I know, I know, I am polemical. I polarize people with my words. I piss people off because I am ever seeking to destroy pretense. And yet at this juncture in my life I understand this irksome gift as a God-given trait that must be used. This does not mean that I am perfect, of course, or exempt. It does mean though that just like the prophets recorded in the Old Testament I cannot remain silent. I am will ever be forthright and forth telling…
*****
Pervasive throughout our land is the avoidance of asking the hard questions. We shun the real questions about life and death, about God, about good and evil, about the body and soul, about reason and revelation and about eternity and time.
Yesterday I happened to watch The Lord of the Rings (LTR): The Return of the King. Putting the above statement into LTR terms, we want to live peaceably in the shire with never having to venture out and deal with the Ring which has consequential power over us. We may say to ourselves, “Why destroy the ring when we can pretend it doesn’t exist? We may have doubts that all that the shire presents to us is all there is to life but we will ignore those doubts in order to avoid conflict and to live peaceably. We choose the immediate surroundings to avoid the dangerous quest that truth demands. We fear what it might take to make the journey. We fear we will lose ourselves on the way and never return to the shire. We fear what it might take to fight the good fight.
We fear conflict. Conflict is the evil we most want to avoid. Our “dialectics” begin with opposites and end in synthesis. We seek conflict resolution, bargaining, harmony and therapy, no-fault divorce, etc. Because of this we find it easier to believe nothing of import so that we do not have to fear disagreement, ostracism or even death for what one believes. And because we do not believe in anything then we cannot be responsible for outcomes.
To choose to believe nothing means that absolute truth is discharged from our lives. Its voice is no longer heeded. In fact its voice is now being drowned out. The commotion that you hear daily is man’s raucous resistance to leaving the shire ~ his tweeting and texting of empty words, the ever streaming pop/rock music filling the void, the Surround sound of ubiquitous blaring entertainment. It is as if men and women were walking around in the dark calling out to each other and never finding the light switch. They have chosen to stay in the purgatory of their fears.
The avoidance of pain and conflict has become our primary goal in life. This is seen in the young voter’s desire for Obamacare. The health care reform is seen by them as in line with their “values”. The reform is also seen as providing a sense of self-esteem in that it affirms the young voters wish to avoid pain and insecurity at all costs. On the surface Obamacare appears to provide security for themselves and for others while in truth it is a compromise of what is good and what is evil – the good being the desire for your well-being and the well-being of others and the evil which is the lie that Obama and the government will somehow provide self-esteem and security for you and others and do it with altruism. Remember, God has now been replaced by social science, social science based on rationalism and egalitarianism (think John Rawls, Laurence Tribe, etc.) all under the banner of “Social Justice.” Rationalism’s,’ “Social Justice” trumps God every time. Social science is now becoming the creator of society’s values, e.g., God is not to be talked about in public but homosexuality must be. All of this in spite of the fact that rationalism without revelation could never create value. As Benedict XVI said in 1969:
“What is essential is that reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational, just as the state that aims at being perfect becomes tyrannical. Reason needs revelation in order to be able to be effective as reason.”
The avoidance of truth with its inherent conflicts with other than the truth affects our relationships, our sexuality, our creativity, our culture. In place of absolute truth Americans, as mentioned, have latched on to “values.” And our new “value” system has a new way of talking: “lifestyle”, “Be Yourself;” “Be original;” “Let go and be;” diversity;” “I have my rights.” But now “rights” are no longer the natural inalienable God-given rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Now “rights” have morphed into feelings worn on our sleeve. We demand that others accept what we feel and that others be open and tolerant. This is what we value above all else. Right and wrong (and love (read not sex)) no longer have a place in our psyche. “Values” – a synthesis of good and evil dominates our diseased culture. And when we ignore serious questions we create words with synthetic meanings to describe our lives.
“Charisma” is one of those words often heard today. Charisma was once considered a God-given grace but has been used as cover for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, notes when talking about Hitler’s appeal.
Allan Bloom, another political philosopher, notes in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, “Charisma both justifies leaders and excuses followers. The very word gives a positive twist to rabble-rousing qualities and activities treated as negative in our constitutional tradition. And it s vagueness makes it a tool for frauds and advertising men adept at manipulating images.” Consider that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been called charismatic leaders.
In the introduction to his book, Bloom writes about what he sees in the classrooms of higher education:
“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes that truth is relative….They are unified only in their relativism and their allegiance to equality….They have been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society…The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness ~ and the relativism that makes it only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings ~ is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point (now) is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.” (emphasis mine)
In a later chapter titled The German Connection, Bloom relates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Weber, Freud have influenced American thinking. Americans, within a “pro-choice” democracy, have assimilated this German thinking sometimes turning it on its head. Bloom writes,
“…there is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get “beyond good and evil” and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore. Even those who deplore our current moral condition do so in the very language that exemplifies that condition.”
“The new language is that of value relativism and it constitutes a change in our view of things moral and political as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman paganism.”
…
“Value relativism can be taken to be a great release from the perpetual tyranny of good and evil, with its cargo and shame and guilt, and the endless efforts that the pursuit of the one and the avoidance of the other enjoin. Intractable good and evil cause infinite distress – like war and sexual repression – which is almost instantly relieved when more flexible values are introduced. One need not feel bad about or uncomfortable with oneself when just a little value adjustment is necessary. And this longing to shuck off constraints and have one peaceful, happy world is the first of the affinities between our real American world and that of German philosophy in its most advanced form, given expression by the critics of the President’s speech.”
Here Bloom is referring to the clamor arising when President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” When yet at another time Reagan said that the Soviets had “different values,” this statement was met “at worst with silence and frequently with approval,” thus revealing our loathing of absolutism in the former statement.
At the beginning of the chapter Values, Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began (in the book), where values take the place of good and evil.” (emphasis mine)
And so like Gollum we place the utmost value on the ring of power, becoming blind to its tyranny over us. Along with the ring we call our values “My Precious.” Under the yolk of temporal “values” and without facing the serious questions of life we lose ourselves, we lose the real. We lose love, romance, culture, art ~ everything meaningful to us.
Love or charity, a virtue which must be constantly worked at, is replaced with easy sex. Consider that in our culture sexual activity is not to be repressed or disciplined but rather it is to be given preeminent unrestrained “value.” Think Sandra Fluke and contraception. Think in-your-face homosexuality. Does America “confirm her soul in self-control” or not?
Romance, apart from truth is portrayed in movie after movie as just a response to nihilism. Nowhere to be found is the expectation, the unrequited desire and the hoped-for revelation of real romance. Without absolutes there can be no true romance.
We are a culture that seeks therapeutic counseling. Yet modern psychology, the sworn enemy of shame and guilt, refuses to talk about good and evil and therefore offers nothing for the soul. Freudian psychology only brings the patient back to repressed sex.
Modern art has nothing of consequence to offer. Consider the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
Deafening music, pop or rock, pummels our ear drums daily evoking barbaric passions and depriving the soul of its senses.
Tattoos deface our bodies so as to reveal our disdain for the discipline that purity of mind and body requires. Inking is given the (non-)value of counter-culture and rabble-rousing.
Religion, wherein serious questions are faced, is being replaced by positive thinking as preached from the temples of TV.
In view of the fact that our nation is becoming increasingly devoid of absolutes and truth while at the same time becoming increasingly laced with relativism and sliding scale “values” consider this:
Jesus, the Son of the Living God, says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear. All fear: the fear of the unknown, the fear of facing accountability, the fear of death, the fear of loss and personal suffering, the fear of evil. Jesus’ perfect love casts out all fear. Because of this we can face the serious questions of life head-on knowing that He loves us, that He stands with us and that He has gone before us through the same difficult places. Seek Him and He will be found.
Going back to the LTR analogy do you remember how Frodo and Sam and the rest rejoiced that the ring had been destroyed, that their arduous life and death journey had been accomplished? Their courage and resoluteness saved the shire, themselves and Middle Earth even while the others in the shire had no clue as to what was going on. You and I are about to do the same.
Cindy Wity 
More of Less?
July 28, 2012 Leave a comment
You have a choice in November. You could choose more of the same deficit leadership or you can choose wisely.
You can choose Obama’s anti-capitalist Marxist socialism which seeks to “materialize” everything in its path including you. Obamacare is only the beginning of this dehumanizing process. You can choose to exalt redistributive materialism to the neglect and hurt of your own soul.
You can choose more bureaucracy and more IRS agents and less control of your own life and property. You can choose to increase government’s monopoly and its power grab of the private sector. You can choose to be just another cog in the collective. You can choose sameness for the sake of egalitarianism.
You can choose Obama’s class and race warfare, a malignant stratifying of people into special interest groups. One civil war in this nation wasn’t enough, right? One nation under Obama? It will never happen! Obama works to polarize the nation, to make some people more favored than others thereby tossing justice by the wayside. You can choose more rancor and strife and less community.
You can choose more voter fraud, more Black Panther intimidation. You can choose more Eric Holder and his Fast and Furious lying. And you can choose more injustice and less rule of law.
You can choose Obama’s devotion to special interest groups such as the environmentalists and his own circle of friends (Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Solyndra’s buddies, etc.). You can choose favoritism over equal opportunity.
You can choose more homosexuality and with it bullying disguised as “Diversity.” You can choose less family values when you vote for Democrats.
You can choose his “You didn’t build that” rhetoric and decide that you really are too stupid to build anything on your own. You can choose Obama’s shaming you into submission and less his offer of incentives to even try to succeed.
You can choose more abortions and more food stamps and more bureaucracy and more people telling you what to do, what to eat, what to drive and how to spend your money. You can choose endless higher taxes, more casinos, ever-increasing debt. That’s the Obama way.
You can choose to pay for Obama to play more golf so that he can relax while he’s thinking about the millions of people who are out of work. (BTW: Obama has played more than 100 rounds of golf in three and one-half years compared to Bush’s 25 rounds in eight years! And, Obama has had only one cabinet meeting so far this year. It is now the end of July!) You can choose more of same insipid leadership and less vision. Or, you can choose wisely.
Per the unspoken rhetoric of Obama and Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi they are counting on the rich to succeed. They hope the 1% will provide enormous tax revenues to pay for all of their Great Society gambling debts. These Democrats promote class warfare against the very rich believing that the middle class will benefit. But nothing happens in isolation. The middle class will suffer if the very rich are no longer able to invest their money. This type of over-arching economic thinking is lost on the Democrats. They are only looking for the short-term power and money grabs.
These political fat cats want to control free enterprise thereby keeping individuals from creating wealth which aids human flourishing. In so doing they can keep their hands in till. They gain access to their “fair share” in the pea and shell game of government. This is called “Progress” but “political corruption” is its true name.
These snake-oil salesmen, the Democrats, will tell they have a cure for society’s ills: higher taxes. They believe that if they can just throw more money at a problem that the problem will magically go away. This “lets-be-reasonable” irrational thinking is exactly the same type of thinking behind the extensive guns laws passed by the City of Chicago, the strictest gun laws in the nation. Their shot-gun approach to passing guns laws has not resulted in a decrease in violent gun-related crime in this city. Rather, Chicago’s murder rate is the highest in the nation. But the Democrats of the state of Illinois aren’t saying much about that. No. Now they want to throw more gun laws at the bullets. More of less. That is the Democrat’s answer to our dying culture. Maintaining political power is more important than the people on the streets. They march in your parades while backtracking on your best interests.
The only tools in Obama’s “community organizer” bag are raising taxes and blaming others. That’s all you’ll ever get from Obama and the Democrats. That, and more casinos. You can vote for more of the same anemic leadership, more scapegoating and less vision. You can vote for more economic stagnation, more radicalism, more of less.
You can also choose European style top-down government and place yourself at the bottom of another list. You can choose a culture of dependence for yourself and your kids. Our national debt is the insurance policy of our nation’s ongoing slavery to debt. Obamacare is just the name on one of the policy brochures.
With your vote you can choose Democrats and the decline of America. You can choose more of the same devastation to individual liberty. You can choose the monopoly of government.
The Democrat party is the party of less liberty. You can vote for less liberty but in doing so our nation, without your individual dynamic of liberty put to good use, would soon implode and become the vacuum that totalitarianism rapidly fills without ever asking for your vote.
I’ll leave you with this interesting statement from Chairman Mao on April 30, 1971:
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harris/1973/02/sincelin.htm
You can choose more of this:
Obama in focus:
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Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Writing Tagged with 2012 election, Big Government, black panther, Chicag gun laws, culture, current-events, dehumanizing process, economy, Forward Campaign, gambling debts, government, Harry Reid, move forward campaign, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, politics, progrssives, public debt, social isses, special interest groups, The Democrat Party Platform