Tuesday's Election Was a Vote to Bring the 19th Century to an End

The American Thinker ^ | November 04, 2010 | J.R. Dunn

[Scanian]

The 19th century was the nursery for contemporary politics. Every form of modern political activity -- fascism, communism, socialism, liberalism -- has its roots in that epoch. (Yes, I'm fully aware of such figures as Locke, Burke, Madison, and Jefferson, but their work was hijacked and twisted all out of recognition, in large part by French revolutionaries and assorted German academics. Edmund Burke was so appalled by this that, having invented modern liberalism, he turned around and invented modern conservatism.)

Anything coming out of the 19th century is going to be imbued with rationalism, the dominant intellectual credo of the period. Rationalism has nothing to do with rationality per se; it is instead an ideology (note that "ism" -- always a giveaway) based on a severe simplification of Cartesianism, humanist doctrine, and the results of modern scientific research. For our purposes, rationalism can be defined as a reductionist doctrine holding that the universe and everything within it is a mechanism, governed by simple laws easily discovered, understood, and manipulated. A rationalist is a very smart individual who, if he doesn't know all the answers, can tell you where to get them. A political rationalist is all this and more, since political rationalism is the arena in which the limitations of the ideology first became apparent. Namely, rationalism, taken to its logical extreme (and how could it be otherwise?), leads inevitably to chaos, misery, and death on continental scales.

Most leaders of the modern era were political rationalists: Lenin, Mussolini, Woodrow Wilson, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Clement Atlee, FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Harold Wilson, all the way down to Mr. Barack Obama, who lives in Washington in a building called the "White House." Whether communist, fascist, progressive, socialist, or liberal, all believed in the tenets of rationalism. Since the universe is a mechanism, and everything within it shares that quality, then society, in all its varied manifestations, was a mechanism to these rationalists as well. The social and political machinery was open to manipulation, along with all the little machines within -- humans, they were called. All were perfectible, and all could be made right with the proper formulae

[vanilla swirl]

“American eyes have opened at last, and they will not close again.”

I would give just about anything if that were true. However, I know the electorate has a short memory.

This is a fabulous piece, a lot of things I hadn’t thought about.

[jazzlite]

I am in the process of reading the late Dr. Francis Shaeffer’s entire works..It is 5 volumes and though he has been gone many years, he addresses much of our “progressive world” from an intellectual perspective and fits that into the Judeo-Christian concept upon which our nation was founded. He speaks of how our elitists view mankind as a machine and nothing else. Those who believe in God view each and every man as unique and with a purpose in the sight of God. Dr. Shaffer’s works are not easy reading for the most part, but his writings are most enlightening, in my opinion.

[MissDairyGoodnessVT]

J.R.Dunn’s big bite of the 19th is really hard to swallow-
he’d be better off re-inventing the wheel

[vanilla swirl]

“I am in the process of reading the late Dr. Francis Shaeffer’s entire works.”

Thanks for the tip, I’ve read a little of his but now I will seek it out.
Add it to my long list, there will never be enough time =(

[IronJack]

Very well written and definitive in its conclusions.

[bvw]

Obama’s not rational.

[Defiant]

Great post, thanks.

[Scanian]

Glad you like it.