The Paradox of Principles
That principles should essentially be paradoxical is sufficiently proven with the fact that, while the pursuit of their defence is elemental to the very existence of civilization, dogmatic adherence to those very principles can undermine the existence of that very civilization.
The defence of high principles must never forsake the awareness that some peoples do not agree with those principles; nay, are even clinically hostile to them. While the loss of such awareness on part of the left has long ceased to surprise the lay observer, that such loss must sully the right-leaning forces is infuriating. And such right-leaning forces, it would seem, invariably happen to be libertarian in character.
Perhaps to the novitiate, libertarianism is a richly green country under the sunrise of bliss, awash with the cool zephyr of love, where in dappled shadows play their child brethren with overflowing kindness, and where snow from the mountains of wisdom melts to replenish the rivers of amity, along with the mellifluent rains of joy. To these children, the very thought of someone possibly being so evil as to desire their annihilation is blasphemy. To them, the wary elders are naught short of chauvinists.
Little would a reasonable being desire more ardently than the realization of libertarian principles, if only a few of them, so rational and so innately fulfilling as they are. In that quest, however, one must not be disposed to be wholly sundered from reality. Those imploring a wholesale import of refugees from Afghanistan have, regrettably, elected to be ensorcelled by idealism. They do not discern that Afghanistan is fundamentally feudal, divided into fiefs; where even the most retrograde elements of Islam hold too potent an allure for our comfort. Their wholesale import will, doubtless, imperil our national security.
If history is to impart its precepts, the allure to the most retrograde elements of a religion the very premise of which is a borderless brotherhood exclusively for its faithfuls, is inimical to nationalism. The Khilafat movement and the sanguinary Partition bear out this unimpeachable fact. However, it is classically Indian to never learn from history, to stigmatize the truth in a violent insult to his national motto, and to perennially blame a third force for all of his country’s social fissures and never introspect what antediluvian force lies within the territory of his homeland, rendering laborious its march to progress. The Indian state is no epitome of efficient law enforcement; a duty, which while basic, is nonetheless an uphill battle. Quite forthrightly, we cannot afford to house a horde of potential militants. Our Vasudha is only genetically and not socioculturally a Kutumbakam.
