A classic breakdown of the problem today.
Yuri Bezmenov (Ex-KGB, USSR Defector) explains how it works(from Youtube) :
AND
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Alan Roebuck: A Nation That Honors Sin
From A Nation That Honors Sin
By Alan Roebuck, on August 5th, 2011
HT: The Thinking Housewife
America does not just tolerate the sins loved by the Left - - Abortion, homosexuality, Balkanization through multiculturalism, and so on. Our leaders want us to love sin.
It is widely understood that Western Civilization -- our civilization -- is in an unprecedented crisis. But a crucial element of this crisis is rarely discussed: that America’s leaders generally want us to approve of sin. Not all sins, to be sure, but many. And a nation that approves of sin invites the wrath of God, in both the theological and the practical senses, as sinful activity is always destructive of individuals and society.
What is unprecedented is not the widespread occurrence of sin, nor even the widespread approval thereof. These have been common through history. It is the institutionalized, officially mandated approval of sin that is unprecedented. Widespread sin is bad enough; even worse is the approval thereof. But worst of all is for society’s leaders to promote the approval of sin.
Observe how our leaders generally expect and require us to approve of homosexuality, abortion, fornication, moral relativism, mass immigration and multiculturalism that are Balkanizing America, demonization and demotion of whites, rebellion against proper authority, and all the other sins loved by the Left. Disapproving of these sins is only permitted in private; our leaders want us publically to approve of and even celebrate much that is evil, perverted and destructively foolish. We must, in other words, approve of sin. Not all sins, to be sure, but many that no previous society in history has honored. It is the institutionalization -- the mandating -- of this approval that is the problem. For what society’s authorities teach, most people believe. And people act in accordance with their beliefs. If sin is held to be good, more sin will be committed, leading to more destruction.
To describe these disorders as “sins” may sound excessive. But the ills mentioned above are all manifestations of the most primal sin: rebellion against God. The liberal, in his approval of these sins, is rebelling against God’s authority. To understand the problem at its deepest level we must use religious language.
The mandatory approval of sin also demoralizes a nation. When America’s authorities did not require the approval of sins a man who found that his companions approved of what he knew to be wrong could always choose other companions. A man who realized that the worldview in which he had been raised was false and destructive was free - - albeit after a dark night of the soul - - to choose another worldview. But nowadays the man who disapproves of state-endorsed sins will find it more difficult to locate fellow dissenters. And if he cannot find companions to strengthen him he will be more likely to fall into despair, cynicism or nihilism as he sees the obviously wrong apparently in triumph.
And the increasingly intrusive apparatus of bureaucratic control forces many people to act as if they approve of sins they oppose. Think of the college professor who would suffer professionally if his companions knew that he opposed “gay rights,” of the nurse who would be fired if it were known that she opposed “reproductive rights” (i.e, abortion); of the college student whose grade would be arbitrarily lowered if he expressed opposition to the favoring of nonwhites at the expense of whites. The mandatory approval of sin forces many people to hide their true beliefs, and they often become demoralized at this erosion of their integrity.
Observe that our leaders do not demand only “tolerance.” Normal people understand that sin is bad and therefore tolerance in the true sense of the word (allowing the limited expression of something bad in order to secure a greater good) is unstable. Eventually, for most people, tolerance must change into either open disapproval or open approval, and our leaders must therefore demand that we approve of sin. Furthermore, man only approves of what he believes to be good and so our leaders have no choice but to demand that we regard as good the sins which the Left loves.
To describe the crisis as unprecedented brings to mind the only possible precedents: Revolutionary France, Nazi Germany and the communist nations. These societies did mandate the approval of many sins. But observe that Revolutionary France and Nazi Germany burned out quickly. Their leaders did not succeed in establishing stable societies. This leaves Communism as the only possible precedent.
But Communism is the brother of today’s Left. The communists were (and in a few nations still are) far more violent and tyrannical than the leftist rulers of the contemporary West, but their basic stance was essentially identical to that of today’s Left: religion is only opinion, society must be ruled by science, and man’s traditional allegiances to race, tribe, nation, and religion must be replaced by an allegiance to mankind as a whole. In some areas today’s Left goes farther than the communists; for example in demanding that we honor homosexuality and that whites be lowered so that minorities may rise. But overall the contemporary Left is the continuation of Communism by other means. Since it includes Communism, the crisis truly is unprecedented.
The Sins They Want Us to Love
Consider: While homosexuality and pederasty were common in ancient Greece and Rome, there were no Greco-Roman equivalents of the Human Rights Campaign or NAMBLA, nor was same sex pseudo-marriage a part of law or custom. Homosexuality was widely practiced. But -- and this is the key point -- it had no official approval as it does now. Indeed, homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world was analogous to drunkenness in contemporary America: widely practiced and even possessing a sort of folklore of its own, but officially regarded as a dangerous disorder.
Full verification of the general attitudes of ancient authorities toward homosexuality would require a book-length treatment. But consider these examples: Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars portrays homosexuality as one sign of a wicked Caesar’s vice and degeneracy. Plato in the Symposium portrays (in the words of the sage Diotima) the most noble type of love to be one that strives for immortality through procreation. And the Roman Lex Scantinia, a law code governing sexual behavior, imposed the death penalty for certain forms of homosexual conduct. The official approval of homosexuality was nowhere to be seen.
Consider also the status of abortion. Although abortion and infanticide were common in the ancient world there were no ancient equivalents of NARAL or Peter Singer, nor were there laws guaranteeing a woman’s “right to choose.” To the contrary, the authorities regarded abortion as the sinful destruction of human life that it is, because it was universally recognized by the authorities that fertility is a blessing. Abortion and infanticide were seen, correctly, as desperate responses to difficult circumstances, not as “human rights.”
And at the time Rome was being overrun (or perhaps simply supplanted) by barbarians there was no Gothic equivalent of MECHA or La Raza, nor was the “celebration of diversity” institutionalized. Mass immigration only occurred in the ancient world when one people invaded and subjugated another, which was only cause for celebration for the conquerors. Many of the ancient barbarian peoples, in fact, violated the rules of multiculturalism by taking up the ways (including Christianity) of the Roman society they recognized to be their cultural superior.
Note again: It is not the widespread existence or approval of evil, perversion and destructive foolishness that is unprecedented. Prior to modern times there were many individual writers who expressed their approval (or at least non-condemnation) of abortion, homosexuality, rebellion against authority, and so on. What is unprecedented is a society’s political, intellectual, cultural and even (God help us!) some religious leaders officially telling us that good people must approve of these sins. It’s the establishment of laws, rules and customs that institutionalize and formalize the approval of sin.
Think of it: Those of us who acknowledge homosexual activity and abortion as sins are not just disagreeing with the majority. We’re officially branded as wicked. If they choose to, leftists can attack us with a full array of society’s institutional apparatus: anti-discrimination laws, private attack organizations such as the ACLU, art that portrays vice as good and disapprovers as wicked, anti-discrimination brainwashing seminars, classroom lessons in which the instructors identify us as renegades and troublemakers, and even sermons from liberal clergy denouncing us.
Our leaders want us to love sin. But to love sin is to be disordered, and since this disordered love has become mandatory, Western societies have become disordered. Enough of the old order remains that these societies generally function at a tolerable level. We can still generally procure the necessities of life and live in relative safety, at least if we avoid the dangerous districts. But there is no mistaking the general downward trend. Since we are officially required to approve of a great deal of evil, perversion and dangerous foolishness, America and the West will continue to decline until some force successfully opposes our current disorder.
Consider: We are told to love homosexuality, and yet this disordered love -- along with the love of all forms of non-marital sex -- contributes to society’s increasing sterility. We are told to love multiculturalism, and yet this disordered love is dissolving our society into mutually hostile tribes. We are told to love moral relativism and consequently to hate the “judgmental,” and yet this disordered love destroys man’s ability to think and to act properly: If nothing is really true or good then nothing has real value, in which case passivity, cynicism and nihilism are natural and widespread responses. And when people, especially the young, are told the absurdity that they must love that which is obviously wrong, they often draw the conclusion that reality itself is absurd. Today’s mandatory love of sin is a prime cause of the passivity and nihilism that are so common among the young. Society is literally being de-moralized.
Nondiscrimination
Mandating the love of sin makes sense when we consider that the Left’s prime moral directive - - and therefore America’s not-officially-acknowledged prime moral directive - - is Thou Shalt not Discriminate. To love what was once regarded as sinful is for the liberal a mark of sanctity, for it marks the one who is truly dedicated to the leftist revolution that will (allegedly) usher in, for the first time, a truly just society.
But all human activity, and especially the formation and maintenance of social order, is discriminatory. In a properly ordered society we discriminate against (that is, recognize as different and take appropriate action relative to) fellow citizens as opposed to foreigners, our spouses as opposed to other attractive persons, mothers as opposed to fathers, children as opposed to adults, law-followers as opposed to lawbreakers, and so on.
To live is to discriminate. But our leaders endorse the liberal principle of nondiscrimination, and no contrary principle is allowed to have authority. Christianity, American tradition, common sense: none of these trump nondiscrimination. Normal people assume that common sense will prevent our leaders from taking the nondiscrimination principal too far. It was once widely believed, for example, that the demand for homosexual rights would not lead to the demand for same-sex pseudo-marriage. But this belief has been proved false and since there is no theoretical limit on the left’s demand for nondiscrimination, it is as certain as the rotation of the Earth that the Left will soon be pushing for the legitimization of polygamy and bestiality.
In short, nondiscrimination is destruction, for it makes any organized, cohesive society impossible to maintain. To avoid discriminating against homosexuals we must destroy marriage, for if any group of adults living together is marriage then there is no reason to aspire to real marriage. To avoid discriminating against women we must destroy masculinity and femininity, for if all are to be treated as sexless then there is no reason to aspire to real manhood or womanhood. To avoid discriminating against other religions we must destroy Christianity (and every other traditional religion), for if all faiths are equally valid then they are also all equally worthless. To avoid discriminating against perverts and evildoers we must destroy the concept of sin. Everything that makes man distinct from the animals is to be dissolved in the universal acid of liberalism.
To treat all as equal is madness, and the Left’s actual goal is therefore the obliteration of society and the suicide of America. Few liberals are consciously aware of this goal, but it follows necessarily from the nature of the enterprise. Ordinary liberals assume common sense will prevent liberalism from going too far, but they are wrong. Only an organized anti-liberal force can prevent the destruction.
Conservative Misunderstanding
The unprecedented nature of the crisis often leads conservatives to misunderstand what must be done. When confronted with the well-orchestrated campaign to legitimize same-sex pseudo-marriage, for example, many libertarian-leaning conservatives oppose “defense-of-marriage” (DOMA) laws on the ground that it is not the proper business of government to define marriage. Since there has never before been an organized movement whose goals include the official derangement of sex and marriage, these conservatives fail to grasp the meaning of DOMA laws. Failing to understand that many of America’s leaders are committed to forcing the love of sin on the public, and thinking in terms of traditional politics, they see DOMA laws as a government power grab. In truth, they are precisely the opposite: A DOMA law is government attempting to block evildoers from perverting the official understanding of marriage. DOMA laws are not analogous to a government commissar forcing citizens to obey government edicts; they are analogous to the police preventing criminals from doing evil.
Conservatives also fail to grasp the unprecedented crisis when they fail to acknowledge the radical nature of the Left. Conservatives often assume that leftists agree with them in wanting the best for America, and that therefore conservatives can sometimes work with the Left toward this goal. But the Left does not want to govern American society within the general framework of traditional American ways. To them, traditional ways are sinful, and must be abolished, either by force or by manipulation. The Left wants to smash traditional America, and the sins they want us to honor are to them virtue. The Left does not just disagree with the Right on various concrete policies; it has a fundamentally different view of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. For conservatives to cooperate with the Left, they must act like liberals.
As a final example, observe that some Western conservatives are willing to consider making an alliance with socially conservative Moslems against the leftist menace. A high-profile example is Dinesh D’Souza, whose 2007 book The Enemy At Home: the Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 portrays non-radical Moslems as (conservative) America’s natural allies against both the leftists and the jihadists. Another example is the blogger who goes by the pseudonym Bonald, who sees Moslems as worshipping (albeit inaccurately) the same God Christians worship, and who has stated the desirability of Western conservatives making some sort of alliance with Islam against liberalism. (To be fair, we must note that Bonald has expressed second thoughts.)
Observe that these proposals are not just for limited tactical cooperation between Westerners and Moslems, which has previously been proposed from time to time by Westerners. No, what makes these proposals unusual (and mistaken) is their assumption of the possibility of a deep fellowship between Christians and Moslems.
In both cases it appears to be the insanely destructive nature of the left that drives a conservative to take such a counter-intuitive position. Perhaps they would argue that unlike liberals, Moslems do not aim to obliterate Western civilization, only to make it submit to Allah. Under Islam, they might argue, public obscenity would once again not be tolerated, fathers would once again be heads of households, homosexuality would once again be acknowledged as sinful, society’s leaders would once again formally acknowledge the existence of God, and so on. For these reasons, they might argue, Islam can support an important part of the conservative agenda.
Although these proposals are both mistaken (albeit with noble motives), it is not the purpose of the present essay to prove their falsity. It must suffice here to state that Islamic and Western societies are radically incompatible, and that liberalism’s unprecedented campaign of destruction via the imposition of the love of sin has driven some conservatives to make proposals that no true conservative of previous times would have made.
What Can be Done?
What can protect us from the disorder brought by the Left? “Conservatism” is the traditional name for the defense of society’s proper order, but conventional conservatism is largely impotent to arrest the downward trend. The obvious continued success of the left (despite occasional local setbacks) proves conclusively that conservatism is failing to do its job. But why?
The error of conventional conservatism is to assume our society is basically sound. It is to assume we can defend our society only by opposing the latest initiatives of the Left and that if such initiatives are defeated, or at least watered down, then America will be safe and will continue to flourish.
But this is to fail to acknowledge the gravity of the crisis. On average, the masses believe what their leaders say they ought to believe, especially on the most fundamental principles of existence. When, for example, America’s leaders tell Americans they ought to be tolerant, nondiscriminatory and inclusive, especially of things that are obviously destructive, John Q. Public generally goes along. Most Americans do not publicly dispute liberalism’s most basic moral principle that Thou Shalt Not Discriminate. And since most Americans do not oppose liberalism, it continues its successful campaign of destruction.
It is probably for popularity’s sake that conventional conservatism assumes the soundness of society. Few people like to hear bad news, and many people retain some conservative instincts despite their general acquiescence to liberalism, in which case a superficial critique of the liberal status quo -- one that avoids challenging basic liberal assumptions that are widely held -- will be popular. But a physician who diagnoses a disorder must be truthful, not popular.
We must face facts: America, for the most part, approves of liberalism. Most Americans at least act as if they approve of agnosticism, nondiscrimination, and socialism. Many Americans disagree in their private lives, but most act as if they approve of these principles ruling the public square. And therefore American society becomes ever more disordered.
This leads to an obvious question. What organized force is capable of producing a more properly ordered America? We must reject the two most common answers: “Political organizations” and “Nothing can be done; we just have to evangelize individuals and pray.” Political organizations must be popular and therefore they cannot afford to oppose the leftist premises that are the ultimate cause of the disorder but are also popular. And Christian evangelism concerns the beliefs of individuals, not the structure of society. Evangelism and prayer may set the stage, but re-ordering society always requires deliberate, organized action.
Christian evangelism (at least of the protestant variety, and the author is a Protestant) only deals with the beliefs and actions of individuals, but social order is not determined by individuals. Society’s order -- meaning the totality of its laws, rules, regulations, customs, traditions, and so on -- is distinct from the beliefs of its individuals, although each obviously influences the other. Social order does not emerge spontaneously from the collective beliefs of its individuals. Order is deliberately built through processes that are largely invisible and poorly understood.
Consider: Why has the passage of so many defense-of-marriage laws done nothing to defeat the leftist campaign for the full legalization and legitimacy of same-sex pseudo-marriage? Because social order is not primarily created by the visible processes of politics such as elections and legislative action. Something deeper is at work, as the left successfully manipulates the institutions that determine the basic beliefs and practices of Americans so that more and more of them become willing to allow same sex pseudo-marriage.
If the ultimate cause of society’s disorder is the institutionalized approval of sin, then the only organized force capable of opposing this disorder is the church, meaning both the totality of all believers in Jesus Christ and the institutional apparatus of church leadership. Only the church is charged with preserving and disseminating the Words of God that authoritatively identify and oppose sin.
Exactly how the church will lead the re-ordering of society cannot be stated in advance. All we can say is how it will not be done: Not by supporting conventional political processes, because these cannot arrest the disorder. And not by having church leaders take over the civil government, because these are not the proper duties of church leaders.
But one obvious way the church could lead a cultural renewal is by teaching not just the Christian doctrine that is its primary teaching responsibility, but also principles of proper social order. Theologically conservative churches already teach some of these principles indirectly; for example, when they teach the sinfulness of fornication and abortion. But it is not enough to teach what is sinful for the individual to do. The order of society does not arise spontaneously from individuals practicing personal piety. Society’s laws, rules, customs, and traditions must also be made right by sociopolitical action, and the necessary foundation of a properly ordered society is a general belief among the population that society’s order ought to be proper. The people must believe, for example, not just that homosexuality is sinful, but also that law and custom must reflect this reality. They must believe not just that husbands ought to have primary authority in the home, but that society’s rules should honor this truth. The church must teach the necessity of a proper social order
We must also speak to the individual who feels powerless against the liberal juggernaut. What can one man do?
The individual man must inwardly reject the basic principles of liberalism while at the same time acknowledging that he will swim in a liberal sea for the foreseeable future. Blogger Lawrence Auster has expressed this point well:
The starting point, the indispensable condition of any conservative or traditionalist movement, as well as of our personal spiritual survival, is that we say NO to the prevailing values of the liberal order and that we keep saying no, that we never accept them inwardly, even while recognizing the fact that they exercise effective control over society at present and that we may need to accommodate ourselves to them to a certain degree in our external interactions with society. [Emphasis in original]
How can we respond personally to the disordered liberal society wrought by the legitimization of sin? How can we maintain our spirit? By fighting back, in whatever way we can. Can liberalism’s reign of destruction be ended? Of course it can, if enough men resist it. And the foundation of our resistance must be recognizing sin as sin although the authorities praise it. We must refuse to accept the false system of liberalism and we must aspire to a more properly-ordered society in the future even as we live within the liberal system of today. America, after all, is still our nation despite the sin into which she is sunk. We must keep her alive, looking to a better future.
[The author is grateful to Professor Thomas F. Bertonneau for his insights about the beliefs of ancient Greco-Roman authorities.]
By Alan Roebuck, on August 5th, 2011
HT: The Thinking Housewife
America does not just tolerate the sins loved by the Left - - Abortion, homosexuality, Balkanization through multiculturalism, and so on. Our leaders want us to love sin.
It is widely understood that Western Civilization -- our civilization -- is in an unprecedented crisis. But a crucial element of this crisis is rarely discussed: that America’s leaders generally want us to approve of sin. Not all sins, to be sure, but many. And a nation that approves of sin invites the wrath of God, in both the theological and the practical senses, as sinful activity is always destructive of individuals and society.
What is unprecedented is not the widespread occurrence of sin, nor even the widespread approval thereof. These have been common through history. It is the institutionalized, officially mandated approval of sin that is unprecedented. Widespread sin is bad enough; even worse is the approval thereof. But worst of all is for society’s leaders to promote the approval of sin.
Observe how our leaders generally expect and require us to approve of homosexuality, abortion, fornication, moral relativism, mass immigration and multiculturalism that are Balkanizing America, demonization and demotion of whites, rebellion against proper authority, and all the other sins loved by the Left. Disapproving of these sins is only permitted in private; our leaders want us publically to approve of and even celebrate much that is evil, perverted and destructively foolish. We must, in other words, approve of sin. Not all sins, to be sure, but many that no previous society in history has honored. It is the institutionalization -- the mandating -- of this approval that is the problem. For what society’s authorities teach, most people believe. And people act in accordance with their beliefs. If sin is held to be good, more sin will be committed, leading to more destruction.
To describe these disorders as “sins” may sound excessive. But the ills mentioned above are all manifestations of the most primal sin: rebellion against God. The liberal, in his approval of these sins, is rebelling against God’s authority. To understand the problem at its deepest level we must use religious language.
The mandatory approval of sin also demoralizes a nation. When America’s authorities did not require the approval of sins a man who found that his companions approved of what he knew to be wrong could always choose other companions. A man who realized that the worldview in which he had been raised was false and destructive was free - - albeit after a dark night of the soul - - to choose another worldview. But nowadays the man who disapproves of state-endorsed sins will find it more difficult to locate fellow dissenters. And if he cannot find companions to strengthen him he will be more likely to fall into despair, cynicism or nihilism as he sees the obviously wrong apparently in triumph.
And the increasingly intrusive apparatus of bureaucratic control forces many people to act as if they approve of sins they oppose. Think of the college professor who would suffer professionally if his companions knew that he opposed “gay rights,” of the nurse who would be fired if it were known that she opposed “reproductive rights” (i.e, abortion); of the college student whose grade would be arbitrarily lowered if he expressed opposition to the favoring of nonwhites at the expense of whites. The mandatory approval of sin forces many people to hide their true beliefs, and they often become demoralized at this erosion of their integrity.
Observe that our leaders do not demand only “tolerance.” Normal people understand that sin is bad and therefore tolerance in the true sense of the word (allowing the limited expression of something bad in order to secure a greater good) is unstable. Eventually, for most people, tolerance must change into either open disapproval or open approval, and our leaders must therefore demand that we approve of sin. Furthermore, man only approves of what he believes to be good and so our leaders have no choice but to demand that we regard as good the sins which the Left loves.
To describe the crisis as unprecedented brings to mind the only possible precedents: Revolutionary France, Nazi Germany and the communist nations. These societies did mandate the approval of many sins. But observe that Revolutionary France and Nazi Germany burned out quickly. Their leaders did not succeed in establishing stable societies. This leaves Communism as the only possible precedent.
But Communism is the brother of today’s Left. The communists were (and in a few nations still are) far more violent and tyrannical than the leftist rulers of the contemporary West, but their basic stance was essentially identical to that of today’s Left: religion is only opinion, society must be ruled by science, and man’s traditional allegiances to race, tribe, nation, and religion must be replaced by an allegiance to mankind as a whole. In some areas today’s Left goes farther than the communists; for example in demanding that we honor homosexuality and that whites be lowered so that minorities may rise. But overall the contemporary Left is the continuation of Communism by other means. Since it includes Communism, the crisis truly is unprecedented.
The Sins They Want Us to Love
Consider: While homosexuality and pederasty were common in ancient Greece and Rome, there were no Greco-Roman equivalents of the Human Rights Campaign or NAMBLA, nor was same sex pseudo-marriage a part of law or custom. Homosexuality was widely practiced. But -- and this is the key point -- it had no official approval as it does now. Indeed, homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world was analogous to drunkenness in contemporary America: widely practiced and even possessing a sort of folklore of its own, but officially regarded as a dangerous disorder.
Full verification of the general attitudes of ancient authorities toward homosexuality would require a book-length treatment. But consider these examples: Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars portrays homosexuality as one sign of a wicked Caesar’s vice and degeneracy. Plato in the Symposium portrays (in the words of the sage Diotima) the most noble type of love to be one that strives for immortality through procreation. And the Roman Lex Scantinia, a law code governing sexual behavior, imposed the death penalty for certain forms of homosexual conduct. The official approval of homosexuality was nowhere to be seen.
Consider also the status of abortion. Although abortion and infanticide were common in the ancient world there were no ancient equivalents of NARAL or Peter Singer, nor were there laws guaranteeing a woman’s “right to choose.” To the contrary, the authorities regarded abortion as the sinful destruction of human life that it is, because it was universally recognized by the authorities that fertility is a blessing. Abortion and infanticide were seen, correctly, as desperate responses to difficult circumstances, not as “human rights.”
And at the time Rome was being overrun (or perhaps simply supplanted) by barbarians there was no Gothic equivalent of MECHA or La Raza, nor was the “celebration of diversity” institutionalized. Mass immigration only occurred in the ancient world when one people invaded and subjugated another, which was only cause for celebration for the conquerors. Many of the ancient barbarian peoples, in fact, violated the rules of multiculturalism by taking up the ways (including Christianity) of the Roman society they recognized to be their cultural superior.
Note again: It is not the widespread existence or approval of evil, perversion and destructive foolishness that is unprecedented. Prior to modern times there were many individual writers who expressed their approval (or at least non-condemnation) of abortion, homosexuality, rebellion against authority, and so on. What is unprecedented is a society’s political, intellectual, cultural and even (God help us!) some religious leaders officially telling us that good people must approve of these sins. It’s the establishment of laws, rules and customs that institutionalize and formalize the approval of sin.
Think of it: Those of us who acknowledge homosexual activity and abortion as sins are not just disagreeing with the majority. We’re officially branded as wicked. If they choose to, leftists can attack us with a full array of society’s institutional apparatus: anti-discrimination laws, private attack organizations such as the ACLU, art that portrays vice as good and disapprovers as wicked, anti-discrimination brainwashing seminars, classroom lessons in which the instructors identify us as renegades and troublemakers, and even sermons from liberal clergy denouncing us.
Our leaders want us to love sin. But to love sin is to be disordered, and since this disordered love has become mandatory, Western societies have become disordered. Enough of the old order remains that these societies generally function at a tolerable level. We can still generally procure the necessities of life and live in relative safety, at least if we avoid the dangerous districts. But there is no mistaking the general downward trend. Since we are officially required to approve of a great deal of evil, perversion and dangerous foolishness, America and the West will continue to decline until some force successfully opposes our current disorder.
Consider: We are told to love homosexuality, and yet this disordered love -- along with the love of all forms of non-marital sex -- contributes to society’s increasing sterility. We are told to love multiculturalism, and yet this disordered love is dissolving our society into mutually hostile tribes. We are told to love moral relativism and consequently to hate the “judgmental,” and yet this disordered love destroys man’s ability to think and to act properly: If nothing is really true or good then nothing has real value, in which case passivity, cynicism and nihilism are natural and widespread responses. And when people, especially the young, are told the absurdity that they must love that which is obviously wrong, they often draw the conclusion that reality itself is absurd. Today’s mandatory love of sin is a prime cause of the passivity and nihilism that are so common among the young. Society is literally being de-moralized.
Nondiscrimination
Mandating the love of sin makes sense when we consider that the Left’s prime moral directive - - and therefore America’s not-officially-acknowledged prime moral directive - - is Thou Shalt not Discriminate. To love what was once regarded as sinful is for the liberal a mark of sanctity, for it marks the one who is truly dedicated to the leftist revolution that will (allegedly) usher in, for the first time, a truly just society.
But all human activity, and especially the formation and maintenance of social order, is discriminatory. In a properly ordered society we discriminate against (that is, recognize as different and take appropriate action relative to) fellow citizens as opposed to foreigners, our spouses as opposed to other attractive persons, mothers as opposed to fathers, children as opposed to adults, law-followers as opposed to lawbreakers, and so on.
To live is to discriminate. But our leaders endorse the liberal principle of nondiscrimination, and no contrary principle is allowed to have authority. Christianity, American tradition, common sense: none of these trump nondiscrimination. Normal people assume that common sense will prevent our leaders from taking the nondiscrimination principal too far. It was once widely believed, for example, that the demand for homosexual rights would not lead to the demand for same-sex pseudo-marriage. But this belief has been proved false and since there is no theoretical limit on the left’s demand for nondiscrimination, it is as certain as the rotation of the Earth that the Left will soon be pushing for the legitimization of polygamy and bestiality.
In short, nondiscrimination is destruction, for it makes any organized, cohesive society impossible to maintain. To avoid discriminating against homosexuals we must destroy marriage, for if any group of adults living together is marriage then there is no reason to aspire to real marriage. To avoid discriminating against women we must destroy masculinity and femininity, for if all are to be treated as sexless then there is no reason to aspire to real manhood or womanhood. To avoid discriminating against other religions we must destroy Christianity (and every other traditional religion), for if all faiths are equally valid then they are also all equally worthless. To avoid discriminating against perverts and evildoers we must destroy the concept of sin. Everything that makes man distinct from the animals is to be dissolved in the universal acid of liberalism.
To treat all as equal is madness, and the Left’s actual goal is therefore the obliteration of society and the suicide of America. Few liberals are consciously aware of this goal, but it follows necessarily from the nature of the enterprise. Ordinary liberals assume common sense will prevent liberalism from going too far, but they are wrong. Only an organized anti-liberal force can prevent the destruction.
Conservative Misunderstanding
The unprecedented nature of the crisis often leads conservatives to misunderstand what must be done. When confronted with the well-orchestrated campaign to legitimize same-sex pseudo-marriage, for example, many libertarian-leaning conservatives oppose “defense-of-marriage” (DOMA) laws on the ground that it is not the proper business of government to define marriage. Since there has never before been an organized movement whose goals include the official derangement of sex and marriage, these conservatives fail to grasp the meaning of DOMA laws. Failing to understand that many of America’s leaders are committed to forcing the love of sin on the public, and thinking in terms of traditional politics, they see DOMA laws as a government power grab. In truth, they are precisely the opposite: A DOMA law is government attempting to block evildoers from perverting the official understanding of marriage. DOMA laws are not analogous to a government commissar forcing citizens to obey government edicts; they are analogous to the police preventing criminals from doing evil.
Conservatives also fail to grasp the unprecedented crisis when they fail to acknowledge the radical nature of the Left. Conservatives often assume that leftists agree with them in wanting the best for America, and that therefore conservatives can sometimes work with the Left toward this goal. But the Left does not want to govern American society within the general framework of traditional American ways. To them, traditional ways are sinful, and must be abolished, either by force or by manipulation. The Left wants to smash traditional America, and the sins they want us to honor are to them virtue. The Left does not just disagree with the Right on various concrete policies; it has a fundamentally different view of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. For conservatives to cooperate with the Left, they must act like liberals.
As a final example, observe that some Western conservatives are willing to consider making an alliance with socially conservative Moslems against the leftist menace. A high-profile example is Dinesh D’Souza, whose 2007 book The Enemy At Home: the Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 portrays non-radical Moslems as (conservative) America’s natural allies against both the leftists and the jihadists. Another example is the blogger who goes by the pseudonym Bonald, who sees Moslems as worshipping (albeit inaccurately) the same God Christians worship, and who has stated the desirability of Western conservatives making some sort of alliance with Islam against liberalism. (To be fair, we must note that Bonald has expressed second thoughts.)
Observe that these proposals are not just for limited tactical cooperation between Westerners and Moslems, which has previously been proposed from time to time by Westerners. No, what makes these proposals unusual (and mistaken) is their assumption of the possibility of a deep fellowship between Christians and Moslems.
In both cases it appears to be the insanely destructive nature of the left that drives a conservative to take such a counter-intuitive position. Perhaps they would argue that unlike liberals, Moslems do not aim to obliterate Western civilization, only to make it submit to Allah. Under Islam, they might argue, public obscenity would once again not be tolerated, fathers would once again be heads of households, homosexuality would once again be acknowledged as sinful, society’s leaders would once again formally acknowledge the existence of God, and so on. For these reasons, they might argue, Islam can support an important part of the conservative agenda.
Although these proposals are both mistaken (albeit with noble motives), it is not the purpose of the present essay to prove their falsity. It must suffice here to state that Islamic and Western societies are radically incompatible, and that liberalism’s unprecedented campaign of destruction via the imposition of the love of sin has driven some conservatives to make proposals that no true conservative of previous times would have made.
What Can be Done?
What can protect us from the disorder brought by the Left? “Conservatism” is the traditional name for the defense of society’s proper order, but conventional conservatism is largely impotent to arrest the downward trend. The obvious continued success of the left (despite occasional local setbacks) proves conclusively that conservatism is failing to do its job. But why?
The error of conventional conservatism is to assume our society is basically sound. It is to assume we can defend our society only by opposing the latest initiatives of the Left and that if such initiatives are defeated, or at least watered down, then America will be safe and will continue to flourish.
But this is to fail to acknowledge the gravity of the crisis. On average, the masses believe what their leaders say they ought to believe, especially on the most fundamental principles of existence. When, for example, America’s leaders tell Americans they ought to be tolerant, nondiscriminatory and inclusive, especially of things that are obviously destructive, John Q. Public generally goes along. Most Americans do not publicly dispute liberalism’s most basic moral principle that Thou Shalt Not Discriminate. And since most Americans do not oppose liberalism, it continues its successful campaign of destruction.
It is probably for popularity’s sake that conventional conservatism assumes the soundness of society. Few people like to hear bad news, and many people retain some conservative instincts despite their general acquiescence to liberalism, in which case a superficial critique of the liberal status quo -- one that avoids challenging basic liberal assumptions that are widely held -- will be popular. But a physician who diagnoses a disorder must be truthful, not popular.
We must face facts: America, for the most part, approves of liberalism. Most Americans at least act as if they approve of agnosticism, nondiscrimination, and socialism. Many Americans disagree in their private lives, but most act as if they approve of these principles ruling the public square. And therefore American society becomes ever more disordered.
This leads to an obvious question. What organized force is capable of producing a more properly ordered America? We must reject the two most common answers: “Political organizations” and “Nothing can be done; we just have to evangelize individuals and pray.” Political organizations must be popular and therefore they cannot afford to oppose the leftist premises that are the ultimate cause of the disorder but are also popular. And Christian evangelism concerns the beliefs of individuals, not the structure of society. Evangelism and prayer may set the stage, but re-ordering society always requires deliberate, organized action.
Christian evangelism (at least of the protestant variety, and the author is a Protestant) only deals with the beliefs and actions of individuals, but social order is not determined by individuals. Society’s order -- meaning the totality of its laws, rules, regulations, customs, traditions, and so on -- is distinct from the beliefs of its individuals, although each obviously influences the other. Social order does not emerge spontaneously from the collective beliefs of its individuals. Order is deliberately built through processes that are largely invisible and poorly understood.
Consider: Why has the passage of so many defense-of-marriage laws done nothing to defeat the leftist campaign for the full legalization and legitimacy of same-sex pseudo-marriage? Because social order is not primarily created by the visible processes of politics such as elections and legislative action. Something deeper is at work, as the left successfully manipulates the institutions that determine the basic beliefs and practices of Americans so that more and more of them become willing to allow same sex pseudo-marriage.
If the ultimate cause of society’s disorder is the institutionalized approval of sin, then the only organized force capable of opposing this disorder is the church, meaning both the totality of all believers in Jesus Christ and the institutional apparatus of church leadership. Only the church is charged with preserving and disseminating the Words of God that authoritatively identify and oppose sin.
Exactly how the church will lead the re-ordering of society cannot be stated in advance. All we can say is how it will not be done: Not by supporting conventional political processes, because these cannot arrest the disorder. And not by having church leaders take over the civil government, because these are not the proper duties of church leaders.
But one obvious way the church could lead a cultural renewal is by teaching not just the Christian doctrine that is its primary teaching responsibility, but also principles of proper social order. Theologically conservative churches already teach some of these principles indirectly; for example, when they teach the sinfulness of fornication and abortion. But it is not enough to teach what is sinful for the individual to do. The order of society does not arise spontaneously from individuals practicing personal piety. Society’s laws, rules, customs, and traditions must also be made right by sociopolitical action, and the necessary foundation of a properly ordered society is a general belief among the population that society’s order ought to be proper. The people must believe, for example, not just that homosexuality is sinful, but also that law and custom must reflect this reality. They must believe not just that husbands ought to have primary authority in the home, but that society’s rules should honor this truth. The church must teach the necessity of a proper social order
We must also speak to the individual who feels powerless against the liberal juggernaut. What can one man do?
The individual man must inwardly reject the basic principles of liberalism while at the same time acknowledging that he will swim in a liberal sea for the foreseeable future. Blogger Lawrence Auster has expressed this point well:
The starting point, the indispensable condition of any conservative or traditionalist movement, as well as of our personal spiritual survival, is that we say NO to the prevailing values of the liberal order and that we keep saying no, that we never accept them inwardly, even while recognizing the fact that they exercise effective control over society at present and that we may need to accommodate ourselves to them to a certain degree in our external interactions with society. [Emphasis in original]
How can we respond personally to the disordered liberal society wrought by the legitimization of sin? How can we maintain our spirit? By fighting back, in whatever way we can. Can liberalism’s reign of destruction be ended? Of course it can, if enough men resist it. And the foundation of our resistance must be recognizing sin as sin although the authorities praise it. We must refuse to accept the false system of liberalism and we must aspire to a more properly-ordered society in the future even as we live within the liberal system of today. America, after all, is still our nation despite the sin into which she is sunk. We must keep her alive, looking to a better future.
[The author is grateful to Professor Thomas F. Bertonneau for his insights about the beliefs of ancient Greco-Roman authorities.]
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
G.K. Chesterton On Motherhood
“To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can imagine how this can exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.”
-G.K. Chesterton
-G.K. Chesterton
Monday, June 27, 2011
Dr.T's Response
I liked this response at There Are No Socialists - June 25, 2011 - 6:56 pm - by Victor Davis Hanson
Found through Thesocialisthistorical end game - Vox Popoli(VoxDay)
Here is Dr. T's fairly decent summary of how the US condition got to where it is today:
Dr. T's response(click for link to original):
“This country has been through some pretty tough times…. In all instances we’ve come through pretty well.”
Not in my opinion. We fight the British in a revolution about taxation without representation and form a new nation. Less than 15 years later the federal government imposes a tax solely on whiskey (and not on any other beverages, alcoholic or not, in violation of the equal taxation clause in our Constitution). Those who opposed the tax were met with federal force.
Our nation supposedly was formed as a federation of sovreign states. Sovreignty includes the right to make or break alliances. However, Lincoln and others decided that not only was secession bad, but that it called for war to force those states back into the USA. During that war, we violated the Constitution some more by suspending habeas corpus and initiating a federal military draft, which is not one of the federal government’s enumerated powers.
We had no business getting involved in the Great War, but we hadn’t had any action since the Spanish-American War (that we caused), and so we drafted some more men to get killed in trenches in Europe.
We experienced the Great Depression that Hoover and Roosevelt made worse with their multiple rounds of stimulus spending. Roosevelt repeatedly violated the Constitution, tried to pack the Supreme Court, and began the welfare state that plagues us today and that may sink us soon.
Roosevelt desperately wished to help the British in WWII, but he couldn’t get Congress or the people behind that idea. Instead, he provoked Japan at every opportunity, knowing that if Japan and the US went to war, Japan’s treaty with Germany would result in Germany declaring war on the US. Once that happened, the vast majority of our war effort went towards Europe despite the fact that the Japanese were the ones who had attacked us and who were capturing American territories, protectorates, and allies in the Pacific. We violated the Constitution again and took the homes of Japanese-American citizens and forced them to live in camps. We did not do the same to German-Americans or Italian-Americans.
The Vietnam conflict showed that we don’t have to declare war to draft men and send them halfway around the world to fight and die. More than fifty thousand died to delay the fall of South Vietnam to the communist North. The only good to come from this war was the realization that a smaller volunteer military works better than a military comprised mostly of conscripts. (Note that we still haven’t given up on the draft. It is only suspended.)
Johnson decided to distract us from racial conflict and anti-war sentiment by creating Great Society Ponzi schemes. The full effects of that will be felt within the next twenty years as we follow the course taken by Greece.
The 1960s featured free love and mind-altering drugs. We decided to address the latter by starting a War on Drugs in the 1970s that has not ended. It has given us the largest prison population (in both raw numbers and percentage of adults imprisoned) of any nation. The War on Drugs also featured further degradation of the Bill of Rights, with the 4th Amendment now almost worthless as your property can be seized without a warrant or without you being charged with a crime.
We follow all that with the massive overresponse to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, the loss of more liberties, the further trashing of the Bill of Rights, the massive expansion of government, and the deliberate infliction of public indignities and sexual molestations that provide no security benefits but show the public that our massive federal government can do almost it wants.
Yep, we’ve weathered our troubles so well that I’m emigrating as soon as possible.
Found through The
Here is Dr. T's fairly decent summary of how the US condition got to where it is today:
Dr. T's response(click for link to original):
“This country has been through some pretty tough times…. In all instances we’ve come through pretty well.”
Not in my opinion. We fight the British in a revolution about taxation without representation and form a new nation. Less than 15 years later the federal government imposes a tax solely on whiskey (and not on any other beverages, alcoholic or not, in violation of the equal taxation clause in our Constitution). Those who opposed the tax were met with federal force.
Our nation supposedly was formed as a federation of sovreign states. Sovreignty includes the right to make or break alliances. However, Lincoln and others decided that not only was secession bad, but that it called for war to force those states back into the USA. During that war, we violated the Constitution some more by suspending habeas corpus and initiating a federal military draft, which is not one of the federal government’s enumerated powers.
We had no business getting involved in the Great War, but we hadn’t had any action since the Spanish-American War (that we caused), and so we drafted some more men to get killed in trenches in Europe.
We experienced the Great Depression that Hoover and Roosevelt made worse with their multiple rounds of stimulus spending. Roosevelt repeatedly violated the Constitution, tried to pack the Supreme Court, and began the welfare state that plagues us today and that may sink us soon.
Roosevelt desperately wished to help the British in WWII, but he couldn’t get Congress or the people behind that idea. Instead, he provoked Japan at every opportunity, knowing that if Japan and the US went to war, Japan’s treaty with Germany would result in Germany declaring war on the US. Once that happened, the vast majority of our war effort went towards Europe despite the fact that the Japanese were the ones who had attacked us and who were capturing American territories, protectorates, and allies in the Pacific. We violated the Constitution again and took the homes of Japanese-American citizens and forced them to live in camps. We did not do the same to German-Americans or Italian-Americans.
The Vietnam conflict showed that we don’t have to declare war to draft men and send them halfway around the world to fight and die. More than fifty thousand died to delay the fall of South Vietnam to the communist North. The only good to come from this war was the realization that a smaller volunteer military works better than a military comprised mostly of conscripts. (Note that we still haven’t given up on the draft. It is only suspended.)
Johnson decided to distract us from racial conflict and anti-war sentiment by creating Great Society Ponzi schemes. The full effects of that will be felt within the next twenty years as we follow the course taken by Greece.
The 1960s featured free love and mind-altering drugs. We decided to address the latter by starting a War on Drugs in the 1970s that has not ended. It has given us the largest prison population (in both raw numbers and percentage of adults imprisoned) of any nation. The War on Drugs also featured further degradation of the Bill of Rights, with the 4th Amendment now almost worthless as your property can be seized without a warrant or without you being charged with a crime.
We follow all that with the massive overresponse to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, the loss of more liberties, the further trashing of the Bill of Rights, the massive expansion of government, and the deliberate infliction of public indignities and sexual molestations that provide no security benefits but show the public that our massive federal government can do almost it wants.
Yep, we’ve weathered our troubles so well that I’m emigrating as soon as possible.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Discrimination
Kristor at VFR writes at this post:
I would like to enter a word of support for discrimination. You can't run your life without it. The doctrine that we should not ever discriminate among people would entail that it is offensive and biased for a woman to withhold her sexual favors from anyone at all, or to favor her own children over those of other women. Likewise, it would be offensive and biased for her to prevent anyone who wants to from staying in her house and eating her food. These are absurd examples, to be sure, but they serve to illustrate the general principle that it is not possible to organize social activity except by discriminating among people.
If it is wicked to treat some people as citizens because they were born here, and others as aliens because they were not, then in order to avoid that wickedness a nation would have to treat everyone in the world as its citizens, entitled to vote in its elections, reap all its civil benefits, etc. But then "citizen" and "nation" would become empty terms, and that society would vanish along with the lines and definitions and distinctions that had differentiated it from its neighbours. Thus suspicion and distrust of abnormal people, inclining us all to discriminate against them and favor those we recognize as fellows, is the only way societies survive.
To have a nation, a society, a firm, a church, any organization at all, you have to draw lines. Furthermore, you have to empower people differently, or dignify them differently. For example, if there is to be any leadership whatsoever, leaders must be somehow disproportionately empowered. Ditto for citizenship, or membership in a group or club: one must pay one's dues, the membership cannot be free or it is void. In the world as it is actually constituted, nothing is free (with the exception of God's love for creation, which, being infinite, can be provided to creatures without any cost to God). Ditto also for mate selection, which is an act of discrimination for one person, and against all others.
One of the inescapable elements of discrimination is a moral or aesthetic judgement that some people or things are better than others, in at least some important respect. It would be perverse to dignify someone as a leader if you thought he was not likely to do better at it than the average bear. It would be stupid to turn for counsel to the village idiot. The same holds on the playground when boys are picking sides, and in triage on the battlefield. Discrimination can really hurt. But you can't run a society without it. And it does work in practice, too, because some people really are better than others, at job x, or in terms of characteristic y.
So it is a fantasy to think that we can make life equally nice for everyone. The world doesn't work that way.
Note that none of this is to say that in deciding someone is not right for citizenship, or for cohabitation, or for our soccer team, we are deciding also that they are ipso facto actively bad, and that we are justified in persecuting them. That inference is not justified; that only one runner wins the race does not entail that his competitors should henceforth be kept off the track. To decide that a person or class of people are actively bad, or dangerous, requires a further determination. But we can't shrink from making that determination, either, if we are to survive. For some people truly are bad or dangerous, and if we are to survive we must harass and persecute them: the serial killer, the enemy in wartime, and so forth.
Many members of this community are either Christians, or used to be, or are sort of Christian, or something; at any rate, they hold in high esteem Jesus' injunction that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. This saying at the core of the faith, and thus at the core of our civilization, had always been a stumbling block for me, because it seemed as though it contravened the whole order of the universe, which operates on gradations in value and worthiness, on differences; and that it contradicted also the entirety of Biblical religion, in which God is (among other things) a Judge discriminating the relative merit of everything that happens, right up to the differences among the choirs of angels.
The best interpretation I could come up with was that Jesus' first great commandment that we should love God with all our being meant that I should have no love left over for myself. This would not be the death of me, because in loving God I should also love his will for me, which provides for my best good. That is, I should be more inclined to do His will, and so to prosper. Loving God instead of myself would be good for me. How then should I love my neighbour? Just as I should love myself: not at all. If I love God with my whole being, then I will do what is best for me, and I will also do what is best for my neighbour, because God wills what is best for both myself and my neighbour.
I recently read a comment by a fellow named Sage McLaughlin that, "When we are told to love our enemies as ourselves, this does not mean we are to treat them the same way we treat ourselves--Christ did not say, "Don't have enemies." He takes for granted that we shall have foes, but demands that we love them as human beings and that we hate the disfiguring effects of sin on their immortal souls, just as we hate them in ourselves. We must do this, and we must forgive all those who ask our forgiveness--but we do not have to outdo God, who abandons to eternal damnation all those who turn from Him and walk in darkness." I.e., we are to love the good and hate the bad in other people just as we love the good and hate the bad in ourselves. In order to do that--in order to move closer to goodness and further from wickedness in ourselves, and in our society, and in the creation at large--we must discriminate between good and bad, and choose goodness. That we forgive the wickedness of our enemies does not automatically make them friends; and if they cannot let go of their deadly hatred of us, then in order to control the risk to us of their hatred, we must perforce destroy them with it. In that case, we cannot survive to forgive them except by defending ourselves, and working their destruction, however that may grieve us.
I would like to enter a word of support for discrimination. You can't run your life without it. The doctrine that we should not ever discriminate among people would entail that it is offensive and biased for a woman to withhold her sexual favors from anyone at all, or to favor her own children over those of other women. Likewise, it would be offensive and biased for her to prevent anyone who wants to from staying in her house and eating her food. These are absurd examples, to be sure, but they serve to illustrate the general principle that it is not possible to organize social activity except by discriminating among people.
If it is wicked to treat some people as citizens because they were born here, and others as aliens because they were not, then in order to avoid that wickedness a nation would have to treat everyone in the world as its citizens, entitled to vote in its elections, reap all its civil benefits, etc. But then "citizen" and "nation" would become empty terms, and that society would vanish along with the lines and definitions and distinctions that had differentiated it from its neighbours. Thus suspicion and distrust of abnormal people, inclining us all to discriminate against them and favor those we recognize as fellows, is the only way societies survive.
To have a nation, a society, a firm, a church, any organization at all, you have to draw lines. Furthermore, you have to empower people differently, or dignify them differently. For example, if there is to be any leadership whatsoever, leaders must be somehow disproportionately empowered. Ditto for citizenship, or membership in a group or club: one must pay one's dues, the membership cannot be free or it is void. In the world as it is actually constituted, nothing is free (with the exception of God's love for creation, which, being infinite, can be provided to creatures without any cost to God). Ditto also for mate selection, which is an act of discrimination for one person, and against all others.
One of the inescapable elements of discrimination is a moral or aesthetic judgement that some people or things are better than others, in at least some important respect. It would be perverse to dignify someone as a leader if you thought he was not likely to do better at it than the average bear. It would be stupid to turn for counsel to the village idiot. The same holds on the playground when boys are picking sides, and in triage on the battlefield. Discrimination can really hurt. But you can't run a society without it. And it does work in practice, too, because some people really are better than others, at job x, or in terms of characteristic y.
So it is a fantasy to think that we can make life equally nice for everyone. The world doesn't work that way.
Note that none of this is to say that in deciding someone is not right for citizenship, or for cohabitation, or for our soccer team, we are deciding also that they are ipso facto actively bad, and that we are justified in persecuting them. That inference is not justified; that only one runner wins the race does not entail that his competitors should henceforth be kept off the track. To decide that a person or class of people are actively bad, or dangerous, requires a further determination. But we can't shrink from making that determination, either, if we are to survive. For some people truly are bad or dangerous, and if we are to survive we must harass and persecute them: the serial killer, the enemy in wartime, and so forth.
Many members of this community are either Christians, or used to be, or are sort of Christian, or something; at any rate, they hold in high esteem Jesus' injunction that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. This saying at the core of the faith, and thus at the core of our civilization, had always been a stumbling block for me, because it seemed as though it contravened the whole order of the universe, which operates on gradations in value and worthiness, on differences; and that it contradicted also the entirety of Biblical religion, in which God is (among other things) a Judge discriminating the relative merit of everything that happens, right up to the differences among the choirs of angels.
The best interpretation I could come up with was that Jesus' first great commandment that we should love God with all our being meant that I should have no love left over for myself. This would not be the death of me, because in loving God I should also love his will for me, which provides for my best good. That is, I should be more inclined to do His will, and so to prosper. Loving God instead of myself would be good for me. How then should I love my neighbour? Just as I should love myself: not at all. If I love God with my whole being, then I will do what is best for me, and I will also do what is best for my neighbour, because God wills what is best for both myself and my neighbour.
I recently read a comment by a fellow named Sage McLaughlin that, "When we are told to love our enemies as ourselves, this does not mean we are to treat them the same way we treat ourselves--Christ did not say, "Don't have enemies." He takes for granted that we shall have foes, but demands that we love them as human beings and that we hate the disfiguring effects of sin on their immortal souls, just as we hate them in ourselves. We must do this, and we must forgive all those who ask our forgiveness--but we do not have to outdo God, who abandons to eternal damnation all those who turn from Him and walk in darkness." I.e., we are to love the good and hate the bad in other people just as we love the good and hate the bad in ourselves. In order to do that--in order to move closer to goodness and further from wickedness in ourselves, and in our society, and in the creation at large--we must discriminate between good and bad, and choose goodness. That we forgive the wickedness of our enemies does not automatically make them friends; and if they cannot let go of their deadly hatred of us, then in order to control the risk to us of their hatred, we must perforce destroy them with it. In that case, we cannot survive to forgive them except by defending ourselves, and working their destruction, however that may grieve us.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
One STDV: Special Guest Post: You Are All Racist
LINK - OneSTDV: Special Guest Post: You Are All Racist
The following is a very special Guest Post from a college student in Race and Gender Studies.
Click the above link for an UPDATE
I am glad that OneSTDV, despite being an incorrigible racist, has given me this outlet to inform you inbred hicks about true racism and legacy of the authoritarian menace that is the white race and the nefarious deeds said race has foisted upon People of Color in lands that they have never been welcome in despite thinking that they are welcome there, indubitably. Since I am currently studying these courses at a top American university, I am far better equipped to understand the historical infractions engendered by the white race as it proffers its legacy of extirpation around the world. People of Color have been mere innocent bystanders as racist whites have taken over their lands, destroyed their traditions, rapaciously plundered all the intrepid innovations of People of Color, raped their women, and then had the audacity to impose upon them the racist standards of modern society. Just to be clear, you are all racist and I am only writing this post because it is incumbent upon the informed to inform the uninformed and even though I believe you all are inconsequentially perturbed and beyond redress, I have a duty to my brothers and sisters of color to do so.
Now I am a white male so one must understand that everything I say and everything I know is undeniably motivated by the insidious and vapid constructs of social and societal and political privilege that dominate this racist and sexist and colonialist and ableist and genderist and socially constructed and racist and sexist and biased and anti-fat and anti-anti society that I unfortunately must call home and that pays all my bills via student loans. So while I'll try my best to relay the information about historical legacies of structural and institutional racist sexism and People of Color suffering inherent to society's structures, only a handicapped, half-blind, fat, invalid, black, female-trans, lesbian could do so in a sufficient manner.
Since OneSTDV, probably because he's a racist, has only given me limited amount of space, let me just explain why you're all racists. First, you're all white and even those of you that aren't white have been fomented by the invidious constructs of social construction that underpin the institutional racism that pervades this society. In other words, white people are all racist because society makes them all that way. You can do nothing about it, only the tears of a Person of Color, preferably an illiterate lesbian from South Africa, can cure you of this affliction. White people can not understand the plight of People of Color because they are blinded by society and its inherent white morality, a morality that views all People of Color as intractably below them. Only People of Color can understand the vast problems of society because they must deal with white racists every single day and every single minute of their lives.
Further, every single white in the world should be held accountable for the collective moral transgressions of the white race. People of Color have been victimized by whites for far too long and until those past sins are expunged from the moral record of whites, either by disenfranchisement or as in killing such as in the justified killing of Amy Beihl, then whites must ask for forgiveness every day. Any crime committed by a Person of Color is justified because People of Color can never do any wrong. They are just reacting to a racist society and so anything they do, even killing for no reason, is justified and should be celebrated. Whites can never complain about crime because white people killed some People of Color in 1750 and we will never forget that. People of Color who commit crime today can never get back all the years of abuse from whites and so whatever they do now is just collective retribution for white transgressions of the past and so I think every Person of Color criminal is actually a hero because they are righting a wrong inferred by the callous actions of the white man, who is bad.
People of Color do not commit crimes then, they commit acts of justified retribution. Every death of a white person, especially of a cop, is justified because People of Color can never do anything wrong. People of Color in prison are all innocent because they never did anything, it was racist judges and racist lawyers and racist policemen and racist shopowners and racist grandmothers and racist dogs and racist squirrels and racist buildings and racist cars.
Damn, you hicks just don't understand the struggle. I grew up in New Hampshire and I knew a black kid once and I felt for him so much because all the other kids at school were so nice to him and so willing to include him in everything they did. And all the other parents would treat him like all the other kids. Damn racists.
Now, I know you racists will throw out some racist stuff like test scores and everything, but those are culturally biased. Asians score better only because they hate themselves. Blacks would actually score better than whites if the tests were appropriate. Did I mention that you guys have small penises and you're just jealous that black men have big penises and could give it to me so hard? Back to test scores and statistics, statistics are really just a ploy of racist whites to keep People of Color down, same with victim surveys (racist eyes), track and field, and education. All racist and all wrong. In fact, even reading those racist studies is racist, so I don't do that.
Finally, let me explain why People of Color have done everything good in this world. They commit no crime, it only looks that way because Law and Order has racist writers and so does the news and the crime pages and the newspapers and YouTube and cameras are racist too. People of Color have invented everything good in the world, but then white people stole it all because that's what the insidiously criminal white race does to the humble and generous and sacred People of Color, with their hard bodies and their voices and their chocolate skin and their rapping, oh their hardcore rapping is so great. So white people steal stuff and then try to take credit for all the great stuff invented by People of Color who are way better than they are. Whites just can't compete with People of Color so that's why they run and hide. But you can't hide for long racists, People of Color are taking over and we'll have our utopia of big, bad, brothas and their doorags and their Tim boots and oh yea, can't wait for that. People of Color will rise up and then we'll have the society we always wanted where there is no crime, no oppression, no victimization, and nothing wrong because any problem ever caused in the world, white people did it. Even if they didn't directly do it, they did it by being white and existing and also by looking at People of Color with their white privilege.
But the day is coming when People of Color will undermine white privilege and it will be great. So heed my advice you racists, with your math and statistics and incontrovertible evidence for every single racial disparity, you will rue the day when People of Color, the rainbow coalition, rises up against you and your horrible society with the highest standard of living, the best medicine, the most stable social landscape, and the most opportunity for success. When this racist society comes crashing down on your racist heads, you will understand how it feels and you should grovel for the forgiveness of People of Color who have done the thankless work to keep your society going - running drugs and guns across the border, working in your prisons (for free!), maintaining gang life, rapping about bitches and hoes, and updating the lexicon and social landscape with stuff like making it rain and droppin' it to the flo'.
White privilege is done racists. So take your computers, your technology, your food, your modern medicine, your democracy, your poetry, your music, your low level of crime, your civic service, your academia, your science, your philosophy, and your stable societies and shove it.
Oh and race is a social construct, we're all the same except blacks are the best, there's more variation in group than out group, tests are all biased, institutional racism, white supremacy, Western beauty standards, and mother's basement losers small penis in the ass jealous.
Click the above link for an UPDATE
I am glad that OneSTDV, despite being an incorrigible racist, has given me this outlet to inform you inbred hicks about true racism and legacy of the authoritarian menace that is the white race and the nefarious deeds said race has foisted upon People of Color in lands that they have never been welcome in despite thinking that they are welcome there, indubitably. Since I am currently studying these courses at a top American university, I am far better equipped to understand the historical infractions engendered by the white race as it proffers its legacy of extirpation around the world. People of Color have been mere innocent bystanders as racist whites have taken over their lands, destroyed their traditions, rapaciously plundered all the intrepid innovations of People of Color, raped their women, and then had the audacity to impose upon them the racist standards of modern society. Just to be clear, you are all racist and I am only writing this post because it is incumbent upon the informed to inform the uninformed and even though I believe you all are inconsequentially perturbed and beyond redress, I have a duty to my brothers and sisters of color to do so.
Now I am a white male so one must understand that everything I say and everything I know is undeniably motivated by the insidious and vapid constructs of social and societal and political privilege that dominate this racist and sexist and colonialist and ableist and genderist and socially constructed and racist and sexist and biased and anti-fat and anti-anti society that I unfortunately must call home and that pays all my bills via student loans. So while I'll try my best to relay the information about historical legacies of structural and institutional racist sexism and People of Color suffering inherent to society's structures, only a handicapped, half-blind, fat, invalid, black, female-trans, lesbian could do so in a sufficient manner.
Since OneSTDV, probably because he's a racist, has only given me limited amount of space, let me just explain why you're all racists. First, you're all white and even those of you that aren't white have been fomented by the invidious constructs of social construction that underpin the institutional racism that pervades this society. In other words, white people are all racist because society makes them all that way. You can do nothing about it, only the tears of a Person of Color, preferably an illiterate lesbian from South Africa, can cure you of this affliction. White people can not understand the plight of People of Color because they are blinded by society and its inherent white morality, a morality that views all People of Color as intractably below them. Only People of Color can understand the vast problems of society because they must deal with white racists every single day and every single minute of their lives.
Further, every single white in the world should be held accountable for the collective moral transgressions of the white race. People of Color have been victimized by whites for far too long and until those past sins are expunged from the moral record of whites, either by disenfranchisement or as in killing such as in the justified killing of Amy Beihl, then whites must ask for forgiveness every day. Any crime committed by a Person of Color is justified because People of Color can never do any wrong. They are just reacting to a racist society and so anything they do, even killing for no reason, is justified and should be celebrated. Whites can never complain about crime because white people killed some People of Color in 1750 and we will never forget that. People of Color who commit crime today can never get back all the years of abuse from whites and so whatever they do now is just collective retribution for white transgressions of the past and so I think every Person of Color criminal is actually a hero because they are righting a wrong inferred by the callous actions of the white man, who is bad.
People of Color do not commit crimes then, they commit acts of justified retribution. Every death of a white person, especially of a cop, is justified because People of Color can never do anything wrong. People of Color in prison are all innocent because they never did anything, it was racist judges and racist lawyers and racist policemen and racist shopowners and racist grandmothers and racist dogs and racist squirrels and racist buildings and racist cars.
Damn, you hicks just don't understand the struggle. I grew up in New Hampshire and I knew a black kid once and I felt for him so much because all the other kids at school were so nice to him and so willing to include him in everything they did. And all the other parents would treat him like all the other kids. Damn racists.
Now, I know you racists will throw out some racist stuff like test scores and everything, but those are culturally biased. Asians score better only because they hate themselves. Blacks would actually score better than whites if the tests were appropriate. Did I mention that you guys have small penises and you're just jealous that black men have big penises and could give it to me so hard? Back to test scores and statistics, statistics are really just a ploy of racist whites to keep People of Color down, same with victim surveys (racist eyes), track and field, and education. All racist and all wrong. In fact, even reading those racist studies is racist, so I don't do that.
Finally, let me explain why People of Color have done everything good in this world. They commit no crime, it only looks that way because Law and Order has racist writers and so does the news and the crime pages and the newspapers and YouTube and cameras are racist too. People of Color have invented everything good in the world, but then white people stole it all because that's what the insidiously criminal white race does to the humble and generous and sacred People of Color, with their hard bodies and their voices and their chocolate skin and their rapping, oh their hardcore rapping is so great. So white people steal stuff and then try to take credit for all the great stuff invented by People of Color who are way better than they are. Whites just can't compete with People of Color so that's why they run and hide. But you can't hide for long racists, People of Color are taking over and we'll have our utopia of big, bad, brothas and their doorags and their Tim boots and oh yea, can't wait for that. People of Color will rise up and then we'll have the society we always wanted where there is no crime, no oppression, no victimization, and nothing wrong because any problem ever caused in the world, white people did it. Even if they didn't directly do it, they did it by being white and existing and also by looking at People of Color with their white privilege.
But the day is coming when People of Color will undermine white privilege and it will be great. So heed my advice you racists, with your math and statistics and incontrovertible evidence for every single racial disparity, you will rue the day when People of Color, the rainbow coalition, rises up against you and your horrible society with the highest standard of living, the best medicine, the most stable social landscape, and the most opportunity for success. When this racist society comes crashing down on your racist heads, you will understand how it feels and you should grovel for the forgiveness of People of Color who have done the thankless work to keep your society going - running drugs and guns across the border, working in your prisons (for free!), maintaining gang life, rapping about bitches and hoes, and updating the lexicon and social landscape with stuff like making it rain and droppin' it to the flo'.
White privilege is done racists. So take your computers, your technology, your food, your modern medicine, your democracy, your poetry, your music, your low level of crime, your civic service, your academia, your science, your philosophy, and your stable societies and shove it.
Oh and race is a social construct, we're all the same except blacks are the best, there's more variation in group than out group, tests are all biased, institutional racism, white supremacy, Western beauty standards, and mother's basement losers small penis in the ass jealous.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Principles of Tyranny
HT and Link: Straight Talk
Principles of Tyranny…or we are so screwed
1. Control of public information and opinion:
It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it “public information” or “marketing”.
2. Vote fraud used to prevent the election of reformers:
It doesn’t matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted.
3. Undue official influence on trials and juries:
Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.
4. Usurpation of undelegated powers:
This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.
5. Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force:
The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of “protecting” the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.
6. Militarization of law enforcement:
Declaring a “war on crime” that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.
7. Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform:
Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.
8. Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers:
When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.
9. Use of the law for competition suppression:
It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters’ competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.
10. Subversion of internal checks and balances:
This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.
11. Creation of a class of officials who are above the law:
This is indicated by dismissal of charges for wrongdoing against persons who are “following orders”.
12. Increasing dependency of the people on government:
The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.
13. Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them:
When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.
14. Use of staged events to produce popular support:
Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.
15. Conversion of rights into privileges:
Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.
16. Political correctness:
Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.
Principles of Tyranny…or we are so screwed
1. Control of public information and opinion:
It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it “public information” or “marketing”.
2. Vote fraud used to prevent the election of reformers:
It doesn’t matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted.
3. Undue official influence on trials and juries:
Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.
4. Usurpation of undelegated powers:
This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.
5. Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force:
The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of “protecting” the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.
6. Militarization of law enforcement:
Declaring a “war on crime” that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.
7. Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform:
Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.
8. Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers:
When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.
9. Use of the law for competition suppression:
It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters’ competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.
10. Subversion of internal checks and balances:
This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.
11. Creation of a class of officials who are above the law:
This is indicated by dismissal of charges for wrongdoing against persons who are “following orders”.
12. Increasing dependency of the people on government:
The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.
13. Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them:
When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.
14. Use of staged events to produce popular support:
Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.
15. Conversion of rights into privileges:
Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.
16. Political correctness:
Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.
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