Posted on 12/09/2010 7:56:44 AM PST by spirited irish
By the close of WW II, Richard Weaver and countless other classical liberals apprehensively discerned that the Western civilized nations were on the road to breakdown and totalitarianism. Suffering "progressive disillusionment," Weaver perceived that old cultural restraints had failed to control man's propensity for evil. This led him to ponder the fallacies of modernist ideas that had produced the holocaust of evil visited upon the world from WW I to WW II. By late 1945, Weaver published his conclusions in his book, "Ideas Have Consequences."
The subject of Weaver's book was "the dissolution of the West." Its deterioration was traced by Weaver to the late 14th century when, Weaver argued, Western man had made an "evil decision." Enticed by William of Occam's (d. c. 1349) philosophy of nominalism, Western man abandoned his belief in transcendent "universals" and thus the position that "there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man..." The consequences of this revolution in ideas were catastrophic, for "The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably...the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of 'man is the measure of all things."
Things worsened as the downward spiral continued:
God would be conceptually murdered, Heaven shut-down and Nature itself elevated to the supreme reality. The doctrine of original sin was abandoned and replaced by the "goodness of man." With only the physical world of the senses held to be real, Christianity declined, rationalism arose, and materialist science became the most prestigious way to study man. With knowledge limited to the sensory realm, man's spiritual attributes, that is, the soul, mind, conscience, and free will were soon lost in an endless cycle of reductionism and determinism. Man, created in the spiritual likeness of his supernatural Creator would be lost. In his place would stand the soulless human ape, an accidental emergent product of mindless evolutionary forces.
Weaver dubbed this way of thinking the "spoiled-child psychology" of modern man, who had "not been made to see the relationship between reward and effort." This orgy of mindlessness is traceable to certain terrible-willed modernists who, no longer wanting to be created in the spiritual likeness of their Creator, had failed to achieve an integrated world picture, a "metaphysical dream," said Weaver.
Weaver concluded with an ominous warning:
"the closer man stands to ruin, the duller grows his realization (for) the annihilation of spiritual being precedes the destruction of temple walls." (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 30-33)
What Weaver dubbed a "spoiled-child psychology" can be broken down into a legion of poisonous "isms:"
naturalism, materialism, idealism, empiricism, relativism, positivism, determinism, reductionism, scientism, biological and spiritual evolutionism, Freudianism, progressivism, liberalism, socialism, communism, utopianism, amoralism, and underlying them all....atheism and antitheism.
By 1951, insanity-producing modernism had already contaminated America's Supreme Court. In "Dennis et al. vs. U.S." Chief Justice Fred A. Vinson observed:
"Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes ....all concepts are relative." (ibid, p. 37)
Around that same time, Anthony Harrigan noted that a process of decay was being fostered in America by a "fierce and subtle" modernist orthodoxy. "Modernists are determined," he argued,
"to force the acceptance of pornography as medical science, filth as artistic realism, and abnormality as a mere difference of opinion...Though the life of the country is basically decent, Americans are in the hands of a cultural ruling class which...is conducting us to ruin." The amoral ruling class seeks to raise up a "liberal-bred barbarian" motivated by a destructive impulse" and unchecked by "traditional values and restraints," in order to destroy America from within noted Harrigan. (ibid, pp. 39-40)
That the ruling class of Harrigan's day succeeded in their unholy quest can be seen by Dennis Prager's article, "F — You" from the Music Industry,' wherein Prager succinctly describes today's "liberal-bred barbarians:"
"the music industry, from producers to artists, is largely populated by people who regard social and cultural norms as stifling. Their professional lives are dedicated to lowering that which is elevated, destroying that which uplifts, and to profaning that which is held sacred." (http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/12/07/f — _you_from_the_music_industry)
The barbarianism described by Prager is not restricted to music industry insiders. No, it is the prevailing attitude of the class of people described by Angelo M. Codevilla as the "Ruling Class..." In his book by that name, Codevilla notes that contemporary America is a kingdom divided against itself. Today there are two distinct classes and they are as different as day from night.
On the one hand there is the Country Class...the little people. Though in general the Country Class holds a disparity of beliefs, it nevertheless remains the repository of America's founding Judao-Christian philosophical worldview. Hence it is the Country Class that maintains the traditional founding belief that all men are created in the spiritual likeness of God the Father and that all men are therefore subject to His laws.
On the other hand there is the Ruling Class....the liberal-bred barbarians This class is comprised of the people we commonly think of as Leftists, that is, Socialists, Communists, Marxists, Liberals, Progressives, and anarchists. But it also includes people identified as rightwing, notes Codevilla. They are certain positivist GOP and Wall Street insiders, global corporatists, and international bankers.
The Ruling Class was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the very ideas described by early Conservatives such as Richard Weaver as evil, by Harrigan as amoral, and summarized by Whittaker Chambers as "Ye shall be as gods." Hence the key to understanding the ruling class says Codevilla, is its first principle, which is "we" are the best and brightest while the rest (the Country Class) are retrograde, racist, backwards, and dysfunctional and must be properly constrained and managed.
Whereas unscientific, unenlightened Country Class bumpkins still believe in God the Father Almighty, ruling class barbarians absolutely know by way of a "Gnostic knowing" that mankind is the emergent product of mindless evolution. Hence the ruling class "know" that they are the "naturally selected" ones possessed of superior intellect while the unevolved masses are human apes who cannot be trusted with reason or science and certainly not with guns, their own children, and private property.
To the ruling class, science is only science in the "right" hands just as consensus among the "right" people is the only standard for truth, notes Codevilla. By identifying science and reason only with themselves, ruling class barbarians have delegitimized the Country Class, thereby freeing themselves to demonize, ridicule, shame, and scorn the "lower class" as superstition-believing fundamentalists, as mentally-ill, as terrorists, haters, bigots, homophobes, and fascists. And though the ruling class has as yet been unsuccessful in destroying the Country Class' faith in God, they have managed to make it as socially unacceptable and embarrassing as smoking — to be done furtively and with a bad social conscience, said Codevilla.
It is as a whole that Ruling Class barbarians "regard social and cultural norms as stifling" and "are dedicated to lowering that which is elevated, destroying that which uplifts, and to profaning that which is held sacred." Early Conservatives knew this, and as previously stated, viewed Liberalism — by any name — as evil:
Forrest Davis, an adviser to Senator Taft asked:
"Is not the prevailing political 'liberalism'...that potpourri of indiscriminate do-goodism trending into statism and Marxism and blending so indistinguishably with treason, that is the deepest enemy of the traditional America and the West?" The Liberal, exclaimed Davis, "has looked upon the face of evil and found it half good." (ibid, p. 95)
William Rusher, publisher of the National Review in 1957 remarked:
"...the Liberal Establishment...shares Communism's materialist principles." (ibid, p. 137)
In summarizing the conservative case, Frank Meyer commented:
"...Liberalism is in agreement with Communism (it sees) the necessity and desirability of socialism...it regards all inherited value — theological, philosophical, political — as without intrinsic value or authority....therefore (there are no) irreconcilable differences...between it and Communism (thus) Liberals are unfit for the leadership of a free society, and intrinsically incapable of offering serious opposition to the Communist offensive." (ibid. p. 137) Or to today's jihadists, it should be noted.
It was Fyodor Dostoevsky's acute spiritual discernment that ultimately revealed the real source of the evil lurking at the bottom of Liberalism's so-called "enlightened" canon of isms. The evil, said Dostoevsky, is the Original Lie: "Ye can be as gods."
In absolute agreement with Dostoevsky's analysis, many years later ex-Communist-atheist-Darwinist Whittaker Chambers noted that the crisis of the 20th century was a crisis of faith. Communism is a religion, "man's second oldest faith," man's "great alternative faith," observed Chambers. Its promise is "Ye shall be as gods." Its vision is "the vision of man without God," of "man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world," of "man's liberated mind...redirecting man's destiny." Communism proclaims an inescapable choice between two irreconcilable faiths: "God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism." To Chambers, the "crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God."
Chambers despaired of the West because as the death of God movement that gave rise to the poisonous "isms" broadened and deepened, in the blackness of the shadow it cast, the majority of mankind appeared to Chambers to be spiritually blind to the titanic struggle between these two "irreconcilable faiths." (ibid, p. 92)
Like Whittaker Chambers, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been a dedicated Darwinist, Communist, and atheist, that is until he was thrown into an earthly Hell called the Gulag. After many long years of unbelievably brutal suffering he emerged one of the 20th century's most powerful Christian prophets. In a message of immense importance to us he said:
"If we surrender to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human. But let us note that the absolutely essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from participation in the lie forced upon us...this requires no physical, or revolutionary...measures. No. It requires from each individual a moral step within his or her power....No one who voluntarily runs with hounds of falsehood will ever be able to justify himself to the living..."
Solzhenitsyn is saying that modernist "isms" have corrupted all of us in some fashion. This is because at the heart of them is the Original Lie and all men are naturally attracted to and seduced and tainted by it in some fashion.
Once the Original Lie in its many deceptive guises is institutionalized, it becomes the basis for policy decisions and legislation such as Global Warming, the transnational corridor and highway, redistributive justice, progressive taxation, population control, sustainable development, gay marriage, and Darwinism taught in schools. It likewise becomes the basis for law enforcement, for example, speech codes and hate crimes laws, separation of church and state, and no public nativity scenes. This means that many lies have already been installed as laws, covered by a shroud of other lies and enforced by law. Already in America, to oppose the lie is to be accused of a hate crime.
Solzhenitsyn is also telling us that we must liberate our souls from the power of the Lie. We must become warriors for truth. To fight for truth means defining, exposing, and attacking the lies — Darwinism for example. But isn't Darwinism empirical science? No, absolutely not. At bottom, Darwinism is a Gnostic myth notes Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematics professor at Oregon State University:
"...As a scientific theory, Darwinism would have been jettisoned long ago. The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living things created themselves, which is in essence a metaphysical claim....Thus...evolutionism is a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb....it is a scientistic myth. And the myth is Gnostic, because it implicitly denies the transcendent origin of being; for indeed, only after the living creature has been speculatively reduced to an aggregate of particles does Darwinist transformism become conceivable. Darwinism, therefore, continues the ancient Gnostic practice of deprecating "God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth." It perpetuates...the venerable Gnostic tradition of "Jehovah bashing." (From Old Gnosticism to New Age I, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal Vol. 28:4-29:1, 2005, pp. 30-31)
Darwinism is the Big Lie that allows ruling class barbarians to conceptually dehumanize the Country Class, look down upon them in utter contempt and resentment, and run roughshod over them. Without their realizing it, the Country Class has been reduced to tax slaves to feed the insatiable appetites of the Ruling Class.
To destroy the power of Darwinism is to literally knock the pinnacle out from under ruling class barbarians, thereby casting them down to earth from atop their imagined lofty heights. Suddenly they will be just like the Country Class — fallible, sinful men made in the spiritual likeness of God the Father Almighty and subject to His moral laws. This is the true equality envisioned by the Founders.
However, before we can be effective warriors for truth cautions Solzhenitsyn, we must first cast out our own lies and other sins through confession and repentance. For only with a clean conscience can we be effective warriors for truth.
Resources:
The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It, Angelo M. Codevilla
Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America, Hilmar von Campe
Related Reading:
Darwinism: Devilish Gnostic Myth Dressed Up As Science
In the Shadow of Leviathan: America's Arising Fear-Based Society
Yes, so luckily for creationists that they, on the whole, avoid such things as higher education. Ignorance is their strength!
After all, that book learning might turn people away from thinking the Earth is only a few thousand years old. I mean it is only contradicted by Biology, Physics, Geology, Astronomy, etc, etc.
You know that all creationists are not YE. I am a creationist and accept that the earth is a couple of billion years old or so.
You like to lump everyone together to suit your venom. Doesn’t work.
I don’t agree with all the creationist beliefs on this thread. But I’m not hatefilled so I don’t slam them for differences.
It’s also true that institutions of higher learning are in the main meat grinders grinding out generations of leftists. Of course some manage to not get indoctrinated, but most do get influenced to one degree or another. You conveniently avoid this point due to being blinded by the miasma of your arrogance.
You should know that not everyone who accepts evolution is an atheist and/or a moral relativist; and yet the entire theme of this thread is to try to link them to suit their venom. It doesn’t work.
The less educated someone is the more likely they are to be a creationist.
Oh, but you lump Higher Education in with leftism, communism, affirmative action liberalism, etc, to suit your venom. Doesn’t work.
On the other hand there is the Ruling Class....the liberal-bred barbarians This class is comprised of the people we commonly think of as Leftists, that is, Socialists, Communists, Marxists, Liberals, Progressives, and anarchists. But it also includes people identified as rightwing, notes Codevilla. They are certain positivist GOP and Wall Street insiders, global corporatists, and international bankers.
That's a little too simplistic, no? Ruling classes like ours may well think that they are privileged in everything.
But even among "the little people", there can be feelings of entitlement. See the recent mortgage crisis for evidence.
It would be nice to think that the healthy normal common people have only to throw off the parasitic elite, but that's not exactly how things are.
And aren't there problems with the "healthy people vs. sick elite" model beyond that?
Doesn't it flatter members of movements for change and make them perhaps too self-righteous?
I agree. Evolution by itself does not deny God or deny that God made us. If He chose to do via evolution, so be it.
I will admit that the left has consistently asserted that evolution proves there is no God. It proves no such thing and they need to be challenged every time they claim that.
My venom?
I merely pointed out some facts.
You don’t like them.
So what else is new.
You editorialized in some “venom” on my part. That is not a fact, that is your attempt to mind read me and attribute motive and emotion to me. Rather lame on your part.
This article stated a flat out lie. I pointed it out. People didn’t like that.
I pointed out that creationists sources OFTEN lie, and they are pretty sure they can (and do) get away with it more often than not, because creationists are most common among the least educated segments of the population. Some people REALLY didn’t like me pointing THAT out.
But there it is.
A fact that you didn’t like.
The more educated someone is the less likely they are to be a creationist.
That is a fact.
lj: And we all know that institutions of higher learning are filled with letfists, atheists, wymmin’s studies teachers, Darwininisst, communists, affirmative action hires, homosexuals, and the like, who instill their beliefs in their students.
Spirited: Since Whittaker Chambers time, evolutionary modernists (leftists, et al) have occupied positions of power and influence over our culture, politics, foreign policy, and economy.
Shortly after Hitler took control, John Dewey and legions of evolutionary modernists brought the infamous Frankfurt School to America with funding from certain powerful industrialists.
The Frankfurt School was created by Lenin, KGB agents, and others of that ilk. Upon arrival here, the Frankfurt School, with assistance from treacherous collaborators throughout arts and entertainment, media, academia, law, and politics set about planting the seeds of evil which in our own time have come to full “bloom.”
Among the rotten fruit: Satanism, filth as art, irrationalism as “reason,” obscenity as “free speech,” narcissism as self-esteem, revised history (amd’s history, btw), and of course Darwinism as “science.”
Their evil intent was nothing less than turning our culture upside-down and in their own words, “make it stink so bad that Americans will hate their own country.” They succeeded, and the “Ruling Class” is the result.
In 1970, former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov did an interview with Ed Griffin in which he explained exactly how the Frankfurt School and later KGB agents “ideologically and psychologically” subverted almost an entire generation of Americans. It is the 60’s generation (today’s Ruling Class) who were programmed to absolutely believe as good and true the ideology of traditional America’s enemies, that is, Marxists, Socialists, etc.
“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern,” noted Bezmenov. Consider for example amd’s mindless insistence that creationists are always ignorant liars, that Darwinism is “true,” and creation is false. This is programmed belief which, as Bezmenov notes, cannot be changed even when the programmee is exposed to authentic information.
Ruling Class beliefs are irrational, but as Bezmenov said, “Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”
I’ve read your comments (some of them that I run into) for a long time.
It’s clear that you write with a lot of anger and hatred. Anyone can see that.
There are two schools of thought, here.
1. God created everything including all the species, not using evolution.
2. There is no God the creator, everything is accidental and species evolved and are still evolving.
Which is true?
I am convinced beyond the slightest tinge of a sliver of doubt that the first is true.
THere is a small subset of people who try to force 1 and 2 together by claiming that God used evolution. But it’s a mismarriage and only exists because people are afraid of the kind of vemon you and your ilk sling about. Another reason is many people have been brainwashed - yes, brainwashed - by evolution/Darwinist lies in schools, from gradeschool on up to graduate level.
Your attempt to paint all creationists as exactly the same doesn’t fly with me. For another thing, I have more in common with a YE creationst than I do with either a godless Darwinist, or a weak minded believer in God who tries to make a mis-marriage of evolutionary theory and God.
A YE creationist accepts that God created everything with a plan and purpose, even if I disagree with some of the details of the “how”; whereas with evolutionists - either atheists or the weak minded - I disagree 100%.
Sorry, but you are absolutely wrong about Communism during the time of Stalin being Darwinist. This is not “revised history” it is the absolute 100% truth. Scientists in the Soviet Union under Stalin were forced to denounce Darwin's theory or they were forbidden to work in science, arrested and/or killed.
It is “revised history” by a cheap ignorant propagandist to try to claim that Stalin was a “Darwinist”.
But creationists are not only ignorant, they lie.
And most creationists are so uneducated that they cannot even recognize the lie.
Educate yourself, if you are not afraid that too much information will shatter your fragile world view!
God created everything, even random events are controlled by God, species evolved and are still evolving.
So how does your long ages of the Earth work out, got a timeline?
Earth created billions of years ago, but all life was “poofed” into existence contemporaneously? Humans walked with dinosaurs?
How is that ANY different than being a YEC other than that you are willing (at least) to admit that the data ABSOLUTLEY doesn’t support a few thousand year old universe and instead is much more compatible with it being billions of years old.
I have to give you SOME credit for at least abandoning the idiocy of a few thousand year old Earth and Universe, but once you start accepting data WHERE DOES IT STOP???
Apparently, with you, on the subject of biology.
I agree with you 100% if not more.
I was raised in a highly academic elitist and leftist family, every member of which for generations (except for a tiny few who only had the four year degree) had multiple higher degrees. I know first hand the elitist academic leftist viewpoint, mindset, and belief system. Facts? Ha ha! They don’t see them at all.
I got out as fast as I could.
I have less than no interest in debating the creation of the earth or universe with you.
Pearls before swine is not recommended in either the Bible or the Vedas.
It must be rough to have beliefs so outlandish that you are embarrassed to even state what they are! LOL!!!!
A Yabba Do Time, A Dabba Do Time!
Pearls + Swine = not recommended.
Have fun with your mind!
Your insipid posts are hardly pearls, but thanks for calling me a swine, shows where your heart really is!
God bless you.
The author did in fact address the demoralized condition of the “little people” right here:
“... before we can be effective warriors for truth cautions Solzhenitsyn, we must first cast out our own lies and other sins through confession and repentance. For only with a clean conscience can we be effective warriors for truth.”
"Proof" is a term used in logic and math; of course you're right that the scientific method is not about the "proof" of anything, nor can it be.
You are correct: the Pope should have said there is "much scientific evidence of evolution."
My problem with your statements regarding what the Popes have endorsed is that in neither case were they speaking of Darwinian evolution (at least that I can find). If you have a cite to the contrary, please share it with me (us).
My impression is they were speaking of the Big Bang/inflationary universe theory, which is an evolutionary model with increasingly strong evidentiary support. But this model appears to be irrelevant to Darwin's concerns: It deals with physical cosmology, not biology.
I agree with you that there is nothing to preclude God from using an evolutionary model to manifest His creative Will. In fact, I believe He did. But to say as much is not to grant that either Pope endorse(d) Darwin's theory.
If you can find a statement to the effect that either did, it would be news to me....
I came across these lines in my reading recently, which seem relevant to your evidently uncritical embrace of Darwin's theory:
There is a sharp yet oft-overlooked distinction between scientific knowledge and scientistic belief. And the difference is simple: authentic knowledge of a scientific kind refers necessarily to things that are observable in some specified sense, and affirms a verifiable truth; scientistic belief, on the other hand, is distinguished precisely by the absence of these positivistic attributes. Thus, no matter what may be its "scientific status," the latter refers to entities that are not in truth observable, and affirms something that is in fact unverifiable. And yet, in spite of this lack of empirical content, scientistic beliefs are by no means irrelevant or extraneous to the scientific enterprise; they too have a role to play, however unrecognized their nature and function may be. We must remember that science does not operate in a vacuum, and that only the smallest portion of what is normally presupposed in technical discourse is itself subject to scientific analysis. Recognized or not, there is always a dark field around the white spot, a grey region that shades off into obscurity. Basically what confronts us here is the imaginative and the equivocal: the "scientific unconscious," one is tempted to say. But however one may wish to designate this rationally obscure and protean realm, it is there, and it rounds out the picture. — Wolfgang Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence (1984), p. 9This "grey region that shades off into obscurity" is, of course, the subjective ground on which "scientistic faith" rests; and it profoundly affects the quality (verifiability) of "scientific knowledge."
JMHO FWIW
Thanks so much for writing, allmendream!
If they are "controlled," then how can they be "random?"
What on earth do you mean by this word, "random?"
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