Friday, February 10, A.D. 2012

Abortion as a Sacrament

Last month before the March for Life, I was thinking about an idea that I have encountered in recent years that abortion is a sacrament for the Left. Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life notes that Ginette Paris published the book, The Sacrament of Abortion, in A.D. 1992, wherein she supports abortion as a pagan affirmation of life. I was surprised that the idea has its origin on the Left, but I should get used to the perversity of this world. Although the prophet Isaiah proclaims, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!,” one must not forget that the wicked delight in wickedness.

Upon reflection, however, I think that the Left’s position is remarkably consistent given human nature. Consider sacrifice and its place in human society. Sacrifice is pretty much a universal human phenomenon. Man gives up something dear to his gods. Crudely, this act is seen as a transaction wherein the sacrificer seeks to appease divine anger or curry divine favor. The more philosophical understanding is that by sacrifice man makes clear to himself and to everyone the proper order of being, where lesser goods are given up for greater ones. The act of sacrifice to the gods demonstrates vividly to the human soul and to the human community the appropriate hierarchy of the world; it is an impressive (as in impression making) act that proclaims the community’s ranking of values.

Among sacrifices, none is greater than offering human life, especially the life of a child who represents the very continued existence of the human community of which he is part. We find stories of child sacrifice repellant, and we are quick to condemn the practitioners of such acts as evil and demonic. However, from their point of view, they are offering their most precious good to the divine. In the scripture, we read of the Moabite king:

And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew sword, to break through unto the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there came great wrath upon Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

The king killed his son and successor to gain divine power. It is obvious from the story that he did not want to do this for its own sake. He did it to prevail in battle and to save his kingdom, and it appeared to have worked. We on the Abrahamic side of the story might conclude that his murdering his son would only have pleased demons, and the great wrath was not a divine force but a Satanic one. Nonetheless, from the Moabite point of view, offering one’s own child to the gods was the most powerful offering because it was the greatest sacrifice possible. What more can a loving father give than his own child? Child sacrifice, seen in this light, is the supreme act of submission.

We have this in our own heritage with Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac. Of course, the Lord saved Isaac at the last moment, but there can be no doubt that the test of Abraham demanded the most from him that God could ask. As Christians, we further see the extreme expression of sacrifice in the crucifixion of Christ, and I propose that the sacrifice on Golgotha is the archetype for all sacrifice. Every sacrifice, whether burnt, blood, or living, of fruits, beasts, or human beings, of enemies, friends, or children, is an imperfect attempt to copy the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ—“the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”—whose peculiar metaphysical status makes the crucifixion an eternally significant event that connects time and space to that which is beyond being. Consider, for instance, how the author of the letter to the Hebrews contrasts the temple cult to the sacrifice of Christ.

What, then, does this talk of child cacrifice have to do with abortion?

I believe that the positions and goals of the “Left” are the logical consequences of modernity. By that, I mean that the shift in world views that occurred in the late medieval period and Renaissance has been playing itself out over the past seven centuries, and the “cutting edge” of this development is, unsurprisingly, the “progressive” Left. The end of the Middle Ages saw the rise of nominalism—a philosophical doctrine that denies that essences exist in the world. The Franciscans who created this theory did so from a certain kind of piety, thinking that formal ontological realities limited the power of God. They thus conceived God as an omnipotent and unrestricted will, disconnected from and superior to anything known and, therefore, to knowing. This fundamental change in thinking about God revolutionized everything else, including the West’s understanding of nature and of mankind. Will has become the most important reality. Indeed, it is the only reality in quite a few philosophical currents. Having discarded the divine will, atheists keep only the human will, or perhaps will as such, and the will remains the touchstone for all other considerations. This change is the origin of all modern philosophical movements, almost all of which deify the will and discard any restraint upon the will. As with the original nominalists’ theology, the elevation of will corresponds to a diminution of truth. For truth is a restriction upon will, and the glorification of will necessarily accompanies a demotion of the intellect. For if we admit that there is reality apart from will, then the will’s freedom and scope become limited as there would be truths independent of the will. In summary, modernity is fundamentally an idolatry of the will.

I do not know if we should blame this aberration on the medieval nominalists or on Augustine who ensnared the West with the will’s tangle, but I do think that the reduction of reality to the will underlies all modern madness from the Cartesian mastery of nature to liberalism to utilitarianism to nihilism to Marxism to fascism to feminism to postmodernism to all the insane -isms that afflict men’s minds. Contemporary political thinking remains a prisoner in these fetters.

One obvious problem when everything is reduced to will is how we manage conflicting wills. One possibility is the Darwinian world where the stronger overcome the weaker. Think of Nietzsche’s will to power and the struggle of wills that we call life. Then, there are the ways of liberalism, where society attempts to maximize the ability of each will to exercise its power. Classical liberals seek to manage such conflicts loosely by instituting general rules of fairness, whereas egalitarian liberals want to engineer a society wherein each will has an equal ability to manifest its power. For why should one will be considered more important than another? If will is the fundamental reality, then everything else such as talent, intelligence, fortune, and discipline are irrelevant in discussions of justice. A just world is one of equal outcomes that allow equal opportunities to exercise power. Biology, consequences of decisions, and considerations of social stability cannot have any standing in this court of justice; for they are external to will and the Left is therefore uncomfortable with them. Nature must be reconstructed to agree with our choices, not the other way around. Something is willed; it therefore must be.

Therein, we see how abortion is a sacrament. For one sacrifices his children to his highest god, and there is no higher authority or power in the modern world than the individual will. Abortion is our society’s form of child sacrifice where babies are killed on the altar of the ego. There is no higher authority than the will; there is no greater good than the will’s current object. Abortion is simply a powerful manifestation of this belief. It is an affirmation in the superiority of the will over instinct, tradition, morality, and nature. The sacrificing priests of old both represented and taught the community through their sacrifices, and contemporary women and abortionists do the same in our society. Hear, all ye nations, the will is most supreme. Choice is sacred.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, February 10, A.D. 2012
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Monday, February 6, A.D. 2012

Priorités Noires

Last week, George Michalopulos posted a lament over the Episcopal Assembly in America: “Another Missed Opportunity by the Episcopal (Non) Assembly.” I commented so:

Is it really true that the health care plan for the OCA’s employees covers elective abortion? How is that possible? Were the folks involved in the benefits selection disinterested in such matters or willfully supportive of the culture of death? This is yet another instance that shows how much further advanced the Latins are when it comes to engaging a post-Christian culture in practical ways.

Though tangential to the point of this post, I want to address the following statement:

This means that blacks, who gave 96% of their votes to Obama made a concerted effort to vote in landslide proportions the other way for a traditionally conservative proposition. This is a staggering consideration. Besides showing surprising political sophistication among African-Americans, it gives the lie to the thesis that liberal voters are blase when it comes to matters of cultural import.

I think that these words manage to be naive and condescending at the same time (unintentionally, of course). The “surprising political sophistication” of black Americans? “Why, George, bless my soul, Old Jesse’s over there reciting the Pledge of Allegiance! Isn’t that precious?”

Moreover, how is it a mark of political sophistication to disagree with a radical social platform of your chosen team but still to remain on the team because your support assures you many unearned goodies? While there are blacks on the “New Left” who go along with the sexual revolution and all that it entails, I do not think that black preachers often extol the splendors of diversity of sexual identity, lesbian literary criticism, or the dogmas of PETA. Rather, the Left has successfully recruited the vast majority of American blacks to support a racialized version of Marx, where ethnicity has supplaced class based on labor. It is the Old Left in blackface — Labor without the labor. Johnny-come-lately conservatives, like Glenn Beck, for example, fail to understand how leftist black Americans are. Conservatives fret over their “intolerable whiteness,” worrying that such makes them racist, whereas the truth is that proportionally few blacks hold conservative principles. Tea Parties and Republican conventions are overwhelmingly white because American whites are the only ethnic group to support traditional American notions of the state’s role in our lives, justice, social order, and the like.

The economic leftism of American blacks does not make them the typical San Francisco voters of Nancy Pelosi’s district. Black leaders hobnob with the other constituents of the Democratic coalition from necessity. They tolerate the glorification of sodomy and feminism in order to grease the rails of the statist gravy train. And they do so in good conscience, having bought into the racial Marxist explanation of blacks’ lower class status in America. If only Whitey did not keep them down, they would be doing fine in the Land of Milk and Honey. So, while it might be unpleasant to mobilize politically in arms with NAMBLA sympathizers, it is what one has to do for his “community.” Ethnic interests almost always trump other principles in normal human affairs. Yet, when an opportunity comes along where one can vote his disagreement, as in referenda, he does so. Yet, at the end of the day when it comes to whom average American black Mr. Jones puts in power, he remembers who butters his bread. That is what Democrats mean when they say that people vote their economic interests. It means that they support government managed theft as long as they are the recipients of that transaction. You know, that “social justice” beloved of the Left that is neither social nor just.

Men keep many goals. Human life involves ranking such goals as we limited beings must prioritize. Wisdom involves conforming those value choices to the true hierarchy of being.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, February 6, A.D. 2012
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Monday, January 16, A.D. 2012

Saint Martin’s Day

For this holiest of days on our modern civic calendar, I recommend that you read Paul Gottfried’s “The Patron Saint of White Guilt” from Taki’s Magazine. After such edification, if you still hunger for a chance to indulge more piety, enjoy One STDV’s “Example of MLK as Deity,” inspired by Gottfried’s brief article.

One would think that such sanctimonious madness exists only on the political Left, but Leftism has colonized mainstream conservative institutions and minds. For example, Glenn Beck named Saint Martin of Sorrowful Memory as one of history’s four champions of peaceful revolution along with Moses, Jesus Christ, and Ghandi. Of course, Beck is an American and a Mormon, which means that his historical compass wavers after we go back more than two centuries. Still, I find it surprising that a prominent American “conservative” media figure like Beck includes Ghandi and King among the most important men in any category that spans human history or that he reckons that Mose’s and Jesus’ accomplishments involve “peaceful revolution.”

Update: It appears that the unrepentant Right shares a mental morphic field at times. A day after posting my homage to Saint Martin, I read Richard Spencer’s “The God of White Dispossession,” which starts with, “On this, the holiest day of modern America’s liturgical calendar, we should revisit Samuel Francis’s writing on the significance of Martin Luther King Jr.” Later, Spencer also criticizes Glenn Beck, though more generally than my post does. I suppose that the Left’s worship of King and Beck’s unconsidered enthusiasm for him make them standard targets for conservative disgust. Moreover, I believe that Gottfried and Francis were friends. So, even our auctores were related.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, January 16, A.D. 2012
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Friday, January 13, A.D. 2012

Traditionalist Manifesto

Christ is born!

Merry Christmas on this seventh day of the Nativity and happy birthday to my nephew, Austin. Many years and blessings to him! He was born on Friday the thirteenth of January (December 31 on the Church’s calendar), and so the cycle has revolved, again.

Yesterday, Lawrence Auster explained a bit more of his recent change in outlook in “Small moves away from liberalism are not going to turn around the society as a whole.” Auster states that he no longer thinks that our civilization will repent from its spiral toward nihilism and barbarity. He therefore counsels what we may do without falling into despair. The ever insightful Kristor adds the following comment:

Back in 1973, when I was a teenaged commie, I used to engage with my commie friends in political discussions that would go on for hours and hours. The only thing I remember from those discussions is a dictum that arose from within me one day, unbidden, yet fully formed, when we were talking about what it meant to be a radical: “To be a radical is to be forever unsatisfied with the content of history, yet reconciled to the process of history.” This attitude will be familiar to readers of VFR from the phenomenon here oft noted, of the fact that liberals understand there to be no limit, no stopping point, to the process of social reform. What has happened and is now happening, however many improvements there might have been, is totally unsatisfactory, and awaits the incipient onset of a gnostic New Age, in which every sordid thing that has come before will be repudiated and destroyed. Nevertheless, however, the ugly things that are happening now are the birth pangs of that New Age, and since birth is painful, it is to be expected that the process should make most of us quite uncomfortable (and even, many of us, dead); yet for the sake of that glorious New Age, we should not chafe at our discomforts of ugliness, but rather shoulder them cheerfully, happy with the way things are tending. That’s a radical: forever unhappy with things as they are, while delighted with the endless evolutionary/revolutionary process of history as it works its way toward a new utopian order.

It strikes me that this dictum is just as applicable to Traditionalist radicals as it is to those of the Left, albeit along a diametrically different vector; for the Traditionalist sees history as having Fallen from a Golden Age, and tending toward an ultimate, inescapable eschatological catastrophe, while the Leftist sees it as going the opposite direction. As pessimists about the prospects for a merely human project of saving the world, Traditionalists are more apt to respect and cherish the beauties it has so far produced, that are in the nature of things always eventually lost to the flux of time, and skeptical about their “new, improved” replacements. Until the Enlightenment, such was the prevalent attitude—the traditional attitude—in all cultures and throughout history. The hope added thereto by the Christian Gospel, of an ultimate, permanent, and total redemption of history at the eschaton, completed that vision, healing and correcting the despair that it had recommended to men, and nerving them to the creation of new and sublime creaturely beauties: cathedrals, songs, voyages, poems, discoveries, philosophies, enterprises of all kinds.

Our job then—indeed our duty—as Traditionalist radicals is, to name the uglinesses now pervading our world, not surrendering to despair thereat, but rather rejoicing nonetheless in the marvelous and orderly beauty that still, always, nevertheless surrounds us, and determined to enact such new beauties as may be within our poor powers. We are all of us engaged throughout our lives in a steady progress toward our own personal holocausts, in which every good thing we have loved will be immolated. Yet we may have confidence that, as all of history is an instrument and expression of Beauty Himself, so must that Beauty which is the source of all things eventually, utterly prevail in and through all things. We may therefore—indeed, we should—make our way toward our common doom, singing and rejoicing, if only to adorn this world’s everlasting resurrection. For, thanks to the Divine omniscience, no worldly good can fail of resurrection in the life to come.

And that, in the final analysis, is why we humans have children, and want to have children. It is why we want to preserve them, and to preserve our culture, and our lives. It is why we are ordered toward reproduction, survival, prosperity, enjoyment. Mere death makes all these things vain, empty, stupid. If death were the end of the story, none of these things would be worth doing, much; so that as our culture has come to believe in the ultimate finality of death, it has done less and less of them. But if death is not the end of the story, and the goods of this world are destined to permanent life in the world to come, then all these vital pleasures are objectively and immensely important—not all-important, to be sure, not first things, but important nonetheless.

What then ought we to do about the death of our culture? Do what is good, and beautiful, and virtuous. Nothing will be wasted, no good thing forever lost; everything will be remembered, and accounted for. From the good and virtuous things that we engender—children, mostly, but also our work, our charity, our thought, our art—something appropriate will arise. We may trust in that.

Kristor beautifully reminds us of the Christian hope and offers sage advice on how we may act as instruments through which the Lord transfigures the world into his perfected creation. Moreover, I found it more than a little ironic that Kristor begins his comment, “Back in 1973, when I was a teenaged commie,” in a thread about the hellish trajectory of the modern West. If a Communist can become what Kristor is now, then anything is possible! But, of course, we have always known this. The hagiographies of the saints remind us over and over of the power of repentance and of the transformation that God affects upon men and women who allow him to do so. Mary of Egypt and Moses the Black come to mind.

I had a friend in college who was raised in an extraordinarily pious Roman Catholic family. His mother appeared to me as the very incarnation of the traditional Catholic maternal presence. His parents and siblings would continually pray together; road trips would be opportunities to say the rosary as a family. Very Catholic! Then, one day, my friend told me about his parents’ youth. His mother was a radical feminist in college, rebellious against traditional society and the Church. The Lord works many wonders, and the human mind may be surprisingly resilient in struggling for truth in the midst of lies. Given such examples, it is reasonable to hope for the salvation of our civilization in time and not only in the eschaton.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, January 13, A.D. 2012
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Friday, December 2, A.D. 2011

Holiday Tree?

I recently received a message wherein an acquaintance mentioned a “holiday tree.” I wanted to respond by asking which holiday. Is it a Presidents’ Day tree? A Saint Patrick’s Day tree? How about a Halloween tree? Do we decorate this said holiday tree with Independence Day ornaments while we sing Memorial Day carols? Do we place Labor Day gifts under this tree?

I find it difficult to be a modern American. So much that is considered polite or decent in our society stinks of rank stupidity. The underlying reason for “holiday tree” appears to be a desire to be inclusive. However, who tells rabbinical Jews that they are not invited to Christmas parties? Do the Salvation Army Santas refuse to say “Merry Christmas” to Hindus? Are Muslims not allowed to partake of our gingerbread? The “exclusion” inherent in Christmas celebrations is only one of identity. It will remain exclusive in the sense that it is not something else as long as it continues to exist. To remove that exclusion, one has to destroy Christmas. Perhaps, that is the plan. Regardless, calling the feast or its trappings by a generic name does not remove this exclusive aspect. It only makes for ridicule. Imagine if a dormitory with an international student body decided that it would have an annual “national holiday” celebration for all the students to celebrate their respective nations. However, this “national holiday” always curiously landed on the fourth of July, when the dormitory would facilitate a cookout of hamburgers and hot dogs and sponsor an evening fieworks display. Obviously, Sousa would always be played. It sounds rather cosmopolitan and inclusive, no?

Earlier in the week, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio broadcast, and Limbaugh stated that he could not understand how any American could hate America. I honestly do not understand such rightwing conservative blindness. When America has largely become a society wherein most people will change their speech, behavior, and views—their way of life inherited from their ancestors—to accommodate a small, whiney, and wicked contingent of ne’er-do-wells, it is no longer very lovable. Conservatives like Rush ignore what America has largely become. It is repulsive, and it does not deserve to survive. Of course, there are many “Americas,” and the way of life that conservatives value continues to exist. However, it has long ceased to be dominant. Traditional America is now the counterculture, but its adherents refuse to accept that they have lost the country.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, December 2, A.D. 2011
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Wednesday, November 9, A.D. 2011

Gynocracy and Liberalism

I recently discovered an entertaining, old View from the Right thread about “gynocracy” and liberalism. It features some frank discussion on what “feminism” has wrought in the West. Among other worthwhile aspects of the post, Auster once again shows his knack for analyzing the Left:

Liberalism means seeing the world as a single collection of individuals, all possessing the same rights, and distinguished only by their “individual worth.” Liberalism rejects, as a fundamental principle, the idea that individuals may belong to different categories—categories not chosen by the individual himself—that may affect the individual’s rights. So, from the point of view of liberalism, there is no reason why women cannot be, say, soldiers or police officers, so long as the women in question can “do the job.” This leads to a few women, who have the requisite qualifications, becoming soldiers or police officers, which in turn leads to changes in the institution to adjust to those women (e.g., separate bathrooms and sleeping quarters, the elimination of hazing at VMI), and thence to an attack on the “culture of masculinity” in those institutions and to never-ending demands for ever more women to be admitted and to be promoted at the same rate as men. Starting with a liberal individual-rights paradigm aimed at the non-discriminatory inclusion of qualified individuals, we end up with cultural radicalism aimed at transforming or destroying the institution itself.

In the area of immigration, U.S. immigration in 1965 was opened up equally to immigrants from all countries on the basis that the only criterion for admission should be the “individual worth” of prospective immigrants, rather than their nationality, race, or religion. But since these notions of individual worth were necessarily minimalistic (since the very purpose of the law was to eliminate group discrimination, not to admit high quality immigrants, an impossible task in any case when you’re talking about mass immigration), the people we permitted as worthy individuals in fact carried cultural differences with them that inevitably have changed American culture and created demands for far more sweeping changes, in the process also leading to the prohibition of any criticism of these changes. Once again, pure liberal individualism, based on “individual worth,” leads to cultural radicalism and the loss of an institution’s or a whole society’s legitimate liberty to govern itself.

By contrast, traditionalism acknowledges that we as human beings are not just individuals possessing rights and desires, that there are things about us that matter that do not come from ourselves. Our nature as men or women is not created by ourselves; it is a given that comes from outside ourselves and that structures our existence. From the point of view of traditionalism, such larger categories as sex, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and race (not to mention species) matter. How much they matter varies. In some cases they may not matter at all, and the issue can be determined on a pure basis of individual rights; in other cases they may matter very much, and liberal rights must take a back seat to other considerations. How much they matter in any case is something to be determined by prudence. As President Kennedy once said about brains, there is no substitute for prudence.

Therefore the proper role of women and men in society is a legitimate topic of political discussion. But liberalism denies that it is a legitimate topic, because liberalism denies the existence, or at least the importance, of those larger categories or essences.

Of course I am not denying the evils that have been done in the name of putting people into determined categories of race, class, sex, and so on. Liberalism is however an extreme solution to that problem which creates horrible problems of its own. The result of denying that group categories can ever matter socially or be a legitimate topic of discussion can be seen in the paralyzing political correctness that controls Britain and other European countries at this moment, with the U.S. not far behind.

May Auster keep writing and enlightening for many, many years!

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, November 9, A.D. 2011
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Monday, October 24, A.D. 2011

The End of the Future

Earlier in the month, billionaire genius Peter Thiel published a short essay in National Review, “The End of the Future.” It makes for an interesting and sobering read. Thiel notes that the current political and social orders in Western countries depend on easy economic growth, which requires constant technological innovation. Thiel investigates the state of technology and shares some frank and rather unpleasant commentary about the near future.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, October 24, A.D. 2011
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Wednesday, October 5, A.D. 2011

Leftist Self Mastery

Earlier in the week, a commentator on View from the Right expressed an insight that I really appreciated. The post, “The truth that liberalism prohibits, even as it exploits it,” concerned a reader’s puzzlement concerning leftist promotion of homosexual “marriage.” Another reader then provided the following gem (with Auster’s comments bracketed in bold, as is his custom):

S. writes:

. . . The liberal psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done fascinating research into the moral psychology of liberals and traditional conservatives. He acknowledges that even many liberals find homosexuality deeply repulsive. He claims that liberals typically react by assuming that they are the one with the problem, and that they need to overcome their “bigoted” reaction by repressing the natural reaction of disgust. They see this as virtuous because they are allowing their “rational” egalitarian impulses to overcome their “irrational” and “bigoted” moral impulses. I think this partly explains the recent push towards the normalization of ever more bizarre forms of sexual expression like transsexuality. The more disgusting some deviant behavior is, the more the liberal can practice the virtues of tolerance and non-discrimination by accepting and promoting it. If the behavior is truly perverse and revolting, it is a heroic act to tolerate it and accept it, an act of liberal supererogation, as it were. [LA replies: That’s a new variation on Auster’s First Law! Under liberalism, the more vile and perverted an act is, the more virtuous it is to tolerate it.]

In the traditional morality of virtue, one attempts to exercise control over one’s baser desires and animal passions. One eventually learns to tame these passions, thereby achieving the kind of self-mastery that is necessary for spiritual development. The liberal, on the other hand, achieves a different kind of self-mastery. He learns to control and suppress his natural moral passions, so that he can forge a society in which all people are free to indulge their baser desires without fear of social censure.

LA replies:

Excellent comment. It’s often been said that liberalism inverts traditional morality. You have shown more precisely how this is the case. The traditionalist, in order to become a better person, restrains his baser behaviors. The liberal, in order to become a better person, restrains his belief in morality.

S. replies (before he saw my bolded response to him making the same point):

This phenomenon dovetails nicely with your theory that in a liberal society, the worse a designated victim class behaves the more forbidden it is to criticize it. The more obvious it becomes that some minority group is transgressing the bounds of decency and morality, the more heroically virtuous it is to tolerate their transgressions and to punish those who speak the truth.

S. continues:

Come to think of it, this phenomenon may lend some measure of credence to Steve Sailer’s “status competition” theory of liberal insanity. In any group of people with shared values and norms, there will be ideas about virtue and vice. Those who most embody the virtues will have enhanced social standing. Hence, in liberal society, the more tolerant and permissive you are of vile and revolting behaviors, the more you distance yourself from the benighted non-liberal and the more you demonstrate your virtues to your peer. If you can accept even outrageous offenses against decency and nature, you are the liberal version of Aristotle’s great souled man, able to expect much and receive much.

S. demonstrates in this comment how a degenerate form of Kantian morality perverts human nature. From what I have witnessed of our upside down contemporary world, I believe that S. analyzes finely.

In case you were wondering about Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society, you may wish to read “Clarifying the First Law.”

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, October 5, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, September 27, A.D. 2011

Moral Greed

On George Michalopulos’ site, Monomakhos, readers have been arguing about yet another confusing and boring topic involving ecclesial politics in the O.C.A. I sometimes attempt to follow these discussions for the interesting tangents that appear in the threads. Just so, comments in the recent post about Bishop Melchizedek referred to the Pokrov crew. Pokrov is a web site that publicizes accusations of clerical impropriety. It claims to be “a resource for survivors of abuse in the Orthodox Church.” Though such a ministry seems beneficial, the witch hunting tendencies of Pokrov remind me of the politically ambitious district attorneys who ginned up sexual abuse cases against the childcare industry decades ago in order to appear as protectors of the people. Commentator Helga wrote:

My experience of reading “Pokrov” is that they are attention-seekers who feed off of strife and upheaval. . . .

Also, Pokrov seems to glory in creating scandal where none exists . . .

My friend Andrew coined the condition that the Pokrov women suffer “moral greed.” It consists in eagerly anticipating scandal so that one may exercise outrage and disgust. For it is in railing against whatever abuse or “social injustice” the morally greedy encounter that they find their happiness and self actualization. It is Manicheism for the Lifetime Channel, though the fastidiousness of these righteous ones curiously only applies to a narrow spectrum of proper behavior. The hypocrisy and prelest of the Puritans of yore have been passed down to their post-Christian heirs who manifest that old hallowed sanctimony in The Vagina Monologues, Shantytowns, and P.E.T.A. antics. With Pokrov, it is not as bad. The Pokrovettes are more like Nancy Grace in a Russian shawl.

Lusting after power and prestige has often accompanied social reformers and crusaders for progress, from the Gracchi to that patchouli smelly girl on campus who refuses to shave her armpits lest she capitulate to the phallocracy. Whether these folks pander to the masses or score self righteous street cred among fellow radicals, many who claim to seek the betterment of mankind are simply competing for status and gain among their peculiar peers. Even a brief sojourn with leftist activists will teach you all that you need to know about the character type. True love of virtue and true charity for mankind are much rarer, and the bearers of such qualities typically improve the world without making their chief focus the shortcomings of everyone else.

There is obviously a need for muckraking in this fallen world, and the weak will always require champions on their behalf. However, there is a temptation that follows such good work, wherein one aquires a taste for righteous indignation and thereafter greedily sets off in search of offenses to fight and victims to protect. As such, we should be thankful for the good work that Pokrov has done. We must not tolerate clerical abuse. Consider the Roman Church’s problems from the past few generations; disease was allowed to fester, and the rot damaged many lives. A “watchdog” for clerical abuse performs a good service for the Church. However, the overreach and hysteria of Pokrov demonstrate that even well intentioned paths might lead to peril. There are predatory clerics, but there are also predatory laymen who realize what power they can wield through false accusations. Pokrov enthusiastically enables such folks, and their mission may have perverted them by making them hostile to traditional hierarchy and authority in the Church. They label Orthodox monasticism cultish, and they have whored themselves out to modernists who despise traditional Orthodox praxis and doctrine.

In the midst of those who truly labor for justice there is a mighty crowd of busybodies who have discovered a guise for their vice that earns them praise, respect, and money. Among them are mediocre, passive aggressive souls who nevertheless seek status and dominion over others. They lack the typical traits of leadership that result in such, but they have tasted a parasitic form of power by bringing down the exalted and proud. And they hunger for more. They are the high priestesses of slave morality.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, September 27, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, September 20, A.D. 2011

Propensity to Enslave

A few days ago, I was browsing old articles on The Independent when I came upon Johann Hari’s “The Dark Side of Dubai.” Hari examines the virtual slavery that undergirds the Emirate kingdom; he reports on the working conditions of Dubai’s foreign labor force and the wicked means of their enslavement. Hari also notes the complicity in and enthusiastic acceptance of this system of slavery by the Emerati populace and by Westerners. The article moreover details the corruption and lack of transparency that pervade government and business in Dubai. It appears that the most colorful counterexample of third world dysfunction has been nothing but a mirage.

Hari has suffered lately from lapses in professional ethics, and perhaps we ought not to take his reporting as credible. I, myself, always approach leftist crusaders with a healthy amount of skepticism. Nonetheless, there is a place for leftwing muckrakers who expose human exploitation. If there is truth to Hari’s report of Dubai, we should not be surprised that the shining example of Arab progress has turned out to be a flashy, tacky fabrication. Cultural transformation demands centuries if not millennia, and we really expected nomadic Mohammedan barbarians to transform into social democrats in a generation? Furthermore, men universally have always been quick to enslave and to exploit. Human beings are largely predatorial, and concerns for justice and human dignity will always remain an interest only for the few.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, September 20, A.D. 2011
Anthropology • Politics • (0) Comments • Permalink