Piracy and Protests

I've been a fan of Richard Fernandez for a long time, since he wrote under the nom de plume Wretchard at the Belmont Club.  He now writes a regular column for PJMedia, and this week's offering is a good one.  In it, he talks about Tom Clancy who  recently died, and also about the Greenpeace pirates.  He ties together with the force that once held the reins to normalcy on the seas, the US Navy.

The price of stage protest is the “understanding”. The acceptance of the unstated limits imposed by those who don’t kid around. What many activists really do, though they may not comprehend it, though they may deny it, is to abet the very forces which left unchecked would destroy them.
Ironically the courage of Greenpeace is subsidized by the valor of those they detest. For the stage pirates can only go through their steps while the real pirates are at bay; and their right to prattle about fascism is only possible while the real fascists are kept at arm’s length by those they will never thank, whose existence they will never acknowledge.
Tom Clancy’s greatest contribution was to uncover the physical basis of our liberty, to sing the song of the rock that civilization ultimately stood on. And for a brief period of lucidity right around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it actually became cooler to captain an SSN than be Che Guevara. We’ve forgotten that now.

As they say on the internets, go read the whole thing.