Posted on 11/30/2012 3:15:43 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
......[George] Washington spoke truly: a democratic form of government, republican or otherwise, is only as virtuous as the citizens who form it. Institutions of liberty, equality, and mutual respect cannot be sustained in, let alone re-imposed upon, a society that has generally forsaken every single virtue named in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and has in turn filled the soul's moral void with hatred, envy, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, lust, and collectivism's unique license to pillage, namely its presupposition that individual men -- that is, other men -- do not really exist.
The entire moral and intellectual structure of the West has rotted out from within, over the course of generations. Winning elections is still valuable -- as is choosing the most principled candidates. (The two are not contradictory goals, contrary to the delusions of the entrenched political establishment.) But winning elections, even with good candidates, cannot solve the West's existential crisis. The divide this time is not tempered with a measure of long-developed moral common ground. Two fundamentally opposed views of life are represented, and the side of reason and decency is by far the outnumbered force.
The modern left's anti-rational, anti-virtuous, anti-individualist superstructure must be destroyed, mercilessly and thoroughly. It took generations for this brilliant scheme of reassuring repression -- soft despotism -- to be wound around the West, like spider's silk around its paralyzed prey. It might take generations to unravel it. The alternative to this fight, however, is to sit passively by as the world enters a new dark age.
This is going to be hard, and it is going to take much longer than the American Revolutionary War, for reasons I have explained above. But we can win, and we will win. Time is not on our side; but truth is.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Our mission now is to turn the ship before we depart - it is the only hope for humanity.
“The modern left’s anti-rational, anti-virtuous, anti-individualist superstructure must be destroyed, mercilessly and thoroughly.”
In the past, the time equation worked for the truth precisely because there was someone, a country, "out there" to speak it plainly. While in the case of the FSU, the 'time' was about 80 years - 8 decades of being juxtaposed against someone else (US) speaking the truth. It did, in the end, end.
What really worries me is there is now NO collective sovereign entity that speaks the truth as it once was. This entire world has been corrupted to liberality.
What's left? Well, things could get so bad - to the point of completely breaking down: susceptible to the next populist demon's dictatorship, anarchy, or scattered tribes of varying ideologies, etc.
What I'm afraid of is actually getting to the point of a complete "do-over" of human development; and that could be centuries.
I hope that our great grandchildren will remember that there was once a shining city on a hill.
Good article. We should throw secession into the mix. Are we really going to turn around the liberal strongholds or should they be left to collapse on their own?
the only way they will know that is if we teach them....that is no easy task. it requires energy and commitment beyond the reach of most.
we could very well be entering a very dark time.
What’s left? Well, things could get so bad - to the point of completely breaking down: susceptible to the next populist demon’s dictatorship, anarchy, or scattered tribes of varying ideologies, etc.
Well put. The scattered tribes option is probably the best we can hope for.
The beacon may go out. What hope, then, here or around the world?
If nothing else, we will serve as an example of a rear-guard action, defense against all odds, never quitting.
This sort of "population inversion" (forgive use of physics concept) usually creates a financial opportunity for someone smart enough to see it.
I sure wish I was smart enough to be that someone.
If the GOP wants the REAL answer to why it lost the election, here it is.
But as the author points out, the real issue is how to reverse the decline from a moral state into a self-serving morass. How do you re-instill morality into a society that’s gone feral? How do you promote virtue when the masses have tasted vice?
Israel is a socialist country. Ive known a lot of Israelis, having worked for a subsidiary of Tadiran; which was Israels GE at the time. The Israelis were smart, hard-working and what wed call entrepreneurial. On the subject of socialist programs they were universally in favor of what we would call the left-most solution. Then, theyd tell you how to get around the program. The public health care in Israel is wonderful, fantastic! But to make it work you had to bribe a little here and there. The taxes are wonderful; You have to fund all this terrific stuff somehow; Of course you can get around them by buying on the black market. (Its okay, everybody does it.)
Ive never witnessed such a dichotomy between what people professed and how they actually lived. I think that the left is like that here too. The rules, laws, taxes are all (as Leona Helmsley said) for the little people.
No Democrat wants to take responsibility for their own actions.
As then Spkr. Rep. Nancy Pelosi once said: We have to pass Obamacare to see what is in it.
And now Benghazi-Coward Obamas Democrats are saying: We have to go over Obamas Fiscal Cliff to see how far we fall financially.
While I remain in the fray, I have about given up hope. Until we stop relying on words, no matter how wise, and actually start using the tactics of the Left with the same single-minded purpose, we will continue to lose the war. There is no political solution - the solution will involve our heeding the provisions of the Founders and dissolving the government for a fresh start - I have trouble picturing it actually happening with the balance as lopsided as it has become.
You’re quite correct, its a fascinating article and in many ways quite correct. With all due respect to you and the author I’d have to disagree with the conclusion that this is a battle that can and must be won.
As the author notes: “As a result, the citizenry has gradually given way to a new entity, “the masses” (once again using the suitable Marxist language), a collectivist majority without any of the reflexes of self-reliance, self-restraint and shame that a virtuous citizenry would have; without any of the respect or capacity for rational deliberation, forethought, and common sense that a properly educated citizenry would have; and without the universalizable notion of freedom — freedom as an equal, natural right, rather than a childish wish-fulfillment fantasy — that a citizenry not enmeshed in the mass manipulations of class envy would have.”
Once a society establishes the “Masses” it becomes the case that for the “Masses” one of the prime focuses of attention becomes one of economic class envy; in societies where a majority is reduced to the same level poverty relative to the other 50%, the “do not/have not/gov’t dependent” find themselves constantly watching and counting to ensure that those around them don’t have any more than they do and if they discover someone has hoarded up an excess of something unto themselves, they feel it legitimate to take the excess, by force if necessary and to punish the hoarder, often times by killing the hoarder because, after all, killing is fun and the fewer people there are the more there is for everyone else. As well, contained in the quote above is the reference to the “virtuous” citizen; with the masses there is no virtue except the virtue that no one should have more than the others of the masses. The abrogation of virtue with the Masses in the U.S. is near complete, for them, God is dead and they are morally dead, likened unto a Zombie population. And therein lies the core of the U.S. problem. The society is rent assunder as there is no core belief system and there isn’t any “cultural” identity outside the “group” identities created and daily reinforced by the Marxist School systems and Media outlets.
Now, to my conclusion: the reason I disagree with the idea that this is a battle we must fight and win is that in the course of conducting a battle against this, we automatically lose; truth will not win the day because truth has no forum, no media for expression because the Media is owned and controlled by the evil. The only way to obtain victory over this beast is to starve it economically, retreat, and watch the masses tear themselves and their Uncle Sambo gov’t to pieces. And the pieces for this type victory are perfectly in place. The cities which are largely inhabited by the evil, are entirely dependent for resupply of food and fuel from outside the cities. Once the chaos starts, the supplies stop and the masses will turn upon themselves. The wise and virtuous among us will be gone and out of the cities and make no effort to save the evil from destruction at its own hands. Therein lies the path to victory; this society can’t be “turned” it has to end altogether to be rebuilt and the sooner, the better.
True; see my post explaining that below.
Everyone here knows what the real problem is. It is just politically incorrect to say it. The closest hint that I can give you is to say that there are too many ‘liberals” on the planet.
When it gets to that point there will be NO resistance. Look at Cuba. Look at Venezuela. All avenues and means of protest, or ways to avoid what is occurring are systematically removed, one by one; groups are pitted against one another to stop any unity.
Excellent article that left out two major points:
1.) As I’ve posted here innumerable times, the Marxists control the totally effective brainwashing system of education (actually “de-education”) of the masses, pumping an ever-increasing number of dumbed-down, non-thinking, amoral, feeling-oriented idiots so, as Rush says, “We are out-numbered and losing ground..”
And then the media (our equivalent of Pravda in USSR) sustain and maintain their idiocy post-education.
NO ONE has yet come up with a strategy to change this. NO ONE. (I’m waiting....)
2. Collapse and recovery may take not years, but decades - as with the USSR. We are in this disaster for many of us for the rest of our lives.
The do-over is the book of Revelation, the good news is that it will be done-over in our lifetime, it won't take centurys.
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