, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
If Mill's words didn't teach them, life did. All the pot smoking took its toll, and even today, it is obvious when you see someone on the street who had just a little too much "flower child" time in the '70s.
Today some teenagers try so hard to look like '70s grifters and pot heads that they all begin to look alike. At some point, massive efforts to make a statement become conformity, not rebellion.
Isaiah Hankel is a regular guest on my show, "Smart Life with Dr. Gina." He says "fitting in is like being in a swarm. And swarms don't think. They can only react."
In fact, he cites statistics that say that herd mentality actually uses very low levels of cognition. Fitting in, Hankel contends, actually uses very low levels of cognition. Herd mentality puts you in the middle of a large, dull blob that can only react to its environment.
This is counter to how the mind might naturally deduce the power of groups.
You might think that "fitting in" with a large group of really smart guys might correct the swarm or herd mentality. But studies on leadership and decision-making found that adding more intelligent people to a group does not help the group achieve its goals any faster. For example, a group of 200 people will perform the same, whether 10 or 100 of them are intelligent, according to IsaiahHankel.com.
If that is true, then the smart guys are all in small groups.
And if that's true, Billy Idol was right!
G.K. Chesterton said it is only a "very shallow critic who cannot see the eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative."
At some point, tattoos and dyed hair were rebellious. Not the case anymore. Now most conservatives I know have tattoos in opposition to the tyranny spreading across America. About 90% of my friends, and even I, have tattoos that express the political and religious oppression they feel in some way. Most of my friends are in their 30's and early 40's, raising young children. They are God-fearing, government loathing, passionate patriots who are willing to sacrifice all for the Country they love. Not exactly the rebel profile of generations past.
Ultimately, the God-fearing conservatives are bucking convention. Convention has become going along with tyranny. So counter-culture has somehow become the new rebel conservative.
And consider this.
It was once, that big, shaggy beards were rebellious and meant you probably spent most of your time on a Harley, in leather. Today that has become so much of a trend that is must go in the dreaded conformity file. So much for swag.
To be a true rebel, you have to be fighting back against something or someone in power. The power today lies in the hands of the D.C. elites who want an ever-enslaved population, in an ever-more tyrannical, imperial centralized government. The only ones fighting that are, by definition, the rebels of today.
A friend of mine who is a radio talk-show host was recently attacked for saying he didn't think being gay was all that rebellious anymore. Rather, he sees it as conformity, somewhat of a cultural trend.
I sent this out to a close friend of mine who is gay and conservative. He said he agrees with what my talk-show host says. He said being gay is trendy, and conformist, and that the real rebel is the conservative. He said coming out of the closet as a conservative was much more difficult for him, because he knew that as a conservative, he would be marginalized and bullied and few would come to the rescue of the persecuted conservative.
Another friend of mine who is gay told me that when he is bullied, or persecuted, he can always pull "the gay card" and everyone comes to his defense. But when he publicly wrote that he opposed Obama, those same defenders attacked him, ridiculed him and even bullied and threatened him. These were all things that he says he never experienced in his coming out as gay, but only when he dared to be a conservative.
If you are a conservative, you are free game in an open field. They can call you a racist, homophobe, sexist, xenophobe, hater, bigot, you name it. And few will come to your rescue.
Don't believe me? Watch the attacks that ensue below in the comments, and in social media because I dared to write what the actual haters do. I know their game. They don't want to be exposed as the true bigots.
Still don't believe me?
Did you ever wonder why the same people who want to give government the power to subvert parental rights also often don't have children? While they claim they want to protect children from their parents, they also want those same parents to be able to kill them as babies (partial-birth abortion).
Their hypocrisy is showing.
Make no mistake, conservative. You are the rebel today. Wear it well.
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