Posted on 08/02/2015 4:53:34 PM PDT by Louis Foxwell
Front Page mag - A Project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center
Daniel Greenfield Ping List Notification of new articles.
I am posting Greenfield's articles from FrontPage and the Sultan Knish blog. FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off the Greenfield ping list.
I highly recommend an occasional look at the Sultan Knish blog. It is a rich source of materials, links and more from one of the preeminent writers of our age.
FrontPage is, a basic resource for conservative thought. Lou
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Ping
bttt
There are no morals, only sides.
Depressing.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
This is the most thoughtful and philosophically sound article Greenfield has written. It must be read and reread. Its conclusions lead to its premises. While it is not cyclical, it is foundational.
I sent this article to a witless family member who is a mind number leftist, with the notation that it will help her understand our society. I will be amazed if she is able to get past the second sentence.
This is a tough read but it will refine your thought process.
He’s right, but late. We aren’t becoming a decadent nation, we’ve been one for some time. Only decadent nations pass legislation without knowing what’s in it, refuse to prosecute violations of laws they don’t like, and relinquish any subservience to the nation’s founding documents. What took a constitutional amendment in 1920 (Prohibition), merely requires executive action today (the War on Drugs).
Bookmark
Freedom can only truly exist on a frontier,
as areas become settled they become more
civilized, and civilization means more laws
until it reaches the point that the people
come to ignore the laws, then civil society
disintegrates until a frontier is all that’s
left for the survivors and it all starts over again.tet68
Perhaps Legal Perfection” is a much more succinct description of what Greedfield so accurately descrides in the article under discussion.
The Ancient Greeks discussed what ideal law would be and agreed that it would treat all citizens equally in all circumstances.
Then one pointed out that the City State was so large(40,000 ‘voting citizens’) that such legal perfection would have to encompass so many variables as to be impossible. They concluded that they would have to rely on human judgement, instead of attempting to write perfect laws.
Now, think about the sheer hubris of attempting to create laws and regulations in the numbers America has done.
Shut down whole agencies. Florida’s Governor Scott campaigned promising to shut down the Florida Department of Community Affairs(A hotbed of collectivists/regulators).
He won the election and did shut down the entire agency. Florida did better without it.
Shut down all agencies not justifiable from a Strict Constitution perspective!
In this situation people naturally develop the complementary belief that to accomplish anything in life, they must take action in ways that are invisible to others until their actions can be unveiled as faits accompli, because open methods are seen as hopeless.
There are several ways this piece could be organized into an essay that makes its points clearly and memorably, emphasizing them with relevant examples.
Bump...
....”There are several ways this piece could be organized into an essay that makes its points clearly and memorably, emphasizing them with relevant examples”....
I agree....but a good read just the same. Points could have been better written though.
....” the decadent civilization must ‘undo’ the damage that is devolving it. This is easier than it seems. ...the decadent civilization has most of ‘the same infrastructure’, physical and mental, of the vigorous civilization. Only its ideas have become corrupted.
And even this deeper corruption is largely limited to the ‘elites and the professional classes’, while the rest of the civilization has experienced only a surface corruption that is easily wiped away.
The difficulty is however structural. A decadent civilization becomes more top-down with each year. And the source of the corruption is at the top. ‘Removing the source of the corruption requires either removing all or almost all of the elites, and sizable sections of the professional classes as well’.... Or a campaign of ideas that transforms them as fundamentally as they were transformed.”......
This is why the ground swell for Trump who seems to want to lead this. But is he really any different?
Does not matter if Trump is different. He is catalyzing an antielitist movement. Ultimately he will either become a victim of his own success or a bona fide leader of the movement.
... “Trump is catalyzing an anti-elitist movement. Ultimately he will either become a victim of his own success or a bona fide leader of the movement”....
I think a lot of people have hope that Trump will be exactly that...and we know there are others working along with him who also are a part of this movement. I believe now that this is not chance Trump is on stage as he is.
I remember so well Cruz saying back after he filibustered.....”The American people don’t realize how close ‘we’ are to taking back our country.”.......At that time there were 20 or so congressional people working with Cruz.
I think this entire thing with Trump is being carefully orchestrated and that He is simply one part of what we are going to see as this election moves forward.
Interesting tidbit:
In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of World War II, only 100 spectators watched New York City’s Veteran Day Parade. It was an insult to all veterans. Approached by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the chief of New York City’s FBI office, Mr. Trump agreed to lead as Grand Marshall a second parade later that year...... Mr. Trump made a $1 million matching donation to finance the Nation’s Day Parade..... On Saturday, November 11th, over 1.4 million watched as Mr. Trump marched down Fifth Avenue with more than 25,000 veterans, some dressed in their vintage uniforms. A month later, Mr. Trump was honored in the Pentagon during a lunch with the Secretary of Defense and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff.
His thesis, his facts, and his comparisons are outstanding. It’s just that the piece reads like a set of notecards arranged randomly, rather than a well-structured essay.
Mr. Greenfield is a very busy writer. It’s understandable that his output isn’t always as polished as it might be. This is an important topic, and I hope he will revisit it in a more focused way.
Yes....maybe he just wanted to get it out there....
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