A Few Words From Some Astute Observers Of The West

     I found these pithy observations at the Spectator:

     Progressives hate this, but the extraordinary influence of the Bible on history — and Western civilization in particular — is undeniable. The Bible gave rise to Western law, government, art, literature, and science. According to sociologist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Rodney Stark, because the West believed in a God of logic and order, they believed his creation was likewise logical and orderly and should be explored, subdued, and studied. Stark writes, “Most non-Christian religions do not posit a creation at all … it is without beginning or purpose, and, most important of all, having never been created, it has no Creator. Consequently, the universe is thought to be a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary. For those holding these religious premises, the path to wisdom is through meditation and mystical insights, and there is no occasion to celebrate reason.” Eminent mathematician, philosopher, and agnostic Alfred North Whitehead is again instructive here on what set the West apart: “When we compare the tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilizations when left to themselves, there seems but one source of its origin. It must come from the Medieval insistence on the rationality of God.” This faith in rationality catapulted the West ahead of the rest of the world culturally, militarily, technologically, and economically. So intrinsic is Christianity to the fabric of the West, wrote T. S. Eliot, that “It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning.… I do not believe the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes.”

     Christianity, the only faith that posits both unbreakable natural laws and the benevolence of God, is the foundation upon which the whole of the Western edifice – what I’ve often called the Christian Enlightenment — is built. Remove Christianity and you undermine the lot: individual rights, political freedom, reason and science, good will among men, the belief in the possibility of progress, and all the things that go with them.

     Now reflect on the influence the following incursions into Christian-Enlightenment societies have had:

• Solipsism / Social-constructionism
• Gender-war feminism
• Deconstructionism and associated theses
• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• The Frankfurt School
• Islam

     Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Quickies: A Time For Battle

     Please bear with me for a few hundred words, Gentle Reader. I’m furious, and I need to get it out.

     My recent pieces have prompted several readers to write to me that I’ve “lost my moderation” and really need to “cool it.” The general tenor of their “advice” is either that there’s no need to go to war with the Left (because we’re currently in the ascendant), or that we can’t afford to go to war with the Left (because the public will react against us).

     I disagree with these claims:

1. I haven’t “lost my moderation;” I’ve shelved it for the duration of the present emergency.
2. Patriotic Americans have a fingernail grip on the federal government, and some supposed allies have been working against us.
3. Whatever their politics, there’s nothing Americans despise more than a coward.

     When Patrick Henry stated on the floor of the Virginia legislature that “the war is already begun,” he was stating a truth: an unpleasant truth to be sure, but a truth: an accurate statement of an objective fact. The facts of our time are much the same: The Left is already at war with us. Its activists have deployed every tactic and every weapon at their command in this political “battle of the bulge.”

     We cannot afford to hang back any longer. A war that’s being fought by only one side has a predetermined outcome.

     When masked and armed Leftists physically assault persons attending public events dedicated to freedom of expression, what possible argument can there be for not meeting their violence with violence of our own? When university officials and media figures routinely excuse the masked, armed Leftists, implicitly accepting their claim that the violence we suffer is our fault, how can we sit silently rather than giving their calumnies the appropriate responses?

     When scum such as failed comedienne Kathy Griffin make “humor” out of the beheading of President Trump, why is it incumbent upon us to be courteous? When morons such as Alec Baldwin and Stephen Colbert grotesquely insult the president, why must we be moderate in response? When a black racialist huckster and open Communist such as Van Jones characterizes Trump’s election as a “whitelash” against a black president and accuses President Trump of “treasonous language,” why are we obliged to sit quietly rather than to call him out for what he is? When actual terrorist Bill Ayres calls Christian conservatives hypocrites for our political stances, why are we required not to answer in kind?

     If I were an “unaligned American,” unwilling to commit to either party but attentive to the national discourse, to the policies enacted by the two parties, and to their demonstrable effects, I would be inclined to write off most of the Right as cowards, unwilling to stand in our own defense. Especially the “NeverTrump” quislings who claim to be conservatives but blanch when the Trump Administration delivers the policies – and the results – that they’ve prattled about for decades but never, in all their years of prominence, provided.

     Two years ago, I wrote:

     “The law of the jungle” is that of the moral vacuum: that state of affairs in which civilized laws and norms – i.e., the laws and norms of the Christian Enlightenment – have no (or inadequate) defenders. The conception separates societies ruled by mere force from those in which “rule,” as such, is rooted in the Enlightenment principle of individuals’ rights as superior to the claims of power and groups, married to the Christian Law of General Benevolence.

     If the American Republic, the most faithful political instantiation of the Christian Enlightenment, is to survive, it must be defended. To quote a vaguely remembered figure of modest political importance:

     “If not us, who? If not now, when?” – Ronald Reagan

     It’s time we got the lead out.

Vacua

     It seems that for some kinds of learning, you have to get old.

     I’m old. I’ve lived 73 years as of the fifth of September in this Year of Our Lord 2025. And I sometimes thank God that I can’t clearly remember the foolishness I espoused in my younger days. I’d die of embarrassment if some of it were to come to light. And that’s enough for personal disclosures.

     I was educated as a physicist. I’ve retained very little of that knowledge. I couldn’t solve a Schrodinger’s Equation problem to save my life. But I did hold on to one critical insight. It’s one you probably acknowledge, too, even if you would express it in other terms.

Excepting the effects of entropy,
The universe is ruled by equilibrium.

     Practical living incorporates that insight in particular ways: “The goldfish will grow to the size of the bowl.” “Water seeks its own level.” “Dirty is automatic; clean takes work.” “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

     That last one is much on my mind this morning. No calculus will be required to follow it out.

***

     Experimenters create vacua for specific purposes, often to gauge the consequences of a reaction that cannot occur in air. Vacua are also required for certain types of high-tech manufacturing. But have you ever contemplated the production of vacua by activists and politicians? Why would they do it?

     (Before we proceed further, yes: the plural of vacuum is vacua. The alternate plural vacuums is best reserved to the discussion of floor-cleaning devices.)

     Nature abhors a sociopolitical vacuum just as much as the physical kind. Indeed, a sociopolitical vacuum is often paralleled by a physical one. Both demand to be filled by something. All it takes is time.

     Now consider what’s happened to birth rates in the First-World nations. I don’t know of any advanced nation other than Israel that’s reproducing at or above replacement rate. Without an influx of immigrants, those countries would “empty out” within a few generations. The effects are already visible in Russia and Japan.

     Those declines in fertility don’t create a hard vacuum... but they indicate a reduced pressure within the affected countries. The pressure against their borders is higher than the pressure to maintain racial, ethnic, and cultural norms can resist. Moreover, there are elements within those countries that want a flood of immigrants, regardless of any countervailing considerations.

     Those pro-immigration elements have effective control of the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

     Yes, movements have arisen in all those nations to agitate against unrestricted and unqualified admission to their lands. But to this point, the pro-immigrant elements in their governments are holding sway. It’s unclear whether the balance will tip in the other direction in the near future.

     I’d bet against it, because of a cooperating vacuum that’s been under construction for several decades.

***

     Moral and ethical norms are best inculcated in the young person by his parents. Should they fail to do so, he might manage to acquire them in some other fashion, but he’d likely give and receive a lot of pain and damage in the process. Some of that damage would be to his beliefs about individuals’ rights.

     For decades the trend in Western nations has been away from firm moral-ethical norms and toward a freewheeling relativism: “whatever’s right for you.” Parents have been swayed in that direction as much as anyone else. But relativism acts like a vacuum. Under the guiding principle of “whatever’s right for you,” even a nation whose heritage is strongly Christian will lack the will to defend Christian norms against an incursion by an aggressive and confident opponent.

     Relativism synergizes with the reluctance to confront – an unwillingness to risk conflict, even if it’s just verbal conflict. The relativist will not argue for any absolute norm. How can he? Under the relativistic principle, there are “no right answers.” Everyone is entitled to “his own truth.” But a time may come when someone else’s “truth” mandates the relativist’s subjugation or death.

     That’s what’s happened to Canada, Britain, and Australia. It’s beginning to raise its head here in the United States. The great majority of Americans are at least nominally Christian. Our Nation’s laws were founded on Commandments Four through Nine of the Decalogue. But we have exhibited an increasing disinclination to take up cudgels in support or defense of Christian norms.

     Those norms will not prevail without a stouthearted defense. Their adversaries’ numbers are growing while ours are stagnating. Do the math.

***

     My personal conviction is that Islam is toxic to human life and must be destroyed root and branch. I feel similarly about the tide of Negro savagery that’s manifested in recent years, most notably in the larger cities. But underlying those threats to Christian-Enlightenment civilization are the vacua of relativism and non-confrontation. Those vacua will be filled by something. It behooves us of the Christian Enlightenment to be ones to fill them.

     Time is not on our side.

Honesty, Clarity, And Other Virtues The Left Strives To Suppress

     To one whose highest priority is power, anything that might obstruct or impede his pursuit of power is a fault to be avoided. That includes any of the conventionally recognized virtues.

     Today the great Chris Muir has something to say about that:

     Note the unabashed use of a word tabooed by our sociocultural shamans. I have no problem with it. American Negroes use it freely, and I refuse to allow anyone to tell me that what they can say to and about one another, I cannot. But then, colored people have a lot of strange ideas, don’t they?

     Chris expressed an important observation in a striking fashion: clarity. Moreover, he bull’s-eyed it in the process: honesty. Clearly, he’d never fit in on the Left. Somehow I doubt that it troubles him overmuch.

     Now let’s look at how Left-wing activists would view Chris’s “American white men are the nigger of the whole world” statement. Would they salute its unflinching honesty about the bigotry being exercised against the nation and the race that built the modern world and three times saved it from irrevocable tyranny? Clearly not, as it runs counter to one of their major weapons for advancement: the inculcation and exploitation of undeserved guilt among American whites.

     Well, what about its clarity? Would that draw the approbation of Leftist activists? Again, clearly not (note the irony). To be clear about an injustice being perpetrated by the Left is to paste a target onto one’s chest. (If you’re a white male you’ve already got one on your back, as the Left prefers to strike its targets unaware. Cowards are like that.)

     Virtues we were once taught to pursue in our spoken and written communications are anathema to the Left. Whenever a Leftist expresses himself on any subject, you may rest assured that both honesty and clarity will be absent from his emission. Nor would it advance either cause to ask him “what do you mean by that?” He’ll simply call you a racist and walk away.

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     The Western nations are rooted in Christian ethics. I’ve referred on several occasions to the First World as the nations of the Christian Enlightenment. The Enlightenment thinkers may have been indifferent to Christianity as a faith, but they absorbed its ethos whole, and never departed from it. The core of that ethos consists of seven virtues:

• The three theological virtues:
  1. Faith,
  2. Hope,
  3. Charity;
• And the four cardinal virtues:
  1. Prudence,
  2. Justice,
  3. Temperance,
  4. Fortitude.

     For political purposes, faith should be regarded as a secular attribute: i.e., faith in the rightness of the ethos for public action. I’m sure my Gentle Readers need no help in discerning why those seven virtues are anathema to the power-seeker. All seven are clearly – a little more irony there – essential to the maintenance of a free and harmonious society.

     So the Leftist, the ultimate power-seeker, must act to suppress and extirpate the seven virtues wherever they are found. Certainly he must avoid practicing them himself. And he must struggle to suppress the comprehension of why he does so…among others, of course.

---

     “Mr. Rearden,” he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand out more of the Metal to friends of yours—I mean, in bigger hauls—it could be arranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends in Washington. Your friends are pretty important people, big businessmen, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential need dodge. Of course, there would be a few expenses. For things in Washington. You know how it is, things always occasion expenses.”
     “What things?”
     “You understand what I mean.”
     “No,” Rearden had said, “I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
     The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind, then come out with: “It’s bad psychology.”
     “What is?”
     “You know, Mr. Rearden, it’s not necessary to use such words as that.”
     “As what?”
     “Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another?”
     “Which way do I want you to say them?”
     “Why do you want me to?”
     “For the same reason that you don’t.”
     The boy had remained silent for a moment, then had said, “You know, Mr. Rearden, there are no absolute standards. We can’t go by rigid principles, we’ve got to be flexible, we’ve got to adjust to the reality of the day and act on the expediency of the moment.”
     “Run along, punk. Go and try to pour a ton of steel without rigid principles, on the expediency of the moment.”

     [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

     Rand’s prescient vision was largely focused on the economic sphere. Yet it applies without distortion to every realm in human intercourse. The Left is savagely determined to suppress all the virtues of the Christian Enlightenment, and to do so without ever admitting its mission. Therefore it must treat honesty and clarity as mortal enemies to be destroyed. Should those virtues in communication make a true comeback – should we all return to speaking plainly, using words according to their common meanings and eschewing all dissimulation – the Left will go down to a most ignominious defeat.

     So by all means ask the Leftist haranguing you “What do you mean by that?” Smile when he calls you a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe, or whatever. Then tell him, “Your response has been video-recorded. Have a nice day.” Tot it up as your good deed for the day.

     Food for thought.

Christianity And Community

     I’ve labored virtually the whole morning over what you’re about to read. Now that it’s finished, I’m disturbed by it. No, not because it’s incorrect, badly reasoned, or poorly written; because its implications are alarming in the extreme. I swore as I sat to my task that I would follow the evidence wherever it might lead me. Having done so, I find myself beset by a powerful need to “make it all go away.”

     If you’re interested in what animated it all, this piece at the Washington Post will provide some supplementary value.

---

     Over at Gab, where I occasionally participate, I was surprised to see another commenter post this:

     Regardless of whether or not you believe in Christianity, it is needed in order to strengthen the cultural identity of white people.

     As a Catholic Christian, I have no problem with any of that. But it pleased me greatly to encounter someone else aware of the importance of our Christian heritage. However, we must not leave it at that. The backdrop to the matter is critically important.

     Many will disagree with what I’m about to say. Some will be offended...not that anyone’s opinion could make it less true. Facts are like that – and this is a fact:

Christianity created what we call Western Civilization.
The West would not survive the disavowal of Christianity.
Neither would the white race.

     Christianity is the common ethical foundation of all Western nations. Christian ethics, where they can be reliably presumed, make commerce, the division of labor, and voluntary cooperation possible. Alongside that, note that wherever whites have flourished, Christianity was there from the first. Wherever whites are a persecuted minority, Christianity is absent, and usually not tolerated. Those nations that are drifting away from Christianity are reaping the whirlwind for it.

     Some who would demur would offer as “counter-evidence” the hostility toward Christianity found in some of the luminaries of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire. (“Man will never be free until the last king has been strangled with the entrails of the last priest” makes his opinion rather plain, doesn’t it?) But by now we should all know that he who is a genius in one field can be a total dunce in another.

     Christian colonial missionaries to Africa are largely responsible for what civilization can be found there. Where Christianity remains strong, there is a modicum of order and decency. Where Christianity has been expelled, or has been displaced as the natives reverted to tribalism and pagan shamanism, disorder and violent predation are prevalent. Moreover, black populations outside Africa show the same correlation. That, too, is a fact.

     Those nations where Christian allegiances have waned but a semblance of Western Civilization remains are running on a sort of momentum, an inherited social and ethical webwork beneath which the departure of Christianity has left a void. That webwork has begun to fray badly. The morals and ethics bequeathed to us by Christianity are supremely difficult to sustain vertically, through the generations, once severed from their Christian foundation.

---

     Christianity, from the very first, incorporated a sense of community: a bond among the Christians of a place independent of their variations in age, occupation, pastimes, or what-have-you. Indeed, in the earliest Christian parishes each member was expected to know all the others. More, they were expected to strive to be well-disposed toward the others: courteous in social or incidental contact, trustworthy in trade and cooperative concerns, and charitable toward those in need through no fault of their own. The bond was kept vital by involvement in the parish itself: its rituals, its festivals, and its celebrations of births, deaths, and marriages.

     After the Civil War, when the social and commercial interpenetration of the white and black races began in earnest, Christianity was the bridge. Blacks who embraced Christianity were accepted as trustworthy members of the community; blacks who did not were regarded more warily. This pattern is still observable today: there’s greater racial harmony in those regions of the United States where black Christian churches are strong than in those where they command few adherents. Community bonds trump racial differences.

     It is possible that no mingling of the races would have worked were it not for the Christian dictum to “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Tranquil multiracial and multiethnic societies where Christianity is feeble or absent are very few.

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     Among the most significant differences between our age and times past is the great quantity of laments over “alienation” and lack of “communication.” It’s becoming ever more difficult for Smith to be sure that he can trust Jones, or to be sure that he can understand Jones to mean what he says. Jones, of course, feels the same way about Smith. This is the direct consequence of moral relativism, especially in its multicultural garb. Culture cannot be separated from ethics.

     Ethical principles of the Christian sort can be arrived at rationally – i.e., without an appeal to Divine authority – but few persons possess the intellectual power required for the job. Those principles are best inculcated in one’s children “at their mother’s knee.” Christianity is a supremely powerful aid to that process; without it, Mom is reduced to trying to reason with that least reasonable of creatures, the unruly child. Thus, should Generation N lapse in its attachment to Christianity, it becomes more likely that Generation N+1 will contain a large proportion of ethically uncivilized persons.

     Not coincidentally, the secular tend not to bond to a community. No matter how much real estate they acquire or where, they remain nearly as unrooted as “drifters.” This is most observably the case among the unmarried. Worse, marriages of the secular sort have been displaying a mayfly-like longevity.

---

     A fully secular culture will lack both a common ethics and enduring communities. The commonalities among its citizens will be superficial, too thin to sustain Western ethics against the human impulse to manipulate others for personal gain. Tragically, pressures arising from Man’s quest for greater knowledge, greater control of his environment, and greater control of his own destiny will play a large part. Creeds that emphasize power and personal aggrandizement will flower in the void created by Christianity’s departure.

     C. S. Lewis noted this in That Hideous Strength:

     The sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had even in Ransom's own time begun to be subtly manoeuvred in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists’ indifference to it, and a concentration upon power had been the result. Babble about the élan vital and flirtations with pan-psychism were bidding fair to restore the Anima Mundi of the magicians. Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of deep set repugnances was the first essential for progress. And now all this had reached the stage at which its dark contrivers thought they could safely begin to bend it back so that it would meet that other and earlier kind of power. Indeed, they were choosing the first moment at which this could have been done. You could not have done it with nineteenth-century scientists. Their firm objective materialism would have excluded it from their minds; and their inherited morality would have kept them from touching dirt. MacPhee was a survivor from that tradition. It was different now. Perhaps few or none at Belbury knew what was happening: but once it happened, they would be like straw in fire. What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     This isn’t the way I’d originally intended to close this essay, but the thought pressed itself upon me with too much urgency to resist:

     If you want to be able to trust those around you...
     If you yearn to be part of a mutually supportive community...
     If you seek to instill in your children a sense of safety and acceptance...

     ...need I say more?

The Engine Of Contemporary Collectivism

     The brilliant and indispensable Chris Muir provides the ignition for today’s tirade:

     He’s right, you know. White, heterosexual men are now the officially despised class of the Western world. even though we are the builders and defenders of the Christian-Enlightenment order and all that flourishes within it. Members of all other blocs feel either entitled to disparage and demean us, or obliged not to speak in our defense. Ironically, even some of us participate, in acts of self-denunciation.

     Yes, it’s bad. Worse than bad, as one of the consequences has been the adoption of a “tolerance” that urges us to tolerate the intolerable. What else do the preponderant reactions to the atrocious behavior of Muslims in Europe signify? What else could it mean when high government officials react to Muslims’ brutalization of European women not by encouraging European men to rise to their defense, but by advising women to cover up, travel in groups, and stay away from public places?

     Anyone with three functioning brain cells can see that this is insupportable. The marginalization and demonization of the defenders of Western civilization will doom that civilization. Progress will be displaced by riot and destruction. Public order will be smashed to flinders. Indeed, these things are already taking place. How, then, did it get to this point?

     Perhaps you already know.

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     Some time ago, a dear friend penned a series of essays condemning broadcast journalism. Among his most powerful points was that that industry is a creature of the government. Without the intrusion into journalism of the Federal Communications Commission, the powers of broadcast journalism – indeed, the broadcast networks as a whole – would never have come to exist.

     Among my habitual points is that bigness gravitates to bigness: that huge organizations will tend to cluster, and more often than not to ally with one another, despite a superficial appearance of competition. In the case of the broadcast networks, the matter is more than obvious, as the networks must please the federal government to retain their licenses. That naturally results in promoting the ideas and viewpoints Washington likes and suppressing those it dislikes.

     Every government on Earth, no matter how constituted, is a collectivizing force. Thus, its creatures will tend to be collectivizing forces as well, for their parent will not tolerate a great divergence from its will.

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     It is in the nature of any centrally controlled entity with a broad scope, whether broad geographically, economically, or demographically, that it will promulgate and promote a kind of uniformity among those it affects. Japan provides an extreme example: the huge zaibatsu corporations exert enormous influence over the thinking and behavior of the near-uniform Japanese people. When some idea or practice gains a foothold among them, it spreads at great speed to become a universal fad. Though Westerners are more diverse in many ways than the Japanese, our own large conglomerates, especially those in the business of spreading news and ideas, have comparable influence over what’s commonly called “conventional wisdom.”

     The idea-propagating industry in all its manifestations has been a principal target of the Left:

• The broadcast networks;
• The newspapers;
• The publishing industry;
• The visual media;

     ...have all fallen under the sway of “liberal” / “progressive” assumptions and thought. As that mindset is inherently collectivist, the ideas thus propagated have swerved a hundred eighty degrees from the individualist propositions at the foundation of Christian-Enlightenment civilization to a Marxism not of economic classes but of oppressed and oppressor groups.

     (The attempt to spread “classic,” economics-based Marxism in the West has been indifferently successful; Europe bought partway into it, but America never did. Here, the entering wedges were racism and the early exclusion of women from the vote. The emphasis on oppression and groups derived for it, followed naturally.)

     If you’ve ever wondered about the hostility the major media players have demonstrated toward individualist thought expressed on the World Wide Web, right-leaning talk radio, or upstart Fox News, you have your answer.

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     The inescapable conclusion is that American collectivism, manifest through the Left’s various gospels of:

• Race;
• Ethnicity;
• Sex;
• Sexual orientation;

     ...is almost entirely the product of the Left-dominated idea propagating industries. Recent flare-ups in the ideological battle between individualism and collectivism, for example in the “Sad Puppies” contretemps over the Hugo Awards, only illustrate the ferocity with which the Left defends what it sees as both its bastion and its indispensable tool.

     There are lessons to be drawn here:

• The broadcast networks’ products are far more likely than not to grate against the sensibilities of an individualist-minded American.
• The products of major media companies, whether in print or electronic form, will continue to be collectivist in their assumptions, whether or not those assumptions are made explicit.
• The government-controlled educational “system” has as its first priority the inculcation of collectivism (and subordination of the individual to the State) in minds under its sway.
• The recent attack on video gaming for emphasizing enjoyment over “social justice” ideas, is no accident and will intensify over the near term.
• Government at all levels will side with the “social-justice warriors,” albeit not necessarily overtly, regardless of whether under the dominance of Democrats or Republicans.

     Consider that a checklist of things to be avoided by the prudent adult, and as far as possible deflected in favor of wholesome alternatives by the parents of minor children.

Context Matters

     It was a long time ago that I first heard the following instructive exchange:

P1: I saw something disturbing today.
P2: What was that?
P1: An old woman was walking down the street when a young man rushed at her, knocked her down, rolled her along the ground, and slapped her all over her body.
P2: Horrible! How could anyone treat a defenseless old woman that way?
P1: Wait, did I mention that she was on fire?

     Little details such as that one matter a lot. Yet a great part of what passes for journalism today consists of concealing certain details to ensure that the story being told conforms to “the narrative,” or at least doesn’t damage it. This is also true for a lot of public rhetoric. If you tell the story just right — tell just enough truth, then shut up – you can enlist your audience in its own deception.

     Activists tend to omit details in the stories they tell, too. Smith is homeless, living on the street and begging passers-by for food? Very sad. But how did he get there? Drink? Drugs? Drawing to an inside straight? Unwise moves in the commodities markets? Give us the process, not just the consequences.

     The technique makes use of prevailing assumptions about what isn’t said. The young man in the opening vignette could be anyone, and the context could be anything. But it’s highly uncommon for young men to attack old women. It’s also uncommon for old women to be publicly on fire… in the literal sense, at least.

     Good people tend to assume the goodness of others: i.e., that unless it’s made explicit that this is not the case, other people share their ethical basis. That’s our inheritance as members of a Christian-Enlightenment culture.

     Prevailing assumptions prevail because they’re correct more often than not. Yet even when society is at its most uniform, there will be exceptions to them. More critical yet, in a society that’s losing uniformity, those assumptions will develop an increasing number of exceptions. This is especially important in a society which, for whatever reason, is shedding its cultural cohesion.

     Many First World countries are losing their cultural cohesion today. There are several reasons, which apply differentially according to the country under discussion. Rather than go into yet another tirade about immigration, I’ll say simply that as largely uniform populations become ever less uniform, the prevailing assumptions in those nations will become ever more dubious.

     Street violence? It might not be a failure of the “forces of order.” After all, certain ethnicities concentrate their numbers geographically. There are only so many police. Besides, some ethnicities regard the police as their enemies and would turn from whatever animates them to attacking the men in blue. There are a lot of guns out there, y’know.

     Open, blatant shoplifting? Don’t we teach our children not to do such things? Of course we do… some of us. Others tell their kids that “The Man” has been holding them down, and that the only way to “get a little back” is to grab it and run away. Or swagger away, if the shopkeeper is a tiny Asian man and you’re Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri.

     Idleness and shiftlessness concentrated in particular demographics? Ain’t no jobs, bro! Besides, who would hire one of us? Never mind that there’s a national labor shortage. And while it’s true that most employers would hesitate to hire one of you, don’t you think there might be reasons for it – and that you might want to put some effort into being an exception?

     The disintegration of a First World society into increasingly insular, increasingly mutually hostile subcultures makes it vitally important to be alert for exceptions to our assumptions. Maybe they’re becoming less reliable than in seasons past. As for the implied importance of preserving a common, Christian-Enlightenment culture, I trust that no more need be said.

The Foundation Is Gone

     “Politics is downstream from culture.” – Andrew Breitbart

     A few years ago, I wrote a pair of essays on the deterioration of male-female relations and its most important secondary effect: the declines in marriage and marital stability. Here are the links:

• The Crumbling Cornerstone
• The Crumbling Cornerstone Part 2: Mental Avoidances

     I’ve written other pieces on the subject, of course, but I regard those two as the warning siren that – if I had anything like a wide readership – “should” have alerted Americans to the future they faced. Well, that future has arrived, and its implications for further deterioration are even uglier:

     Fewer U.S. adults now than in past years believe it is "very important" for couples who have children together to be married. Currently, 29% say it is very important that such a couple legally marry, down from 38% who held this view in 2013 and 49% in 2006.

     Another 31% of U.S. adults currently say it is "somewhat important" for couples with children to be married, bringing the total to 60% who consider it important to some degree. Meanwhile, four in 10 say it is not too (18%) or not at all (22%) important.

     In 2006, Americans were more than twice as likely to say it is very important (49%) for couples with children to wed as to say it is not important (23%).

     The latest results are based on Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 1-13. The poll updated several trends on Americans' views about marriage asked previously over the past two decades.

     The above statistics capture a trend away from marriage and family formation that couldn’t be clearer if it were sky-written in blacker-than-black thousand-point type.

     The easiest thing in the world is to predict that a trend in progress will continue. You’ll eventually be wrong, of course (“Trees do not grow to the sky.” – Baron Philippe de Rothschild) but averaged over time, you’ll be right more often than not. Therefore I predict, with fair confidence, that the trend away from marriage and family formation will continue.

     If this trend continues much further, it heralds the end of Christian-Enlightenment civilization.

---

“But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long.
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on,
I wonder what's gone wrong...
I can't help but wonder what’s gone wrong.”

[Paul Simon]

     The political morass of our era consumes a great deal of popular attention. (Yes, mine too.) It makes me wonder how many people are familiar with the Breitbart quote at the top of the previous segment...and how many of them actually believe it.

     Among the things that most strongly shape our culture is our attitude toward the future. Do we care about the future? How far forward do our cares extend? Why? What predisposes a man to care about the years that will follow his departure from this veil of tears?

     The answers are not hard to find. Our concern for what might follow our deaths arises from those things we hope to survive us:

• Our progeny,
• Our businesses,
• Our reputations.

     Let’s leave businesses and reputations to the side for now. He who has children is most likely to be concerned with the future. (Yes, that assumes that he loves his children.) He who has seen his children become adults and produce children of their own has doubled reasons. But he who has not produced offspring has a nearer horizon for his decision-making. All other things being equal, he will care less about what will follow his death than the man with progeny.

     Marriage has been the traditional method for protecting the well-being of fertile women and the children they have borne. No other method known to Mankind has worked nearly as well at safeguarding those interests. But any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will be aware that marriages in our time are more fragile, are shorter on average, and tend to produce fewer children than the marriages of previous generations of Americans. Combine those trends with the suspicions and animosities that bedevil relations between the sexes. What does the combination say about our interest in our future?

     Need I say explicitly that a people unconcerned with the future are unlikely to build a stable society, nor to preserve and nurture the social supports bequeathed them by their forebears? Perhaps not, but as is my wont I’ve done so anyway.

     Without a preponderance of stable families that produce and cherish children, Christian-Enlightenment society – especially its highest expression, the United States of America – cannot long endure. It will lack the foundation it needs to sustain it.

---

     “Ve get too soon old und too late schmart.” – Old World maxim

     Rather than flog this beast all the way to the glue factory, I’ll close with an observation from about forty years back. It’s a semi-hopeful observation, which might presage the end of the destructive anti-marital, anti-natal trends. However, it would be foolish to presume that it means anything more than what it’s meant to my Long Island neighborhood: i.e., a reduction in the traffic on Friday and Saturday nights.

     There was a developer who’d received approval for a multi-family compound on a nearby plot of land. He was licking his chops over his prospects, for he had noted the trends toward ever more single people living alone, along with ever smaller families. So he planned for an apartment complex that was heavy with one-bedroom units: the sort of pad that would appeal to bachelors, bachelorettes, and the divorced. After all, if they were “the future” – and given the trends, he had good reason to think so – then marketing to them was the smartest course. At the time Long Island didn’t have much convenient housing for singles, so he’d be tapping an underserved market.

     Sounds like good market analysis, doesn’t it? It certainly did at the time. Working from that vision, the developer produced a 200-apartment complex that was heavily weighted toward small units. It quickly attracted exactly the sort of tenant he sought. It also acquired a moniker: Sin City. (I have no idea whether he was aware of that, nor if he was, whether he cared.)

     That apartment complex is almost empty today. I believe the company that operates it has gone into receivership. I can’t say why of my own knowledge. Certainly such an enterprise is subject to many influences, currents, and vicissitudes. Regardless, the original flood of tenants has left and has not been replaced by tenants like them. Why not?

     Time passes. Things change. People’s desires change. Some regret their earlier ways and strive to change them. Then there’s technology to consider, and its response to the changes in human desires. One advancing technology is making it possible for women to have healthy children safely at a later age than ever before in history...and an increasing number of women are discovering, much to their own surprise and chagrin, that marriage, a stable home, and a husband and children to love are the things they really want and should have pursued from the outset.

     Naturally, the radical feminists eager to keep “the war between the sexes” hot and bloody condemn this development. Could they counteract it and keep the anti-marriage, anti-natal trends “healthy?” It remains to be seen. But at least the evidence is not wholly in their favor.

     That’s it for me for today. Enjoy your Sunday.

The Inmates Are Running The Loony Bin

     We have proof at last: You’re not crazy. It’s the rest of the world. At least, it’s the part that the Main Stream Media prefer to report on.

     Consider this: Two persons, each of whom commands vast influence over a large number of people, neither of which has the slightest education in thermodynamics or large-scale hydrodynamics, have converged to discuss that all-purpose chimera of the totalitarian Left, “climate change.”

     But who are those two persons? Why none other than Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio a.k.a. Pope Francis, and the president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. Both these persons were elevated to their current positions by idiots – and I use the term quite deliberately. It should surprise no one that idiots have empowered idiots, as unfortunate as that is.

     But first things first. Why is Pope Francis meeting with The Won? It’s not because of Obama’s pretended Christianity. No Christian would countenance the appalling treatment of Christians by the federal government. No Christian would accept that the homosexual rape of young boys is merely a “cultural practice.” No Christian would so regularly side with Islamic satraps and their tyrannies against Israel or the nations of Christendom...at least, no Christian of a sort not tutored by Jeremiah Wright.

     But then, we have reason to doubt Pope Francis’s Christianity as well. A true pope would not consort with the most brutal dictator in the Western Hemisphere. If the College of Cardinals isn’t feeling a trace of remorse over having elevated Bergoglio to the Throne of Saint Peter, the entire batch of them is doomed to Hell.

     Meanwhile, the media are absolutely aghast over Donald Trump not having chastised a questioner for indirectly asserting that Obama is a Muslim. Those selfsame media figures are apoplectic that Ben Carson, a true Christian and one of the most admirable men ever to enter public life, said that he would not advocate installing a Muslim as president. And of course, the media are legendarily hostile to any questioning of the Left’s Climate Gospel. If there’s a greater irony than the above in the public discourse, I haven’t encountered it.

     Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts, though much beloved by his fans, has proved a trifle optimistic. But then, many of those fans are utterly convinced that the supreme cultural event in the history of Mankind was the Woodstock Music Festival.

---

     Let’s not lay all the guilt on the inmates. There are plenty of allegedly rational collaborators who deserve to share the burden.

     The Republican caucuses in Congress have been adamant in refusing to oppose or impede Obama and his agenda. They’ve allowed The Won to reign as if he were an absolute monarch. They’ve refused to block funding for Obama’s anti-Constitutional initiatives because they fear the odium from “shutting down the government.” They’ve allowed Administration figures to lie to Congressional committees, without a single indictment for perjury. They’ve declined to impeach Cabinet secretaries who’ve openly defied the law. A few have spoken out...far too few.

     The Supreme Court is no better. That body has interpreted “not a tax” to mean “a tax,” has dismissed the text of the bill it thus admitted into law, and has agreed to the politicization of a critical and completely non-political institution – marriage – out of fear of the Sodomite Lobby. There are six persons on the Court who claim to be Catholics. Reflect on that.

     State and local governments have been complicit: some out of cowardice, some for fear of losing federal bucks. Major “think tanks” and “institutes of higher learning” have participated in these farces as well. Need I say anything about the media? It’s all been said before, much of it here.

     I’m not feeling too sanguine about the future of my country or my Church. What about you, Gentle Reader?

---

     He who writes about politics, current events, and the doings of the powerful can easily come to despair. His political alignment is almost irrelevant to the process. The actions of governments and those who steer them could discourage any man, regardless of his opinions, from thinking that evidence and reason are any part of the decision makers’ concerns.

     I’m completely unsurprised by the adulation being showered on “outsiders” in the current presidential-nominations contests. “Insiders” have been so reliably perverse that no words suffice. Those that aren’t demonstrably criminal are either deceivers or impotent hangers-on. The public has become largely convinced that the political class is its enemy. The process of purging it has begun.

     I reserve my astonishment for the huge mass of Catholics worldwide who have chosen to embrace Pope Francis as “a pontiff for our times.” Granted that Bergoglio could not do as he’s done without at least the passive acquiescence of the Curia and the Catholic hierarchy generally, a pope does not have the expertise Bergoglio has assumed. Neither in economics nor geophysics is he at all informed. Worse, he appears willing to distort the Gospels – the bedrock of all Christian faith, from which flows the grace on which the Church rests! – to abrogate the Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

     The Church has been the indispensable civilizing element of the West from the time of its inception. Let the scoffers scoff. The Enlightenment didn’t refute the Church; it merely showed how Christian convictions are supported by evidence and reason. If it weren’t for the Church, human learning and human moral-ethical conduct would never have progressed beyond that of the pre-Christian Roman Empire. But the Church of today is steadily retreating from its preachments and its historical role as the conscience of rulers.

---

     What next?

     My imagination has failed me. I write contemporary fantasy, science fiction, and a kind of alternate history. My characters and their decisions have to make sense within their contexts. The only way the current state of the world or the actions of the highly placed could be made to make sense is by adopting as a premise the title of this piece. It certainly can’t be falsified by the available evidence.

     Clearly, I’m not in a frame of mind suitable to continuing just now. Back later, perhaps.

Schismata Part 3: The Cracks

     I’ve received a couple of questions about the neologism in the titles of these pieces. The resemblance to stigmata is deliberate. The wounds inflicted on Jesus Christ during his Passion and Crucifixion were preliminaries to His death on the Cross. The last of the stigmata, the spear wound to His side, was inflicted to guarantee that He was dead before His body could be taken down.

     My concept of schismata parallels the stigmata in that regard. The cracks in our philosophical and cultural unity being inflicted by the Left’s vanguard are preliminaries to a deathblow. They’re intended to soften us up for the kill. And they’ve been doing a bang-up job… or they were.

* * *

     As reality itself is a unity, all true wisdom is a unity as well. For wisdom is something other than material knowledge about “how things work.” True wisdom is the acceptance of reality in all its facets. The truly wise man “concedes the Tao,” as C. S. Lewis might have said. He doesn’t attempt to deny any part of it, for he knows its unity.

     Philosophy, “love of wisdom” etymologically, is a unity as well. Most peoples with a common culture share a philosophical outlook that’s seldom articulated. One aspect of that outlook is made visible in what they hail as beautiful. The architectural wonders of Europe, especially its cathedrals, testify to the esthetics of the culture that produced them. That esthetic cannot be separated from the rest of its enveloping outlook without destroying both.

     As I noted previously, that is where the Left chose to attack. No other part of the Western outlook was as vulnerable. Esthetics was uniquely sensitive because of the notion of relativism.

     In retrospect, we ought to have known better. To place the cathedrals and symphonies of Christian Enlightenment culture on a balance scale with the mud huts and grunted chants of self-mutilating savages was insane from the first. But the premise that beauty is “in the eye of the beholder,” rather than an aspect of reality itself, made it possible.

     The rejection of esthetic absolutes provided the ingress the destroyers needed.

* * *

     Once esthetic relativism had swept over Western culture, other aspects of the Western philosophical outlook became vulnerable. The key target was objectivity itself. Undermining the conviction that reality is real was the goal of the anti-Western forces. That could not be done by direct attack. It had to be through the promotion of non-Western outlooks, concepts of beauty, and “ways of knowing.”

     That trend began in Europe before the World Wars, but it accelerated sharply in the Sixties. That was when relativism as a philosophical primary took firm root. Millions of credulous young Westerners seized upon it. Their elders did little or nothing to correct them.

     Nonsense was promulgated as truth. Bizarre notions about reality as a plastic that individuals could reshape as they please were touted as wisdom. Relativism, already established in the arts, made it possible to introduce absurdities as acceptable alternatives to the real… and to get them accepted by millions.

     I was there. I was part of it. I remember it too well.

* * *

     “What is truth?” – Pontius Pilate

     Once, in giving a presentation to a college class in philosophy, I asked the students whether any of them had ever been interested in magic. A few hands went up...all of which belonged to persons who were somewhat reluctant to admit it. I smiled and told them not to be overly embarrassed, for magic, if it worked, would appear to be an easier way of achieving one’s aims – some of them, at least – than the alternatives. That’s its attraction.

     But magic doesn’t work. Why, then, are there persons who call themselves witches and claim to practice magic? Why are they granted the smallest amount of respect?

     If magic worked, it would be the focus of intense study and experimentation. Researchers would flock to the field, hoping to tease out the laws that govern it. Money would pour into the exploration of its limits and potential applications. None of that has happened.

     Another set of notions, similar to magic, is that of psi powers: in essence, mind over matter/energy. For a time, that was a field of investigation for some fringe researchers, but it yielded nothing and has been relegated to the mediums (not “the media”) and stage magicians. But again, there are persons who proclaim themselves to be telepaths, or clairvoyants, and make a living out of demonstrating those “powers.” Why are they accorded any respect?

     Ironically, a brilliant fiction writer, Robert Silverberg, provided a summary of the reasons:

     “For the last eight, ten years, we’ve all been trying to stumble toward some kind of workable synthesis, some structural correlative that’ll hold the world together for us in the middle of all the chaos. The pot, the acid, the communes, the rock, the whole transcendentalist thing, the astrology, the macrobiotics, the Zen—we’re searching, right, we’re always searching? And sometimes finding. Not often. We look in a lot of dumb places, because basically we’re mostly dumb, even the best of us, and also because we can’t know the answers until we’ve worked out more of the questions. So we chase after flying saucers. We put on Scuba suits and look for Atlantis. We’re into mythology, fantasy, paranoia, Middle Earth, freakiness, a thousand kinds of irrationality. Whatever they’ve rejected, we buy, often for no better reason than that they turned it down. The flight from reason. I don’t entirely defend it. I just say it’s necessary, it’s a stage we all have to pass through, the fire, the annealing. Reason wasn’t sufficient. Western man escaped from superstitious ignorance into materialistic emptiness: now we’ve got to continue on, sometimes down blind alleys and false trails, until we learn how to accept the universe again in all its mysterious inexplicable tremendousness, until we find the right thing, the synthesis, the getting together that lets us live the way we ought to be living.”

     [From The Book of Skulls]

     They – we – were looking for magic.

* * *

     But “mythology, fantasy, paranoia, Middle Earth, freakiness,” et cetera are not of the Tao. To compel respect for them, by whatever means, violates the precepts of rational thought. Silverberg may have known that, back in 1972 when he wrote The Book of Skulls. Indeed, a man that intelligent could hardly fail to know it. Those who sought to undermine the Western outlook – the philosophical bedrock of the Christian Enlightenment – knew it well.

     The fragmentation of that bedrock proceeded apace throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century. Magic, irrealism, and outright solipsism, propelled in part by the burgeoning drug plague, advanced as alternatives to reality itself. A critical moment arrived with the introduction and acceptance of a nonsense phrase: “our truth,” or alternately “your truth.” That became popular with the moral / ethical relativists, those determined to open a crack in the moral norms promulgated by Christianity.

     The assault on esthetic norms had made inroads for assaults on other norms. In large part that was through the personal charisma of the “new artistes.” It was also powered by the adolescent thrill of rebellion, flipping off the “straights” and “doing your own thing.” The cracks would soon be exploited by the purveyors of a deadly kind of magic: the “reality is plastic” notion that makes it possible to believe in impossibilities.

     More anon.

Canons

     Catholics are made aware, fairly early in life, of canon law: the set of rules that govern:

• The Church hierarchy;
• The way in which rules are arrived at, modified, and enforced;
• And of course, the behavior of lay Catholics, including their relations with the hierarchy.

     That’s usually our first encounter with the term canon. The modifier specifically addresses the Churchly aspect of its laws: their position in Catholic life above and apart from civil law. Civil law, the theory runs, is impermanent, often arbitrary, and not to be relied upon for moral guidance in day to day life. Canon law derives from a far more authoritative Authority, at least in theory.

     However, the term canon is used to describe certain things that aren’t explicitly religious in nature. In particular, there’s been a great deal of talk about the Western canon: that set of great books that articulate and defend the core ideas behind Western Civilization.

     (I’ve often referred to Western Civilization as Christian-Enlightenment Civilization. The melding of Christian moral codes with the Enlightenment understanding of the supremacy of the indivdual’s rights over the claims and representations of the powerful was what made freedom possible. Before that marriage, freedom as Americans understand it had never even been conceived. But this is a subject best left for another time.)

     In similar fashion, various collections of literary works have been described as canon or canonical, meaning that they express the ideas at the heart of some current in the evolution of fiction, or a category thereof. A recent encounter struck me as particularly revealing...and somewhat humorous as well:

     The end result is that you now hold a new Tomb Raider story. It is canon. Its events are now part of Lara’s life and the origin story that is currently being told. [From the Foreword to Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals. Emphasis added by FWP.]

     Mind you, Lara Croft is the heroine of a video-game series. Surely no one is less real than a video-game heroine who explores tombs, warrens of caves, and mystically infested islands. Yet the adoption of the bosomy adventurer by millions of fans has resulted in two slam-bang action movies starring Angelina Jolie, a number of spin-off novels, comics and fan fiction, a “reboot” of the franchise to give her a more complete, more human “biography”...and the need for her creators to say which works in which Lara appears are “canonical.”

     I’m in something of the same position at the moment, having surrendered to pressure from my readers to extend the Realm of Essences series, and to connect it somehow to my Spooner Federation series. The problems that face a writer in this sort of effort can be quite severe. He’s basically writing a “future history” of the sort Asimov and Heinlein once essayed – and once it’s been declared canonical, even he won’t dare to violate its precepts.

     The amount of Sturm und Drang surrounding the idea of literary canons is difficult to overstate. Some writers regard the Western canon as quasi-sacred: not to be questioned, much less violated. Others, obsessed with being regarded as “innovators,” treat it as a target to be punctured. (Those latter ones often regard the existence of a canon as an affront to their “creative freedom.” Given the generally abysmal quality of most of their fiction, I’m tempted to say that they could use a little discipline...in some cases more than a little.) The volume of the argument occasionally violates the pain threshold, to say nothing of the accusations and epithets the participants sling around.

     Universities are often major participants in the “canonist vs. anti-canonist” cage matches. There’s a certain logic to this, as the University of Chicago, under the leadership of the brilliant Robert Maynard Hutchins, was instrumental in the compilation of the Great Books curriculum, which has come to be regarded as essential to if not identical with the Western Civilizational canon. Those who seek to “make their mark” often choose that series as a target: to be extended, amplified, edited, or destroyed.

     Lesser canons have become significant in genre writing. For example, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth over what John C. Wright and others have proposed as the canonical works of fantasy and science fiction. Some of the exchanges, like the Cherry Fondue from the Whizzo Quality Assortment, have been extremely nasty. (No, we can’t prosecute for that.) Yet the veneration of those canonical works, their immense popularity, and their importance as points from which thousands of other writers have chosen to pursue elaborations, cannot be disputed.

     What the literary anti-canonists refuse to accept, in virtually every case, is that a canon does not exist because it was declared from On High. It emerges from the widespread recognition of the quality of its components, and their formative importance to later writers. In the usual case, that’s because their attempts to gain fame by dismissing or contradicting some canon fail miserably. The execrable quality of most of the crap that’s won awards stands in testimony.

     The same is true for canonical ideas. The ideas and principles at the foundation of Western Civilization were, at some point, original. But they would not have become a canon if they hadn’t succeeded in practice – and so brilliantly that the rest of the world is divided between camps that seek to emulate us and camps that seek to destroy us.

     In a way, the emergence of a canon demonstrates that Aristotelian essentialism and Platonic idealism can be harmoniously fused. Horses must pre-exist “horseness,” except in the mind of the Creator, but once one has recognized the commonalities of horses, their differences from other mammals, and the perpetuation of those characteristics from generation to generation, “horseness” becomes equally real and equally powerful. So also with canons.

     More anon.

You Can’t Ponder Social Pathologies...

     ...without simultaneously being struck by their correlations with race, ethnicity, and identity.

     In a recent article, John Derbyshire considered at some length whether those three conceptions, which are interrelated in ways both obvious and subtle, are relevant to the question: What does it mean to be an American?

     The article is too rich with important observations for me to do it violence by pulling any of its meatier bits free of their context. It deserves your undivided attention from top to bottom. However, one early passage strikes me as excerpt-able: Derbyshire’s probe of whether America is a “proposition nation:”

     Suppose I were to trek up into the highlands of Ethiopia, get myself invited into the hut of some illiterate Amhara goatherd, and explain our founding documents to him; and suppose he were to respond with enthusiastic agreement. Did he thereby instantly become an American?

     Conversely, here is a U.S. citizen every one of whose forebears arrived here before the Revolution, and whose male forebears fought with distinction in our country’s wars. He strongly disagrees with the principles of the Founders, and would have preferred we become a Christian theocracy. Should he be stripped of his citizenship?

     I regard this as important because it bears on the frequently derided concept of an American culture.

     Take that Ethiopian goatherd and drop him into Nebraska, perhaps on the outskirts of Lincoln. (Yes, he can bring his goats.) Would he be able to survive, much less flourish? More important yet: Would he abide by the behavioral norms, positive and negative, that characterize the American culture:

• The legal “thou shalt nots:” no murder, theft, fraud, perjury, false accusations.
• The cultural “thou shalts:” public decency; a certain minimum of neighborliness; adherence to the rules of civilized behavior in public accommodations (e.g., a grocery store).

     Note that the advocate for a Christian theocracy would have no problem with any of that. He’s a product of the American culture, having absorbed it from birth. Would our Ethiopian goatherd pick it up in time to avoid being jailed or lynched?

     The social pathologies of our era derive from the rejection of the American culture, as summarized above. That rejection correlates powerfully with race, ethnicity, and identity:

• The preponderance of violent crimes and crimes against property are committed by Negroes.
• Exclaves where American law is not honored are dominated by Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and African immigrants.
• Persons who identify as other than American account for a great deal of the tension and disorder in our cities.

     The most important contrast here is between the above-named groups and the Eastern European immigrant waves of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Those persons arrived knowing only that they were leaving their homelands. They knew little about America; many believed much that was not so. They had little or no acquaintance with the Christian-Enlightenment heritage upon which America is based. Yet they assimilated swiftly, became sound, law-abiding citizens, and flourished.

     They were powerfully influenced by the institutions of the time, especially the public schools, which had as a principal mission the assimilation of immigrant children. They were not accommodated in maintaining the cultures from which they came:

• They were expected to learn English.
• They were expected to abide by American laws and customs.
• They were expected to transfer their allegiance to the United States.

     Those late 19th and early 20th Century Eastern European and Asian immigrants did all those things. They didn’t even regard them as impositions. Yet today we make excuses for rapists and molesters on the grounds of their “culture.” We condone riots in our cities because of “the legacy of slavery.” We refrain from criticizing the practices of any culture, preferring to treat all as “equally valid.” If there’s any single development that underlines how far into reverse we’ve gone, it’s this: Instead of expecting the residents of the United States to speak, read, and write English, our governments print their official publications in more than90 different languages.

     There’s a lot that needs explaining here...and part of the explanation must derive from race, ethnicity, and identity as those things bear upon resistance to cultural assimilation.

     I maintain that you cannot function as an American – i.e., as a self-supporting member of American society, free to navigate through it at will, whose fear of the law cuts off roughly at the traffic and zoning ordinances – unless you adopt – assimilate to – the American culture. Yet we allow designated minorities to flout their active rejection of the laws and customs of that culture. We admit thousands of persons each month who neither understand the American culture, nor want to become a part of it, nor respect it enough even to pay lip service to its norms. And we passively tolerate their construction of exclaves in which an American, as implicitly defined here, would be unwelcome at best.

     Thoughts?

Schismata Part 2: The Unity

     A long time ago, I wrote:

     In the kitchen, Louis took a small saucepan from the cabinet beneath the cooktop, filled it half-full with hot water, and set it on a burner. From a drawer he produced a large bulb-type thermometer, attached it to a pair of wooden grips, and passed the combination to her.
     “This is going to be a little different. I’m going to make a prediction, and then we’ll see if it comes true.” He gestured at the saucepan. “I’m going to light the stove and heat the water in the pot. You put the thermometer in and watch the reading, but don’t let the bulb touch the pan! I predict that no matter how high we turn the flame, and no matter how long we let it heat, the temperature of the water will never rise past two hundred twelve degrees. Okay?”
     “Okay.” She dipped the bulb into the pot. The reading rose to a hundred fifteen degrees. He lit the burner, turned the flame up high, and they watched.
     When giant bubbles began to rise through the water, the thermometer read two hundred twelve. She kept it as steady as she could, never allowing the bulb to touch the metal of the pan. The water level dropped and the kitchen filled with steam, but the reading stayed at two hundred twelve until Louis quenched the burner ten minutes later.
     “We’ve boiled away too much to keep going safely. So? What does that mean to you?”
     She shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it supposed to mean something?”
     “Well, maybe not. But what does it mean to you that my prediction came true?”
     “You knew it would be that way.”
     “And what does that mean?”
     She started to speak and stopped herself. She knew his style. There was a pattern in the sequence of apparently unrelated things he had shown her that day. He was waiting for her to see it. The Nag lent a hand.
     Limits. He’s shown you three limits. Three things that wishing can’t do anything about.
     “Water’s just that way, right? It always stops at two-twelve. You can’t force it any higher.”
     He nodded as the huge grin returned to his face. “That’s right. Not at sea level, anyway. That’s one of the unvarying properties of water.” He took the saucepan to the sink and emptied it. There was a hiss and a new cloud of steam as the water ran over the cold porcelain.
     “Scientists study the properties of things all the time.” He set the pan down in the sink and turned back to her. “They look for patterns in the way things behave, and then they test their understanding by making predictions. When their predictions work, they gain confidence that they’re on to something. When their predictions fail, they junk their theories and start over. Mostly by little steps, sometimes by big ones, always building on the learning of those that came before them, this is how scientists come to know the world.”
     He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms against his chest. There was something in his demeanor she hadn’t seen before, a kind of all-pervading delight that transformed him and made it impossible to look away from him.
     “Scientists always look for the widest, most comprehensive patterns they can find, and then they try to explain them. And they’ve noticed that, the wider and deeper they go, the simpler the explanations seem to get.
     “The great discoveries of the past three centuries have all pointed toward the existence of an enormous central fact, a single law for the whole world and everything in it. All the little patterns we see in things, like legs only being so fast, or arms only being so strong, or water never rising past two-twelve Fahrenheit, are just special cases of that central law, like the differently shaped shadows a statue will cast depending on how you turn it in the sun. Does that suggest anything to you, Chris?”
     It took her a moment to register the question. She began to think. He waited in silence.
     A million million details. A single truth giving rise to them all. Human reason sifting the details for the patterns that hid in them. Human knowledge of the patterns accumulating over the centuries, gradually reconstructing the statue from its innumerable shadows.
     “The more you know, the simpler it all gets,” she whispered. “The parts might be confusing, but it’s made to be understood whole.” The thrill of discovery was coursing through her like an electric current. “Louis, it couldn’t have happened that way by chance, could it?”
     He folded his hands and looked down at them.
     “Some people think it could have, Chris.”
     “Do you?”
     “No.”
     “And that’s religion?”
     He nodded.

     That was a young genius attempting to explain the impulse toward religious belief to another young but untutored genius. He’d found God in natural law. The uniformity and consistency of natural law seemed to him to mandate a single great Lawgiver. Other great minds have done the same, though not all of them.

     Yet Louis’s insight, entirely apart from its religious overtones, has another implication of critical import: All laws are one. All truths are one. They intertwine and support one another. Were any one of them to be pulled loose, the edifice would crumble.

     Though many would disagree, the unity is there.

     I’ve written that for an individual to accept any single fact as objectively irrefutable would compel him to accept all the rest of reality, given time. But after long reflection, I’ve come to believe that the reverse is true as well: If he could successfully deny any one objectively demonstrable fact, it would force him to deny all the rest of objective reality. He’d have to! They’re intertwined. Any one thread that’s pulled loose would unravel the whole garment.

     It may be that the enemies of the Western edifice – what I’ve called the Christian Enlightenment — are more aware of this than are most of us who strive to defend it. Their attacks have demonstrated that their tacticians have some insight. A smart tactician doesn’t pit strength against strength. He always looks for a weakness to attack.

     The weaknesses of Western civilization are those realms of thought in which we’ve entertained disputes about objective truths… including the mystifying determination of some to dismiss the concept of an objective reality entirely.

* * *

     I led off yesterday’s piece by rhapsodizing, a bit wistfully, about the Apollo 11 mission. In what probably struck many Gentle Readers as the all-time champion of jagged segues, I leaped thence into a tirade about the Left’s attack on the arts.

     By now, you know that what I do, I do deliberately.

     Though I know that there are people who claim that the moon landing was faked – that men have never crossed that divide – only they take themselves seriously. They’re in a special category of naysayers, along with the flat-Earthers and Man Will Never Fly Society. But the naysayer, a.k.a. the skeptic, is an important creature. Provided that he is honest, he assists the rest of us in answering questions about natural laws. The honesty part is not optional: he must be willing to concede when he’s been proved wrong by objective means.

     The nature of objectivity is a tender point in the Western psyche. It’s unprovable, because proof is inapplicable to things that cannot be categorized. Objectivity isn’t a concept; it’s reality itself. To deny objectivity is to deny that the world we perceive is anything but a figment of our imaginations.

* * *

     I feel no need to go into the solipsist or social-constructionist fallacies today. Suffice it to say that these are the end states of the denial of objectivity. They who strive to destroy the Christian Enlightenment don’t want to go that far. They want something like this:

     ’There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,’ he said. ’Repeat it, if you please.’
     ”Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently.
     ”Who controls the present controls the past,” said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. ’Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?’
     Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether ’yes’ or ’no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
     O’Brien smiled faintly. ’You are no metaphysician, Winston,’ he said. ’Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?’
     ’No.’
     ’Then where does the past exist, if at all?’
     ’In records. It is written down.’
     ’In records. And- ?’
     ’In the mind. In human memories.
     ’In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?’
     ’But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ’It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’
     O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
     ’On the contrary,’ he said, ’you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

     With themselves as “The Party,” of course.

     If all of reality is truly a unity, then successfully attacking it at one weak point offers the best chance of destroying the acceptance of reality itself – that is, reality as objective, ontologically prior to perception, statement, theory, and opinion. The weakest point was in esthetics, the special province of the human activities called the arts. Accordingly, that was where the destroyers struck.

     “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” ran the old saw. Nothing that blatantly false has ever received as much deference. Beauty – esthetic Quality, as Pirsig would say – inheres in the object itself. We perceive it, call it beautiful, and think that in doing so we’ve rendered a personal judgment, but in point of fact we are merely recognizing a fact – something prior to our perceptions; something that simply is. The artists of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment eras accepted that without bothering to debate it. Their works exemplify their acceptance.

     As usual, C. S. Lewis had something to say about it:

     She saw from the windows of the train the outlined beams of sunlight pouring over stubble or burnished woods and felt that they were like the notes of a trumpet. Her eyes rested on the rabbits and cows as they flitted by and she embraced them in heart with merry, holiday love. She delighted in the occasional speech of the one wizened old man who shared her compartment and saw, as never before, the beauty of his shrewd and sunny old mind, sweet as a nut and English as a chalk down. She reflected with surprise how long it was since music had played any part in her life, and resolved to listen to many chorales by Bach on the gramophone that evening. Or else—perhaps—she would read a great many Shakespeare sonnets. She rejoiced also in her hunger and thirst and decided that she would make herself buttered toast for tea—a great deal of buttered toast. And she rejoiced also in the consciousness of her own beauty; for she had the sensation—it may have been false in fact, but it had nothing to do with vanity—that it was growing and expanding like a magic flower with every minute that passed. In such a mood it was only natural, after the old countryman had got out at Cure Hardy, to stand up and look at herself in the mirror which confronted her on the wall of the compartment. Certainly she was looking well: she was looking unusually well. And, once more, there was little vanity in this. For beauty was made for others.

     If yesterday’s piece didn’t make sense to you at first reading, perhaps it will today.

* * *

     I try not to go on at great length here. This is one of my longer pieces, yet it’s composed principally of citations of other works. In the next segment I’ll attempt to solidify the connections between the attacks noted here and the pillars of our intellectual realm.

     Have a nice day.

Lost...And Found? A Belated Rumination

James Pinkerton has a seven-year-old essay at The American Conservative that I blush to have overlooked before this:

In one of the great epics of Western literature, the hero, confronted by numerous and powerful enemies, temporarily gives in to weakness and self-pity. “I wish,” he sighs, “none of this had happened.” The hero’s wise adviser responds, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.” The old man continues, “There are other forces at work in this world … besides the will of evil.” Some events, he adds, are “meant” to be, “And that is an encouraging thought.”

Indeed it is. Perhaps, today, we are meant to live in these times. Perhaps right here, right now, we are meant to be tested. Maybe we are meant to have faith that other forces are at work in this world, that we are meant to rediscover our strength and our survival skills.

And so the question: can we, the people of the West, be brought to failure despite our enormous cultural and spiritual legacy? Three thousand years of history look down upon us: does this generation wish to be remembered for not having had the strength to look danger squarely in the eye? For having failed to harness our latent strength in our own defense?

With apologies to the frankenfood-fearers and polar bear-sentimentalizers, the biggest danger we face is the Clash of Civilizations, especially as we rub against the “bloody borders” of Islam.

Please, please read the whole thing. (If you regard fighting your way to the end of one of my essays as wearying, you'll find this experience either terminally exhausting or exhilarating.) Pinkerton fearlessly zeroes in on what the Western world lost -- in many cases, willingly -- when it surrendered the ancient title of Christendom.

---

I once wrote:

For nearly two centuries, America was seen as Olympus come to Earth: the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. For a century it was a nation of heroes, envied by all the other peoples of the world, upon which they automatically called in their darkest hours. That's an image of ourselves that should rouse all but the terminally comatose from their torpor.

The present generation of Americans may be only half-salvageable. Cravenness is dispelled only under unforeseen trial. Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance. The forces that call for surrender to the intolerable, that march under the banner of relativism and accommodation, are mighty. From their perches in academe and the media, they've done gruesome damage to the history and self-regard of our nation. But that's no reason to despair. It's certainly no reason not to raise our own banners and march.

We must put away venality and rediscover our just pride.
We must proclaim a gospel of responsible individual liberty, and hold strictly to it.
We must demand absolute fidelity to promises from our public officials.
We must purge our laws, our language, and our thoughts of much nonsense that entangles them.
We must cease to grant any respect to the demands of the Fakers and Takers; they must be recognized once more as parasites and objects of charity.
We must learn to discriminate between the unconscious and the conscious followers of Cthulhu and Allah. The former must be either enlightened or neutralized; the latter must be defeated by any means expedient. In no case may they be accommodated.

These are the weapons with which we can defeat Cthulhu, Allah, and the seemingly irresistible tides of demography, and reclaim our heroism.

"Olympus come to Earth" was a long-pondered choice for this Catholic; it was more evocative of the sentiments I wanted to stir than "Heaven come to Earth" would have been. The "gods" of classical mythology weren't divine in the sense appropriate to a Christian or Jewish believer; they were depicted more like very powerful humans who held themselves to be "above" the laws that govern the rest of us. When they were bad, they were very, very bad; when they were good...well, that wasn't often.

Brave, principled men who are willing to put "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" on the line for the values they hold dear are Olympian in stature. However, they are Christian in character. That is, they bind themselves to the moral laws enunciated by the greatest Lawgiver that could ever be:

Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together. And one of them, an expert in religious law, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." [Matthew 22:37-40]

Now a man came up to him and said, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?" He said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." "Which ones?" he asked. Jesus replied, "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself." [Matthew, 19:16-19.]

A land that hews straitly and explicitly to those laws may justly call itself Christendom: a land ruled, ultimately, by Christ. A land that sets them aside, whether out of negligence or in search of some other advantage, may not.

---

There's been a resurgence of popular interest in the "traditional" Christian sects in recent years, most notably in Catholicism. It's not large enough to be called anything as dramatic as a movement or a renaissance, but it's happening. Significant numbers of teens and young adults, blessed by not having received formal religious "instruction," are discovering the immense value in Christianity, and embracing it as what it is and should always have been: a revelation of joy rather than an indoctrination in dreary renunciations and obligations.

In On Broken Wings, I had Louis Redmond, far and away my most popular character, put it this way:

    "What has the typical response to indoctrination been, Father? What percentage of the children that have passed through parochial schools remain communicants as adults? Do we really need any other explanation for why the schools are closing down at such a rate?"
    The priest grinned without humor. "Don't you think the property tax situation might have had something to do with it, Louis? To say nothing of the problems the Church has had with zoning boards all over the country?"
    Louis shook his head. "That's nothing new. The American Church has faced those forces for three centuries. It's only in the last fifty years that our numbers have diminished this way. And we're mostly to blame for it."
    He scowled. "It was always a mistake, you know. Religion isn't for children, and to impose it on them by force has never been to anyone's greater good. As society has secularized, the resentments over that practice have been free to come out into the open. Is the Church better off for all these claims of the physical and emotional abuse of children by priests and nuns, even if every last one of them were eventually disproved? Are Catholics better off?"

Should the trend continue, the social gains will accumulate over time.

This has its hazards, of course. Far too many priests and ministers are prone to preaching their own preferences rather than the truths set down in the Gospels. Christ's dictates, as we can see from the citations from the Gospel According to Matthew, are few and simple. His yoke really is easy; His burden really is light. He forbade very few things; all that lies beyond His Commandments is within Man's free choice, subject only to the constraint that it not be put to use oppressing, defrauding, or wounding others.

Ironically, one of the best evidences is the redoubled fury of militant atheists and other anti-Christian forces, which see their hard-won gains among young Americans slipping from their grip. But those gains stemmed primarily from the antihedonic, hairshirted teachings of so many priests and ministers: the harping on renunciation and self-denial, even unto the point of self-mortification. Glory be to God! If our lives and their potentials are His gifts, how could it possibly be His command that we deny ourselves the pleasures of existence, or refuse to prosper, or make ourselves miserable with privation and pain amidst the innumerable bounties of the world? Does it really take a Certified Galactic Intellect to see this, or have you just been waiting for someone like me to bellow it at you?

As clerics steadily (albeit somewhat grudgingly) replace their hairshirted preachments with the words of the Redeemer and the militant atheists are revealed as the hypocrites they are, Christendom is creeping back. The seven Christian virtues:

• Faith: To hold fast to that which is true despite inability to prove it mathematically;
• Hope: To stand fast upon one's principles in the belief that deliverance is possible;
• Charity: The active concern for others that springs from sympathetic personal connection;
• Prudence: Sober consideration among alternatives in place of impulsiveness;
• Justice: To defend what is right, and not to demand what is not;
• Temperance: The exercise of restraint in the face of "too much;"
• Fortitude: Courage and perseverance in the face of obstacles and trials.

...are being rediscovered and reinvigorated. And young Americans are finding something two generations of naysayers canted was a fraud and a delusion: the peace of Christ.

---

An enticing neologism occurred to me a few minutes ago: hypocrats. It's not a word you'll find in any dictionary, at least not yet. I would use it to refer to those who would rule you through lies. That's a population of which there seems no shortage.

Hypocrats in politics are obviously many. Indeed, most professional pols are plainly willing to say or do anything rather than let their prestige, power, or perquisites be taken from them. The man of Christian conscience who enters the political arena soon finds that there is little welcome there for statements of principle: i.e., statements about absolute right and wrong. If his "colleagues" don't manage to bend him and compel him to compromise, they're likely to ostracize him or drive him out.

But these are merely the most visible hypocrats. Many "activists" are of similar character. Though a goodly number of allegiants to false causes such as "global warming / climate change / climate disruption" are sincere believers, their leaders are not, as is made evident by the ways they conduct their personal affairs. (Michael Loftus's exposition captured just below makes a rather pointed point about that.) A "leader" who doesn't believe in the cause he purports to "lead" is almost always focused on power, wealth, or both.

The third group I have in mind this morning is the cult of relativism. "All is relative," the relativists ceaselessly proclaim. "No religion / standard / ideology / morality / culture / creed is superior to any other. Each has its own validity." These, can be detected by their expressed preferences, verbally and behaviorally. What's most important is their open hostility toward the Christian-Enlightenment standard of absolute right and wrong: the barrier they've largely battered down to make room for the dissolute and bloodthirsty alternatives of Cthulhu and Allah.

A standard of any sort is where one makes one's stand. Relativism is an attempt to seduce Christians away from their stand: the cluster of compelling truths we've made our own and should defend to the death. Note how many militant atheists are relativists, and vice-versa. Note how they deride us for our inability to prove the existence of God, when they have no greater capability to disprove it. Note how they insist that Christianity -- to be fair, they usually say "religion," but in practice the only one they ever assail is Christianity -- "is valueless," or "has never done anything for the world," in blatant contradiction of actual history (which they ceaselessly strain to obscure or rewrite). And note how they preen themselves on being "smarter" than us believers, when their pretensions are without any foundation.

All these persons want to rule you: i.e., to get you to do what they want, as opposed to what you might prefer and what would benefit you personally. And they do it through lies.

Hmm. Maybe hypocrat will find its way into the dictionaries after all.

---

I'll give the closing thought to the Pinkerton essay:

We in the West will always need warriors. We must have chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche—“Knights without fear and without reproach”—to safeguard our marches and protect our homes. Men such as Leonidas, whose Immortal 300 held off the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC, long enough for other Greeks to rally and save the nascent West. Or Aetius, the last noble Roman, who defeated Attila the Hun, Scourge of God, at Chalons in AD 451. Or Don Juan of Austria, who led the Holy League to naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Or Jon Sobieski, whose Polish cavalry rescued Vienna from the Turks in 1683.

These are not just legends, not just fictional characters—they were real. And if we dutifully honor those heroes, as heroic Men of the West and of Christendom, we will be rewarded with more such heroic men.

Future epics await us. Future Knights of the West, ready to defend Christendom, are waiting to be born, waiting for the call of duty. If we bring them forth with faith and wisdom and confidence, then also will come new heroes and new legends.

Maybe it was meant to be. And that is an encouraging thought.

May God bless and keep you all!