I could only touch on a few points that arrested me in Whittle's essay, lest my reply be even longer than it already was.
Thank you for pointing to the Apple and AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] models: both are "self-organizing, open-source structures" that do not operate "top-down," but only "laterally."
And as both you and MHGinTN have pointed out, our very own FReeper Buckhead is a perfect illustration of this phenomenon. Although an "obscure" person on an "obscure" website, he personally blew up Dan Rather's chicanery WRT Dubya's actual military service. And by exposing Rather's perfidy to public view, probably led to his "early retirement." A perfect "David vs. Goliath" scenario.
Truth will ever out — especially when there are willing truth bearers like Buckhead.
Also I did not mention Whittle's profound insight, that public change must come BEFORE political change. Especially in a constitutional republic like ours. Culture precedes politics.
For as any student of Plato already knows, no State (polis) can ever be any "better" than the human capital that constitutes it. If the people are disordered, if they are devoid of virtue, then their government will be likewise — disordered, and lacking in virtue. And so, lacking in truthful law and thus justice — but vastly empowered from the very same cause that "disorders."
Whatever flaws that lie in the public culture cannot be corrected by the State. This will come as news to committed Left Progressives. Indeed, Left Progressives seem to believe that just by repeatedly invoking the "right magic words," social reality itself can be absolutely transformed: Rhetoric with them always trumps Reality.
They don't seem to realize how stubborn, how durable, Reality actually is. And so they end up trying to be the "tail that wags the dog."
Do we (and they) not understand that in the end the State itself is but a reflection of the culture, and not the other way around? That the State is but the condensation or concretization of whatever passes for public morals and thus — if the culture is barbarous — will be vicious towards its own?
0Bama plus pals Axelrod, Jarrett, et al., thrive on the vicious — and cultivate it as a matter of principle. The bottom line of "community organizing" is that it is a school of and for the cultivation of thuggery. The ends justify the means.
Cicero — and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and George Washington, et al. — were all keenly aware that there is one universal Truth of human nature, of states, and of Nature herself....
And that is why we rarely if ever hear about these great men in elite academe nowadays, not to mention in the taxpayer-funded public schools....
Whittle holds that virtue is "teachable." And desperately needs to be taught.
Anyhoot, the video runs nearly an hour and a half; I couldn't recommend it more, for FReeper reflection.... Oh, on that score, Whittle suggests that political parties and political battles are increasingly irrelevant. They constitute a status quo that only divides the people.
His conclusion: You can't fight city hall; so go around it: "Ignore the unvirtuous people, leave them alone." And remember that the government is NOT the same thing as the country We the People call the United States of America. Notwithstanding, all the while render under Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's.
As a "parallel-structure alternative," I'd say FreeRepublic is an excellent example: FR does not carry water for any political party. And so folks feel they are free to speak freely. We gain a great deal from a variety of perspectives offered by many FReepers. In this sense, FR itself is a "self-organizing, open-source structure" in Whittle's sense.
And Buckhead proved how essential that is, if Truth is to receive its just due.
Thanks so much for writing, dear brother in Christ! It's so good to hear from you.
Thanks for the ping, and thank you and joanie-f for a very elevated discussion, which has been quite a rarity on FR for a long, long time. It provokes nostalgia for the days when such was more common.
I’m not sure I accept Whittle’s argument, assuming I understand it correctly. The parallel structures he proposes already exist, and have existed from the beginning. They are the churches, private schools, and voluntary personal and civic associations that fill the interstices of community life. Toqueville wrote about them. They embody the virtuous citizenry working to make their communities better places. So I don’t see that as anything new, not in the slightest.
I’m not quite sure how the Rather episode fits into the argument either. I see it as symbolic of how communications technology is disrupting the old information oligarchy. That oligarchy arose because of the nature, cost and distribution of communications technology. It is being disrupted by radical changes in the nature, cost and distribution of communications technology. A grandiose but nevertheless suitable analogy is to the role of the printing press in the Reformation.
Yet despite that, the MSM and the destructive cultural avatars of Hollywood and the professoriat remain the dominant voices. They are diminished but not yet dead. An no rag tag collection of bloggers can overcome them.
But their trendlines are all negative. The New York Times Company and the Washington Post Company, and many other MSM old media companies are headed for oblivion, brought on by a technological revolution they cannot outrun. No one has figured out how they can remain profitable. It would be good if those trends could be hastened to their ultimate conclusion. Perhaps a corporate raider will buy them and sell their assets for salvage value.
Similarly, the world of higher education is riding an unsustainable bubble and will eventually collapse. There are a number of forces at work here, but once again, technology is disrupting an ossified information oligarchy. Go to iTune U and check out the instruction available at nominal cost. iTunes U may do to higher education what it has done to record labels. Anything that can hasten the collapse of the higher education bubble is devoutly to be wished.
These trends weaken the enemy, but they do not strengthen our allies, or teach virtue to the young or strengthen the ties that bind. These same technological trends undermine virtue through the distribution of pop culture barbarism.
The technology itself is neutral. Weakening the enemy is certainly part of the strategy, but they’ll never be finished off. The inculcation of virtue is a continuous struggle between the forces of good and not so good that will never end. Entropy is only staved off by work.