Posted on 06/03/2024 6:21:49 AM PDT by spirited irish
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since…it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought” — Roger Scruton (27February 1944 – 12 January 2020)
“Ideology is compelled to distort reality and so is inherently dishonest and distorting of truth, and it is therefore inherently violent. It also naturally tends toward totalitarianism. But even if it does not attain totalitarian state authority, it has an insidious tendency to possess and transform the human being from the inside out. This is the tendency of ideology to destroy, with one’s own cooperation, the humanity or free personhood of those who adhere to it or are seduced by its view of the world, and to some extent even those intimidated into being collaborators. It is the tendency of ideological politics to turn human beings into instruments, not only through compulsion and intimidation, but through their own choice to behave and think according to its dictates.” What is Ideology? Mark Shiffman, Public Discourse, 5/24
Ideology holds out both the promise of power to the soul sick and escape from their fallen human condition. Like Cain, the soul sick spirit of ideology rejects Eternal Reality and the way things really must work in this world requiring humble interpretation in favor of its own egocentric interpretive framework based in illogic, wishful thinking, and fantasy. Acceptance requires uncritical submission to the narrow channel of the ideology’s dark illogic:
(Excerpt) Read more at renewamerica.com ...
Thanks for posting this. I saw the list of your other articles as well at the bottom of this one. Awesome!
A very well thought out and well written essay.
It will be read by few people and understood by even fewer.
The fight is not in the universities.
The best teacher in the world is…..the world.
Socialism/communism never works.
Never.
Because it is made up of people and people are bags of emotions walking around.
The history of mankind is the history of most people just trying to have a decent life and raise their kids, fighting against a series of assholes who want all the money in the world and to rule over them.
Thanks for posting. BUMP.
I would add an additional and always overlooked "oppressed class" to the list in the article (of blacks, LGBTQ+, illegal aliens, and man-hating lesbians).
The communists who sold Marxism to American universities and colleges in the 20th century convinced the academic class that they were also part of the oppressed class (being oppressed and subordinated by the ignorant business class).
Academics were prime candidates for inclusion in the "oppressed class" because they were extremely sensitive to the fact that, though they were much smarter than those stupid Americans outside academia, they were financially poor in comparison.
As we can see so clearly now, the academics have taken their revenge on the rest of us.
A very well thought out and well written response.
I especially liked your last sentence.
Bkmk
Thanks. Only the truth will set us free!
Thanks. Missed that one, but then there are so many soul sick groups and individuals..
They probably think they bought into Marxism because they are so smart and sensitive to the inequality and oppression of other poor schmucks.
There will absolutely be an apocalypse, whether it’s a war, economic or political. The frustration is that it will be unnecessary and precipitated by over fed, spoiled idiots who believe that the garbage on the internet has made them geniuses on nearly every topic. I guess Mark Twain was right: if G-d had meant for humans to think, He would have given them brains.
I do have questions. This for one:
Cain had his own way of doing things, even to the murder of his brother Able (who deserved what he got)...huh? How did Able deserve to be murdered? And:
In his masterful book, “Utopia: The Perennial Heresy,” Thomas Molnar (1921-2010)
1921-2010? What do those years, put that way, mean?
Thanks in advance if you can answer.
The words "deserved what he got" are Cain's thoughts, where he rationalizes the brutal murder of his brother as being Abel's own fault. In other words, Abel caused Cain to murder him, meaning Cain was not really guilty of his brothers murder.
(1921-2010) are the birth and death years of Thomas Molnar. He was born in 1921 and died in 2010.
Thank you very much!
I saw 1921, but was “seeing” 2021. Derp.
Too long, too wonky and in the end it doesn’t provide the answer to the question it asks.
The reason Marxism (and any other utopian fantasies) hasn’t died and will not die is because there is always been and will always be a sizable group of people who look at the world as “unfair” and unjust. and are sufficiently bothered by that to want to blow up the status quo and replace it with their imagined, “everyone is equal” paradise. To them equality is justice. And there are enough easily manipulated useful idiots and “oppresseds” who benefit from such schemes, that they can be easily recruited to join the “party”.
Tocqueville put it in very concise and eloquent terms...
“There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville
I firmly believe this “depraved taste for equality” has a genetic component, and that’s why it’s always been there and will never disappear.
So the more important question is, what do you do with these people?
Could that be from Lucifer's lust for equality with Christ? I think you've hit on something here.
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