By the close of WW II, Richard Weaver and countless other classical liberals apprehensively discerned that the Western civilized nations were on the road to breakdown and totalitarianism. Suffering "progressive disillusionment," Weaver perceived that old cultural restraints had failed to control man's propensity for evil. This led him to ponder the fallacies of modernist ideas that had produced the holocaust of evil visited upon the world from WW I to WW II. By late 1945, Weaver published his conclusions in his book, "Ideas Have Consequences."
The subject of Weaver's book was "the dissolution of the West." Its deterioration was traced by Weaver to the late 14th century when, Weaver argued, Western man had made an "evil decision." Enticed by William of Occam's (d. c. 1349) philosophy of nominalism, Western man abandoned his belief in transcendent "universals" and thus the position that "there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man..." The consequences of this revolution in ideas were catastrophic, for "The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably...the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of 'man is the measure of all things."
Things worsened as the downward spiral continued:
God would be conceptually murdered, Heaven shut-down and Nature itself elevated to the supreme reality. The doctrine of original sin was abandoned and replaced by the "goodness of man." With only the physical world of the senses held to be real, Christianity declined, rationalism arose, and materialist science became the most prestigious way to study man. With knowledge limited to the sensory realm, man's spiritual attributes, that is, the soul, mind, conscience, and free will were soon lost in an endless cycle of reductionism and determinism. Man, created in the spiritual likeness of his supernatural Creator would be lost. In his place would stand the soulless human ape, an accidental emergent product of mindless evolutionary forces.
Weaver dubbed this way of thinking the "spoiled-child psychology" of modern man, who had "not been made to see the relationship between reward and effort." This orgy of mindlessness is traceable to certain terrible-willed modernists who, no longer wanting to be created in the spiritual likeness of their Creator, had failed to achieve an integrated world picture, a "metaphysical dream," said Weaver.
Weaver concluded with an ominous warning:
"the closer man stands to ruin, the duller grows his realization (for) the annihilation of spiritual being precedes the destruction of temple walls." (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 30-33)
What Weaver dubbed a "spoiled-child psychology" can be broken down into a legion of poisonous "isms:" naturalism, materialism, idealism, empiricism, relativism, positivism, determinism, reductionism, scientism, biological and spiritual evolutionism, Freudianism, progressivism, liberalism, socialism, communism, utopianism, amoralism, and underlying them all....atheism and antitheism.
By 1951, insanity-producing modernism had already contaminated America's Supreme Court. In "Dennis et al. vs. U.S." Chief Justice Fred A. Vinson observed:
"Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes ....all concepts are relative." (ibid, p. 37)
Around that same time, Anthony Harrigan noted that a process of decay was being fostered in America by a "fierce and subtle" modernist orthodoxy. "Modernists are determined," he argued,
"to force the acceptance of pornography as medical science, filth as artistic realism, and abnormality as a mere difference of opinion...Though the life of the country is basically decent, Americans are in the hands of a cultural ruling class which...is conducting us to ruin." The amoral ruling class seeks to raise up a "liberal-bred barbarian" motivated by a destructive impulse" and unchecked by "traditional values and restraints," in order to destroy America from within noted Harrigan. (ibid, pp. 39-40)
That the ruling class of Harrigan's day succeeded in their unholy quest can be seen by Dennis Prager's article, "F--- You" from the Music Industry,' wherein Prager succinctly describes today's "liberal-bred barbarians:"
"the music industry, from producers to artists, is largely populated by people who regard social and cultural norms as stifling. Their professional lives are dedicated to lowering that which is elevated, destroying that which uplifts, and to profaning that which is held sacred." (http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/12/07/f---_you_from_the_music_industry)
The barbarianism described by Prager is not restricted to music industry insiders. No, it is the prevailing attitude of the class of people described by Angelo M. Codevilla as the "Ruling Class..." In his book by that name, Codevilla notes that contemporary America is a kingdom divided against itself. Today there are two distinct classes and they are as different as day from night.
On the one hand there is the Country Class...the little people. Though in general the Country Class holds a disparity of beliefs, it nevertheless remains the repository of America's founding Judao-Christian philosophical worldview. Hence it is the Country Class that maintains the traditional founding belief that all men are created in the spiritual likeness of God the Father and that all men are therefore subject to His laws.
On the other hand there is the Ruling Class....the liberal-bred barbarians This class is comprised of the people we commonly think of as Leftists, that is, Socialists, Communists, Marxists, Liberals, Progressives, and anarchists. But it also includes people identified as rightwing, notes Codevilla. They are certain positivist GOP and Wall Street insiders, global corporatists, and international bankers.
The Ruling Class was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the very ideas described by early Conservatives such as Richard Weaver as evil, by Harrigan as amoral, and summarized by Whittaker Chambers as "Ye shall be as gods." Hence the key to understanding the ruling class says Codevilla, is its first principle, which is "we" are the best and brightest while the rest (the Country Class) are retrograde, racist, backwards, and dysfunctional and must be properly constrained and managed.
Whereas unscientific, unenlightened Country Class bumpkins still believe in God the Father Almighty, ruling class barbarians absolutely know by way of a "Gnostic knowing" that mankind is the emergent product of mindless evolution. Hence the ruling class "know" that they are the "naturally selected" ones possessed of superior intellect while the unevolved masses are human apes who cannot be trusted with reason or science and certainly not with guns, their own children, and private property.
To the ruling class, science is only science in the "right" hands just as consensus among the "right" people is the only standard for truth, notes Codevilla. By identifying science and reason only with themselves, ruling class barbarians have delegitimized the Country Class, thereby freeing themselves to demonize, ridicule, shame, and scorn the "lower class" as superstition-believing fundamentalists, as mentally-ill, as terrorists, haters, bigots, homophobes, and fascists. And though the ruling class has as yet been unsuccessful in destroying the Country Class' faith in God, they have managed to make it as socially unacceptable and embarrassing as smoking----to be done furtively and with a bad social conscience, said Codevilla.
It is as a whole that Ruling Class barbarians "regard social and cultural norms as stifling" and "are dedicated to lowering that which is elevated, destroying that which uplifts, and to profaning that which is held sacred." Early Conservatives knew this, and as previously stated, viewed Liberalism---by any name---as evil:
Forrest Davis, an adviser to Senator Taft asked:
"Is not the prevailing political 'liberalism'...that potpourri of indiscriminate do-goodism trending into statism and Marxism and blending so indistinguishably with treason, that is the deepest enemy of the traditional America and the West?" The Liberal, exclaimed Davis, "has looked upon the face of evil and found it half good." (ibid, p. 95)
William Rusher, publisher of the National Review in 1957 remarked:
"...the Liberal Establishment...shares Communism's materialist principles." (ibid, p. 137)
In summarizing the conservative case, Frank Meyer commented:
"...Liberalism is in agreement with Communism (it sees) the necessity and desirability of socialism...it regards all inherited value---theological, philosophical, political----as without intrinsic value or authority....therefore (there are no) irreconcilable differences...between it and Communism (thus) Liberals are unfit for the leadership of a free society, and intrinsically incapable of offering serious opposition to the Communist offensive." (ibid. p. 137) Or to today's jihadists, it should be noted.
It was Fyodor Dostoevsky's acute spiritual discernment that ultimately revealed the real source of the evil lurking at the bottom of Liberalism's so-called "enlightened" canon of isms. The evil, said Dostoevsky, is the Original Lie: "Ye can be as gods."
In absolute agreement with Dostoevsky's analysis, many years later ex-Communist-atheist-Darwinist Whittaker Chambers noted that the crisis of the 20th century was a crisis of faith. Communism is a religion, "man's second oldest faith," man's "great alternative faith," observed Chambers. Its promise is "Ye shall be as gods." Its vision is "the vision of man without God," of "man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world," of "man's liberated mind...redirecting man's destiny." Communism proclaims an inescapable choice between two irreconcilable faiths: "God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism." To Chambers, the "crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God."
Chambers despaired of the West because as the death of God movement that gave rise to the poisonous "isms" broadened and deepened, in the blackness of the shadow it cast, the majority of mankind appeared to Chambers to be spiritually blind to the titanic struggle between these two "irreconcilable faiths." (ibid, p. 92)
Like Whittaker Chambers, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been a dedicated Darwinist, Communist, and atheist, that is until he was thrown into an earthly Hell called the Gulag. After many long years of unbelievably brutal suffering he emerged one of the 20th century's most powerful Christian prophets. In a message of immense importance to us he said:
"If we surrender to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human. But let us note that the absolutely essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from participation in the lie forced upon us...this requires no physical, or revolutionary...measures. No. It requires from each individual a moral step within his or her power....No one who voluntarily runs with hounds of falsehood will ever be able to justify himself to the living..."
Solzhenitsyn is saying that modernist "isms" have corrupted all of us in some fashion. This is because at the heart of them is the Original Lie and all men are naturally attracted to and seduced and tainted by it in some fashion.
Once the Original Lie in its many deceptive guises is institutionalized, it becomes the basis for policy decisions and legislation such as Global Warming, the transnational corridor and highway, redistributive justice, progressive taxation, population control, sustainable development, gay marriage, and Darwinism taught in schools. It likewise becomes the basis for law enforcement, for example, speech codes and hate crimes laws, separation of church and state, and no public nativity scenes. This means that many lies have already been installed as laws, covered by a shroud of other lies and enforced by law. Already in America, to oppose the lie is to be accused of a hate crime.
Solzhenitsyn is also telling us that we must liberate our souls from the power of the Lie. We must become warriors for truth. To fight for truth means defining, exposing, and attacking the lies---Darwinism for example. But isn't Darwinism empirical science? No, absolutely not. At bottom, Darwinism is a Gnostic myth notes Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematics professor at Oregon State University:
“…As a scientific theory, Darwinism would have been jettisoned long ago. The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living things created themselves, which is in essence a metaphysical claim….Thus…evolutionism is a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb….it is a scientistic myth. And the myth is Gnostic, because it implicitly denies the transcendent origin of being; for indeed, only after the living creature has been speculatively reduced to an aggregate of particles does Darwinist transformism become conceivable. Darwinism, therefore, continues the ancient Gnostic practice of deprecating “God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.” It perpetuates…the venerable Gnostic tradition of “Jehovah bashing.” (From Old Gnosticism to New Age I, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal Vol. 28:4-29:1, 2005, pp. 30-31)
Darwinism is the Big Lie that allows ruling class barbarians to conceptually dehumanize the Country Class, look down upon them in utter contempt and resentment, and run roughshod over them. Without their realizing it, the Country Class has been reduced to tax slaves to feed the insatiable appetites of the Ruling Class.
To destroy the power of Darwinism is to literally knock the pinnacle out from under ruling class barbarians, thereby casting them down to earth from atop their imagined lofty heights. Suddenly they will be just like the Country Class--- fallible, sinful men made in the spiritual likeness of God the Father Almighty and subject to His moral laws. This is the true equality envisioned by the Founders.
However, before we can be effective warriors for truth cautions Solzhenitsyn, we must first cast out our own lies and other sins through confession and repentance. For only with a clean conscience can we be effective warriors for truth.
Linda Kimball, copyright 2010
Resources:
The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It, Angelo M. Codevilla
Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America, Hilmar von Campe
Related Reading:
Darwinism: Devilish Gnostic Myth Dressed Up As Science
In the Shadow of Leviathan: America's Arising Fear-Based Society
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