The Precariousness of the Shire: Peace Through Strength

Palmer Luckey, a young Silicon Valley startup impresario of Oculus Drift and defensetech giant Anduril fame, did an amazing interview with Mike Rowe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dejWbn_-gUQ. 

Palmer talks about being a massive nerd and fan of Tolkien of the Lord of Rings books. His description of Tolkien: 

“Tolkien was not someone who was pro-war by any means. The things he saw in World War I. He made that very clear. But he did believe in good and evil and he did believe in wars that needed to be fought. And he made very clear that those are the wars you need to focus on fighting.”

He pulled out a passage from CS Lewis that was incredibly apt: 

“Almost the central theme of the book is the contrast between the hobbits or the Shire and the appalling destiny to which some of them are called. The terrifying discovery that the humdrum happiness of the Shire, which they had taken for granted as something normal, is in reality a sort of local and temporary accident, that its existence depends on being protected by powers which the hobbits forget against powers which the hobbits dare not imagine.” 

This truly describes most Americans and especially our allies in Europe and Canada. Palmer goes on and it’s a long passage, but it perfectly sums up the challenge of most countries in the West right now.

 “They're being protected against powers that they forget, against forces they dare not imagine, and they forget that it is a local and temporary situation. And you look at the map of Middle Earth and you see where the Shire is. That's right. It's far behind lines. And so you have the men of Gondor basically holding the line, fighting every day.

It's more of the themes around universally what is good and what is evil. You can tease out his worldview to some degree. We take the times we live in and immediately juxtapose it to whatever the story is and it's not quite so simple, right?....But one of the interesting things that he does call out is how you have this human nature for the people who live far away from Mordor to basically not believe any of these things. They literally don't believe in this invasion. They don't believe that these monsters exist. 

Contrast that with the men who are living literally on the front lines of this conflict. They are the last line of defense for the entire kingdom of man and everyone who lives behind them. They don't have the luxury of wondering if these things are real. They don't have the luxury of thinking that maybe evil doesn't exist. They're confronting it every day.

And I think there's a very similar analog to our modern military. You'll talk to people who say, "Oh, well, you know, I don't think that anyone's truly evil." And I think that nobody deserves to die.

There are a lot of people who have been on the front lines of conflicts who don't have the luxury of that. Someone who's been who's looked evil in the eye can't pretend, well, I think it doesn't exist and really we shouldn't be killing anybody……

That's right. Because you're isolated. That's right. There's no isolationism in, you know, Hapsburg or the World War I Europe, right? You're like, sharing a border with everybody and the knives are out all of the time. Well, and I think too in World War II, we got a really good bit of immunity to these problems in that every family had someone who fought. I mean, almost without exception. The draft was so extensive and the number of volunteers was so broad. 

And so people understood that we were fighting for something that mattered, that we were fighting for allies who mattered, that we were fighting a just war against a real foe. And I think that as those people have died off, we now live in a country, I think it's less than a third of families in the US have a family member who is in the military. 

And you wonder what does that do to the character of a nation? And it becomes much easier for a whole family of people to become, you know, anti-military. Not anti-war. There's a difference between these things to become anti-military, right?

In their pursuit of being anti-war. And it's because they don't know anybody who's actually been part of it. They don't know anyone who's been part of that, at least not directly. Maybe they did in their past, but they forget. There's a lot of kids today who can't remember 9/11. Do you really think that they're going to be remembering the lessons of World War II or World War I?

This is why it's such an incredible quote where it talks about, you know, a sort of local and temporary accident, really describes the relative peace we've had since the end of World War II till now. It is a local and temporary accident that comes as a result of PAX Americana, this post World War II era.”

Unfortunately Pax Americana as we know it is over. CRINK being led by China is competitive, vicious and wily, knowing what levels to push so they don’t seem like a threat, winning over formerly strong stalwart Western allies like in Europe, Canada and New Zealand, who are run by either deluded, naive politicians or blatantly corrupt, power seeking sociopaths. It’s difficult to decide what is worse. 

But for all the rest of us, wake up. Look at the world and our situation with clearer eyes. Our way of life and values are precious and worth defending. But the enemy is already at the gates and we have disarmed ourselves due to our stupidity and blindness. Naivety and delusion leads to literal slavery and death. It’s not too late to reindustrialize, build our militaries and ourselves, and get smarter and stronger. Peace through strength.