Public Rhetoric Matters

I will speak of 'public rhetoric', and the need for it to be uncompromising. 

Public rhetoric means any spoken or written communication which the world at large is likely to overhear. That can include anything transmitted through the mass media, or anything posted on commonly accessible websites.

The politically pro-male community is both transmitting a body of ideas to potential recruits, and maintaining lines of communication amongst those already recruited. A great part of this transmission fits the description of public rhetoric, and since the world at large is apt to overhear such communication, it behooves us to have a care what we are saying.

Some would insist that our business is "apolitical", but that is only true if, by politics, you mean partisan politics or electoral politics as present history defines them. But if you define politics broadly, as of forces contending for power, then we are clearly in it up to our hatbands.

Very well: in politics, public rhetoric matters. That is a lesson fatal to ignore if you would make headway with anything political, and history provides countless examples of those who learned the hard way.

In the pro-male community, we find plenty of undisciplined spirits who think they can say whatever the hell they want, whenever they want, however they want. "Don't censor us!", they say. "Don't police our self-expression!"

Well I 've got a memo for them! We ALL police our self-expression, every day of our lives -- or at any rate, we do this if we mean to travel through life in one piece and get our way occasionally. And they must understand that politics is no different. If a group of people aims to get its political way, it must govern its political tongue no less than any of them alone would govern his individual tongue in the politics of everyday life.

Such is politics, and such is life.

I, individually, know how to govern my tongue according to the plan which I have formulated. What I say, or don't say, is always calculated with an endpoint in mind -- with an "eye on the prize". The effect is crafted with a purpose, known to me, many moves ahead -- I play chess, not checkers! I do as I do because I deem it for the best, and did I not so deem, I would do otherwise.

So I don't relish the political company of those who treat the weighty business of public rhetoric like they were belching out the window. I wish them joy in their self-expression, but I will stand apart from them because I don't want their self-expression to be taken for my own. If they don't know enough to police their public rhetoric for the sake of politics, I'll bear neither the burden of doing the job for them, nor the political cost of their failure to do it for themselves.

In politics, public rhetoric matters, and that's the facts, Jack!