As on a darkling plain ...

Twenty lessons I've learned recently (there are more, many more, but 20 is a nice round number):

1. If you're a kid, don't try to climb a mountain. If you're a parent, you should be arrested if you permit your kids to try.

2. Ditto with sailing around the world.

3. In fact, don't try anything that will attract media attention. Standing out from the crowd shows that you're selfish, self-centered, and have too much time and money. Anyway, everyone knows you're just trying to get your 15 minutes of fame.

4. Don't get 15 minutes of fame. (Presumably, this admonition refers also to Nobel laureates for any accomplishment whose immediate advantage to the average person isn't immediately apparent to that average person.)

5. Soccer sucks. It's boring, it's un-American, we don't need it. The networks are trying to ram it down our throats, but we aren't buying it.

6. Soccer players are effeminate, despite the fact that the best athletes of most countries devote their athletic lives to playing the sport. "Q. What's the hardest part about playing soccer? A. Telling your folks you're gay." (Reader comment.)

6. Despite #5 and #6, above, Team USA is vastly superior to the wimpy soccer teams of all other countries.

7. The French and Italians are losers in every respect, and their failure in soccer this year is just more evidence of that fact.

8. FIFA should have its collective head examined for playing the World Cup games (in a sport which, as we already know, sucks and is effeminate) anywhere in Africa. Africa also sucks, is dirty and dangerous, and is full of primitive tribesmen. Vuvuzelas suck.

9. Light rail and mass transit are forms of European socialism. Democrats and elitists are trying to make us European. But we are American and we'll stay American. "I've never set foot on a light rail, and I never will." (Reader comment.)

10. Corollary to #9: Automobiles are American. Driving is American. Driving big cars is especially American. Any discouragement to the use of automobiles is un-American.

11. Ditto with guns.

12. Mexicans who in desperation flee Mexico and try to cross the border are common criminals. They shouldn't be surprised when U.S. border patrols shoot to kill. (But when Iranian border patrols arrest errant hikers, this action proves that Iranians are barbarians. Their barbarism is tempered only by the stupidity of hikers in general, and those hiking near Iran in particular.)

13. It follows that the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States are also common criminals. They should serve time and then be deported. All 11 million. The mere fact that an illegal immigrant has spent decades in the United States and has become a pillar of his community doesn't justify offering him amnesty.

14. If a child born in the U.S. (and thus a citizen) and being schooled in the U.S. has parents subject to deportation, that's just tough for him. We have orphanages -- or, better yet and cheaper for us, he can go back to Mexico, where he belongs, with his folks. (Also, see #16, infra.) If a kid born in Mexico was brought illegally as an infant to the U.S., speaks only English, got A's in high school, and is now attending an American university, he should be expelled from school and deported back to Mexico. The law's the law.

15. Fifteen year olds who have a record of assisting illegal immigration deserve to be shot.

16. The Fourteenth Amendment doesn't mean what it says. It was intended to refer only to black kids.

17. No one should object to being required to carry an internal passport. Doing so would assist the government in fighting illegal immigration. The ACLU sucks.

18. Kids who excel at an early age at music, dance, and other performing arts have been deprived of a well-rounded, normal childhood. Their parents have pushed them -- in order to win fame and fortune for themselves, or because they are living their pathetic lives through their children, or both. (See also truths about parents of young mountaineers and sailors, supra.) The freaky kids are to be pitied; the parents, censured.

19. President Obama is a Muslim, a socialist, an un-American cosmopolitan, a "sock monkey." He was born in Kenya, or maybe it was Indonesia; his Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake. He is ignorant; he's an Ivy League elitist. He has not served in the military and therefore does not have the background to be commander in chief; he's never had to make a buck and therefore does not understand economics. He thinks it's always "us Americans' fault." He apologizes. He bows to Emperors; he shakes hand with Chinese officials. He's not "one of us."

20. Shut up and keep your head down. The protruding nail gets hammered flat.

Yup, I've learned all this good stuff just from reading the comments to news stories on Yahoo, MSNBC and Fox News.

But the biggest lesson I've learned is this: The kind of folks who write these on-line comments have been around since George Washington's time. They've been sitting in front of the general store, leaning back in their chairs and sneering at every new idea, every new development, every new leader that has appeared throughout American history. These are the folks who called slavery a natural institution. They said you'd never be able to dig a canal through Panama or put a man on the moon (or would want to). They called Teddy Roosevelt "that damn cowboy." They laughed at the horseless carriage. They sneered at Wilson's Fourteen Points. They called FDR a "class traitor" and a dictator.

I could go on.

It's just that now they can mutter and sneer to a worldwide audience, thanks to the Internet. And I can live with that. Ignorant speech is best defeated by intelligent speech -- that's the conceptual basis of the First Amendment.

I'm hopeful that, in the end, the thoughts and ideas of wise and optimistic writers will overcome the prejudices and negativity of the sneerers in the "marketplace of ideas." I'm not absolutely certain that they will -- but if they don't, it means a defeat for our form of government, and for the men like Jefferson and Madison who gave us that government.

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(6-28-10) Percipient readers will have noted the disturbing presence of two #6's. So be it. I refuse to destroy one of my painstakingly crafted paragraphs simply keep the number of my "lessons" at a round 20. That's no more unethical than increasing your margins, so that your English paper will have the minimum five pages. And you know you all did it.