Broadsword and the Beast

Dark sails on the horizon.

That’s what Ian Anderson sings about in his song, Broadsword – popular sometime in Spring 1982. It was the last tour for Jethro Tull in which they went out of their way to be theatrical, dressing up the entire stage as a pirate ship.

Interesting when you consider how pirates keep showing up. There are Somali pirates, then there are election pirates, there are terrorists who perhaps view themselves as pirates and there are government pirates – but more like the kind of looters Ayn Rand wrote about.

Don’t you wish for simpler times? I certainly do.

In an earlier age, the problems we are being beset with today would have been met with a completely different response. Instead, we are faced with the Political Correct nonsense in which it seems everything is backward and upside down. The careless, cackle like madmen watching with red-rimmed eyes from the curbs of the burning world. The witless run rampant.

Funny isn’t it, that Tull’s album cover for Broadsword would have been decorated around the edges with Cirth runes which were used by J.R.R. Tolkien in his masterpiece of good versus evil, “Lord of the Rings.”

It’s funny because of the good versus evil thing. Because while I don’t usually sign on to extreme views, I can’t help but note that we are facing an open assault on our entire way of life – an assault perpetrated by those in our own leadership. And while government functionaries and their minions may use condescension and derision, misdirection and propaganda in an effort to marginalize the growing anger and resistance to their plans, they are fighting on the wrong side. They are essentially, pirates on the black ship. And we all know what happens to pirates.

Looters meet forces, which can’t be frightened into submission. Pirates eventually meet the hard men who will protect the populace regardless of personal outcome – or they learn the truths of angry citizenry who have been pushed too far. Witness the ignoble end of Sadaam Hussein, the Bosnia elite, or even Mussolini, and so many others. The truth of angry citizenry is: Push far enough and they come for you and you are expelled from office.

They are breaking rules and bending truth to such an extent, I believe our current government will very soon reach the point where they can’t keep track of the lies they are speaking to attempt to placate the populace. But you have to understand, the crown jewels of their legislative attempts – the House Health Care Reform Bill passed in the House by a very thin margin. The vote was unbelievably close, even with a near “state-run” media in place, a huge propaganda machine (the National Endowment of the Arts) paid for, most unions on their side, payoffs to various power brokers and promised gifts to lawmakers. They nearly lost everything in a moment, even though they have control of the entire lawmaking process, huge nebulous groups like Acorn to run roughshod during elections and now greater control of the internet and other communications networks. And still this legislation can be stopped long before it has the chance to reach the President’s hands.

But why should it have even been close? The morons who created and voted for this package, shouldn’t have even been in the least bit worried. It shouldn’t have taken them months to get this mess through the House. With all this control, they should have simply danced through, laughing and skipping all the way.

The reason they didn’t, is because the populace is so dead-set against everything they are doing and that despite the “control,” they are struggling. Blogs like this one – and people like you, dear reader, are having an effect in marches, demonstrations, letters, public meetings and in so many other ways. Want to know whom the heroes are who are coming to save us? They are you – each of you, so long as you never give up, never give in and never surrender.

Yes, there is a dark sail on the horizon, but we are here waiting for it. You and I are standing at the roundhouse on the cliff and the enemy has been well-sighted. And he will not get through. We will meet him with unflagging resolve, and we will cut him down. The night and the sails are darkest just before the dawn, but when morning comes and the opposition is revealed for what they are, we will meet them with stronger hearts and stronger wills, and we will drink to their spirits, and our deeds will live on in songs and stories forever.

We have been marking time, staring at that sail, as if it is some kind of abyss, but I have seen into the Void before, and this is not it. All that sail represents is a hard fight coming – a battle in which the day will be filled with pain and hardship and fear, but which we shall not lose, because we stand shoulder to shoulder. And when your shield drops, mine will be the cover for both of us. When your sword arm fails, mine will cut for you.

We are brothers and sisters in the cause of the free and the just, and we will stand together and not be overcome.

Those Cirth Runes on the Tull cover art had a meaning in English. They read:

“I see a dark sail on the horizon, set under a black cloud that hides the sun. Bring me my broadsword and clear understanding. Bring me my cross of gold as a talisman.”

Yes, bring me my broadsword.