Liberty Yell

It is the night of the 2016 Republican caucus in Nevada, where an exhausted political party has put down a tall stack of chips and rolled snake eyes.

God knows, we need at least one hero to rescue us. And, if you look at the current crop of television shows and movies, you will see an abundance of heroes.

In fact, heroes and world-destroying disasters are both at the center of today's zeitgeist. Eternal salvation and damnation are both on offer, though salvation appears to be fighting an uphill battle.

One more major terrorist attack, and we will be faced with an ongoing violation of the concept and practice of freedom.

Leadership requires thought.

The obvious response, the knee-jerk reaction to the events in Paris, would be to attack the perpetrators. Their hideous violence should be met with more of the same, and this is what has already happened. France and the U.S. have attacked the supposed capital of the Islamic State, Raqaa in Syria.

And now our humanity will be tested.

Millions of refugees have fled from Syria. Many more people have, sensibly, left their homes in the Middle East, Africa and around the world rather than die from hunger, disease and violence.

We are part of a grand project: The direction in which humanity will travel as we put one foot in front of the other. Thus far, apart from a few stray sheep, we have organized our movement in the same way: Humanity operates as part of an elitist system in which power is concentrated in the hands of royalty and wealth, or both.

Be a witness and look at the front page and page eight of yesterday’s New York Times. You will see the corpses of men, women and children killed in a chemical attack in Syria. A chemical attack is what the evidence points to, and it is still being determined who committed this mass murder. The chief suspect is the Syrian dictator.

As we engage in our many ridiculous arguments about abortion, gun control and any of the other cultural differences out of which “We the People” manufacture our various opinions, we should at least realize that we are fiddling while Rome burns.

Francis Fukuyama almost had it right: It isn’t “the end of history,” but it is the end of history as we have always thought about it.

America, America, America. It is a bell ringing. It is a city covered in the smoke and ashes of its own dubious prosperity. It is a homeless man sleeping on the steps of a church whose doors are locked against him. It is the Supreme Court of the United States voting to allow capital punishment of the mentally retarded. It is people wrapping themselves in a flag that loses all meaning once it becomes a sandwich board advertising patriotism.