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
Teaching Natural Selection in Stalin's USSR, or genes and chromosomes for that matter, got you thrown in prison, and out of a job. My teacher in Molecular Genetics was banned from teaching in the U.S.S.R. for being suspected of accepting Darwin's theory. Ronald Reagan (”who shall live always in my prayers” he would say) asked for him BY NAME and the USSR allowed him to come to the USA.
You should read his book and learn something about history before you make yourself look like even more of a fool.
Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science- Valery Soyfer
Here is a snippet from another source about how far from “embracing” Darwinism, it was a punishable offense under Stalin.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/21228-russia
Following a speech he gave at a conference in 1948 denouncing Mendelian genetics as “reactionary and decadent”, Lysenko rose to prominence. Geneticists who opposed Lysenkoism were dispatched to the gulag as “enemies of the Soviet people”. Most confessed to their “errors” in propounding Mendel's and Darwin's teachings - and, consequently, kept their jobs.
How very odd that you who embrace Darwinism with its’ moral relativism would accuse me-—or anyone for that matter-—of lying.
It really matters not what Stalin or any of his legion of liars later claimed about Darwinism. The Soviet Union was an empire of evil, and there was neither truth nor righteousness to be found there.
Be that as it may, Stalin certainly did embrace Darwin’s theory, if only because it negated God the Father. Darwin’s theory has that effect, as EO Wilson also testifies:
“As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian,” wrote Harvard professor E.O. Wilson in a 1982 article for The Humanist.
“When I was fifteen, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion; I left at seventeen when I got to the University of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory.”
That’s a pretty good summary of what happened to the baby boom generation.
Historically, Darwinism has had some deadly effects, especially beyond our shores. Karl Marx said: “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.”
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin murdered millions. In 1940, a book was published in Moscow entitled “Landmarks in the Life of Stalin.” In it we read:
At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.
G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin’s, relates:
“I began to speak of God. Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence, said:
“’You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. ...’
“I was astonished at these words. I had never heard anything like it before.
“’How can you say such things, Soso?’ I exclaimed.
“’I’ll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,’ Joseph said.
“’What book is that?’ I enquired.
“’Darwin. You must read it,’ Joseph impressed on me.”
Darwin’s theory is many things-—great alternative “anti-creation” account; Gnostic myth; license to reject God the Father; just-so story (to use Lewontin’s term)-—and none of them qualify as empirically verifiable science.
He who embraces Darwin’s theory embraces the Lie. Perhaps that is why Darwin himself wondered if his “theory” was in fact the Devil’s Gospel?
Lest there be another accusation of “lying,” the quoted text is from James Perloff’s “The Case Against Darwin,” Feb. 20, 2001, WND
You lie blatantly when you say Stalin embraced Darwinism. If you taught Darwinian evolution in Stalin's USSR you were sent to Siberia and/or executed.
That is the truth. Your idea that anybody who accepts a scientific theory is a moral relativist is as ludicrous as your previous idiotic assumption that anybody who accepts a scientific theory is an atheist.
Do you know that the current Pope says of evolution that “there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being and such”?
Do you think the Pope is a moral relativist?
Darwinism appeals to a lot of bad men:
“Making a monkey out of Darwin”
Excerpt
That Darwinism has proven “disastrous theory” is indisputable.
“Karl Marx loved Darwinism,” writes Windchy. “To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution.”
“Darwin suits my purpose,” Marx wrote.
Darwin suited Adolf Hitler’s purposes, too.
“Although born to a Catholic family, Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs’ advance into France. Had the Christians lost, (Hitler) reasoned, Germanic people would have acquired a more warlike creed and, because of their natural superiority, would have become the leaders of an Islamic empire.”
Charles Darwin also suited the purpose of the eugenicists and Herbert Spencer, who preached a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism to robber baron industrialists exploiting 19th-century immigrants.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=102589
Stalin rejected Darwinian evolution as being too capitalistic and embraced Lysenkoism-Lamarkianism instead. Teaching or acceptance of Natural Selection, genes, or chromosomes was reason for arrest and prosecution as an enemy of the revolution.
Hitler was a creationist who believed in fixed kinds and that man was directly created by God.
“The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger.” (Mein Kampf, vol. i, ch. xi)
“Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise.” - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. i
Obama says he’s a Christian, LOL.
So to add to the absolute untruth that Stalin was a “Darwinist”, when he was a “Lamarkian” you add the absolute untruth that Hitler was a “Darwinist” when in his own words he was a creationist.
Creationists cannot seem to tell the truth about history or science.
But perhaps one can excuse their untruths as originating through ignorance rather than overt malice; because creationists are most common among the least educated segments of our population.
The point is, bad men always claim to be good men.
You know them by their Darwinian fruits.
The other point is that creationists need to lie and misrepresent both science and history in order to try to make their half-assed appeal to consequences fallacy.
An additional point is that creationists are most common among the least educated segment of society, and creationist sources make good use of this by peddling lies and disinformation.
Please provide a link to the source of your information.
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” is also from Mein Kamph
The will of the Almighty Creator? Sure sounds like a “Darwinist” who rejects the existence of God to me! THAT must of been why he was so evil, because he rejected the God that he thought he was doing the will of, that was Almighty, and that was his Creator.
Hitler said, on signing the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, April 26, 1933: “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . .” So apparently he agreed that a secular education would lead to moral decay! ;)
Please provide links to your sources.
Which quotes or statements of mine do you suggest are in error? I have been quite specific. I know it must be quite a blow to what creationist sources have taught you, but have you lost yourself so much that you cannot recognize the truth when you see it?
http://www.amazon.com/Lysenko-Tragedy-Soviet-Science-Valery/dp/0813520878
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/
http://www.hitler.org/speeches/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kampf.html
First page has...
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord [p. 60].
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1699/was-hitler-a-christian
That one has....
“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith”
I expect you to backup your claims in a way that can be easily verified. I do it all the time.
I’m willing to discuss them with you but I don’t know you from Adam and I’m not going to read every Hitler speech.
I don’t know what you mean by “creationist”. If you’re trying to say Hitler was a Christian then I know you’re wrong. So, please, clarify your point in words a low person like I am can understand.
Do I have to explain to you how you can google any quote I provided and find it yourself?
These are all well known quotes. I am surprised at your utter ignorance of their existence..... or maybe not.
Sheesh - I got very overwhelmed again and didn’t ping this out. I always like to read these article carefully before pinging them but lately - it’s as though my days are getting compressed...
I’ll ping it out tomorrow morning.
Thank you so much for pinging me to these articles. Haven’t seen many lately.
Anybody can 'claim' to be anything. Hitler was a lunatic, and evil. There was nothing Christ led about his attempt to play 'god'. There are lies and then there are lies. There is no bigger lie than to claim without one shred of evidence that flesh man of this flesh age once upon a time originated out of a hot steaming pot of primordial soup. Talk about knowledge of good and evil.
Neither was Stalin an embracer of Darwin's theory. Teaching natural selection made you an enemy of the revolution in Stalin's Soviet Russia.
The entire argument here is to conflate evolution through natural selection and atheism, make an argument that is guilt by association and the fallacy of an appeal to consequences; and to attempt to support that insipid argument with outright LIES and historic inaccuracies.
That is what the creationist is reduced to. Pitiful.
Most Christian faiths have no problem at all with acceptance of science, including evolution, paleontology, plate tech-tonics, radioisotope decay, astronomy, and all the other fields that creationists cannot let stand untroubled, because they ALL conflict with what they would prefer to believe about the natural world.
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