"The Essentials"

 

And now for something completely different –

I'm posting this in order to archive it in an at least semi-permanent way. It's an excerpt from a very long letter written by a student of philosophy and theology to a friend, with the stated goal of clarifying “the most fundamental principles”. He cautions that “since I wrote a very broad outline of everything, I must excuse myself for, as you say, 'being very concentrated while still very meager in its coverage of everything'”, and adds that “the prime aspects are nature, authority, and truth”.

“Also, as you read this, you will see how, in regard to the [Catholic] Church, I agree or apply to it an expression of Chesterton regarding things in general: that any that are worth doing are worth doing badly. If this holds true for homemade music, art, and cooking, how much more if the Church really is what it claims to be and is doing what it claims to do. Then one could claim it to be worth a multitude of human errors, sins, etc. on the part of the weak men who steward it, especially since without it all the men would be far worse and we'd be without its effects. Of course, one must believe in the Church to believe this...”

There follows brief discussion of things such as politics, centralization of power, multinational corporations, banks, economics, medicine, and globalization, as examples of what are called, in Thomistic terms, “The Accidentals”. The writer says “I want to back up and view the whole diseased situation in its historical precedents, and in principle.”

So, to get to the heart of the matter, here is the essay – and those who have read any of St. Thomas Aquinas will recognize some of the terminology and concepts. Overall, it's what I would call a “deep dive” into the fundamental issues of our time, and their historical, theological, and philosophical subtext.

To use a mixed metaphor – wade in, and take one bite at a time.

--------------- O ----------------

The Essentials, a.k.a. what I think might be part of the general problem:

So, where should I start? Well, you mentioned that you read Ayn Rand, who, as I’ve heard, is at least partially Aristotelian and, consequently, emphasizes the natures of things. (BTW, if I pull off this argument, I’m still not taking time to demonstrate each point because each one could be another letter [or a book].) Now, without going into deep philosophical descriptions, we can say that something has a unique nature if it is a coherent reality (whole) with a stable essential character that resists change regardless of accidental changes; although certain accidental changes accumulated can give rise to a substantial change that produces (or is) a radical transformation that creates either fusion, reconfiguration, or disintegration. [I’m assuming that so much of all this is old news for both of us, but I must run the basics through my head before the consequences.] [No desire to be “teachy” here.]

Now, the good for a given whole, from a sheep to a man, is what is necessary for its ideal fulfillment, i.e. of its end or purpose. Since without a proper end or purpose, the truth of a nature is an incoherent idea, since a nature’s configuration defines an end, without which everything goes, since nothing would have any basis for claiming natural or moral rights, i.e. the goods necessary for the fulfillment of a now non-existent end or purpose. Thus, the truth, or better, The True, is the nature of each and the whole of things as they are. The Good is the end of each and the whole of things. The Beautiful if the fittingly ordered state of each, several, and the whole of things. The subsidiary portions, obviously, or intermediate ones, are truths, goods, and beautiful parts; each group only being fittingly named insofar as it flows from and leads to one or all of the so-called transcendentals: The Good, The etc.

Now from several ancient moral and philosophical traditions [note how this is quite easily a non-divine-revelation-based argument, but one perceivable by man’s reason and heart] we may gather similar conclusions; namely, that in man’s case, if we’re wise enough, we learn that his ability to know first principles, to deduce deep understanding of the universe in a way that infinitely surpasses all other material beings [infinite: because if you stack up an infinite number of non-humans, you will never get the most basic rational insight of the most ordinary man], and to seek ends and purposes far beyond any utilitarian or purely material goal, demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the good, true, and beautiful which he can seek and know are a world away from power, honor, riches, or pleasure; in each case, man can sacrifice without rational contradiction each of these lesser goods for whose that are better = fulfilling his nature in a higher = nobler way, i.e. in fulfillment of the capacities of intellect rather than his senses and appetites.

By sacrifice, I don’t mean he ought to do away with them, but only that he is capable of putting them aside.

Most men noticed that, whereas animals seek the goods proper to their more limited ends, which even at their height, basically amount to physically pleasurable goods, man was able to refrain in a non-determined freely willing way either from goods of the physical part of his nature solely, or also those of his spiritual part.

These spiritual goods included the contemplation of the nature of the whole universe working in harmonious unity; his own nature, and the highest limits of its potential; and the identity of the necessary sufficient cause of the intelligently ordered, beautiful, and thus rationally coherent universe. Indeed, Plato & Aristotle both rejected the insult to man’s reason which was the mythology of the multiple gods, usually little more than glorified humans with superpowers; some even originally human. It was clearly absurd that there was more than one, that they were contingent and humanoid, and that they were subject to change and imperfections and even wounds. None of this was remotely fitting or possible for the One who, to be called God, had to stand outside contingent matter which was always subject to other causes, outside of change and thus time, and who would have to be the source of what was, and the ordering principle: quite literally, the source of all truth & beauty and thus goodness.

Now, going on , since I must restrain my love of all these topics in order not to leave you with a thesis instead of a letter.

So, let’s see… Given this aforementioned freedom of man, it was quickly realized that if men went the path of their lower appetites, they got addicted/habituated to those types of goods having priority; and the reverse was true for the higher goods. Internal disorder, i.e., the rule of the lower powers over the higher was realized to be the major factor. Virtue was proposed as a right-ordering of these powers, and man was presented with the choice between moral order in justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude; or denying the fulfillment of his nature, negating his proper, higher end by turning to baser satisfactions in isolation.

As you know this all resulted in a flowering of the roots of all the sciences, initiated, by Aristotle himself, with the support of his adventurous alumnus, Alexander. Not that Thales and his colleagues hadn’t been doing any exploring, but they and others were each trying to identify various elements or material occurrences with a universal, simplistic, and quite insufficient material cause. Of course, their inquiries remain admirable first attempts and are enjoyable reading. Now, to the learned few at least, material beings were considered rationally intelligible, the result of formal principles acting upon matter which, though ever changing, expressed the forms from which it took its various individual species, each having a proper nature & thus proper goods for it, and a definite right order proper to it which, if well expressed, was its proper beauty.

Thus, science had rationality beyond the identification of mere appearances. Yet, the ancients were still highly speculative in their approach. This sometimes led to using the wrong natural principle for an explanation without sufficient experiment, such as the principle of gravity or unequal weights which Galileo corrected. They didn’t worry too much about this because the most enjoyable and highest knowledge lay in the principles themselves and the region of the immaterial/spiritual substances hat made material existence rationally possible, metaphysics [not, of course to be confused with the frequent esoteric connotation]. Thus, science took on its classical definition as “an organized body of knowledge founded upon fundamental rational principles [contradiction, sufficient reason, excluded middle, identity, etc.], and productive of knowledge of the causes of things”.

Fast forward to the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. Why did the Church bother to preserve scientific knowledge when the world was collapsing? Why did generations of monks spend lifetimes copying rare, rescued manuscripts? Very often they were, at least at the beginning, quite ignorant of what they were copying out. It wasn’t often for immediate use. The explosion of scientific interest, and the widespread growth of experimentation was so fervent and rapid because it was fueled by the desire to understand every part of the world better, in order to understand the Scriptures better, in order to understand God’s revelation of Himself in the world as indicated in the Scriptures; and especially (and here we must speak of Christianity on its own terms if we are to understand it) as manifested in the words and deeds of the incarnated second Person of the triune God. [Please excuse my throwing in a divine mystery without accompanying explanations for now. Though, if you ever wish, I’ll write you an intro to Christianity on its own terms. That would be fun!]

This motivation created a fairly sacred regard for truth of all kinds, in whatever subject it could be found. Wherever a church was built, a school often followed, because, for men to be fully men, they needed, as Aristotle had said, to know first the truths of things more knowable to us, closer to us, in order to rise by means of them to things more knowable in themselves, more purely intelligible, but more remote. Unlike the ancients, the Medievals had no desire to remain speculative, and they immersed themselves in concrete experimentation. The roots of the sciences, crowned by philosophy, were relaid. Also, let it be noted, methodical doubt that forced reason to recheck itself was in full use by the Scholastics, as can be seen in such works as the Summa Contra Gentiles of Aquinas.

In contrast to the ancients, they believed in equal human dignity on account of God’s equal love of all men, and the same origin of all men in the first parents. At the same time, they still shared the principle that natures had a right to their fulfillment, and, though men were uniquely free to reject the proper goods of their nature, absolutely speaking, such a rejection should be prohibited and made up for. For Aristotle, someone who from ignorance or habituation could not understand the proper goods of their nature, needed to be ruled and even enslaved in order to assure their better fulfillment. Truth had all the rights, and error none; and no one had a right to be wrong, let alone teach others the same.

We have an excellent example of what was meant: in our care of the mentally ill or retarded. We don’t give them a right to be excessively incorrect about their proper goods, and harm themselves. We even enslave them against their will; sometimes they even request enslavement, i.e. the substitution of their disordered faculties for those of another, even by force. Addditionally, we attempt to immerse them in a rightly ordered (beautiful) environment in order to, if possible, ease their faculties back to reality. And we do all this simply for their rudimentary well being. But the ancient philosophers and Medievals considered the knowledge of the existence of natures, their proper ends, their purposes as determined by their intelligent design, and, most especially, man’s proper end and his rights to the material & immaterial goods necessary to attain it; especially knowledge, to be infinitely more crucial; especially since he only had one life to get it right.

This was a certainty that there were the most essential, really real things in front of us. The reality of sense knowledge wasn’t taken for granted in the sense that it would have had to have been proven; rather, the senses worked, because they were made to convey information to the intellect which was for the purpose of understanding sensory data and the realities it showed and implied. Everything worked, and everything was real. The lack of artificial environments was of constant assistance to those men, who were reminded that the Sun was hot, grass was green, gravity is unforgiving, & we all die, and then what? This was true realism, as opposed to the agnostic cynic who says, “look… I’m just a realist”, and means, rather crudely, that day-to-day survival is all there is.

Now, these truths had almost never before been enough to persuade rulers in almost any culture to give them priority over the typical motivations for obtaining power & honor. What had to come first was the successful conversion of successive barbarian kingdoms to Christianity, after which, even the rulers, certain of having an immortal soul, were more easily, but not always, convinced to their obligations for their own good and then that of others. The Church taught them that they only had true authority if they conformed themselves sufficiently to nature’s demands in ensuring the proper development of their citizens, protected and not dominated by their arms. Authority, from the Latin auctor, had to flow from a bond with the origin of things, and thus their nature & proper goods. Aquinas demonstrated that a law that broke with nature, which break renders it unjust, was not a law at all, because of no authority. Even and especially the men directing the Church on earth, who were supposed to be the models of obedience to the truth, had no right to change it. (Of course, this deals with the question of divine revelation, which must be for a different letter.)

All the same, authority was not power, and was strictly dependent on and found its limits in obedience to a ruler’s duty for his people; outside that duty, a ruler had no authority, and, all the while, he had to respect the other forms of natural authority so long as they were properly exercised, such as that of parents in their families, rulers of other countries, and the ministers of religion. Did men habituated to power and honor and wealth and all the pleasure it all brings easily raise their minds and hearts to these truths? Not without great struggles or a very good education; sometimes still not.

The basis of culture, as Josef Pieper beautifully argues, was leisure, i.e. it was the goal; leisure strictly speaking. Art, music, poetry, literature were not only goods in themselves (in so far, however, as they also were conformed to the truth, & order & thus beauty, and thus were sources of authority themselves), but, most importantly, they were tools of contemplation by which man wondered at, and explored, and grasped the truth of things. As with all fruits of contemplation, they became tools of instruction for others and not simply methods of experiencing refined pleasures. Again, Aquinas, one of the greatest philosophers and theologians of the ages, and speaking for the high Middle Ages, concludes: “Nothing is in the intellect which isn’t first in the senses.” Man, body and soul, and only fulfilled, i.e. happy (since happiness was not random pleasure but true fulfillment), had to use both aspects of his nature to reach the goal. Pleasure was a reaction to any desirable good, and was always notoriously misleading; the only certain path was to know the truth and follow it. In this was, all that was materially productive or useful in that basic sense was never an end in itself, even scientific knowledge, which was easily capable of being relegated to an entirely non-contemplative sphere by considering it only for the sake of material progress, i.e. technology, as if progress were an end in itself.

Power, also, without authority was limitless in its application since obligation based in truth is its only reasonable boundary. Otherwise power is, as usual, simply the tool of the will of the strongest, or it makes up endless self-defined obligations which impel it, “regrettably”, to extend its jurisdiction & penetration.

I should briefly note, to wrap up this development, that the Church would have had no power at all if its authority had not been almost universally recognized. Its greatest spread occurred, in fact, after the fall of the [Roman] Empire; it could not be spread by power but had to convince men’s minds & hearts. So how? Part of the answer is too theological for this argument. But something can be said. Already men of all past ages had been rationally certain of the necessity of a spiritual existence after bodily death, not only because the soul could not be intelligibly subject to decay, but because a process of reward and punishment was a rational imperative which alone rendered coherent the simultaneous existence of an innate human moral intuition so universal that even children could intuit principles of justice; and, of unredressed moral evils which clearly opposed fundamental natural principles that had their origin necessarily in the uncreated intelligence that was their source.

I say all this to emphasize that, not only did it seem more rational, more coherent to believe in the afterlife, but its denial rendered the whole world as known by experience absurd, i.e. an ordered whole that, absurdly, had no justification or explanation. The only rational conclusion was body & soul, nature & obligation, & happiness only in a rational coherent end.

Now, in brief, what did the Church add? The divine revelation it claimed and for which it offered proofs changed the goal entirely, raising it far higher than the most ambitious had dared, higher than reason could have ever induced or deduced. Such were its claims that a direct revelation from God was strictly necessary to support them, i.e. to be their source. Namely, that God was a substantial union of three essentially identical Persons [Sorry, more mysteries]; that man had initially rejected God, breaking with his own nature, and creating a permanent imbalance in it which inclined him toward disordered desires, evil. Moreover, that man’s only hope lay in a process of purgative reordering toward God as Truth, Goodness, & Beauty Himself; a process only possible by divine helps in the soul. That God so loved creation that He himself entered into it and adopted men into the intimate life of the Persons of God. That He took on human nature to bear witness to the truth of it all and to perform a profound act of humility, obedience, & love, as a man, toward God. That, by this act of His life and death, he also set an example of the purification and love to be achieved.

Now, all of this seems hardly able to win out over men’s ordinary desires, let alone enable them to suffer egregious tortures and death for its sake. But so it was. And the careful records of the Roman trials and executions bear witness to it along with accounts of marvelous phenomena that occurred during many of the same, i.e. miracles, phenomena far beyond any possible human capacity to effect. The Church, as you may imagine, has been careful to double check such things. In our own day, you can refer to the miracles of Lourdes, France, and similar places, all confirmed by boards of agnostic or even atheist doctors. Why mention miracles? Because the whole history of the spread of the faith is full of them. Rationally speaking, men and women wouldn’t have abandoned royal kingdoms, great wealth, sensual pleasures, family, etc. for centuries in order to follow a slightly convincing set of esoteric theories. And the whole of the Western world converted. Culturally, this meant that, despite the ever present failings and malice or at least sinful concupiscence in men, the whole order of the new society was largely founded on and shaped by a certain hope, i.e. a hope that was certain, one pursued not only by the practice of the natural virtues, but by virtues called supernatural or Christian, since their modes and ends were so far elevated above the noblest morals of the past that it was firmly held that divine assistance in the soul was necessary to practice them. Thus, their faith and hope were also raised above all naturally knowable and realizable modes and ends; not in earthly happiness and perfection, but in preparing to die perfect in order to live with God. For the first time, a special degree of temperance, mercy, justice, and charity appeared in the world, forever changing what was meant by these old words.

All of this was constantly corroborated by experience; not the mysteries of faith, but that the world, seen through the eyes of reason enlightened and elevated far above its capacity for understanding and wisdom by faith [not rendered obsolete and deceptive by it: Protestants and Lutherans, esp.], became quite reasonable and not at all absurd, even in regard to suffering [cf. Albert Camus, The Rebel]. Under these conditions alone, the universe seemed intelligible and full of love and hope, and metaphysical rebellion was erroneous.

By the way, men had a very realistic expectation of priests and bishops. They knew they were men, and therefore not sinless nor without disordered inclinations; but the knowledge they passed down, and the divine helps that they stewarded were too important to foolishly reject on the basis of their personal habits or failings. Just as one wouldn’t reasonably reject the laws due to corrupt judges and teachers, or stop eating because your local grocer was a perverse man (or a grosser man!).

OK, deep breath… So why write the past 9 pages? Because, according to this argument, the Western culture -- Renaissance to modernity -- is, despite the overweening claims of many of its members to absolute autonomy with no debt to the past, and no reason to look to it for a solution to its woes, now insoluble and unsolvable per said self-entrapping claim above, is not to be understood as a monstrously incoherent riddle sprung up ex nihilo (or a priori), but rather as what-in-the-world happened to the culture from the Renaissance on to render everything unreasonable, absurd, and therefore steeped in agnostic darkness and its consequences. One might call it a journey from the most real and reasonable to the least real and reasonable explanation of the world; or the most real experience of the nature of things, to the most artificial, alienated non-experience of things which cannot but give rise to false ideas about almost everything relevant. Of course, often, the most reasonable explanation is considered these days only another way to say the most scientifically validated one by microscope, telescope, or physics engine, as if understanding was limited to man’s material theories. So, if I explain the following even as briefly as the aforesaid, I will double this short argument and perhaps test the tolerance of your interest in any point I might be making. I might mention a few figures, but I will attempt to make due with general trends of thought and general consequences.

Some have called this movement a reverse of the Socratic turn, so that, once one has seen the really real nature of things, one turns back into the cave and ends up knowing nothing but one’s thoughts about images of the real. I place the beginning at the Greco-Roman revival So enamored did so many become with it all, especially with its idealized portrayals of man intellectually and physically, that a turn away from man as authentically understood within his proper context, within the nature of the world, of man’s origin and end and obligations, etc., began to occur. Even Frank Lloyd Wright, a secular humanist who could only conclude man’s end as in the triumph of his own natural perfection, restricted strictly to earth; even he had to admit that this turn was disastrous for architectural authenticity containing a true expression of man. He insightfully calls the Renaissance “the setting Sun all Europe mistook for dawn”. I might need to resort to bullet points or numbers here; and then, if you find anything worth expatiating, let me know. The advantage in all future history is that the thoughts of the great moderns often are a perfecting of the common thought or implicit assumptions of the era; hemlock goes into disuse for the most part, and is replaced with incense for the newest demigod.

1. So, man’s thought turns in on itself, begins to analyze itself, starts to ignore conclusions with natural wholes as its premises, and, most catastrophically, begins to doubt the senses as if, because there’s more than meets the eye, what meets the eye is a deceiver, or the eye is a deceiver. Notably, scientists didn’t and couldn’t adapt this radical skepticism of experience upon which they depend essentially, desiring only to make arranged experiences in which as many relevant factors as possible are understood. Indeed, the French have but one word for a normal and a scientific experience or experiment. Alas, many philosophers, by remaining in their heads and purposely turned away from the objects of experience, became convinced that they could coherently claim notions as more certain if they seemed more to originate in the mind even if they contradicted the overwhelmingly concrete truths of experience, such that one could claim that water was not truly or couldn’t be known to be wet, that substances couldn’t be known, and that cause and effect could never be concluded from observation; all this while having to work with daily living in which it was all quite manifest with no effort at all. They forgot that the raw experience of a child is prereflective, that one learns of “self” from contrast with “other than self”, and that all ideas are derived in relation to and dependent on experience which has never yet refuted its own existence. These ideas were not above reason, but rather refuted its foundations.

2. The result was a massive mess of contradiction, since the desire for knowledge persisted, knowledge and its benefits, even while they rapidly dissolved their certainties with such improbable doubts. Their solution was to make the mind the judge of nature’s reality vs. reality the arbiter of the mind’s reasonableness. To facilitate this, enamored by new developments in math and mechanics, they refused to see coherent substances with their own essential natures any longer. They wanted to claim that all any object could be known as, was a machine with essentially disconnected parts which said nothing about a greater whole. This, of course, disregarded that anyone who sees a machine immediately is in contact with the entire context which its existence demands: knowledge, purpose, an intelligence higher than the machine (since it didn’t arise from a peat bog, be that peat bog ever so ancient). But it also stripped everything of any of its reality that couldn’t be measured or weighed, etc.

3. Notably, the advantage to denying nature for many was the necessary denial of obligation along with it; as it was clear, as shown before, that obligation is wholly derived from natures and the design or intent behind them. This, matched with the cheapening, or rather destruction, of the reasonable notion of faith by the Reformation, which made it anti-rational and guided by personal interpretation, caused a widespread throwing away of morality on a huge scale united with a rejection of moral and political authority as a whole. Thus, the revolutions from France even to Russia.

Although you know so much of this, I’m enjoying laying it all out on the table.

In the midst of it all, Nietzsche wrote as the most honest acknowledger of what was occurring. But he warned everyone that reason really did gather all its knowledge from experience, and that, if reason was right, then all the rational demands of nature were inescapably obvious: God, morality, objective truth, etc. He even warned scientists that any certainty of laws and order in things had to come from a universally real source, and have a meaning. He knew the only honest rejection had to be of all truth, and reason itself; and this is what he chose, claiming an impossible standard for knowledge sufficient to require a mandatory response in terms of those rational demands. But, he was honest about the conclusions which followed necessarily from such a rejection: namely, no certainty of truth, spirit, nature, morals, thus no rights, thus no essential value of anything, no meaning, no explanations, no purpose, practical nihilism, absolute agnosticism. He was no atheist, but if God couldn’t be deduced, then He might as well be dead to us, i.e. “God is dead”. Only desires remained.

Modern Consequences:

Well, now, here we are at last, if I haven’t fatigued you with my expositions, and driven you to warm yourself by the flames of my burning thesis.

One could go on for hours playing the game of “match-a-modern-contradiction-to-a-metaphysical-error”. So… ah… metaphysics, in the study of immaterial principles sense. So, I will limit myself to a general picture and certain major headings. There are so many factors, but a few basic types of manifestations and people stand out. First, a rather inadequate analogy…

The more brilliant microbiologists teach that the moment a person dies and loses the unifying agent of their whole makeup [which some would call the soul], their body, though seemingly still integral, immediately loses coherence, and most of all that was blood, tissue, etc., becomes jigsaw puzzles of the elements and chemicals that made it up, which, seen from a distance appear no different. To the unmagnified evaluation, disintegration is only confirmed slowly and in pieces, so that one part can have greatly decayed in one way while seeming to retain wholeness in another. But, thankfully, I don’t believe culture will ever be totally dead, since God, the soul, nature doesn’t dissolve because we reject them (or it). Thus, the modern era is one of extreme dissonance between what men consciously believe and what their nature still cries out for. Some succeed in stifling its voice, but the fortunate, even if ignorant of the truth, are too sensitive to it to refuse to search thoroughly with a sincere desire for reality and authenticity. Even those who glut their lower nature on pleasure, power, honor, or wealth, in order to hush the soul’s protests, are often driven to madness by the dissonance, by far deeper and unknown desires; and some even end themselves in order to stop the pain. Clearly, the truly insane are a different, matter, of course.

People

1. The pseudo- “Voltaires”: Those who realize at least more, much more clearly what they think and what they are rejecting, and thus no price is too high to stamp out the lies and fables and naivety of those who still teach objective morals, principles, absolutes, sources of authority, etc. they want to remake the world in some form that might be able to exist while stripped of any thought of nature and its consequences. E.g.:

a. totalitarians,

b. financial globalists,

c. cynical corporate directors,

d. ideologues of towering pride whose triumph would consist in seeing their thoughts made into reality,

e. truly dark souls for whom destruction as a form of refutation of the real is their mode of metaphysical rebellion in the face of the absurd,

f. all the unknown ones who would like to be persons (a -> e) if they had a chance.

Of course, I’m sure that members of all these groups could be acting in blindness, but the effects of their actions are often the same as if they knew, since they are often promoting the destruction of all that came before, for their own projects and ambitions, or ideas, or pride.

2. Members of the perennial philosophy, and thus also the perennial theology: They understand, experience, and acknowledge, to a greater or lesser extent, nature and its demands, i.e. the nature of things, the need for sufficient reason, religion, virtue, minimal moral legislation [i.e. at least some reasonable amount of it, not simply for general peace, but to assist others to see the truth of their nature]; natural rights [ones derived from and proper to human nature].

By the way, I consider each of these groups as requiring the proviso that someone would belong, only to the extent that they truly live predominantly according to its principles.

Here, one might include (a) many ordinary persons, (b) most peaceful native tribes, [c] members of religions that are not contradictory to reason, (d) In a special way, the body of Official Catholic teaching and those who truly follow it. [I’ve never found any inconsistency at all between its teachings and all that nature requires and implies]; (e) many simple farmers, (f) small children.

Here, happiness is only in fulfillment of nature to one degree or another; and peace is the tranquility of order in men’s souls, which alone leads to lasting material peace.

3. Sincere seekers of truth: Persons uninstructed in all this, and raised in an environment fairly or even greatly alienated from it who, whether through contact with nature (with the natural world), philosophical or historical or other forms of reflective thought, or even sudden insight or intuition amidst the shadowland of their life, have grasped the reality of good & evil, of unchanging truths, of objective beauty of goodness. They realize there is a bigger picture they never knew, and they set out earnestly to find it. Sometimes, they even get sidetracked, alas, by the occult, non-religious spiritualities, or irrational Eastern philosophies, and never find what they were seeking. But, if they do find it, it changes their lives.

4. Hedonists & those insatiable for power and honor: Usually totally blinded by their particular passion, they don’t care at all about any picture. Any obstacle, though, to their endless lust is an object of implacable hatred, regardless of any analysis. The supreme law for themselves which they don’t allow to others is “do what you will”; no thought for tomorrow but their own triumph.

5. Cynical agnostics: “Look… I’m just a realist…” Despair of truth, “live and let live” without challenging others; 3 square meals & sports channel or fine arts subscriptions or gym or bar, and internet about caps their yearning for happiness. Epitome or mundanity and indifference.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, my brief thoughts on societal contradictions flowing from the modern dissonance.

1. Public Education: A mess, because children of people, and teachers, from all aforementioned types use it. It’s going to keep blowing up.

Countertrend: Healthy forms of home schooling, a flowering of private & charter schools in those countries where education isn’t entirely stolen by government.

2. Law & Politics: The country writ small. On the one hand, the ambitious, destroying ever more natural freedoms; on the other, citizens demanding all sorts of random “rights” based on vastly different ideas of freedom and happiness that have no objective basis in natural goods flowing from necessity from natural makeup. Whereas the founders, Masonic deists though they mostly were, still had in mind “nature and nature’s God”, and naturally consequent rights. But the fewer the people who understand nature, the more “rights” will mean “what I can’t or refuse not to have or do”, or “what I demand to be provided for me”, or simply “what I feel like doing”.

3. Poetica: I.e., all those ways in which man reaches intuitively ahead of reason’s current understanding in order to express experiences of truth, goodness, and beauty.

Of course, often used also to bring out reason’s conclusions & to teach truths.

Arts, music, literature, poetry, etc.

Now less and less about truth, goodness, and beauty. Radical individualism [when not blatant deconstructionism] has greatly made off with a large part, thus rendering that part unintelligible since usually either an encoded depiction of the most particularly subjective sensations or impressions or thoughts; or a studied attempt to shatter the “imprisoning” intelligible structures of the art form in order to free it for an amorphous, anarchistic adulteration of it which rarely leaves it any objective identity. This often gives rise to a ridiculous elitism and affectations of a select few connoisseurs of these portions of art, music, etc., who claim penetrating but incommunicable insight into the subjective stream of consciousness of the artists.

4. Science: In very large part engrossed by slavish commercial or political research in which finding the “good facts” often takes priority over discovering the true facts. Often used only to confirm one unnatural agenda after another, or to make us buy things.

To restate and summarize, once and for all, a central idea: Everything is involved in a crisis of the understanding of nature. Authority and all science, being so intimately united to nature and its principles, which alone allow for objective induction and deduction; they must be counterfeited the more nature is misunderstood or denied. Such counterfeited doctrines can only be maintained by force since they can’t hold up to experience or argument. As you know and have written, it all becomes not just doctrinal but dogmatic and quasi-religious since it has to rely on an unnatural faith that, incoherently, must allow for rational dissonance. Dialogue, as you well point out, becomes increasingly impossible politically, scientifically, ethically, religiously, philosophically, and historically; because rational premises and evidence are increasingly absent.

4.5 Food & Medicine: If nature is unintelligibly arranged without an innate purpose, etc., then, necessarily, the assumption arises that anything man does to “improve” it according to his intelligence is undeniably more intelligent. All this besides that a naturally complex, irreducible, and effective plant medicine that doesn’t work when stripped down and adulterated is intolerably unpatentable and inexpensive.

1.5 Education (revisited): Note how, increasingly, leisurely subjects originally meant to lead men to higher understandings of truth, etc., are now entirely misunderstood and thence removed from schools in favor of illiberal versions of math, science, etc. Even history is suffering… interesting.

5. Religion: Even many Catholics, lost in all the confusion, think and act Protestant, or even agnostic! So no place is sacred in the face of the massive cultural forgetfulness. As for other religions, they have no future…

Buddhism: In its pure form, not a religion (liturgical, God-centered), but a spirituality. More frequently sought after in the West as persons, believing quite rationally in spirit but not sure where else to turn (especially not to the Protestants), look into it. Alas, it, like the modern Western movement, is also a form of nature or world denial, but a much more reasonable one. Instead of thinking irrationally that mater is all there is without any basis, Buddhism says “being other than matter must exist”, i.e. it is much more real, and, in fact, the only non-deceptive real. Despite the very solid insights into the greater fullness of being in spirit as opposed to matter, it ultimately bypasses all the fundamental human questions, even religion, by a self-negation of man, nature, our faculties, and reason itself. Thus to be or not to be becomes an absurd question. Buddha sought to escape suffering by escaping desire, and now, to escape desire or contradiction, they seek total abstraction from the real, even from the desire of truth. Because of this attempt at negative contemplation, they’ve developed a thoroughly ascetical method in which they wish even to negate thought and consciousness.

In the face of overwhelming indulgence, noise, and materialism in the West, they present an attractively silent, recollected, simple, and self-mastered exterior; but, alas, they admit their total agnosticism and complaisance amid the rational contradictions of their beliefs. So man finds his fulfillment of nature in a lack of any individual existence in the hereafter. The greatest truth is that there is no truth that is separate from falsehood, etc., etc. Dialogue, in any constructive sense becomes impossible or meaningless here. At the same time, they can present no evidence at all for their premises and principles, and have to be content with playing absurdist mind games with themselves in order to accustom their faculties to simultaneously affirming mutually exclusive claims.

6. Environment: Without a true answerability to the source and designer of nature, without a grasp of its innate value, it all becomes “stuff” for us to use that shouldn’t just be left laying around doing nothing since it could bring us so much wealth and power. And who can prove that wrong then? Same for animals, same for human beings, cf. Nietzsche.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile: Souls have a need for the infinite. Created for the enjoyment of the source of all being, they either search it out or kill themselves trying to fill that hole in their hearts by attempting to squeeze infinite enjoyment out of the finite. An insatiable, irrational effort: food, sex, money, power; they exhaust each respective faculty and then shoot themselves or give up on happiness, truth etc. This happens with knowledge too and anything which the animal or rational desires take as objects per se vs. means. The Sincere Searchers feel drawn to moderation, intuiting that their real happiness lies they-know-not-where but somewhere far higher. I will claim that we in the religious life live with a heartache for what we know, in part, that we are seeking (and what we believe with certain hope). And I claim that we Catholics commune with the Source Himself, or Themselves (Trinity), of true peace.

The Politics of Revolution (Part 2 of “How Destroyed Does America Have to Be?”)

Right off the bat, you might say “But wait, that doesn't make sense – isn't revolution what happens when politics don't work?” And that's true in a sense, but you could also say that revolution is just politics on fast forward – eliminating the fine points and the details and getting right to the heart of the matter (and breaking a few eggs along the way). And in fact, that's what seems to be happening in our time. How many times have you heard, or read, a comment like “history is speeding up”, or “the news cycle can barely keep up”? It seems that we wake up to a different world each day – and yet that is how prior revolutions were described as well. And to some extent, this disorientation is intentional – keep the citizenry off-balance and confused, and especially no longer sure who the “good guys” or the “bad guys” are, and you're halfway to the goal. All will be made clear once the revolution is complete and all the stragglers have been rounded up. Then there will be no more doubt or ambiguity, only certainty and the iron hand.

But that doesn't mean revolutions are apolitical – far from it. There has to be a, let's say, critical mass of dissatisfaction among the populace for revolutions to work – not that the isolated revolt, mutiny, whatever, can't happen, because they do and have, many times down through the ages. But for it to stick, there has to be a certain level of – even if tacit – agreement. And yes, this is true even if the result of the revolution is the oppression and exploitation of the very people on whose behalf it was supposedly staged – usually the “common man”, or “the workers”, or “labor”. The cannon fodder of every revolution over the past 200+ years has been the aggrieved – the underprivileged – the exploited – the shat-upon. And yet find me a revolution which, once successful in throwing out the Ancien Regime, does not, on some level, exploit and take advantage of the very same groups. More often than not, for all of their effort they have merely traded one form of oppression and slavery for another.

Another factor is the propaganda. Prior to the revolution, it's all about “rights”, and grievances, and getting even, and sticking it to the ruling class (royalty being especially good as targets). Post-revolution, it's more about absolute conformity for the good of the state, and stop griping because Rome wasn't built in a day, and you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and there's a camp just down the road for any naysayers and cranks.

What would a revolution be, in fact, without a vast army of the dissatisfied, the alienated, and the underprivileged? And what would a modern revolution be without providing them with voting rights, regardless of citizenship status? Imagine if the Roman Empire had not only welcomed the barbarians – opened the gates for them – but also instantly made them full-fledged Roman citizens with voting rights? The empire would have fallen much sooner than it did. (Now one might say, if it was inevitable it's just as well it happened sooner than later. Yeah – it's good being an armchair historian, but just try living through it.)

Which brings us to the present day, and the situation in the U.S.A. As I've observed on a number of occasions, we are a revolutionary society. We started out with a revolution, and then – never satisfied with the status quo – staged a number of mini-revolutions from that point on, right up to the present day. We had, for example, Jacksonian democracy... Reconstruction... Progressivism... the New Deal... The Great Society, along with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts... the cultural revolution of the 1960s... the short-lived populist “revolutions” under Reagan and Trump... and now the full-blown Revolution of 2020, which not only consolidated all previous gains (those trending leftwards, of course) but set even more firmly in place all of the governmental structures, agencies, laws, and regulations required in order to make the revolution permanent – and, by the way – and most importantly of all, perhaps – secured the full cooperation and “buy-in” of the military.

And, in a sense, it matters little whether we refer to a revolution as "just starting", "under way", or "successful", since to the revolutionary mind there is no such thing as completion, i.e. satisfaction with the new status quo.  If dissatisfaction is a state of mind of a certain portion of the citizenry, then so is the desire -- the need -- for any given revolution to go on indefinitely, since there is always room for improvement, and perfection is always tantalizingly out of reach.  But isn't “permanent revolution” a contradiction in terms? Chairman Mao didn't think so. And his heirs (both in China and elsewhere on the globe) are pretty much calling the shots these days. “Permanent revolution” is no more improbable than “permanent dissatisfaction”, which is, arguably, a part of fallen human nature.

So yes, revolution is nothing new. It isn't alien to the American experience – the American “experiment” -- but is part and parcel of it. If there was ever a society that was, in its heart of hearts, anti-conservative, anti-status quo, it is our own. There is an unwritten rule, or assumption, that change is good – change for its own sake, actual results being a minor consideration. “Progress” has been an icon and a fetish almost from the start – and that has morphed into something called “change”. This was, of course, the theme of Barack Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012 – change! Hope and change! The great icon, the great golden calf! And simply believing in it was enough; not only do actual results not matter, but it's considered downright impolite to even bring the subject up.

But let's not get too judgmental on this point, because it should be obvious that the appeal of “change” has to be based on dissatisfaction with things as they are. Obama did not win two presidential elections because people were satisfied and content. He won because people were angry – frustrated – alienated. They felt that they had lost control of their lives, and therefore of their fate. And his campaigns were designed to verify, reinforce, and perpetuate all of that anger and frustration – and to promise that things would get better, because – well – “because change”.

Now, one could argue, what's the big deal? Most people feel this way most of the time, and Obama was just capitalizing on it. OK... but then why do people feel this way? What is it about America that seems to yield up this attitude, seemingly out of nowhere, whereas in other countries it takes a lot more effort (and in some cases, is virtually impossible – think about places like Switzerland, for example)? What it is is what I call The Promise – and that is that the Founding Fathers not only established a republic that was designed as well as it was, given their relative sophistication about human nature, but that republic held out hope for perpetual progress... perpetual improvement in the standard of living... unhindered freedoms... and that the voice of the people would always and everywhere we heard, and honored. Quite a wish list! And it actually seemed to work for a while, at least as long as people were content to allow the landed gentry to run things. But then along came populism (version 1.0) and concern for “rights” (beyond those already specified in the Constitution), and the gap between the ruling elite and the common folk was exposed, and that got the ball rolling. (And yes, Southern Secession and the establishment of the Confederacy was a high water mark of sorts.) Post-Civil War, our revolutions were a bit less violent, but no less significant. And that brings us up to the present day, when a new variation on an old theme is found, namely that the revolution is being led by the government itself – the “establishment” -- and it is aimed at the people – or at least a substantial portion thereof.

Now, one might say, but haven't all of our revolutions been, basically, at the instigation of whoever's in charge, and haven't they all been opposed by a certain percentage of the populace? Instigation, yes – in the case of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, civil rights measures of the 1960s, etc. Revolution from the top – which was, in fact, turned into an art form by Chairman Mao. But as for opposition – not so much. The Progressive Era and the New Deal were, if you will, heavy on carrot and light on stick. They promised, and they delivered – up to a point. (And what they were unable to deliver, they filled in by means of propaganda.) They were represented, at the time, and are in the history books, as being “for the people”. I'm not sure the same can be said of what's going on at present. Yes, there is plenty of carrot (entitlements, creation of new “rights” and catering to newly-discovered victim/grievance groups) but also a whole lot of stick (taxes, regulations, inflation, violation of traditional rights, and intentional alienation and persecution of large segments of the populace by means of slander, “canceling”, discrimination, etc.).

-------------- o --------------

You may have noticed that in my previous post I seemed to be expressing some degree of disapproval of current events and trends. (And I was trying so hard to be objective and “value free”!) Does that make me a “conservative”? Well... if one defines conservatism as “preferring to stick with what works, or at least with what is stable and predictable, as opposed to experimenting with the lives and fates of the citizenry based on some theories or 'models' cooked up in Ivy League faculty lounges”, then yes, I'm a conservative. But if it means “regarding the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as sacrosanct holy writ that must be set in granite and which cannot be improved upon, and America as permanently occupying the moral high ground, and being nigh unto infallible in its foreign and domestic policies” then no. In that case, I'll join the “dirty hippies” in the next protest march.

When you boil it all down, the ultimate question becomes, quite simply, “Is the world a better place because America, i.e. the United States, existed?” Or, would everyone have been better off if we had just stuck with Britain and become part of Canada, or whatever? To put it another way – has America been part of the solution all these many years, or part of the problem? Has our experiment with democracy metastasized into oppression, both on the domestic front and world-wide? Or has it at least been preferable to the alternatives, whatever they may have been? When you put it this way, you soon realize that the question is impossible to answer. History is not full of dress rehearsals and trial runs – it's always the real thing, for better or worse. No rewinds, no replay, no Plan B, no “what-ifs”, no “woulda, coulda, shoulda”.

Now, one “nuanced”, if you will, answer might be that we were a good influence for a while, but then “broke bad”, went rogue, whatever. Human nature and the hunger for power took over. OK... then what was the point at which the balance shifted? The Mexican War? The Civil War? The Spanish-American War? World War I? World War II? Korea? Vietnam? Iraq/Afghanistan? Everybody has a theory as to when we “lost our innocence” – and the simplest answer is that we never had it to begin with. The Founding Fathers knew more about human nature than all the present-day Ivy League “scholars” and think-tankers combined, and yet they had hope. They figured, give flawed human nature a chance to better itself through a rationally designed form of government. Perhaps reason will conquer passion – or at least keep it at bay. And, better to fail than to despair of even trying, right? And in fact, that effort does seem to have at least altered the conversation over the years. Democracy has become, for many people in many places, something that is worth a try, or at least given lip service. (Even the most tyrannical governments on the planet pay tribute by calling themselves the “people's democratic republic of....”.) What it runs into, more often than not, is not only human nature, but national character. Contrary to our State Department's perennial delusion, there are people out there who are simply not ready for democracy, in any form. And this is not being judgmental; it's simply a fact, and is based on any number of things – tradition, custom, religion, language, world view, and so on. And it doesn't mean those cultures are “inferior”; they may have worked out a quite satisfactory system of governance – one that works better than ours, in fact (not that high a bar any longer). And then there is the natural aversion to some foreigners (especially “infidels”) trying to tell you how to run your country and live your life. (And – how many times have we put lipstick on a pig called “fledgling democracy” when it was, in fact, nothing of the sort, but just a show put on for the sake of staying on our foreign aid payroll? “Color revolutions”, ink-stained thumbs... just a side show, basically – and a cruel hoax for the people who actually fell for it.)

So yes, it's imponderable. Go back to 1776 but squelch those minor uprisings in Massachusetts, and put those treasonous wackos on house arrest before they can gather at Independence Hall, and assert that “Hail, Britannia” will remain our national anthem, and let people of good common sense remain in charge, and long live King George! Would the world have profited more by that than by what actually happened? Who knows?

But just because this issue is imponderable doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people out there who have the answer. Start with the “1619 Project” which asserts that America was founded on slavery and was therefore evil, immoral, and flawed from the beginning – and that nothing that has happened since can ever make up for that, therefore the country has to be brought to ruin and then rebuilt from scratch, with not only equal rights but also radical redistribution of property and other resources. And of course this idea has international implications as well, since any nation with such a fatal flaw cannot possibly have legitimately represented itself as an exemplar of democracy, human rights, and freedom for all these years – and certainly should never have imposed its flawed ideas on any other nation or culture, either through diplomacy or by means of physical force. So if America is suspect, so are all of its works, and the rest of world has been deceived all this time. (But they are “woke” now, and America has been "outed" as a total fraud.)

But the 1619 Project aside, many people have come to the opinion that it's high time America paid the price for its hubris and presumption – way past time, in fact. No one wants to have to live with the karma of America's past sins, in other words – and if committing political, cultural, and economic suicide is a sufficient form of reparation, it's certainly worth doing.

So yes, collective guilt is an overriding theme when it comes to both domestic and foreign policy, the only question being how to expiate that guilt. On the domestic side, when it comes to slavery, the preferred option is to nullify all economic gains that can be traced to slavery – which, in the “woke” playbook, means pretty much all. Make us not only poverty-stricken, but helpless before our enemies, because we were – as everyone knows (because that's what we're taught in public school and college) – the only nation on earth to allow slavery to persist for so long, and this in the face of all of our pretenses – oh, the hypocrisy! So we can only repay our debt to the rest of humanity be ceasing to exist as a nation, and as a culture. And if we're ever assaulted in any way – economically, militarily, culturally – by any other nation taking advantage of our sorry state, well, we've got it coming.

Plus, domestic guilt mongers aside, there are plenty of people elsewhere on the globe who totally agree with this point of view. They may not say much about slavery – that would be too blatantly hypocritical even for them! – but when it comes to America throwing its weight around, and our own hypocrisy, they are remarkably unified: It's about time for a comeuppance! We're sick of America being “the” superpower, and the world's policeman -- who do they think they are? And this is at the very same time they cheerfully accept our “foreign aid” and military assistance (and pay us occasional and grudging respect for having bailed them out in World Wars I and II, and for having held off the “Russian bear” throughout the Cold War). Only a fool wouldn't take advantage of Uncle Stupid while they have the opportunity (recalling the “beached whale” analogy...). And what they marvel at more than anything else is our naivete. They may have laughed behind Trump's back at NATO get-togethers, but do you really think they aren't laughing behind Biden's back as well – maybe more? (At least Trump scared them a bit; Biden is about as scary as a frayed sock puppet.)

Make no mistake, the “America and the world” issue is a prominent subtext of the current revolution, but it's far from the only issue, and not even the most important (although it may be to watchers beyond our borders). In view of our history, the current revolution is far from exceptional. One might almost say that it's an American tradition – that we would be all out of sorts without a revolution of some sort every few decades. Now, this doesn't mean that it's right, or desirable, or even that it won't have catastrophic consequences – only that, in the broad historical scheme of things, there's an air of inevitability about it. One could object, of course, that all of our previous revolutions have at least not meant the end of the Republic – that it has survived, in some form, through much storm and strife. And who knows, it may survive the current revolution as well – at least in superficial terms, like the form of government (even if the character of elections undergoes permanent change, including eliminating them for all intents and purposes). Will we still have a functioning system of currency, or will we be spending “Zimbabwe bucks” or trading potatoes for shoes? How about property rights? (They are under assault as it is.) How about all the other rights listed in the Bill of Rights, as well as rights that have been defined or “discovered” since? Will they exist in name only – or not at all? (Or – more likely – will all the old, traditional rights be declared null and void, and the new “rights” be declared paramount? This topsy-turvy act is also a hallmark of many prior revolutions elsewhere on the planet. What better way to remake society than to declare that what once was right, and therefore legal, is now wrong, and therefore illegal – and vice versa?)

That's on the historical side. But then we have the political side, and once again a revolution, in a sort of paradoxical way, depends on a certain modicum of support from the populace even if its ultimate goal is to suppress, or eliminate, most of the rights of said populace. Yes, people can vote themselves into tyranny – the most notable historic example being the naming of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany in 1933, based on the election results in 1932. But we also have numerous other examples of the popular vote going to a communist candidate, who immediately turns around and eliminates elections. (So in that case, did the people vote, in an election, to eliminate elections? File this under either “paradox” or “irony”, your choice.)

See, people don't vote for a “system” nearly as often as they vote for an idea (right or wrong) and, even more often, for what they perceive to be in their best and most immediate interests – economically and socially.  This is human nature, and is the very thing that the Founding Fathers were attempting to rise above with their emphasis on certain ideas – rights, proper governance, etc. What resulted in the long run was a kind of hybrid – “pocketbook” issues, regional loyalties, etc. often disguised as ideas, or ideals, with ample iconography to match. “America” is a concept that suffices on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, but when people walk into the voting booth, their jobs and bank accounts seem to carry the day. (This is assuming that they are not among the “woke” minority who take pride in voting against their own economic interests. In their case it's intentional, but most of the time it's the result of propaganda and blatant lies by politicians.)

And I often wonder how many people actually vote for “America”, as opposed to their state/county/village/farm/etc. It seems that most people can only “think big” up to a point, but in the long run they will make decisions – including those about their governance – based on what is more immediate, visible, and essential to their livelihood. The trick, of course – and it's one that works a remarkable portion of the time – is convincing people that their immediate concerns are synonymous with the good of the Republic, however defined – and that on some mystical, other-worldly level, fighting goatherds in Afghanistan has something to do with preserving the family farm in Iowa. Get enough people to believe this, and you can do anything you like foreign policy-wise, including starting and pursuing endless wars with no discernible relationship to the actual welfare or prosperity of any actual American citizen.

So what has been going on all this time? Well, it's about changing – through relentless propaganda, derision, and shaming -- people's natural regard for home and hearth – for family, village and town – for race, ethnicity, and religion – into a regard – nay, a prioritization – of ideas. Now, this is nothing new, since we've been an ideational society since the start. But even our most iconic idea, or image, that of “America”, is an abstraction, really, when you come to think about it. Is the “America” of a New England fisherman the same “America” as that of a Nebraska farmer, or a California fruit grower, or a Detroit factory worker? They may use the word, but what they really mean is much more here and now – my family, my home, my street, my neighborhood. (Let the rootless cosmopolitans – the globalists – play their games. We know what they've given up (or never had), and we know what really counts in life.)

But the idea of “America” has outlived its usefulness, according to the globalists (including our home-grown kind). It's... well... not just old-fashioned and out of style, but it's also “reactionary”, “isolationist” (try that out on the guys who fought in World War II and Korea), “paternalistic”, “xenophobic”, and, ultimately, “racist”, as well as the dozen or so (and counting) other kind of “isms” that could be called up. So the tables have been turned on the citizenry, who thought they had a reliable set of standards, principles, and images to rely on, and now they're all expected to embrace “globalism” with all of its myriad components, implications, and alleged blessings. They are expected to become world citizens – loyal to the planet, and nothing less.

And they are the people who have the most to lose in the current revolution. All that they value is being devalued, if not outright derided and laughed at, by the ruling elite and their street-wise acolytes. And yet – and here is the ultimate irony – they continue to vote for the people who are out to destroy them and their culture. And I attribute this not so much to their ignorance as to the utter treachery of the ruling elite and of the public officials who are their obedient servants (not to mention their facilitators in the media and on the Internet). If our previous revolutions were, in a sense, about government dragging some of the populace, kicking and screaming, into a new era (think of civil rights legislation), then the current revolution is about completely ignoring large segments of the populace – having decided that they don't count and should have no rights, and are, basically, non-persons.

When the ruling elite simply writes off a substantial portion of the population, you know that the revolution is well under way, and nearing completion. When it declares that portion of the population to be “deplorable”, and liable to engage in “conspiracy theories” and “insurrections”, you know that the revolution is over with, and all that remains is a mopping-up operation (going on right now with the January 6 hearings). Our previous revolutions at least had the merit of allowing the losers to live, if in a state of second-class citizenship (see the South, from the Civil War right up to the present day). The current attitude seems to be one of total war – defeat is not sufficient – only total subjugation will do, and, lacking that, extermination.

So yes, it is different this time, and yet – and here's the point at which all “conservatives” should engage in a rare exercise in humility – it's apparently what most people want, as evidenced by their voting patterns, which include not voting, which is the same as going along with whatever the results happen to be. (Ever wonder why “opinion polls” have such a low correlation with election results when the polls are conducted by conservative organizations, but a much higher one when the polls are conducted by liberal organizations? Think about that for a while.)

To be just a bit simplistic about it, anyone who voted for Biden in 2020 – well, OK, there were certainly plenty of anti-Trump, as opposed to pro-Biden, votes – but basically, anyone who voted for Biden voted for exactly what we have now – inflation, shortages, open borders, Critical Race Theory, racial paranoia, gender paranoia, “climate change” being Job One, globalism, “green” (no oil, no gas, no nukes), chaotic foreign policy – and so on. They voted for all of these things because they were either explicitly part of the Democratic platform, or they were completely predictable in the event Biden became president. (Or, they were things Trump was against, so they had to be for.) So... basically, they can't complain, and in fact they aren't complaining. If you look at or listen to the mainstream media and their facilitators in the “social media” and “entertainment”, you'd think everything was groovy – that we had entered an entirely new phase en route to Utopia. (And as for the White House press office, whose talent for propaganda and doublespeak ranks up there with Izvestia and Pravda, “never is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day”, like the words of the old cowboy song.)

And the point is (again, memo to any and all conservatives) that the people who are with, or at least not against, the revolutionary program are, in fact, in the majority. So... if you're really a dedicated fan of “democracy”, i.e. “majority rule” regardless, you should be completely satisfied with all of this. And of course I know what the objections will be – “But it's wrong! It's un-American! It's globalism, tyranny, totalitarianism, Marxism, etc.” All true – but it's also “the will of the people”, by definition. So... how's that “democracy” thing working out for you? Is it really the best system yet devised for self-governance? The conservatives need to do some serious soul-searching on this issue.

But one can argue that this isn't the real thing – that it's degenerate, chaotic, the product of brainwashing and propaganda, etc. Very likely! But then we have to at least re-think what we mean by “democracy”, and what we want... what we expect it to produce. Because it turns out (and the Founding Fathers knew this very well) that a democracy is only as good as the citizens who make it up, and if those citizens are the demoralized product of a long – generations-long – campaign of propaganda and demoralization and guilt-tripping, starting in the universities and filtering down through the political class and the media to the ordinary citizen, then we can expect what we have now – not democracy in the classical sense, but a kind of Bizarro-democracy – a disfigured mockery of the real thing, which would scandalize the Founding Fathers and their political descendants, but which – at least as things stand – appears to be a natural, inevitable stage of devolution of America as an idea, and thus as an empire as well. The question of whose fault it is – the people's or their enemies – may not even be relevant, since if the people have allowed this state of affairs to develop, they're their own worse enemies.

                                                       -------------- o -------------

Lest I end this post on a completely negative note, let me point out that, historically, every empire eventually falls, disappears, or at least shrinks. And empires built on a delusional Utopian vision have a much lower half life than those built on plain old conquest. Do you find this ironic? Because old-style conquest, i.e. war, is supposedly out of fashion these days, which is why Russia's invasion of Ukraine is such a scandal. War is, well... unseemly... in poor taste... hurtful... and all the rest of it. And yet I will contend that it's more universal, and natural to the human condition, than Utopianism (which often involves war anyway). It's not that I'm saying “Give War a Chance” (priceless title of one of P. J. O'Rourke's hilarious books), it's just that it's so common, and so nearly universal, that it should give one pause when entertaining Rousseau-esque fancies about the nature of man and of what is possible, i.e. to what extent the human race, or any portion thereof, can pull itself up by its bootstraps.

And this is the odd thing about America, in a way. We are an ideational society, which should mean that reason prevails in most if not all circumstances. And yet we are, arguably, one of the most warlike nations, and cultures, on the planet – both now and historically. (Our “defense” budget exceeds that of most other nations combined – and yet only about 1% of it is dedicated to actual defense, i.e. of the homeland.) And what gets us into wars is, more often than not, ideas. Ideas based on the founding documents for certain, but also on the many and varied interpretations of said documents, right up to the present day – the most overriding idea being that simply being “enlightened” is not enough – staying home and sitting under our own vine and fig tree, and minding our own damn business, is way too boring, and selfish to boot. We owe it to the world to spread the gospel of “democracy” – by example, persuasion, or by force if need be (were our Founding Fathers actually students of Muhammad? Makes you wonder... ). And by the same token, we can excuse any foreign escapades – invasions, occupations, whatever – regardless of cost in “blood and treasure” – on the basis that ideas are, and should be, paramount, and that no sacrifice in their service is too great.

And this is what the rest of the world, and especially the globalists – Utopians all – are having to cope with when dealing with the United States. We have trouble falling into line behind the E.U. or the World Economic Forum because we have long since written off Europe, and especially Western Europe, as a hotbed of world-weary cynicism – a place not of ideas but of lukewarmness and decadence. And yet here we are faced with the prospect of, basically, submitting to their world view and their wishes, and leaving traditional American values (whether honorable or wrong-headed) behind.

And is this because we've run out of ideas – our most cherished possession as a society, in a way? Or have we grown world-weary as well? Or has our pursuit of ideas been rebuffed, brought low, and humiliated with increasing frequency (one only has to consider Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan)? Or is it as simple as demographic change (the replacement of traditionally-minded Americans with people who simply don't share our ideas and our vision, and who show no interest in “assimilating”)? In other words, does the America that conservatives are trying “save” even exist any longer (especially if one clings to the notion of “majority rule” at all costs)?

And this may, in fact, be why the globalists and Utopians – especially of the European variety – have found it so easy to infiltrate into our culture, economics, politics, and even values. If nature abhors a vacuum, so do political and social activists; they see a weakness – a gap – and waste no time filling it. And it matters little what they fill it with – what counts is that they've replaced nothing with something. And when conservatives object, and protest – it's foreign, decadent, un-American, etc. – one response (call it mean-spirited triumphalism) might be “Well, then why didn't you defend your traditions and values more energetically, rather than acting like sheep before the shearer?” A valid point, I'm afraid. But it doesn't matter how energetically a minority group defends its values and way of life, a sufficiently determined majority will roll over them with ease – as is happening now, and the popular culture is, if you will, the vanguard, followed closely by public education and the rest of the armies of “agents of change”. Another way of putting it is that when the long march through the institutions was taking place, the “average American” was fixated on 9-to-5 jobs, car payments, TV, and sports. Now we wake up to a different world, and the cry goes out “What happened? And who betrayed us? Who opened the gates and let the Trojan Horse in?” Well, um... how about the people you've been voting into office all this time? Bet you thought they were on your side; sorry about that. They were, in fact, enemy agents – every bit as despicable as the “atomic spies” of old, but much less picturesque.

But this is the way of things in human history – and it's, ultimately, always about power – not necessarily overt power, i.e. armies, wealth, territory, etc. – but about, once again, the power of ideas, and by that I don't mean good vs. bad ideas, but ideas that are backed by sheer force and determination. A true believer in just about anything is what is called, in the military, a “force multiplier”. History is brimming over with examples of small but determined groups emerging victorious after a struggle with a (supposedly) “great” power; our own Revolution (the first one) is an example. And one reason ideas have such power is that the other side has no answers. We were confronted with fundamentalist Islam in Afghanistan (as were the Russians), and could not answer in kind, or anything close to it. So a “primitive” society with “crude” weapons, a fanatical religious outlook, and – gasp! – no uniforms succeeded, after 20 long years, in forcing us to give up and go home. (See also Vietnam, for both us and the French.)

What America is confronted with now is, in a way, new and different. We're used to revolutions, as I've said, but those are basically internal matters, at least for us. Our revolutions have always been home-grown and tailored to our tastes, in a sense. And we've always had the oceans protecting us from traditional military attacks and invasions from overseas. But our Achilles heel, as it turns out, was in being apathetic and naive about foreign influences in other areas -- economics being prime, but also politics/diplomacy, values, culture, and even philosophy and “political science” (areas in which “invaders” from Europe have done some of the most severe damage). We (OK, some of us) take great pride in our European “heritage” – problem is, that heritage is pretty much extinct in the Old Country, and what replaced it is at our doorstep (or maybe a “home invasion” is a better metaphor). America is, in many ways, the last holdout for many of the traditions our ancestors brought with them across the ocean. The Old World has moved far beyond all of that and considers our “clinging” behavior to be somewhat laughable and pathetic – especially when it comes to religion. (Note the similarity to the attitudes of our home-grown elites.) Western Europe in particular takes great, and quite explicit, pride in being religion-free – in being completely secular and materialistic, and they find this quite satisfying and wonder what's wrong with us that we don't follow suit (but they have ways of dealing with this and are doing so).

So the “good news”, in a way, is that empires do eventually end, in some manner or other. The American Empire is on its last legs – not because of conclusive defeats overseas or economic meltdown on the home front, but because of lack of political will – not lack of ideas per se, but lack of any way of implementing those ideas that does not immediately turn into a catastrophe. As a nation and as a society, we're falling apart in nearly every way. But we're not alone, as it turns out! The “international community” is here to help us – and to absorb us into a global, or near-global, empire, albeit in a subordinate role, since we still have to pay for our sins, which are great and many. So – again, like the beached whale – we will be “mined”, if you will, for any usable resources, and assigned a kind of bizarre “emeritus” status on the world stage, but someone else will be calling the shots. (And don't think our own elites aren't polishing their resumes, hoping that they will be welcomed into (or allowed to remain in) the inner circle once we're over the hump. No one wants to be like those Russian officials who thought all was well until they were photoshopped out of the May Day parade photos – the first step to either the gulag or an unmarked grave.)

And yet – and yet! – this empire – this new, squeaky-clean, humanistic, “diverse”, you-name-it, empire will also pass, eventually – and it may take decades, or even centuries. No one now alive will be around to see it. But in the scheme of things, it's inevitable – and that very flaw, or weakness, means that a revival of the human spirit is possible.

And when's the last time you heard that term – “human spirit”? Just try “Googling” it, as opposed to things like “rights”. I imagine you'll wind up with a 1-to-a million ratio. And yet the human spirit, by which I mean the desire to live free, as opposed to being in a state of slavery – and conscious, as opposed to brainwashed – this cannot be suppressed forever. The urge to live free is always there, perhaps buried deep in the subconscious, but never totally extinguished, because it is, after all, a vital part of human nature. African slaves that were brought to the U.S. considered freedom to be their ultimate vision, and that which they hoped and prayed for (and sang about) for generations. Freedom burst forth from the Baltic States and the Caucasus – basically forgotten parts of the world – when the Soviet Union broke up. People rediscovered their national identities, traditions, and customs – and, in many cases, their faith. And it's not always a matter of “remembering” what freedom is, and what it's like; it's deeper than that. It's what happens when people start comparing their situation to what they instinctively feel is proper and just. (We are seeing the glimmerings of this here in the U.S., even as the forces of totalitarianism gain strength.)

So if there's any hope to be had, it is along these lines. This generation may see nothing other than not only the road to serfdom, but serfdom itself. And yet, there may be pockets of resistance, as there have been in all other revolutions world-wide. If a greater portion of humanity prefers bogus “rights”, and even more bogus “security”, and is willing to give up everything else to obtain them, there will always be a remnant that will prefer independence and freedom of choice, with all of its risks – and they are the people on whom we must rely for a rebirth, no matter how long it takes.