There are certain assumptions about the world that modern people take for granted, without thinking about in any detail. These assumptions are about how things ought to be arranged in a modern society. Things like the rule of law and freedom of speech are just assumed to be social positives. Deliberate violations of these liberal principles are a sign that a society is in trouble or corrupt. No one ever wonders why this is the case as it is just part of the shared reality of modern life.
You see this in this essay by Paul Gottfried, which is a response to Canadian historian Ricardo Duchesne, who has taken Gottfried to task for his defense of the old bourgeois liberalism of the past. It is a good essay on the general topic of liberalism and whether or not it is to blame for the current crisis, but of interest here is the assertion that things like religious inclusiveness, individual freedom, and constitutional government are in of themselves good things and signs of progress.
Gottfried does not spend any time arguing these points, as he just assumes them to be good things that a good society ought to seek. This is not peculiar to Gottfried, as most everyone assumes the same thing. Go around a public area in the West and ask people if they favor more or less freedom and they will always pick the former. The same is true for the rest of the principles we associate with liberalism. The moral framework of the West is just assumed to be right and reasonable.
Now, we do not wonder about gravity or the sun rising in the east and setting in the west because these are settled. Few people know why objects fall to the earth when dropped and even fewer know that they accelerate toward the earth at thirty-two feet per second squared, but they know about gravity. Like the sun rising in the east, gravity is a settled matter, so there is no need to debate it. The same is generally assumed about the basic principles of liberal democracy.
What would go unnoticed is the inclusion of religious tolerance in there with reasonable things like individual liberty. Most of the liberal project can be justified, as much as possible, by reason. We can make logical arguments in favor of a rights-based society and limited government. You can make a rational argument in favor of parliamentary rule over a king or dictator. The same cannot be said for religious tolerance, which is something taken for granted, but never examined.
Western societies are moral societies. Instead of being bound together by kinship or force, as we see with most of the world, what holds Western people into political entitles is a common morality. Sure, blood, soil and history play a big role, but every European pollical entity has included significant minority populations. At the dawn of the French Revolution, most people in France did not share the same language. They spoke various local dialects, and in some areas, deferent languages.
This is even more true today as the elites of the West preach open borders, pluralism, and democracy as the holy trinity. The only way this can work is if all the new people agree to the old moral code or the moral code is adjusted to accommodate the new people coming into these old societies. The new speech and thought laws are all about policing the new moral code which prohibits the old stock from thinking anything but happy thoughts about the newcomers.
This is the basis for pluralism. Anyone can be an American if they embrace the American creed, which is a secular way of saying they can be an American if they embrace the religion of Americanism. Vivek Ramaswamy and Ben Shapiro have based their lives on this assertion. They are just as American as the descendants of Quakers or 19th century German immigrants. They say this because they embrace the religion of America and therefore meet the moral criteria to be American.
The problem here should be obvious. If Americanism is the moral code of America and by extension the West in general, and it insists on a general universality, then there can be no tolerance for alterative moral codes. Not only can American liberalism not tolerate alternative moral codes internally, but it must be intolerant of alternative moral codes external to the West. If you want to know why the West has waged war on Islam and now Eurasia, there is the answer.
The reason that Western societies now function like secular theocracies is liberalism has evolved into a religion. It has crowded out Christianity from the public square because no society can have more than one moral framework. Just as science replaced religious explanations for the natural world, liberalism has displaced the explicitly supernatural basis for societal morality with an esoteric moral code based vaguely on things like equality and openness.
What this means is that the assumption that religious tolerance is a liberal principle or could ever have been a liberal principle is false. The opposite is true. Liberalism must drive out or suppress any alternative moral framework, because it is the moral framework that evolved to replace the old moral order. That means it is not just intolerant or Christianity, but any morale framework that places itself above the morality of the liberal order. Everything must submit to the liberal faith.
The question, of course, is why has the liberal project that started at the end of the Middle Ages evolved into something like a secular Gnosticism? Gottfried looks for things outside of liberalism, like Protestantism, while Duchesne looks for things within the liberal tradition like pluralism. In both cases and in most critiques of liberalism the assumption is there is a worm in the apple. The apple being the liberal project and the worm being some sort of corruption.
In reality, the problem may simply lie in the fact that you cannot have a moral order based on reason. Reason cannot be the authority for how people ought to treat one another or how government should be organized. Reason can only take us to the point where the people need to sort these issues for themselves, because the great diversity of man means there is no universally right answer to these questions. How we ought to act is up to us or our gods.
When the gods are removed and tradition is discarded, something that must happen when all things are subjected to the acid wash of reason, there are no standards against which to measure moral claims. That leaves force as the determining factor, which means the moral order is decided by people who see it as their purpose to impose their sense of the moral order. Liberalism must end with a ruling class of secular clerics engaged in a never ending sermon.
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“If you want to know why the West has waged war on Islam and now Eurasia, there is the answer.”
I doubt that’s the case. This is the swill fed to the proles. If there was any truth to this, the West would have waged war on Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Islam, where religion and state prop up each other, and where this brand of fanatic and intolerant Islam is aggressively exported abroad.
Wars cost serious dosh. The wars of choice by the GAE over the last two decades have been resource grabs pure and simple, or equivalently, a dying empire trying to prop up its declining hegemony (but achieving just the opposite). A liberal facade shouldn’t hoodwink anyone.
Liberalism was fashion attire when times were good. But when things become a little dicey, a little problematic, people go back to family, clan, tribe, ethno-nationalism.
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In the case of Islam, there was a direct effort not to mention morality. There were a few hamfisted platitudes about “Islam is a religion of peace,” and so forth, but those were batted down in rather short order.
The attempts to cloak the Ukraine war as a protection of democracy have been so laughable that even the NPC drones have a hard time with it.
As you point out, it was all about theft and empire.
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If the many wars of choice were about resources, we would have more resources and the wars would have been conducted in a much different way. For example, Afghanistan has the world’s largest lithium deposits. The GAE did nothing to secure them, going so far as to give the exploitation rights to China. If it was about oil and gas in Iraq, the logical path would have been to make a deal with Saddam or find a suitable replacement strongman.
I have argued that the Bush wars against the Muslims were about the neocon vision for the world and their bloodlust for Russia, but the general liberal vision also played a part. Fukuyama remains a saint among liberals, despite being totally wrong and an all around nutter. That is because he confirms the liberal vision of the future.
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“If the many wars of choice were about resources, we would have more resources and the wars would have been conducted in a much different way. ”
The key there is “we,” no? Those wars resulted in vast wealth for “them.” One of the many reasons for the elite rage against Trump was his suggestion that the oil in Iraq, for example, should have been seized for the common weal. Those wars were prosecuted to enrich a few at the expense of the many, including “us.” While Covid gives it a strong run, the greatest wealth transfer this nation experienced were the wars of choice, some ongoing, that enriched the ruling class and their helpers and ho’s at the expense of the public. It was a top-down redistribution without parallel.
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eta: Extraction of oil, gas, lithium and so forth were overshadowed by the MIC’s looting and the subsequent rebuilding projects that were at least planned. We got a glimpse of this when Larry Fink and Blackrock surveyed Ukraine for post-war reconstruction projects following on from the military-related largesse. While it was quickly memoryholed, when Zelensky came to the States the first time, he was taken on a literal shopping trip to see what arms manufacturers had on offer. And a reasonable assumption is that, say, China’s extraction of the previously mentioned lithium did accrue to the benefit of the same people albeit in a more subtle way than outright seizure.
The GAE missed a key takeaway from previous empires: to keep the masses happy, some crumbs have to be thrown their way. The British also fell short on this account compared to previous empires.
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Hunger begets a work ethic because the alternative is starvation. Similarly, prolonged affluence begets laziness because abundance solves the hunger problem nearly effortlessly. And at the scale of nations, the latter requires exploitation of weak neighbors in order to keep the plates spinning. Hence the GAE’s desire to control the planet and remain dominant. All the highfalutin BS about democracy and freedom is just Soma to keep the plebs distracted and compliant. We are not going to talk our way out of this dilemma.
Klaus Schwab and his ilk are few in number but highly effective at running things from the shadows. “You will own nothing and like it.” You cannot beat this evil with a strong debating performance. If that were true, you could talk your way out of Stage 4 cancer. But reality is harsh mistress. Ukraine is the GAE’s bitch and Putin is showing us how to beat those assholes. Take note.
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The abandonment of Christian morality and tradition has been a disaster for the west. Virtually everything that has been known and understood about the natural world and our relation to it over the centuries by western man has been turned on its head and replaced. Sure, a lot of it was faith based, but is that necessarily worse than what we call “science” these days? Now everybody must recognize that homosexual marriage and the melding of unequal people across the globe is the only way for humanity to carry forward into the future – or else. Women are the same as men in all respects, blacks are the equal of Whites in all respects etc. – hey, we all bleed red. Despite the absolute fact that 99.9999999% all other species on the planet are either male or female and act accordingly, this does not apply to the human race – trust the “science” don’t you know…
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I think this is very related to the argument that Charles Haywood seems to be making that it all went south with the Enlightenment. The scientific revolution was so successful when it came to predicting the behavior of the material world that it became to be mistakenly thought that the same methods could be applied to questions of religion and politics and economics. But there is no set of mathematical axioms you can write down about government for example that lead to a sequence of mathematical manipulations that predict the best government is X. What always ends up happening is that the people who are claming to use the so-call “scientific method” in addressing these societal questions just end up claiming that their own prior prejudices have been proven true.
And to make matters worse – as we see all the time today – the people most likely to push the use of “reason” in deciding social issues don’t have the understanding of science or mathematics to even know if it can be applied to religious and political questions. There’s an old story about Euler and Voltaire of all people – possibly apocryphal but they did interact regularly. Voltaire was a flaming athiest who liked to claim that reason proved God didn’t exist. Euler was a fairly devout Christian. At some point the story goes that Euler told Voltaire that he claimed God didn’t exist, but God is proven to exist because of – and Euler just spouted some kind of mathematical gibberish. Voltaire had no comeback because he didn’t even have enough understanding of science to know that Euler was spouting pure gibberish. That’s the problem that has plagued the so-called use of “reason” ever since. The people who are claiming to use it actually have no real understanding of it.
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“That’s the problem that has plagued the so-called use of “reason” ever since. The people who are claiming to use it actually have no real understanding of it.”
…and the people who would refute this absurdity also lack the understanding to do so, to tie that up.
Brilliant comment.
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Yes, hubris and complacency. It will destroy us all.
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I think it’s worse than you think. The Postmodernists now ascendant reject what you and I consider to be “reason” because its part of a system of thought imposed with force by old white guys. So therefore our notion of “reason” is invalid (the Marcuse/Foucault line of thought). And of course you’re correct that they cannot understand science or math anyway.
So it’s going to be simian poo-flinging hereafter. To them, Kamala Harris and the Harvard lady are just as valid as Kant and Euler.
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Z
I am usually on board with your stuff. However, this one seems to me to have a gaping logical error in your argument.
So, “How can an HONEST society/culture claim individual freedom not also religious tolerance.”
Thanks
Grumpy
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I think you’re missing it. The American code is absolutist and is expressed very well on all those We Believe signs these people put out front of their house. If you look at the bottom, you see the phrase, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Justice, in the American mind, is simply the Enlightenment concept of absolute freedom from constraint of any kind. Any moral code (religion) insisting that women ought to stay home or that men should not engage in anal sex with other men is therefore the enemy. Very straightforward.
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That’s what I tried to say. You cannot have individual freedom without accepting that others will have a different moral code (gays, transgenders, kill unwanted babies, yes I can try and influence your kids to cut off their body parts, etc), So, if you embrace the concept of individual freedom, others are entitled to their individual freedom, no matter how much you hate or disapprove of it.
That’s why we have arrived at a critical juncture in this culture. Which of these “truths” that are at odds with each other will win out?
I have no idea, but it will be interesting to watch. Bread and circuses. Send in the clowns. 😉
Grumpy
“In reality, the problem may simply lie in the fact that you cannot have a moral order based on reason.”
This is a brilliant hypothesis but it ultimately is wrong. The bottom line is there is no moral code, only the projection of force to attain outcomes. You allude to this somewhat. If there were universal moral codes, they would not have to be imposed. This is the same reality as so-called “natural rights.” Mao was right. All power comes from the barrel of a gun. Along the same lines, all moral codes come from the barrel of a gun.
The Enlightenment gave us a framework that allowed a broad moral code with variations. It failed because ultimately it was still a moral code that has to be imposed. This is where we are as a people–mouthing lies about a phantasmic moral code at gunpoint. If that is to change, if it even can be changed, will require an intelligent embrace of Mao’s dictum, and a willingness to carry it out. The latter part would require harsher economic realities than we presently experience, and the former part an intelligence that has not manifested.
Fine piece, still.
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“…there are no standards against which to measure moral claims. That leaves force as the determining factor, which means the moral order is decided by people who see it as their purpose to impose…”
I’d say both Mr. Dobson and the Zman are in agreement, then.
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We essentially do agree, but even an irrational moral code has to be imposed. Reason is irrelevant.
As mom/ dad/ husband/ boss / priest/ tribe / nation ultimately end up replyng to the question of “Why?”: because I said so.
Unfortunately, all American’s (except slave descendents) at a genetic level, replied to the “obey, because I said so” with a “f-you: I’m leaving”.
Our government schools stink: f-you, I’m leaving.
Join the legions: f-you, I’m leaving.
Vote for the turd sandwich/ giant douche: f-you, I’m leaving.
Take the jab: f-you, I’m leaving.
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Mow Knowname: Unfortunately, not anywhere near ‘all’ American citizens said “f**k you.” I totally discount all the magic paper people and alien imports of whatever era. A regrettably large portion of White Americans are fully on-board with government schools, government mandates, and particularly government funding.
They don’t want to be left alone, they want to be taken care of. To be told what to do. To have all of life’s risks ameliorated. To ensure some mythical ‘fairness.’ And they want to take your labor and money to do so – most ‘murricans innately agree with Marx’s dictum “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
This is not due to a specifically American weakness, but a human one. The weaker or dumber or bossy or envious man always wants to raise himself up by tearing someone else down. The Levellers were a symptom of a universal instinct.
Jack, you’ve helped me understand the moral logic behind “…you cannot have a moral order based on reason. Reason cannot be the authority for how people ought to treat one another…”
I say this because I see religion as the science of the times, an attempt to reason out the “why” of how things work, of the order of the world.
Was that reasoning an explanation of the moral order or of the physical order? Only in the White West were both considered, and at the same time.
Enlightenment gnosticism is the latest attempt; even the archaics such as Egyptian and Persian had an order of the gods, and of Nature.
Outside of the Aryan footstep the origination question is not asked. I say that is because of the physical reality; the nonwhite nervous systems could not hear what we hear.
Thus I must agree with “How we ought to act is up to us or our gods.” You cannot teach a dog to read. I submit that the Left are a reversion to the pre-White wiring, that is, before “reason”, and must be left to their own wild territories.
That is, admittedly, as hard or harder than pushing out foreign invaders. I would start by pushing out foreign influences that are themselves a reversion to pre-White wiring. Those who open the gates, in other words.
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Quite sharp. The Duchesne piece Z linked made the claim all Europeans, leftists and non, are hardwired to reason in a manner that leads to their own destruction, so while pushing out the foreign influence (and leftists, for that matter) is both desirable and necessary, it is not a silver bullet. I haven’t read Kevin MacDonald’s latest but my perception is that he makes a similar claim.
{Oops. Those who open the gates of Toledo, not of Heaven. They don’t have a Heaven; such a concept did not exist outside of the Aryan footstep, simply because they couldn’t hear it.
Considering what lays beyond the greenhouse wall was inconceivable to them because it wasn’t a part of their physical reality. Their moral order did not consider ascension.
Thus, any afterlife, to the nonwhites, will only be power in this world. Evem our own who attempt to seize the strongest magic are merely seeking power, in this world. I reject their recruiting.}
Thank you again, Jack, I must read the linked pieces. I’d say Duchesne is correct; since we assume others hear what we hear, that is, are wired as we are, we assume all races are equal.
The philosophers have not worked out the arisal of reverted or disfunctional sub-clades and branches, since and leaving them unable to work out the reason race- and bodies!- exist in the first place. {As part of a larger ecology, one beyond the material.}
I hate using the words “liberal” or “progressive” for Leftists. Those are there words of self-flattery. They are dippy fools, traitors, tyrants, and hypocrites. Always were. When it seemed Lefties were defeated in the ’80s, the Normie GrillerCons were magnanimous in supposed-victory and never intended to vanquish them; just bring them along with the “rising tide.” Meanwhile, Leftists want to KILL and HUMILIATE their political enemies the second they get power. You simply can’t live with these people and chalk it up as “freedom of speech.”
The only Leftism I respect is old school economic nationalist Leftism which correctly recognizes that a capitalist/free market society has to be controlled to some degree lest billionaires take all the profits and the power for their own ends at the expense of the people; which they do and are.
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Those GrillerCons believed in the same liberal principles as their enemies. Let’s face it, the project of the Enlightenment was to dissolve all bonds between people: any bond not freely chosen from moment to moment cannot hold.
Those Grillers could no more will the destruction of the Left than they could will themselves destroyed: these people all believe the same thing.
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Excellent, fakeemail; the Leftists and the Kapitalists are both a tragedy of the social commons.
“economic nationalist” is such a perfect phrasing.
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There is a long line of conservatives against capitalism on economic and moral grounds. John Calhoun, Theodore Roosevelt, Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Patrick J. Buchanan.
If u want a country or a people, u must have some form of economic protectionism.
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Bingo. The Lefties and the GrillerCons both fetishized GDP, so we can rejoice in deficit spending, welfare state, immigration and permanent warfare because it “grows the economy”.
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These excellent essays from Gottfried and Duchesne plumb the depths of past thought, hoping vainly to find direction into the future. Our host, always the pragmatist, breaks the intellectual deadlock by saying: “That leaves force as the determining factor”.
But for me, Duchesne really hits paydirt when he asserts that “The West has no choice but to find an alternative ideology”. Zman is correctly and constantly chiding certain folks for having “negative identities”. But of course this applies to Dissidents too!
We know for sure what we don’t want, because we’re getting it now. But what do we want? Force might end what we don’t like, but it won’t build a foundation for a new order. This can only come from a positive vision of the future.
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It recalls the old anti-feminist cartoon of a bunch of women chanting: “What do we want? We don’t know. When do we want it? Now!”
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We want an authoritarian government that will suppress non-Christian faiths (in particular Judaism) and disenfranchise those groups who ought to be disenfranchised. We want war against any who proclaim principles of the Enlightenment; we want hierarchy.
Pretty simple, really.
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Is this a Positive or Negative manifesto?
@Captain –
It’s a list of things that we want, defining ourselves for who we are. Can’t see it as anything but positive.
btp: Personally, I don’t want war with any other polity, regardless of its principles or religion, as long as it leaves my polity the hell alone. Let the Musselman be himself and order his society as he wishes. If the Australians truly want to be a disarmed and controlled populace, that is their business. I would have issues with Canada becoming hindoo, simply because it’s next door and we have a porous border.
As a Christian, I don’t want to see temples to other alien faiths on our land (like the hindoo monstrosity that has been constructed in New Jersey), but neither do I want to anathematize Whites who are agnostics or self-proclaimed pagans. We don’t have to agree 100% on religious belief or economic minutiae. What we must agree on, however, is identity and boundaries.
Limits. Who is part of “us” and who is not. What behavior is acceptable and what is beyond the pale. Who can and should have a say and in what matter. All of that falls back on identity and responsibility, rather than bogus and ephemeral ‘rights.’ Hierarchy, racial identity, and personal agency and responsibility. The rest can be worked out amongst men of one’s own kind.
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@3g4me – I don’t know that there is any living with pagans & atheists. Maybe, but better men than I have decided otherwise – Charlemagne, for example, who finally decided he’d had enough of Saxon shenanigans and forced them to convert.
And then, there are many ways to suppress these other faiths, with more or less gusto. So, maybe you can be a pagan, but you can’t serve in government. Maybe you can live as a Jew, unmolested, but you can’t be a teacher or work in media or finance and you can’t own property and can’t marry a Christian.
But this sort of prudence is only possible with some sort of monarchy – probably one that must be elected every generation by local nobles.
Also, as I read Duchesne’s piece, he inadvertently implies it may be too late for the West to find a new ideology because the resultant atomization has led to a predictable cultural collapse. If I understand him correctly, he further thinks European peoples are hardwired for that very outcome and it is unavoidable. So even if a new ideology could be found and implemented, would it not end the same way? It is sort of “you need a new ideology, even though it may be too late, and expect the same outcome.”
Duchesne does make me want to read Dugin, who I probably have wrongly dismissed as a crank, because the quoted call for a return to traditionalism makes infinite sense.
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Yeah Jack, that was my take on Duchesne also. (I will skip Dugin though.) Getting all the cultural toothpaste back into a manageable tube is going to be very hard.
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One of the things that conservatives of all stripes—which means dissidents, too—will find it difficult to understand or admit, is that, in the presence of a material abundance, Progressive ideas really do result in increasing levels of prosperity and social peace.
That is because, like an insurance policy, they help to defray risk. We’ve heard it said time and again that liberalism is about morality; it’s not, it’s actually about indemnity. Pensions for senior citizens indemnify against the declining health and poverty in old age; other types of welfare indemnify against catastrophic accident, job loss, and general poverty; law enforcement indemnifies against the loss of life and property by providing a strong disincentive to casual crime, so on and so forth.
Without this ability to spread risk, it is not possible to develop complex modern societies. That is why modernity and liberalism go hand in hand. You just can’t go beyond a certain level without vast amounts of finance capital and the highly fluid capital markets that manage it, and at bottom that’s what all these Progressive schemes are—financial markets for ensuring social peace. Without that, you might be able to rise to the level of something like renaissance Italy, which was full of art and science and every kind of good thing, but on a rather small scale.
What I don’t see are very many Traditionalists other than myself who are willing to bite the bullet and honestly admit that doing away with Progressivism means doing away with a lot of modern convenience as well. But actually thinking about that, and having a plan for managing it, is the necessary virtue of the politicians of tomorrow.
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I think for traditionalists, this is a given. They accept the trade-off as part of the core assumptions about how society ought to be ordered. It is why their iconography is not littered with modern gadgets or conveniences. Then you have the myth of progress that lies at the heart of the material arguments in favor of liberalism. Is life better now that billions are networked via the latest Apple smartphone? All the ways we measure the health of a species say no, human life is not better.
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Amen..and the gadgets will erode what actually makes life good, which is love, family, and community…
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Prosperity for sure, as Weber and other thinkers have noted in the past.
Social peace, I’m not so sure. It could be argued that we have more social tension with Progressivism. It could also be argued that minor social tension with Progress is better than major upheavals with Traditionalism (sort of the Taleb “anti-fragile” argument).
But your overall point is excellent and that’s why we have to think deeply about the intellectual foundations for the next phase.
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It seems like whatever moral code a society embraces, that society begins to fall apart when a critical mass of its’ subjects no longer have faith in that moral code.
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The problem is not that we have fallen from our principles, it is that our principles were in error.
It might help to read through the history of the Maryland colony – founded as a place where Catholic Englishmen might go after having experienced a very long sequences of losses in the old country. One thing we were taught in the MD schools is that the colony had the very first declaration of religious tolerance in America. Yay!
We were not taught that the Puritans, having been expelled from Virginia – which did not have religious freedom – landed near Annapolis and promptly outlawed Catholic practice. There were literally two little wars fought to expel those intolerant Puritans from Maryland so that free exercise of religion could be re-established. Yay!
A few years later, there was a Protestant revolution, which banned Catholic practice until after the Revolution. Sad and intolerant!
Point is, you can’t have tolerance of contradictory moral codes. There is always an established religion.
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Amazingly, there was only one Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence – Charles Carroll of Maryland.
You make a great point – one group has always struggling to be on top in the US and it’s going to continue.
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If you don’t have a State religion, you will have a State religion imposed on you by people who hate you…
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why has the liberal project that started at the end of the Middle Ages evolved into something like a secular Gnosticism?
Sin.
Your phrase “secular Gnosticism” is excellent. Gnostics are sinners, of course, and materialism and hedonism are also part of the package we see in the West.
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Imagine claiming to have a society based on reason and then letting women vote on how it is run. Even 18 year old ones. Ha ha, no, seriously.
But to be fair, I don’t recall that it was ever claimed that “reason” was our guiding principle. I’m old enough to have taken civics in school and nobody said a word about reason that I can remember, at least not in the context of being a guiding principle of liberal democracy. I do remember something about liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I’m sure I read that somewhere.
And we are getting exactly that. Or at least certain forms of it which have been defined as acceptable.
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The question of morality, of what is right and what is wrong, cannot be adequately examined without acknowledging the existence of evil. If there is one thing I have come to accept in my 60 odd years in this life, it is that evil is real, is manifest, and like life itself seeks to expand and fill all available niches. Whether it is mindless like DNA propagating itself across the environment, or is wielded by Beelzebub himself from the seventh level of Hell is immaterial. It exists.
As has been stated before in different ways, if all men were angels any political, religious, or economic system would work just fine to order the peaceful lives of mankind. But one bad apple spoils the barrel, so we can come up with any combination of these societal rules but they will always be subverted by evil, usually sooner than later. The only reality is the struggle against evil. The struggle is both external with the sword or pen, and internal against the devil inside.
Why this is I have no idea. I’m also not sure whether this is unique to humans and/or intelligence (can a lion or virus be evil?), or whether evil is part of the very fabric of reality. Perhaps it is the struggle itself which allows for growth and understanding, perhaps it is simply chaos. Guess I should read more philosophy.
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“The question of morality, of what is right and what is wrong, cannot be adequately examined without acknowledging the existence of evil. If there is one thing I have come to accept in my 60 odd years in this life, it is that evil is real, is manifest, and like life itself seeks to expand and fill all available niches. Whether it is mindless like DNA propagating itself across the environment, or is wielded by Beelzebub himself from the seventh level of Hell is immaterial. It exists.”
Exactly. Thanks. You have brilliantly summed up the same place I have landed at the last reel of my life. I don’t know if there is a God, but I know damned well there is actual, literal evil.
4
There’s been a flurry of commentary lately from people like Hillary Clinton talking about “deprogramming” MAGA people. This has happened before, but it’s interesting that the vast majority of MAGA people don’t question the holy trinity of democracy, plurality and tolerance of liberalism, they are merely a different denomination, the way a Lutheran would be different from a Methodist. A dissident would drive by both churches and roll his eyes. The real emergency (for the churched) will be when the pews of both churches are empty.
As a side note, religion just incorporates and codifies the values of the state while claiming that these values were always part of that religion. If they don’t, well, David Koresh would have had an opinion on that. This leaves Islam as an outlier. What to do with it? The inherent cowardice of the liberal prevents direct confrontation.
6
” liberalism has displaced the explicitly supernatural basis for societal morality with an esoteric moral code based vaguely on things like equality and openness.”
Given the frequency of headlines like “We Must Work to Eliminate Whiteness, by which they mean White people, ” and university course with names quite similar the above simply cannot be true. Liberalism is the assisted suicide of the European peoples where the foreigner is upheld as the new standard to which we aspire.
Mr Gottfried ignores this and promotes this alleged openness and equlity of liberalism because even the most astute observers cannot see past that which is self-serving. Openness and religious “tolerance” are what enables him to present himself as a Western intellectual, of the right no-less.
7
When you understand that the existence of Whites is, itself, a repudiation of the concept that all men are equal, you will understand how this all fits together.
Many people still labor under this idea that the American ideals are good, the Enlightenment was good, the open society is good, etc. So they think the hatred of Whites is somehow a contradiction of these good ideas of equality and freedom and all that. That view is the meta-expression of the, “Democrats are the real racists,” meme.
3
Also why they won’t leave the Japanese alone lately in harping on them to fling open their borders. After all “your people are aging. GDP Growth.”