Hubris and complete disdain for the past and reason itself.

According to Professor Legutko’s analysis, the similarities that he has observed under communism and the current liberal democratic regime are not attributable to accidents of history or to the activities of a few misguided men, but are the logical consequences of their whole world outlook. And perhaps the single most important similarity is that each of the systems is forward-looking and judges the present not by what has existed in an imperfect past, or by what is possible for human beings given their essential and abiding nature, let alone by any deontological precepts, but by a future state of perfection that the systems responsible for the present will allegedly call into existence.^[1]

I think I've recounted the marvelous insight that a speaker at an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting had after he'd recounted the complete disaster that his life had become: "And my best thinking got me there." Two of the tenets of AA are that

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Just as that speaker experienced complete collapse of his life and all loss of self respect, so has the West rushed with energy and purpose to its own destruction.

AA's idea of a "higher power" is non-sectarian and who or what he or she or it is is not central to its rejuvenating approach. It does require that the alcoholic (zealot) give up the illusion of personal mastery and humbly take into account that someone else might actually have something worthwhile to contribute to his or her life. The Western world takes the opposite approach and puts its faith in kings, potentates, bwanas, poobahs, and scumbag intellectuals, politicians, artists, journalists, and bureaucrats. The work product of these hideous people is all around us now. It swamps us. It drowns us. It slimes us with crudity, delusion, lies, and assaults on reason and experience.

Samuel Johnson had his finger on the problem:

"How small, of all that human hearts endure,/ That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!"

Western man has got it all wrong with our vast schemes for the reformation of all aspects of human existence. We have desecrated all that our ancestors handed down to us. Much humility is now in order but such incipient signs of awakening as can be seen are but dim candles. It cannot and will not overcome over a century of utter stupidity and willful betrayal.

Humility won't return to us until we have a smoking ruin.

Notes
^[1] "A Takedown of the Moral Prometheans." By Theodore Dalrymple|, Library of Law and Liberty, 8/10/17.