Posted on 10/31/2002 9:29:16 PM PST by Noumenon
A Philosophy - If You can Get One
The Germans of the Weimar period were increasingly frustrated, angry, disgusted with the “system,” and ready for change. So are Americans. The Germans, following their intellectuals, were disgusted with what they regarded as reason and freedom, and they were ready for Hitler. The Americans are disgusted with unreason and statism; but they are directionless. Without intellectual guidance, they do not know what went wrong with their system or how to prevent the country’s disintegration and collapse.
Thus, by default – despite the profound differences between Americans and the pre-Hitler Germans – the similarities between the two nations, the similarities between their intellectuals and the social trends they shape, are growing. The most ominous aspect of the trend is that, if it is not reversed, it will ultimately change the character of the American people. It has already begun to do so.
The philosophy that shapes a nation’s culture and institutions tends, other things being equal, to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: by creating the conditions and setting of men’s daily life, it increasingly establishes itself as an unquestioned frame of reference in most people’s minds. A society shaped by altruism, for instance – a society of chronic, politically enforced man-eat-man policies in the name of “the public welfare” – leads many of its victims to feel that safety lies in flaunting public service, that selfishness (the “selfishness” of others, who are draining them) is a threat, and that the solution is to urge and practice greater selflessness. A society shaped by collectivism, in which the only effective means of survival is the group or the state, leads many to feel that the ideas and the personal independence appropriate to an individualist era are no longer possible or relevant. A society shaped by irrationalism – a society dominated by incomprehensible crisis and inexplicable injustice and the constant eruptions of a senseless, nihilist culture – leads many to feel that the world cannot be understood, i.e, that their own mind is inadequate, and that they need guidance from some higher power.
Thus, corrupt ideas, once institutionalized, tend to be continually reinforced (the same would hold true of rational ideas); and the unphilosophical men, however decent their own unidentified premises might be, eventually succumb. Across a span of generations they gradually relinquish any better heritage. In part, they are yielding to the explicit ideological promptings of their teachers and the universities. In part, they are adapting resignedly to what they have come to accept from their own experience as the facts and necessities of life.
The American spirit has not yet been destroyed, but it cannot withstand this kind of undermining indefinitely.
If the United States continues to go the way of all Europe, the people’s rebellion against the present intellectual leadership will be perverted, and re-channeled into an opposite course.
Nonintellectual rebels cannot challenge the fundamental ideas they have been taught. All they can do by way of rebellion is to accept a series of false alternatives urged by their teachers, and then defiantly choose what they regard as the anti-establishment side. Thus, the proliferation of groups that uphold anti-intellectuality as the only alternative to today’s intellectuals; mindless activism as the alternative to “moderation”; Christian faith as the alternative to nihilism; female inferiority as the alternative to feminism; racism as the alternative to egalitarianism; sacrifice in behalf of a united nation, as the alternative to sacrifice on behalf of warring pressure groups; and government controls for the sake of the middle class, as the alternative to government controls for the sake of the rich or the poor.
The type of mentality produced by these choices – activist, religionist, racist, nationalist, authoritarian – would have been familiar in the Weimar Republic.
If it happens here, the primary responsibility will not belong to the people, who still reject such a mentality and are groping for a better kind of answer. The responsibility will belong to those who banished from the schools all knowledge of the original American system, and who would have finally convinced the nation that men’s only choice is a choice of dictatorships.
No one can predict the form or the timing of the catastrophe that will befall this country if our direction is not changed. No one can know the concatenation of crises, in what progression of steps and across what interval of years, would finally break the nation’s spirit and system of government. No one can know whether such a breakdown would lead to an American dictatorship directly – or indirectly, after a civil war and/or a protracted Dark Ages of primitive roving gangs.
What one can know is only this much: the end result of the country’s present course is some kind of dictatorship; and the cultural-political signs for may years now have been pointing increasingly to one kind in particular. The signs have been pointing to an American form of Nazism.
If the political trend remains unchanged, the same fate – collapse and ultimate dictatorship – is in store for the countries of Western Europe, which are farther along the statist road than America is, and which are now obviously In the process of decline and disintegration. (The Communist countries and the so-called “third world” have long since fallen, or have never risen to anything.) A European dictatorship need not be identical to an American one; dictatorships can vary widely in form, according to a given people’s special history, traditions, and crises; in form, but not in essence.
Most of the East is gone. The West is going
A German intellectual made the following statement after the Nazis fell from power.
”In the early days of Hitler’s regime, he recalled, anyone troubled by the Nazi practices and concerned about Germany’s future was shrugged off as an alarmist. And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.”
One can “know, or surmise the end” by knowing what cause produces what effect, i.e., what factor determines the fate of nations.
Today, the only nation still capable of saving itself, and thereby the world, is the United States. It can do so only by one means.
The Constitution cannot stop the trend. A constitution, however noble, cannot stand the death or eclipse of its animating principle.
Religion cannot stop the trend. It helped to cause it.
The demonstrated practicality of the original American system cannot stop the trend. Practicality as such does not move nations.
The profound differences between America and Germany – the differences in history, institutions, heroes, national character, starting premises - cannot stop the trend. After a century, a crucial similarity began to develop between the two countries, the similarity of basic ideas; and this one similarity is gradually overriding, subverting, or negating the differences, and consigning their remnants to the dead end the unappreciated, the undefended, the historically impotent.
There is only one antidote to today’s trend: a new, pro-reason philosophy. Such a philosophy would have to offer for the first time a full statement and an unbreached defense of the fundamental ideas of America.
The same German intellectual quoted above, looking back at Hitler's rise to power said,
"Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies', without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?"
They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer, U of Chicago Press, pp 167-68.
The Ominous Parallels
1980 Leonard Peikoff
The majority of the American public doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of thinking these days. The fundamental premises and ideas necessary to liberty and human dignity have devolved in the circles of our intelligentsia to a party joke at which they snigger and sneer.
Peikoff's words should hauntus - the evidence and the proof of his premises is written in the historical record - and it is playing itself out right in front of the dazed and bemused eyes of the walking dead who think they're free Americans - that is, if they bother to thnik even that much.
As Peikoff said - "There is only one antidote to today’s trend: a new, pro-reason philosophy. Such a philosophy would have to offer for the first time a full statement and an unbreachable defense of the fundamental ideas of America. "
The foundation of this nation lay in the assumption that we were wise enough to control our own lives. Everything that the Founders wrote reflects this underlying assumption. They believed, without exception (even those with strong religious beliefs) that the Church should play no role in the conduct of government because of the Church's tendency to manipulate or otherwise usurp control of the populace's lives in ways the Founders found abhorrent. They were strongly pro-gun; firearms made it possible for a citizen to protect himself from encroachments upon his liberty, even by his own government. They desired a free press because they believed that as individuals, we were wise enough to make decisions that would ultimately be beneficial to the larger community. In short, the Founders produced the first nation ever in the history of the world based upon an idea – a philosophy, if you will - of freedom. Instead, we've got a front row seat to the Fall of the Republic.
Now, the despicable and contemptible lot of political whores that we have voted and applauded into office speaks of party loyalty when they should be speaking of liberty.
They speak of unity when they should be speaking of independence and self-determination.
A mere handful uphold and defend of a set of values based upon reality and rationality.
Most Republicans are willing to compromise their principles for the sake of "getting along." Most Republicans are not Sons of the Republic.
Virtually none of them demonstrate an understanding, much less a passion for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - or the philosophical, metaphysical, and epistemological fundamentals upon which those documents are based.
Virtually none of them uphold the ideals of the Founding Fathers: individual freedom and the right to own the products of one’s labor based upon the rule of law - the only logical and proper conditions for a just and free society. Why? Because they don't believe in them! And they don't understand them!
Once a nation such as ours loses sight of the philosophical principles upon which it was founded, it is lost. A man without a firm grasp of unbreachable and intransigent moral principles based upon reason is a man disarmed. We are a nation disarmed - morally, ethically, and philosophically. The silence of our alleged representatives concerning the steady encroachment on our fundamental rights speaks more eloquently than anything I can write. Don't you suppose that the real reason for the 'silence of the damned' is simply because they have nothing to say?
"I heard no mention of the loss of personal freedom... Apparently this was not much of a sacrifice. They couldn't have cared less."
William Shirer, "Hitler and the Third Reich: First Impressions", from The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940 (Little, Brown, and Co., 1984)
You are evading the truth if you deny the reality of the systematic abrogation of the rule of law and the destruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the hands of both mainstream American political parties. Once it has become apparent that the rule of law no longer applies to the common man; once the application of existing law has become arbitrary and outcomes subject to the amount of money one can apply; once laws are made and applied in such a way that it becomes virtually impossible to exist without violating them, well - the party's over isn't it?.
Some are willing to acknowledge the indisputable and incontrovertible evidence that the rule of law is all but dead, and that the political process as it now exists is irretrievably corrupt. The rest cling to the fiction that the rule of law still governs, and that the first principles of human freedom upon which our nation was founded are honored and upheld, much less understood. And that's the dirty secret, isn't it? Too many of us are willing to look the other way, to deny the evidence, to pretend that it doesn't matter. The loss of our freedom is akin to the crazy uncle locked up in the basement - we all know he's there; we just won't talk about it. But I will. I will remind you all from time to time of the good work your favorite - and not so favorite representatives are doing in the service of tyranny.
We ought to swing from the end of a rope any of our so-called leaders who fail to enthusiastically and articulately embrace and endorse these ideas. And before we do that, we've got to acquire that same rigor and habit of thought if we do not have it already. Those of us who do will be the ones to step forward and rebuild the Republic after we pay the butcher's bill that's coming due.
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I believe it has been irretrievably destroyed.
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The problem with altruistic socialism is that it is not altruistic. It is the most vile form of selfishness obscured by language. It is a system in which each demands servitude from others, and hence ownersip of others. What evolves is a system under which each has ownership of others, but nobody has ownership of themselves.
From an RLK essay published elsewhere.
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In more than 35 years in intertainment, in print, televised discussions, in colleges, I've heard it's important to hear "the other side," meaning leftist opinion. In all this time I have almost never heard the side for which "the other side" is the alternative. It's come to the point where that side is close to being nonexistent.
Good t ohear from you, sir. You are correct, especially with respect to the Left's use of language to obscure their real meaning and intent. In fact, the treal triumph of he Gramsci-inspired Left is their success in hijacking the very terms of debate, rendering any any attempt to reason useless. As Revel said, they have enthroned falsehood in the very centerof thought. That understanding, above all others, clinched it for me. I am certain that we will all pay a terrible price in blood and misery before we see the restoration of the Republic that the Founders bequeathed to us. When reason is no guide to action and the truth doesn't matter. all that's left are guns and whips.
Peikoff wrote, "No one can predict the form or the timing of the catastrophe that will befall this country if our direction is not changed." It is 22 years later, and the direction has not changed. It's so obvious, to many, that this house of cards is getting very shaky.
What we're moving toward may be somewhat debatable, but I'm certain it is not peace and harmony.
Likewise, as Forrest McDonald makes clear in his various analysis of the Constitution, while the members of the convention may have cited Philosphy and metaphysical reason in their various defenses of the document, they actually crafted it based upon the lessons of experience (conservatism) and the radicalism of the Revolution with a constant reliance on real-time political compromise between the various interests.
I am mindful of Novak's On Two Wings, Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding and his definition of Common Sense being made up of much more than pure reason.
The road to decadence does lay immediately ahead, and our political and social institutions are as much as driving us there, rather than steering us clear. On that we are in agreement. But I find your analysis, much more sensible than Peikoff's.
I am mindful of Novak's On Two Wings, Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding and his definition of Common Sense being made up of much more than pure reason.Of course it is made up of much more; were it not, it would be called Common Reason. Sense is reason melded with experience.
The comparisons this guy makes are interesting since, after 9-11, there have been a lot of ideas and attitudes coming from the left that have made me think of the Nazis. My parents both lived under Hitler's dictatorship, so I grew up hearing stories about how hostile Nazis were toward many Christians. Most everyone got caught up in the spirit of the thing. And people who never would have considered hating Jews for most of their live were easily indoctrinated by the Nazis. I hear that Hitler himself was very influenced by Eastern and pagan philosophies (I read somewhere that the Nazis were very influenced by Theosoophy). If you take a look at the conspiracy theories coming from the progressives, they have a lot in common with the Neo-nazi conspiracy theories: world banking conspiracies, media conspiracies, government conspiracies (and both ideologies demonize Israel). An objectivists might frown on me saying this, but a dictatorship that expands over most of the world is prophesized in the Bible. I like to think that America won't get caught up in it. But when I think of how much people still defend and adore Clinton, who is now going around saying he want to lead an effort to redistribute the world's wealth, I'm not very optimistic. My guess: A dictatorship will probably start in Europe -most likely with the support of the United Nations. And just like the years that lead up to Hitler's rule, it would probably take some hard economic times to open the doors wide for a dictator. And then all we need is another man like Clinton, someone who buys into the New Age idea of world unity and peace, to sell us out to a world dictatorship. :o( ---Just a little rambling and half-baked theories. I'm interested in what theories other people have, how people think the political events in America and the world might unfold.
A society shaped by altruism... leads many of its victims to feel that ... the solution is to urge and practice greater selflessness.So a condition leads to an extension of the condition, or "a->A"
A society shaped by collectivism... leads many to feel that the ideas and the personal independence appropriate to an individualist era are no longer possible or relevant.Again, a condition leads to an extension of the condition, or "b->B".
A society shaped by irrationalism ...leads many to feel that the world cannot be understood, i.e, that their own mind is inadequate, and that they need guidance from some higher power.The analogy fails here, since the author's pattern would suggest an assertion that the belief and need of God is an extension of the condition of irrationalism. I do not subscribe to this point of view. Unlike the "a->A" and "b->B" examples cited right before, religion is the cure to irrationalism; for God fills the voids with which rationalism is riddled. It fills the gap between theory and reality which experience shows always exists. "I do now regard as the worm which has been gnawing at the insides of modern civilization and is responsible for its present moral decay. We used to regard the Christians as the enemy, because they appeared as the representatives of tradition, convention, and hocus-pocus. In truth it was the Benthamite calculus, based on the over-valuation of the economic criterion, which was destroying the quality of the popular Ideal." -- John Maynard Keynes.
The author goes through great travails to present the religious condition as one to be feared, but the presentation is one of mere assertion. It is, because it is presented as such, and that is all that is hinted at being required; but the requirements are much higher than that.
The poster then buys into that argument with some false assertions:
The foundation of this nation lay in the assumption that we were wise enough to control our own lives. Everything that the Founders wrote reflects this underlying assumption.This simply is not the case. Fisher Ames railed against "the supposed existence of sufficient political virtue, and on the permanency and authority of the publick morals." John Adams was no friend to the advocates of reason as the guiding principle either:
I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity, as you do: and should not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy, Fury, Brutality, Daemons, Buonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the burning Brand from the bottomless pit: or anything else but the Age of Reason. I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satire on the age."And
Is there a possibility that the government of nations may fall into the hands of men who teach the most disconsolate of all creeds, that men are but fireflies, and that this all is without a father?Does the following sound like a man who believes that men are wise enough?
Where the people have a voice, and there is no balance, there will be everlasting fluctuations, revolutions, and horrors, until a standing army, with a great general at its head, commands the peace, or the necessity of an equilibrium is made to appear to all, and is adopted by all.Again that was Adams, political ally of Washington.
They believed, without exception (even those with strong religious beliefs) that the Church should play no role in the conduct of government because of the Church's tendency to manipulate or otherwise usurp control of the populace's lives in ways the Founders found abhorrent.Again, not the case. Even the founding father most concerned with matters of distinction between church and state, Jefferson, felt the danger was not the Church's tendency to control government, but rather the government's tendency to control Church:
that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments...tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, that the impious presumption of legislators...[who] have assumed dominion over the faith of others...hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world; (From Jefferson's 'Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom')The following discussion over that statute should put away the lie that, "without exception" the founding fathers believed as the poster states:
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton was asked why the framers had omitted the word "God" from the document. His reply: "We forgot." Yet when the first Congress assembled in 1790, among its very first acts were to select a chaplain and to ask President George Washington to declare a day of thanksgiving. [...]Notice that after the Revolution, it was a gradual process whereby religious requirements for government office were eliminated-- this shows that our nation was not born with religion banished from government, but quite the opposite. At its birth, religion was required in government. Eventually, the nation moved away from that towards the stance we have today, in large part to the efforts of some of the founding fathers. But it was not without exception, and it was not immediate, and it is highly unlikely that even a majority of them would agree with a stance that religion should be completely stricken from all vestiges of government. The banning of the ten commandments from being displayed would probably have struck them as a violation of the liberty of communities.Jefferson originally drafted the statute in 1777, during the American Revolution. But the measure was opposed by Patrick Henry and many of Virginia's larger religious denominations, who feared that churches would decline without tax support. [...]
James Madison, who guided the Statute for Religious Freedom through the Virginia Assembly, argued that the right to religious liberty was one of the rights for which Americans had waged the Revolution. Jefferson and Madison held that the right to freedom of conscience extended to non-Christians and even to nonbelievers. Jefferson felt that religion would flourish if left alone. "It is error alone which needs the support of government," he wrote. "Truth can stand by itself."
During the years following the Revolution, every state ended tax support for churches and religious qualifications for voting and office holding. Religious denominations had to compete for followers without government support. (from here)
I guess this is my way of saying I don't care much for the piece or the initial reply.
I'll want to get back to this this weekend when I have more time, but Peikoff seems to be saying the exact opposite of what I have read to have been the case in the German social setting as Naziism rose to power. Even Hayek, in the Road to Serfdom makes some points, as I recall, about the German over dependence on rationalism and the idea that reason could plan all solutions.What I have read supports the latter as well.
"Altruistic socialism" is an oxymoron. Peikoff gets this right, as far as it goes IMO. But IMHO, he also gets a whole lot wrong in this piece. We don't need a new rationalist philosophy. We need to understand how American culture came off its moorings -- a culture whose roots are classical (i.e., Athens, Rome) and Judeo-Christian, "separation of church and state" notwithstanding.
Left Progressives have nothing but contempt for the Christian conception of the human individual -- which is the historical source of the ideas of personal responsibility and autonomy, the inviolate dignity of the person, and liberty.
The Progressive Left has nothing but contempt for the cultural matrix of historical American greatness. And I suspect, so does Dr. Peikoff.
It is probably more interesting to first argue if our whole political and social apparatus IS leading us the direction headed or if it is a more general trend. Then the issues as to actions are worthy of debate and equally the history of the causes and refound path become more of an issue.
Remember, if we can't find the common ground with all aspects of our side of the political landscape, the general citizenry is even broader and less subject to our call.
In a recent post I quoted Allan Bloom from The Closing of the American Mind His comment was about democracy's particular weakness. It's weakness is disgust for the theoretical life. It's true. Americans are very allergic to examining their motivations. They "reason" like this: if it works, go for it. They are pragmatists, through and through. And that is why "statism" is in the way. But, you know, statism works for them too, when the going is good. But we should recognize that whatever P. wants to say about our disgust, the reason of unreason has a special place in the pragmatist's heart.
Is the whole political and social apparatus leading us in the direction headed is a question that can only be answered after we define where the direction is headed. Once that is done, then it probably is a good idea to decide if where it is headed is a good or bad thing. Then it would be interesting to decide if the political and social apparatus is leading us there, a decision that if affirmative and the direction is bad would indicate a need for change.
One thing that strikes me is that when I see an argument framed in false readings of history, as the original piece by Peikoff is regarding the general political atmosphere in Germany and the first reply is on the role religion played in the early days of our nation, that it either indicates a lack of knowledge by the presenters, or more perniciously a rewriting of history to advance an agenda. I do not believe that to be the case for the poster; I don't have the same confidence for Peikoff.
The crux of the original piece is that the United States is on the same path as Germany of the Weinmar Republic. The author starts making the case, strangely, by pointing out a difference (which brings to mind someone saying "our differences are so significant as to make the distance between us insignificant; we are therefore close neighbors")
The Germans, following their intellectuals, were disgusted with what they regarded as reason and freedom, and they were ready for Hitler. The Americans are disgusted with unreason and statism; but they are directionless.I don't agree with the idea that a difference makes us more alike. Further, I think Peikoff got both of these wrong. The Germans were desirous of reason uber alles, to where they were willing to accept the most sinister of mechanations eventually for the utility they would accomplish; a cold, calculating reason that leads to horror as leftism invariably does. And if Americans are disgusted with unreason and statism, they show it in the damnedest ways, as the bizarre campaign of Al Gore (complete with his popular vote victory) speaks. Americans are not yet to the point where they are disgusted with statism. That day will come; it hasn't yet.
So the cornerstone of the argument crumbles; it is followed with a support pillar that religion represents a false choice. While I agree with you that common ground needs to be found among those who share our political landscape; this is not an area where common ground can be found unless one side abandons their closest held beliefs. For the people of a mindset such as Peikoff and people of a mindset such as myself to be political allies, it has to involve them deciding to drop the weapons they weild against those who believe in religion and refuse to stand by, idle, as all vestiges of it are stricken from public life; it must also involve people who hold similar views of religion as me to never attempt to force our religion on them. Find common ground where it is common, and don't try to force unanimity where only emnity can grow.
And since I don't agree with the original analogy of the US to the Weimar Republic, and don't agree with the premise that religion is a threat we have to fear, I don't find much in the proposed remedy worthy of discussion, any more than I would find discussing an antibiotic as a cure for an infection, after we have ruled out all bacteria as a cause since we are dealing with a virus.
Are we on the right or wrong path? A worthy discussion. But the article asserts we are on the same path as Nazi Germany. We aren't.
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