Righteousness

BY MICHAEL REISIG –

You can’t watch the news today and not be assaulted by somebody’s righteous indignation. It’s as if our species was born with wrath and rage in its genetic code – ribbons of indignation and anger curling around and into our DNA, slowly strangling out common sense, kindness, and humility.

You can’t turn on the evening news without seeing someone venting viciously about something, or groups marching though the streets of some city waving signs and chanting their righteous indignation, and you can’t watch any one of the inane “social situation” television shows very long before their displeasure with their fellow man rises to the surface like a curdled cream.

I’m convinced that evil blossoms more from righteousness than any other source. Here’s the way to define your righteousness – is it in your interest? Or is it in the interest of your fellow men and women? It’s not about being constantly for or against something, it’s simply a standard you carry, quietly, without fanfare.

When we give the indignantly righteous enough space and time, we usually find them rising up, taking over, and eventually condoning and often participating in the very concepts they protested. And then you find them despising the righteousness in the eyes of their victims. Just look at history.

Political correctness is the illegitimate child of righteous indignation. We need to transcend the velvet viciousness of political correctness and seek human righteousness – there should never be anything political about morality, virtue, or achievement. Nor should there be any reward simply for color or race.  When everyone gets a trophy there are no winners.

Nor should righteousness ever be an excuse to wreak mayhem, but more often than not, it is. Every war that’s ever been fought was led by righteous people. The most dangerous men in the world are those so consumed with righteousness that the end justifies the means. I’m reminded of the quote by Socrates: “Wisdom may begin in wonder, however, it inevitability ends in righteousness.”

Today America faces enemies consumed with righteous indignation. The Mullahs around the world preach it daily from their mosques – rectitude and morality blended with subtle viciousness, served on a plate of revenge and reckoning. Over a thousand years of bitterness and hate have coalesced into a righteousness harder than a steel ball bearing and as entrenched as Nancy Pelosi’s opinions of rednecks and guns.

You can’t fawn on, flatter, or bootlick these people to make it go away. You can’t buy them, console them, or cajole them, and you sure as hell can’t appease them by giving them positions of power in your own government, as our present administration has done. You can only stand toe to toe with them and become just as unrelenting and mercenary, because their hatred does not allow them to understand anything else. And, sadly, in the process, you have to be equally righteous.

Our country is besieged from the inside by scads of righteous groups, each one decrying the treatment they’ve received, or the treatment they should have received, or the treatment they want to receive. And the more America gives, the more they want. We have a president who was elected on righteous indignation, and whose single-most goal is the attention to these righteous seekers of retribution, even at the expense of all those who have built and supported this nation, even if it means the collapse of the form of government this country has known for 300 years – because righteous indignation is music to his ears.

The problem is, the music he’s listening to is far more indignant than it is righteous.

The views and opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the ownership and staff of The Polk County Pulse. Michael Reisig is a freelance writer and published author whose works are reproduced throughout the globe.

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Jeri Pearson

Jeri is the News Director for Pulse Multi-Media and Editor of The Polk County Pulse. She has 10 years of experience in community focused journalism and has won multiple press association awards.

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