America's Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview, and realized that nobody was all-wise, incorruptible, or had unlimited resources. As a result, they constructed a government that sought to check and balance anyone's attempt to put themselves in a position to be an authoritarian ruler. Leftists and Progressives believe that they are better than the rest of humanity, both morally and intellectually, and so they should be given authoritarian powers. Their proud egos don't believe in the doctrine of total depravity and original sin. As a result, they are bitter that they don't yet have complete power to impose their will on people and create a utopian heaven on earth. They are ungrateful for the current American system of governance and want to "fundamentally transform" it.
Goldberg and Sexton are close when they talk about ingratitude, but the underlying problem is sin and Leftists' proud inflated sense of self. Leftists are inordinately proud and thus are ungrateful people. That is also why they have no problem engendering envy, resentment and hate in order to motivate more of their voters, even though Leftists know that promoting these vices is harmful to America and to the individuals that they stir up. Leftists, Progressives, Elitists, Democrats, whatever you want to call them, truly are satanic in nature and in their methodology. Saul Alinsky was correct to dedicate his Rules for Radicals to Lucifer.
And the Never Trumper Goldberg - a product of nepotism and who apparently has never seen a bathtub or shampoo in his life - has contributed to the suicide of the west.
James Burnham wrote the same book back in the early 60s or late 50s
“future of liberal-Democratic capitalism”
It has no future.
Representative republic, theocracy, or fascism. Take your pick.
Include ‘Jealousy’
I wonder how much Goldberg borrowed from James Burnham’s essay called Suicide of the West from more than 50 years ago:
Goldberg's viewpoint is that we live in a miracle about to be unwound by base, tribal, human nature. Your stance that we live in godless times with our Judaeo-Christian heritage being systematically suppressed, while accurate, doesn't seem out of line with Goldberg.
If I had read Goldberg's words without knowing the author, they would still ring a note of veracity, even though they were scripted by a disingenuous Never Trumper.
Fifty years ago, National Review founding editor James Burnham wrote Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism, a book that brilliantly examines the role of modern liberalism in reconciling the West to its geopolitical retreat. Like all of Burnham's books, Suicide of the West combines elegant writing, historical insight, unsentimental political analysis, and an unmatched understanding of power in all its forms. It was Burnham's last book (other than a collection of columns entitled The War We Are In, published in 1967), and it deserves to be remembered as one of the 20th-century's great works of political analysis. ...Burnham labels liberalism a Weltanschauung, or worldview, a system of belief based on what ought to be instead of what is and has been. At its most fundamental, liberalism is based on an abstract, rationalist view of human nature. Liberals hold that human nature is not fixed but changeable, that humans are perfectible and their potentialities unlimited, that reason can govern the affairs of men, and that human progress is inevitable. In the liberal worldview principles, customs, and religion are obstacles to human progress, not evidence of human nature's essence and limitations. For liberals, there is no evil, no social problem, no disagreement or conflict that cannot be overcome by their enlightened ideology.
I highly recommend Burnham's work. Can't say the same for Goldberg's.
Mass immigration = suicide of the West. Tribalism is just the natural product.
America is a product of Protestantism. As Protestantism has been undermined and supplanted so has America and the entire West.
The general thesis sounds correct, but Jonah is such a rabid Never Trumper, I wonder how much that has polluted the book. Surely it works against his perspective insofar as he can’t see the Trump movement as a last best hope to win it back for another generation.
Maybe Burnham wasn't either (people don't talk about him much lately).
If you say, we have to be strong to fight this external threat, you may get a positive response in some places and maybe change things, but if you say we have to resist all manner of internal weaknesses and self-indulgences that could eventually destroy our society, few people will listen.
If you have an economy based on consumption and self-indulgence, it's hard to tell people that they should restrain themselves when others don't.
ping for later reading
This could be repeated unto infinity, and it wouldn't be enough. This is absolutely, unequivocally true. Socialism is from Satan. It's his best way of fighting back against God.
The West isnt committing suicide, it is being murdered by the left. The left is obsessed with implementing Communism, an economic system that fails and results in mass murder every time it’s tried. The prosperity of the West is fueled by Capitalism and this system must fail in order to get people to demand a new system. In other words the left is doing everything they can to disrupt Western civ to convince people that the current system doesnt work. Once that is accomplished people will be willing to accept communism as a replacement.
FU JG.
I like Jonah Goldberg and I like the premise of conservatism as gratitude. Sure wish he’d snap out of his anti-Trumpism tho.
“Free trade” and offshoring are destroying capitalism and wealth of the USA and creating debt.