Forgetting How To Keep A Republic Gives You Aftyn Behn
My essay posted yesterday (titled on Substack as: The Republic at 250: A Crisis of Civic Memory – America’s fading understanding of constitutional liberty) is opening the door to rival ideologies eager to fill the void) seems to have struck a chord with people – thank you all.
I was asked what physical manifestation would come from forgetting what it takes for the care and maintenance of our constitutional republic and the best answer I can give is playing out in the special election in the 7th District of Tennessee (Nashville).
Democrat Aftyn Behn is the personification of that neglect. She hates the people of the district she wants to represent, she is a lunatic who doesn’t hate her white skin – but she sure hates yours, she is an intellectual lightweight, a BLM supporter, a “defund the police” devotee, and everything you would imagine a 36 year old AWFL suburban wine mom to be – except she isn’t a mom at all.
Her bio says she is a “American social worker, community organizer, and politician.” Public records, including her Wikipedia biography and financial disclosures via LegiStorm, list no spouse or dependents. In a resurfaced 2020 podcast clip, Behn discussed recurring dreams where she declares, “I don’t want children, I want power,” and noted her mother’s advice against having kids due to professional sacrifices. She also critiqued marriage and motherhood as products of “deeply patriarchal structures,” which aligns with her personal choice not to pursue them.
But she did complete a a practicum in Switzerland at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, so there is that.
Behn has been called “the AOC of Tennessee”, and that rings true because she comes from the mold of the “democratic socialists” that are being produced in quantity these days. Like Sandy Cortez, Behn claims to be “working class” – but in 2008, she graduated from the $27,000 a year Webb School, a private K-12 prep school in Knoxville.
And yet, in a historically bright red district that includes the shrines of American country music, in central Tennessee for God’s sake, she is dangerously close to getting elected.
Civic forgetfulness is a double sided sword, it cuts both ways. While Aftyn Behn is a villain straight from central casting, a left wing lunatic with zero understanding or respect for America, Tennessee, Nashville or the people therein, if Republicans don’t do the minimum by showing up to vote – which is the physical representation of the work necessary to keep these leftist destroyers out of office – Behn will win and their ideology will get a foothold.
It’s not enough to love and understand liberty, you have to get off your ass and do something about it – because the Aftyn Behn’s of the world and their backers sure are doing something.
My point is simple – empty vessels can be filled with anything. If they are already full, they can’t be.
