The Tides of Time

Let us look to history and see what we can learn about the Catholic Church, its struggles and stumbles, its enemies, and the results.

The Roman Empire opposed Christianity and attempted to suppress it many times, most famously under Nero. Christianity was illegal from the time of Nero until the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome. In the end, the greatest empire on Earth became Christian, rather than wiping it out.

The Nazi’s and Italian Fascists opposed the Catholic Church. Both regimes fell in just a few short decades.

The Soviet Union and other Communist States all opposed the Church, often strongly and with tactics that may seem oddly – contemporary. Despite these attacks, the Catholic Church prevailed and was a direct participant in the overthrow of the Soviet Union and its client states.

The French Revolution attempted to suppress the Church and even it calendar. Attempts to suppress the Church were common in many new Republics of Europe at that time, some of which continued into the 20^th Century.

As can be seen from this short list, the opponents of the Church include some of the greatest empires that have ever exited; nations with seemingly-unstoppable military might, political power, and the will to annihilate the Catholic Church. In each case the Church triumphed over or outlived their opponent, or both.

There has been some noise for a few decades that the Second Vatican Council marked a huge change for the Catholic Church; that if the Church survives the modern era, Vatican II will forever alter its nature in such a way that it will a completely new entity. You can hear this from the Right and the Left within the Church. Of course, there were a few other ecumenical councils that resulted in turbulence; the Church survived all of these other councils and, after a generation or two, continued on, dogma unchanged. While it is important that Catholic remain faithful to the Magisterium and uphold orthodoxy of worship, the doctrines of the Church, and Tradition, we must remember – we aren’t the first to deal with issues such as these.

From heretics like the Arians and Gnostics, political foes like the Soviet Union, military foes like the Caliphate, ideological foes like Dawkins, and even internal dissent and schism, the Church has already seen it. Seen it, weathered it, and persevered. The tides of time may ebb and flow, but the Rock shall always remain.

Is Star Trek a Utopian Communist Fantasy?

The atmosphere at the Deep Thought blog has been a little solemn recently so I decided to lighten things up a bit by dragging out a debate I have been having for at least 25 years – is Star Trek escapist fantasy where the Federation (i.e., the heroes of the show) represents the US, or is it escapist fantasy where the Federation represents Communism?

I have been watching Star Trek since I was a wee lad and I remember standing in line to see Star Trek, the Motion Picture when it came out. My father hated the show and called it 'a crypto-communist fable'. I thought he was loony, but after I joined the army and The Next Generation came out, my fondness for the show began to wane. My first complaint was that the writers had no idea how real military forces work. Then I, too, began questioning the politics expressed by the characters. Finally, I stopped watching it altogether and want my own children to wait until they are at least 14 before they do so. Why? I think it is a not-so-subtle endorsement of Socialism, maybe Communism.

While there are a number of bits about this on the web, and in many ways it does seem rather silly, it is a question worth reviewing. Why? Well, Star Trek has had quite an impact on society. The Star Trek franchise has impacted the design of technology, the shows continue to have a large presence in video games, and over the course of the franchise it has earned a total of no less than $6 billion dollars worldwide. Catchphrases from Star Trek are still common in English today and the primary characters (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Picard) are global cultural icons.

That is a pretty big impact for a bunch of shows pitched as ‘Wagon Train in space’!

One of the first things to remember is, of course, that Star Trek is a show. It had many writers, and directors and it has continued long after the death of its creator. This means that there is some ambiguity. In some episodes (The Omega Glory) Kirk obviously fights for American democracy against Chinese Communist rule. Of course, that episode also shows surviving American descendents as howling barbarians attacking the more civilized Chinese Communists that had conquered the world. While there is some argument that in the original series the Klingons represented the Communists, the Klingons also were expanding their empire in order to dominate trade.

That, of course, brings us to a cornerstone of Communism. Yes, Communism is an ideology and yes, it is a political philosophy. But first and foremost Communism is an economic system. So let’s talk about money in Star Trek. First of all, we know that it exists outside the Federation. Quark from Deep Space Nine and the rest of the Ferengi are the obvious example of this; they buy and sell things, are obsessed with gaining wealth, and use precious metals as a medium of exchange. Other aliens use money and when dealing with them the Federation and people in Star Fleet sometimes use money or refer to accounts. So money is out there and the Federation uses it when dealing with ‘foreign’ cultures.

Interanlly, however, we are told repeatedly that there is no money within the Federation. There seems to be a limit on high-energy activities (like replicator or transporter use for private reasons), but everyone from Ferengis to Picard informs the viewer that members of the Federation do not have or use money and have not since the late 2100’s. Going even farther, Picard tells us quite clearly that members of the Federation do not even have possessions! In the same incident it becomes obvious that Picard, a well-read and highly-educated man with a strong background in diplomacy (we are told through various episodes) is puzzled by the very concept of financial investments. Instead, a number of characters tell us that people in the Federation work not to accumulate wealth or possessions but to ‘better themselves and humanity’. The few instances of purchases we do see within the Federation in the original series (and its related movies) are all… smuggling. So it seems that the use of money within the Federation did exist, at least in the ‘bad old days’ of Kirk and Scotty, but it was illegal.

Was this just various writers making Star Trek ‘exotic’? Almost certainly not. Ronald Moore, a writer and producer for the Star Trek franchise from the ‘80’s to the ‘00’s said that Roddenberry himself had insisted that the Federation did not have any money, credits – nothing like cash at all, ever. The Ferengi, an invention of Roddenberry, are a not-disguised-at-all mockery of Capitalists and portray businessmen and entrepreneurs as vicious, lying, stealing, cowardly barbarians without morals or scruples at all. The Ferengi/Capitalists are portrayed as Neaderthal-like misogynists Roddenberry originally envisioned the Ferengi as the main villains of Star Trek: The Next Generation to replace the Klingons from the original series, but the other writers and producers saw them as a laughable stereotype instead of a menace and changed them greatly.

So Roddenberry’s personal vision of the future was a world with no money, no possessions, and work was done for the good of mankind as much as for personal satisfaction. That sounds like a fantasy Communisy/Socialist utopia to me. Writers at the Socialist Review agree, lamenting only that Star Trek isn’t quite Socialist enough.

Star Trek also resembles Communism in its open hostility to religion. The religions of the aliens in Star Trek are almost all fakes, shams, or frauds. The Bajorans, Edo, Betans, Triangulans, worship mis-identified aliens, machines, or alien machines. Closer to home, the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans, and Incans also worshipped aliens. Star Trek writer David Gerrold once explained that the Roddenberry would “When in doubt, have Kirk fight God!”. It is clearly stated a few times that rational races leave religion behind, that people and races capable of critical thought are atheists. In at least one case in Star Trek religion was genetically engineered into a race to allow total control by alien masters, preventing the religious from ‘freeing’ themselves from their ‘slavery’. While some people point to the episode ‘Bread and Circuses’ and say that it has a positive treatment of Christianity, I must disagree – although there is an oblique reference to Christ, He is portrayed as just another historical parallel, no different than a bland copy of a Roman emperor, and the Christian Church has had no true influence on this alien world in the 1,950+ years since His (presumed) life, death, and rebirth. This episode paints Jesus as just another historical episode and nothing more.

Roddenberry was an active and outspoken atheist, as is the head writer for the franchise since Roddenberry’s death, Brannon Braga. We should be surprised that the shows were not/are not much more obviously anti-religion. In the end, we see no Christians, no Mormons, and no Zoroastrians. Starfleet has no chaplains, the only Federation chapel we see is a Spartan, non-denominational affair. Although Nazis are seen in a few episodes, there are no Jews. Those few religious people we see are aliens, at best practicing their ‘quaint’, cultural worship of mythological beings seen as socially constructive fiction, but usually believers are shown as the mindless and/or violent pawns of supercomputers or aliens. Despite the careful inclusion of people obviously Russian, Scottish, African, Irish, etc., we never see someone cross themselves, carrying a prayer rug, or saying ‘Oy vey!’ While Chakotay on Voyager was ostensibly a Native American and followed traditional religious practices, in reality what was shown on screen was a mish-mash of various Native American rituals and beliefs with more in common with New Age practices than actual religion.

Roddenberry was a staunch progressive and firmly believed that the history of mankind in one of marching from a dark, unenlightened past toward a brighter, more enlightened future. Of course, this meant that the future he envisioned looked as he felt it should. It did not take long for the high ideals of the Federation to dissolve into moral relativism. The Prime Directive leads the Federation to sometimes ignore the destruction of an inhabited planet, dooming its billions of people to death unless they could be kept ignorant of space travel. This is supposedly to protect other civilizations from the Federation and to prevent the Federation from being too involved in other cultures. Of course, this ignores that fact that there is a standing order for procedures on destroying all life on an inhabited world merely for being a threat to the Federation! On the other hand, Federation officers had no problems with erasing the memories of others, or to radically change societies that they simply did not like all that much, including primitive societies fighting enemies of the Federation, societies with treaties the officer in question didn’t like, and, of course, religious societies. Picard, the captain that initially refused to save the inhabitants of an entire planet rather than violate the Prime Directive had earlier broken that same law to save a single member of his own crew. Kirk will sometimes risk his ship to save others, sometimes will violate treaties and plunge a system into interplanetary war because he doesn’t like their version of peace. All in all, Star Trek is a sea of moral relativism. Things are bad because the writers say so; things are good because the writers say so. The good things are almost invariably Liberal Socialist ideas, the bad things are almost always Conservative or Capitalist things.

There are other little things that point to a Socialist utopia as the heart of Star Trek. All space vehicles within the Federation are Federation (i.e., government-owned) vessels. Federation citizens can be (and are) punished for violating Federation law when they are outside the Federation and its jurisdiction. There is ample evidence that all communications are controlled by the Federation and that only high-ranking Star Fleet officers have access to encrypted communications. You never see independent journalists. The only corporations mentioned are beyond the Federation’s borders, and we never, ever see a brand name, logo, or corporate emblem. Scientific achievements are either ‘for the good of humanity’ (i.e., no patents or fees) or criminal (in other words, getting something for your research other than praise is illegal and/or immoral in the Federation). Star Fleet has tremendous power and influence, including being easily capable of a bloodless coup, controlling all shown research, exploration, and colonization. And being able to try civilians for breaking the law.

So, in the end, the United Federation of Planets (the Federation) looks like a highly-militarized society with central control of research, development, exploration, colonization, manufacture, and communications. Federation citizens do not earn pay, have investments, run their own businesses, or have any personal possessions beyond a few mementos – they certainly have no money. Religions beyond a vague spirituality expressed by very few people, Federation citizens are, at most, agnostic and are generally atheist. Although there seems to be an elected parliamentary body, virtually all local and regional decisions are made by Star Fleet and the majority of Federation-wide laws seems to be Star Fleet directives. Individual ship commanders in Star Fleet have the ability to either abandon non-Federation races to whatever fate they may face if they are ‘too primitive’ to be worthy of help. Conversely, these same ship captains my unilaterally decide to exterminate all life on a planet if it is deemed dangerous to the Federation. All with no appeal to any elected, or even civilian, person or body. Yet the society is portrayed as happy, even perfect, to such an extent that a mere 15-30 minutes of discussion was enough to convince Samuel Clemens, one of the most hard-bitten cynics in history, that it was a worthy aspiration for all of mankind.

In my opinion, the underpinning of Star Trek is a Socialist utopia, a vision of the world that Gene Roddenberry thought would be the pinnacle of human achievement. Roddenberry was open about his hopes that Star Trek would influence people toward favoring what he favored, so I also believe that these Communist fantasies were stated purposefully to convince the viewers that Roddenberry (and later writers) were right. What should we do about this? That’s easy – ignore them. There is so much top-notch science fiction out now that we can vote with our feet for things that we enjoy that we don’t find offensive.

Note: More Star Trek 'Motivational' posters can be found here.

Hello, Blogodidact!

The excellent Blogodidact and I have been discussing Distributionism back and forth for a little while, a process I hope we can continue. So far Van (as I call him in my head) has revealed to me that I did a lousy job at explaining where I was pointing my suggestions, how I expect Distributionism to work, and whom I expect to take the lead. Learning how badly I explained all of that was rather humbling. So let me take Van’s points from his blog entry here and respond to them. We’ll start with his analysis of my suggestions on promoting Distributionism.

“Tax credits & Gov sponsored job training. For a State to have enough largess in their tax base to spare on social engineering (tax breaks) implies Income Tax, which to my mind is one of the big three (Income Tax, Federal Reserve System, Welfare & regulatory systems) physical realities behind all that has fallen in our nation today.”

I agree with Van; I have serious issues with the income tax, I think the welfare system is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy of dependence, and most regulatory agencies no longer exist for legitimate purposes but rather to expand their own power. Unfortunately, such a world is the one we live in. We have excessive taxes to the point that the government can do such things as, say, the Civilian Marksmanship Program, or 50 different homeless assistance programs that often all fund the same groups – only multiplying the overhead, not the results. Or, as an earlier article of mine showed, even welfare programs that are highly praised by the MSM and both sides of the aisle in Congress like Head Start are so inefficient that their administrative overhead is about 70%, making them criminally wasteful. This shows that the America government, a nation with very low taxes by Western standards, is wasting a tremendous amount of tax money.

Unfortunately, unless there is a massive change that comes as a total surprise to me, we will not be able to change this overnight. Instead, we will need to chip away at the existing structure until it is more just (read: we get to keep our own money) and efficient (read: they don’t waste our money). Therefore, I think that supporters of Distributionism (as well as our allies in the realms of Libertarians, Objectivists, and fiscal Conservatives) should push for serious tax breaks for small business owners, even to make small businesses tax-free. I feel the same way about job training; federal job training has been around for a long time and will not vanish overnight. I say we use this training (which is, after all, our own money) to become self-sufficient.

I have been told by others that ‘working the system’ this way is a capitulation, a tacit acceptance of the current system. I disagree (of course!). My goal is to transform the system by working within it. I want to encourage more entrepreneurs; we live in a society with progressive income taxes; I think a strong political case can be made to reduce or even eliminate taxes on small businesses. I think this is a win-win situation; taxes go down and more entrepreneurs are born.


“ “Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies” is just a cloaked method of socialist redistributionism.”

OK, I admit it. This is obviously an encouragement of Socialism…. Well, out of context. What I said was “Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies for a strictly limited time to encourage transition”, meaning that for a period of, say, 5 years microloans would be guaranteed in a manner similar to VA home loans or student loans; no tax money spent, just a government payment to private creditors in the case of default, then the debtors owes the government. I ws really unclear about the details of this, so I apologize. I am not talking about the federal government giving people cash, I am suggesting federal guarantee of small loans for a period not to exceed 5 years in lieu of collateral for some types of small business.

This is still egregious to Objectivists and most Libertarians, but again – let’s game the system. I am paying too much in taxes. The government is braying that ‘small businesses are the motors of growth’. OK, let’s see you actually support that while I wear down the taxes you keep collecting.

The next one is larger, so I will break it up a bit.

““I was surprised when Fr. Neuhaus, whom I normally find to have a very informed opinion, dismisses Distributionism as not having anything to which to attach policies or platforms in the political arena. America has; a Small Business Administration that promotes small business; farm co-ops, credit unions, consumer co-ops, and business co-ops like ACE hardware on almost every corner; a history where the Grange movement held strong, if brief, political influence over national politics; a growing concern over the impact of large enterprises like Wal-Mart and Microsoft of the well-being of the average person; and a rather large (and growing) government job training program.” Which I take to mean that having a Small Business Administration, government sponsored jobs training and a growing concern over a growing Wal-Mart, are signs of optimism and hopeful solutions in the making; but I emphatically believe that these are not part of a solution, they are instead part of the problem! Anytime that Government steps out of its role of ensuring that rights are not infringed, upholding law and order, and defending the interests of the Nation, moral and physical disaster is in the making.”

Well, my point was to refute Fr. Neuhaus, not support anything in particular. I was pointing to these various things as proof that topics like small business, large corporation, cooperative business, etc. are proven political topics. I didn’t mean this section to support any particular government program or refute it – just show the political impact of some ideas.

Van goes on:

“I also have my doubts about a wider scope being attributed to an economic policy, than is proper to its function. The Goal of Economics is not happiness, but production; it is philosophy and ethics that point towards happiness. Economics should of course be compatible with, even complimentary to the goals of philosophy - which as Aristotle says, is happiness – but Happiness is not the goal of Economics, producing, distributing and managing wealth, is the goal of Economics. “Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism”, but I think that the only defense against materialism is an education which better teaches what is truly valuable in life, and that again is the job of philosophy, not of economics.”

Bingo! Proof that I was opaque. The core concept of Pope Leo, Belloc, Chesterton, Schumacher, Penty, and other Distributivist thinkers is that the separation of economics from ethics and philosophy is a critical error that leads to a decline in ethics, a divorcement of philosophy from practical concerns and, ultimately, economic disruption, all of which will culminate in an unethical, unjust society of poor people ruled by a corrupt oligarchy. Saying that economics is about production only is like saying that the law is about winning court cases, not about justice. Or that politics is about power, not leadership. Yes, stripped of context, economics is about nothing but production, law is about winning and losing decisions, and politics is about power. But this divorcement of ethics and philosophy from the basics of life is exactly what the underlying problem is.

Communism, Socialism, etc. did not spring from a vacuum. They sprang from an understanding, conscious or not, that economics cannot be divorced from ethics and philosophy. Likewise, Capitalism and Democracy are usually mentioned together because people recognize that the freedoms and justice that are part of the best democracies allow Capitalism to exist – and vice versa. The 20th Century was a century of warfare between different concepts of economics/ethics/justice competing one with another. Classical Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and Democracy/Capitalism are all defined not solely by their ethics, nor their philosophy, nor their economics, but by all three as a whole. This is because these things are a whole within a society.

Chesterton, Belloc and the other early leaders of Distributionism rejected Communism and Socialism as inherently unjust. Indeed, they felt that the injustice of such systems was self-evident. Their insight was into why such inherently unjust systems not only had adherents but were actually competing with Capitalism and Democracy. This insight is, like many deep insights, both simple and profound. It is this – laissez-faire/’pure market’ Capitalism rejects ethics and philosophy; this rejection leads to injustice; therefore, laissez-faire Capitalism must be rejected.

Their answer was not abolishment of ownership (Communism), nor state ownership of capital (Socialism), nor strict governmental regulations that supported and controlled Capitalism (Fascism, at least as it was defined by them). Their answer was the engagement of the most important element of economics – the individual. The goal of Distributionism is moderation of Capitalism by many individual Capitalists.

Van again, in the same vein:

““Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism”, but I think that the only defense against materialism is an education which better teaches what is truly valuable in life, and that again is the job of philosophy, not of economics.”

But the goal of a society, any society, must be achieved within the realms of economics, and ethics, and philosophy, showing that they cannot be separated.

Van then jumps around a bit (just like I tend to do!), so I will break it up a bit more:

““Deal as directly as possible with the producer/end user” … is of course a wise policy when it saves time and effort to do so, but there are many middlemen that do give significant savings in time and effort, and so are worthwhile. Super markets are an excellent example of middlemen being valuable services provided to consumers. Most Mom & Pop stores are not. Wal-Mart is a time saver, visiting all the mom & Pop stores you would need to in order to quickly pickup the products that can be found at a single Wal-Mart, would be a massive time waster, and the expense would more than likely be higher. I n fairness, Deep Thought does say that if middlemen are adding value, then use them – my reaction may be more to an overall tone I perceive (especially concerning expanding corporations and Wal-Mart) which makes me rise to imaginary bait, than a direct quote by Deep Thought on this. I see Corporate consolidation as usually being a good thing; the reason it is done is to increase productive efficiency and profits; and if it is done poorly, it too will collapse or be broken up, so that eventually the frozen productivity that had been locked up in inefficiency and waste, can be thawed & released from its parts once again, back into the wider economy.”

Whew. OK, I will admit it – I don’t like large corporations. But the reasons aren’t aesthetic, they are ethical and economic. In many markets once a corporation hits a certain threshold of market share it can use its strength within the market to affect the barriers of entry to a market upward, increase the sunk costs of potential competitors, and use predatory pricing to drive out existing competitors. Additionally, high levels of market penetration allow firms to impose artificial switching costs, even artificial transactions costs, to shelter themselves from the ‘free’ in free market. If am opposed to Socialism, I must also oppose such corporate-driven market controls, too. And if a corporation is large enough, it can enter new markets and use its economic resources to do the same to more and more fields of transaction. Think this is loopy? Look at Standard Oil; in the 1880’s began a decades-long practice of coercing shippers to give them discounts and to increase shipping prices for competitors. Soon their control of transportation allowed them to literally dictate oil prices to oil producers in America, demand further discounts on their own shipping costs and ‘rebates’ (i.e., kickbacks) from the artificially-high shipping costs they demanded for their competitors, and other such actions. Using this clout, they also gained very effective control of steel production and, eventually, railroads. This was an especially good idea – by controlling the steel industry, Standard controlled the cost of railroad tracks and cars. By controlling oil, they controlled the cost of fuel and lubricants of the railroads. When they moved into the railroad business it was a foregone conclusion that they would dominate it shortly.

Analysis by economists then and now agree; Standard Oil began as more efficient than its competitors, which allowed it its initial rapid gains. Once it reached its height, however, its efficiency began to drop. In the end it was less efficient than its (few remaining) competitors (or, in some ways, no more efficient than the others). But it retained its dominance for some time because of its power over entry costs, sunk costs, transition costs, etc. and its continued ability to artificially set prices within a number of markets. After the retirement of some of the leaders of the Standard Oil trusts many of these practices were abandoned. By the time laws had been passed and litigation begun the effects of actual competition were seen – Standard Oil’s share of most of its markets had tumbled very badly within 30 years of its founding.

But if its directors had continued the practices of its founders there is little evidence that Standard Oil’s coercive control of at least 3 major markets would not have continued without government interference.

So, I have no problems with a monopoly of efficiency – after all, a more efficient competitor will eventually come along. But I have issues with coercive monopolies. I have yet to meet a Conservative who likes coercive monopolies, but I also rarely find a Conservative who will admit that large firms can establish a coercive monopoly almost as easily as a government can. The result? I prefer small firms to large ones.

I have no problem with Wal-Mart as Wal-Mart. I sop there, I see nothing wrong with them in general. I also have no problem with communities that try to bar them with zoning laws (their own loss, after all. If they want to drive out jobs and low prices, that is their choice). I also think that Wal-Mart has provided more monetary benefit to low-income Americans with low prices than welfare programs have with grants, etc.

But Wal-Mart is not a silver bullet that ‘proves’ that massive consolidation is ‘the answer’. Wal-mart’s size and efficiency has proven amazing in the US and many markets, but it has also failed. Wal-mart’s entry into Germany was a shock to some since they failed to succeed there as was expected. This is because Germany already had a number of players in its robust discount retail market. Some argue that this indicates that Wal-Mart’s success in the US has more to do with barriers to entry and Wal-Mart-imposed transition costs than with real efficiency, but I think we don’t have enough data about that yet. Much more interesting to me are Wal-Mart’s failure in China and South Korea. In both cases Wal-Mart failed due to a number of factors including poor marketing, but also because of their inability to compete with small businesses in the same space. Indeed, as one commentator pointed out - on a global scale, Wal-Mart is a regional business. I would add that the market has shown that Wal-Mart can’t compete with smaller competitors outside of the shelter of American barriers to entry into its market.

And just to carry this side-trip a bit further, Wal-Mart is starting to face real competition in the US, too. Dollar store chains are really eating into Wal-Mart’s market share not just by meeting or beating the pricing but because many consumers are showing a preference for smaller stores closer to where they live instead of very large stores further away. Add in the suspicion of some economists that some of Wal-Mart’s efficiencies of price may be an ‘artifact’ of the transition of manufacturing to the Third World and I suspect that Wal-Mart is much more of a fad than many believe. Not because it is ‘evil’, but because it will lose to smaller, more agile companies relatively soon.

Let’s go on with Van:

““All men have a right to private property, just compensation for their goods and labor, and to enter into business agreements of their own free will” Unfortunately I do not see that this will protect property rights and ensure fairness, but instead only serve as a mandate for those people in power, to demand that their constituency have property, then some property, then some minimum amount of property, then an increased amount of property - and agitate to get government programs established to distribute it. Property Rights are not to be violated, but they aren’t to be awarded either, they flow from the nature of being human, they are not bestowed or granted.”

Wow. I was misunderstood. This is not meant to mean ‘everyone gets 40 acres and a mule’, but rather ‘confiscation of land by the government is a violation of a person’s rights’. This is not for land redistribution schemes, but against Socialism and Communism. This was taken from Rerum Novarum, a response to the Communist Manifesto and related work in addition to being a statement of rights and principles.

And more:

““, a man who produces goods or commodities must be paid a just amount for those items.” No, he must be paid what someone is willing to spend and which he is willing to accept – nothing more. More means waste, regulations, and agencies and bureaucratic regulatory law.”

This is a statement of ethics, not regulation. This is against the concept of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. It is also a moral and ethical guideline for employers and workmen. As with ‘the right to freely enter into contracts’ it means there cannot be any coercion in the setting or payment of wages or in the pricing of goods.

Here Van gets into some interesting territory:

“Deep Thought makes a reference to “Wage Slavery”, and that is a term that just gets my hackles up. It has its most common origins as a Marxist concept, intended to obscure the fact that the employer/employee relationship is freely kept and for mutual benefit. A so called “living Wage” cannot be the goal of a business. A desirable product at the most appropriate cost is all that can be expected. If the people working at such jobs need more, they must find other sources of income, or put another way, if they are only able to produce ¾ of what they need as income from their job, then they need to seek the remaining ¼ elsewhere and probably should be looking for ways – new skills, education, to make possible a change of their main productive skill.”

My definition of ‘wage slavery’ is less like Marx and more like Belloc. Let me quote Robert Nisbit and his comments on this;

“Hilaire Belloc defines the servile state as "that arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labor." "Given the debasement of the language of politics in our time, there are of course many who describe this condition as progress, or as a higher freedom and democracy or as humanitarianism. But the harsh fact remains: a steadily enlarging number of families and individuals in the United States, and other Western countries, are in the position of being constrained by law, beginning with the progressive income tax but extending to numerous other areas of legal requirement, to labor, not for themselves, but, in Belloc's words, 'for the advantage of other families and individuals,' those who do not work and who enjoy what is called welfare in one or other of its by now diverse forms."”

That is one way to describe part of what I mean by wage slavery. Here is a more personal one.

“Through a combination of governmental regulations/laws and predatory practices we have a resulting group of people who do not have the skills or education to be employed in a self-sufficient manner, resulting in them being constrained to labor for an amount too small to support themselves and lacking the time, resources, or opportunity to avail themselves of the means to exit this condition.”

Face it – public schools suck. They are more and more divorced from providing a practical education while they continue to tighten their focus on indoctrination. The result is a populace less and less able to actually become entrepreneurs, forcing them into a spiral of jobs that pay too little for them to live one, resulting in debt resulting in…. Well, you get the idea. The end result is an entire class of people who cannot do that most basic of things – be self-sufficient. Communists recognized this, called those people the Proletariat, and said the answer was to destroy the government and share everything equally. Somehow. The Socialists say the answer is to take things from those who have it and give it to those who don’t. Fascists said the answer was to use government regulations to prevent it from happening. Objectivists say that, well, that’s what happens to the non-demi-gods. Libertarians say get rid of all those regulations and things will sort themselves out, eventually.

Distributivists say work together, voluntarily, to get people out of that trap while also getting rid of the lousy laws that started the whole mess. This is just a piece of the puzzle, of course. I’ll talk about more of it as we go and in the near future.

But I must say, Van is a bit, uh, blithe about the whole idea of ‘if your job only earns you ¾ of what you need to live, get another job for the additional ¼ and look for the skills to get you out of it’. Ya’ think? Of course, where they are to find the time for further education while working at least 1 ½ jobs can be a bit of a puzzler, I suspect.

Another topic from Van:

“Deep Thought supports the creation of Guilds, he raises most of the objections I would raise at such organizations, but I don’t see that they are as easily solved and dismissed as he thinks possible. One key concern of mine, is that If the workers of Guilds are allowed to set prices, that means that prices will be artificially high, such as Detroit's automakers were in the 70’s, and then soon some one, such as Japan, will come along and see that costs are indeed too high, and they will take that opportunity to do better work for less cost, and once that happens those workers and Guilds are going to be seen as Fat fast, and then cut off ASAP.”

The key to Guilds are that they directly involve workers AND supervisors AND owners. Indeed, the ‘classic’ guild is really a consortium of tradesmen/owners that are self-employed. Larger shops also include representatives for employees, all of whom usually are independent contractors, capable of being independent, or are in training to be independent. Even when it is comprised of large shops with many employees and few owners, remember – the owners and managers are part of it, too.

Usually Distributivists admit that Guild are not a universal solution (I am one of them), but are primarily for the trades and professions. However, I have less general objection to unions than Blogodidact. My specific complaint is with mandatory unions. If the UAW, Teamsters, etc. were not mandatory unions, they would have A) never had the power that they had and B) ceased to exist when they began abusing their powers. I’ve worked in mandatory union shops and I can testify – they are hellish. I have also worked in voluntary union shops and they were much, much better. When you can join any union, no union, or drop out of a union when you wish it means that the unions are forced to do what they are designed to do – help workers. If they do a lousy job, people leave them. If they try to wring concessions from management that makes the business less competitive, they are going to go away pretty quickly when the other unions and the independents oppose them.

Therefore, I see Guilds as also being voluntary out of necessity. I stated the historic results of mandatory Guilds – they were worse than unions in the long term. Where they do work, Guilds work like a combination consortium and brand; they allow many small businesses to pool resources to gain the economies of scale and provide a familiar guarantee of quality to consumers. Mutual agreements on pricing and quality within the Guilds will therefore be aimed at being competitive out of sheer necessity.

Van then hits two points quickly, which I will combine:

“A lender may charge reasonable fees for a loan or for exchanging money. A lender may charge a reasonable penalty for a late payment.”

And

“…argue that interest rates should be extremely low (on the order of 1-2% at most) and, especially for home loans, others argue that no interest is acceptable at all, only fees.”

And then comments:

“…Deep Thought promotes Distributionism as more of an ethical practice, which if emulated (aside from the concerns above) would be for the most part a positive step, certainly an improvement over the state of our current mixed economy.”

Exactly. The comments on things like interest rates, types of loans, cooperatives, etc. are guidelines for Distributionists to follow voluntarily. This is about Distributionists working with each other to build a better way of life by remembering that economics and ethics and philosophy can’t be separated.

Van then goes on and, well, confuses me a little bit. He writes this:

““Laissez-faire Capitalism is an argument that “Selfish, unjust actions lead to altruistic, just results… eventually.” This is typical of conservative views, which I think undermines us in so many ways. Being able to do what you see fit because it is right to be able to – that will produce the most wealth and value in the end, but that is a non-essential side effect, and ignores the fact that it will inevitably bring disappointment and ruin to many people as well. It is that ignored last part, which those demagogues lurking out there, looking for an in, will inevitably use in an attempt to cast the first part as 'an unmet promise', a tool, to put governmental power into their hands to “do good’.”

Which is dead on, and the main focus of Distributivist thinkers. But he follows it immediately with this:

““…It goes on to point to the continued failings of unfettered Capitalism and the need to always remember the inherent worth of the individual and the need for solidarity.” What failures are they? When?”

Uh…. The ones you just mentioned. Van just wrote that laissez-faire Capitalism “…ignores the fact that it will inevitably bring disappointment and ruin to many people, as well” and that this empowers demagogues to take advantage of that to undermine the rights and freedoms of people. That is what Belloc was discussing in the Servile State, Chesterton in What’s Wrong with the World, etc.

Van then concludes:

“There is, admittedly, a harshness associated with capitalism, a harshness which I am in the process of experiencing a taste of it myself at the moment – our CIO has been sacked, our projects restructured, and I’ve got to learn and become proficient in a new programming language lickety-split, or I’ll be out the door as well.It is harsh, life is harsh – Black & White is harsh and it is only through the painfully slow process of earning and saving your wealth that we are able to soften the edges a bit and provide some cushion and comfort for ourselves. As I see it, any attempt at artificially creating that cushioning through the power of governments ability to rob Peter to pay for collective Paul, or even worse, to force Peter or Paul to act against what their own judgment tells them they should do - will be doing no one any favors in the end. If we want our Ends to be Just, our means must be Just, anything else is necessarily using the Ends to justify the Means, and that will most certainly be a bitter end for all.” [emphasis mine –DT]

This is great stuff. Great stuff. This is the point of Distributionism. Capitalism is the best economic system we have figured out so far, but when its ends are divorced from its means, when its processes of production are isolated from ethics and philosophy, then you have laissez-faire Capitalism. Laissez-faire Capitalism has long term good results that have short-term victims. The goal of Distributionism is to use the voluntary actions of individuals to ameliorate these negative effects in a manner that not only remains Capitalist, but has competitive advantages.

Van and I seem to share a problem – we can’t be brief! But I hope that now he and I will do a bit less talking past each other and more actual discussion on this topic.

I’ll add more detail next time to exactly how I propose to make Distributionism work and why.

note: fixed a bad link

A World of Artisans: Distributionism as an Economic Third Way

This is the fourth in a series of articles about Distributionism. You can read the earlier pieces here, here and here.

I will attempt to draw the various ideas together to show not just how to encourage Distributionism, but what I think a Distributivist society would look like and some of the effects I think it would have on other societies. To make this as clear as possible I will attempt to do this in a single post, so I apologize in advance for its length.

In the views of Distributivist thinkers (and in my own opinion) Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and laissez-faire Capitalism all result from the same mistake. And that mistake is to misapprehend the goal of economic activity. For laissez-faire Capitalists, the error is thinking that the goal is to maximize profits with the goal of accumulating the greatest possible capital; for Communists the goal is transformation of Mankind into a new sort of person with a different nature; for Fascists the goal is social order and stability; for Socialists the goal is perfect equality of outcome (which they mistake for justice). Belloc and Chesterton point out where these errors can lead, and history has shown them to be pretty accurate. In every case the essential needs of Man are in at least some ways neglected, leading to unhappiness, abuse, and, eventually, tyranny.

The real answer is surprising in its simplicity; the goal of economic activity is the same as the goal of society. The goal is happiness. In ‘The Outline of Sanity ‘Chesterton wrote,
“There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or in any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier”

We seek happiness in society through friendship, family, the development of character, and the improvement of our fellow man. We seek happiness through economics by acquiring the essentials of stability, the leisure of self-improvement and beauty, and the improvement of our fellow man. As the principle of solidarity points out, society and economics cannot be divorced from one another. This means that we must engage in economics with our neighbors and cannot forget that we are as dependent upon them as they are upon us. The principle of subsidiarity points out that, just as the most important element of society is the smallest and closest (the family), so our economics should look to smaller, closer ventures to maximize happiness.

There can be no true happiness in the absence of security. The first goal of society is security (from outside invaders, from crime, from abuses of rights) and the first goal of economics should be security (from hunger, homelessness, and exploitation). But just as a society that does not need to fear crime is not necessarily fair or open, a society where all are fed is not necessarily just or free. Security is the foundation, not the end, and this must always be kept in mind.

Many Distributionists argue that concentration of capital into the hands of too few people leads to a decline in liberty that can lead to a state resembling slavery for those who lack capital. The proposed solution is to strive to distribute capital as much as possible (hence Distributionism) so that most, if not all, families are capable of self-sufficiency. This leaves a wide range of possibilities; farmers that have enough land to provide for themselves both directly and through the sale of ‘excess’ produce; skilled tradesmen with their own tools and enough skill that they can be either self-employed or find employment both readily available and their jobs portable (such as a carpenter or computer programmer); factory workers who are part-owners of their factory with sufficient equity that they are involved in issues of capital expenditures and share the reqards and risks of production; retail employee/owners who make cooperative purchases of stock, participate in sales, and either lease or co-own their facility.

As you can see, the ideas of self-sufficiency, solidarity, subsidiarity, an aversion to wage slavery, and social justice tend to point along a particular path, one that rejects Communism, Socialism, and Fascism and is opposed to corporate consolidation and monopolies. The result, where as many people as possible are professionals that own all the tools required for their work and deal as directly as possible with each other, could be called a world of artisans.

A world of artisans would nullify the tendencies of industrial and post-industrial nations to slip into authoritarianism, regardless of their ‘flavor’. The economic displacement of both industrialization and the transformation to post-industrialism creates feelings of fear and insecurity amongst many people who are incapable of self-sufficiency do to a lack of personal capital; they need wages to live and are incapable of generating them without access to someone else’s capital. Changes in the structure are coming that means that they are unsure of continuing access to capital. A simple example is a worker at an auto-plant. He cannot make cars himself; he owns none of the tools, materials, or facilities to make cars himself; his skills are specialized to the point that no other employment but car-making affords him the potential of a living wage. As plants are closed or moved, he is (naturally) afraid of losing his home, even of losing his life to hunger.

Capitalist economies will always lead to some level of insecurity; it is their nature. The feelings of fear created by those lacking capital will be utilized by those who desire change. They may be Machiavellian, they may be benign, but someone will harness the insecurities to effect change. If the desire is to do away with the insecurities of Capitalism altogether, the goal of change will be Communism. If the goal is to use the power of the central government to take capital from one group and give it to another to ameliorate insecurity, the goal is Socialism. If the goal is to make Capitalism more efficient in the desire to accelerate economic growth and reduce insecurity through expansion, the goal is laissez-faire Capitalism in its ‘purest’ form. If the goal is to stabilize society while maintaining Capitalism (and the largest Capitalists), the goal is Fascism.

I am aware that some will argue with my definitions, above. These are my own very broadly-brushed opinions, nit an in-depth analysis of political methods other than Distributionism.
Distributionism argues that Communism and Socialism are wrong (and lead to oppression) because they make the mistake of blaming Capitalism. They further argue that Fascisms and ‘invisible handers’ are similarly wrong for blaming people. You cannot reject economics, nor reject people – you must integrate them. This is done by making as many people as possible independent economic actors – in other words, capitalists.

But how do we get there?

As I mentioned in Part II, the shift to Distributionism cannot be coerced or via ‘negative’ means. You cannot seize land from those that have ‘too much’ and give it to those who have ‘too little’; who would decide? Who would enforce such decisions? Both obviously require – a massive, powerful central government, the very antithesis of Distributivist thought. Likewise, imposing higher taxes on people earning ‘too much’ and giving this money to those earning ‘too little’ result in the same formula – injustice enacted by remote, faceless entities. In addition to leading to resentment (from all sides as to what is ‘just’), alienation (of different groups from one another), dependency (of those who gain with no effort), and lawlessness (by those wishing to either avoid being taxed or who wish to profit unjustly) the power of the central government will continue to expand at the expense of local leadership, the family, and the individual.

The path must be positive. Some steps are relatively obvious and even partially in place. Small businesses should be encouraged with tax breaks and loans. Similarly, cooperatives, credit unions, and similar solidarity groups should also receive tax breaks. Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies for a strictly limited time to encourage transition. The removal of farm subsidies and their replacement with tax incentives would go a long way toward creating Distributionist farms. Local, regional, state, etc. funding for training, especially in trades and professions, would encourage the creation of more artisans. Laws that encourage guilds should also be created.

And here we come to another key element in early Distributionist thought; the guild. Similar to unions, similar to professional associations, and similar to consortiums, guilds are still unique. The European guilds of the medieval period are, as noted in the link, the source of most modern concepts of intellectual property, business ethics, trade, and social security. The were formed by members of the same or closely-related trades or professions, generally as independent, self-employed artisans and professionals working together for their own greater good. They set standards of education for their members (and prospective members), codes of conduct, quality standards for products, even rules for contents, size of products, etc. Virtually all of them also organized funds and systems to care for the widows and orphans of members, for members no longer able to work due to disability, and the retired/elderly members of the guild.

Historically a number of guilds negotiated exclusive contracts with cities, preventing non-guild members from practicing their professions there. This eventually led to their concentration in such cities and, ultimately, their downfall as they became isolated and hidebound fraternal institutions. Their counterparts outside the cities often refused to join organizations they saw as urban and both were more able to change quickly and, interestingly, were easier prey for large capital concerns who wished to consolidate. Distributionist thought is to learn from history and employ the best of guilds while rejecting their tendencies to become focused on defending exclusive territories and protecting trade secrets. Under this model Guilds are to have an almost dual nature; internal and external. Internally they act like fraternal societies and professional boards/consortiums. They ensure training and performance standards, enforce ethics, provide insurance services for members, manage pensions and trusts, engage in cooperative enterprises with other guilds, etc. Externally, they are almost like a brand. Consumers that deal with members of, for example, the baker’s guild know that they can trust the contents of the baker’s goods, his level of training, the standards of cleanliness of the bakery, his business ethics, etc.

Guilds differ from unions in a very important element – all levels of the profession or trade are in the same organization. While unions tend to pit employee against employer, guilds force them to work together. Since guild members have the skills, tools, and other capital needed to make them ‘portable’ (they can work for themselves or another master of their profession with ease) there is less insecurity on the part of wage earners. Employers within the guild ‘worked their way up’ through the guild and are very clearly aligned with their workers in the joint venture of success for all members of the guild. Since many guilds historically had rules on the election of guild members to local leadership councils and guild assemblies, the voice of the employed has as much weight as the voice of employers in large decisions, as well. The preferred management of Guilds is at the level of individual self-employed worker, then small shops, then a neighborhood, etc. The involvement of workers ensures such things as a living wage, decent social benefits, and a voice in larger decisions. The non-exclusive nature of a guild means that guilds that become corrupt, exclusive, coercive, etc. will simply have their members melt away/ It is almost like the Wobblies, but with the managers and owners involved, too!

More seriously, the Guild system is a microcosm of Distributionism; the line between employer and employee is virtually eliminated since the employee has the means to become self-employed or an employer himself; the organization is founded on the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and justice. The goal of guilds is not to erase Capitalism (which was the goal of many early trade unionists), but to embrace it, to take the best of Capitalism and share it through the free actions of voluntary members. At the same time, guilds share the risks and dangers of Capitalism and ameliorate them through acting with and for each other. Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism through close association with their peers, a focus on the needs of their community, and a desire to contribute to the society that makes their success possible. These voluntary organizations succeeded not by rejecting Capitalism, but by sharing the Capitalism, the risks and insecurities as much as, or even more than, the rewards. This is an emulation of civilization itself; the protection of society by sharing risks and hardship is the cornerstone of the advance from barbarism. The voluntary sharing of the benefits of security is the cornerstone of a just civilization.

I can almost hear you now,
“Hold it!” you say, “Deep, you aren’t describing Distributionism as a ‘Third Way’, are you?”

No, I’m not. Mainly because I don’t think that it is a third way. Communism has always been a pipe-dream of people whose arguments begin and end with ‘once we change Man’s essential nature…”; Socialism is an argument that concludes “…and thus we will give Man more freedom by carefully controlling him.”; Fascism is an argument that “We know what is best for you!”; Laissez-faire Capitalism is an argument that “Selfish, unjust actions lead to altruistic, just results… eventually.” Distributionism rejects Communism, Socialism, and Fascism as unjust and immoral in their very conceptualization. It also rejects laissez-faire Capitalism as a wrong-headed attempt to separate ends from means. So, in the end, it is not a Third Way, it is simply the acknowledgement that Capitalism is the best known economic system, and that very minor, voluntary controls can prevent Capitalism from becoming a tool for injustice.

Since Distributivist writers and thinkers spend a lot of time explaining what is wrong with the world, and what Distributionism is against, it has been argued that Distributionism is no more than a reaction, a denial, a ‘no’. In short, it is impractical, even evil. The arguments against Distributionism range from ‘it prohibits international trade’ to ‘it cannot compete with huge multinationals’ to ‘it has no political platform for politicians to use in advocating it’. I find the concept that Distributivist are against international trade when virtually all of them point to the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation as an example not only of international trade, but successful competition with huge multinationals. Or that small firms cannot compete with large ones when small ‘mom and pop’ shops have successfully limited WalMart in China and carved out serious market share in America in recent years. I must also confess that I was surprised when Fr. Neuhaus, whom I normally find to have a very informed opinion, dismisses Distributionism as not having anything to which to attach policies or platforms in the political arena. America has; a Small Business Administration that promotes small business; farm co-ops, credit unions, consumer co-ops, and business co-ops like ACE hardware on almost every corner; a history where the Grange movement held strong, if brief, political influence over national politics; a growing concern over the impact of large enterprises like Wal-Mart and Microsoft of the well-being of the average person; and a rather large (and growing) government job training program. With all respect to Fr. Neuhaus, but I suspect his obliviousness to possible political planks supporting Distributionism may have more to do with his own ignorance of Distributionism, politics and American business than any weakness of Distributionist thought.

Indeed, it would be a rather simple matter to craft political positions that would have a broad appeal and promote Distributionism in a non-coercive manner. As I mentioned earlier, tax breaks for small businesses would be well-received by many. Pointing out that the vast majority of new jobs in America are generated by small businesses would go a long way to making it more popular. Tax incentives for co-ops would face similar approval across a broad segment of society, and it would be a simple matter to increase support for credit unions and similar activities. Reduction of levies and tariffs for small business and co-ops would also help. An increase in awareness of the value of trades would be of great benefit, too.

That seems pretty simple, really; the engine of job growth in America (and the world) is small business; tradesmen are critical for small business; co-ops of all sorts are efficient, competitive organizations that provide solid business benefits to their participants. I am not sure what Fr. Neuhaus and his fellow detractors are missing, but these seem easy sells as political positions. Conservatives can focus on tax relief for business owners and job creation, Liberals can focus on job creation and tax relief for students, blue collar workers, and mom & pop shops. Both can appeal to farmers and rural voters by supporting co-ops.

Seems like a win-win to me.


Next time: more on Distributionism, but on a more personal level.

Worth Fighting For

"Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they have to do is enjoy what they can understand of it-- luxuries, a high standard of living and easy work for high pay... Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
"And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to seize control.”

My interest in politics has an unusual beginning. Sure, many people become interested by reading, but the book that fired my interest was the one I quoted above, a book called Space Viking by H. Beam Piper. Piper was a science fiction author who, like most do, used scifi to explore not the future, but the world we live in now. In other works Piper explored the nature of racism (Little Fuzzy), colonialism (Uller Uprising), and political transformation (Lord Kalvan). The focus of Space Viking was both more broad and more critical – civilization itself.

The dictionary definition of civilization is a rather bland focus on things. Conveniences, art, records, etc. This is also misleading; these things, and the wealth and leisure to create them, are byproducts of civilization. Civilization is shared values that lead to individual and community action that further the weal of the community and continues the propagation of those same values. The particulars of those shared values and the actions they lead to create the tenor of the civilization. Values which do not further the weal of the community cause that community to collapse – thus, they are not civilized. As the community as a whole prospers, individuals and groups within it gain the wealth and leisure to generate records, art, science, conveniences; all the things the dictionary identifies as civilization.

The world has seen a bewildering variety of civilizations; the Mayans, the Mongols, the Beaker People, the Egyptians. Some have been violent against outsiders, some have been inclusive, some have been both at once. Some have succeeded, most have faded or failed. Those that have succeeded can be said to be ‘better’ or ‘more successful’; after all, the goal of civilization is to improve the lot of the community and continue the core values that create the community in the first place.

The values of a civilization also allow one civilization to ‘judge’ another; if group action, communal living, a rejection of the individual, and selflessness toward the group work very well for one civilization, its members would rightly reject a different civilization that is highly individualistic and that touts the individual as so much more important than the group that the group should suffers as a whole before the individual. And, of course, vice-versa. The resulting ‘culture shock’ or ‘clash of civilizations’ can be resolved in a number of ways. Members of one side, the other, or both may drift between the civilizations; they may learn to co-exist; or, likely, they will attempt to absorb/eliminate each other, sometimes by force. Those civilizations that can coexist usually do so because they have a majority of similar core values and those values that differ do not result in direct conflict.

What are the core values of Western civilization?

The concept of natural law as defined by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas
Human life is seen as inherently valuable, leading to a rejection of murder, suicide, and euthanasia
A devotion to the nuclear family
A focus on personal responsibility, personal honor, and personal shame
That idea that the freedom of the individual is a right that is important for its own sake and benefits the community
The idea that personal property is a right that is important for its own sake and benefits the community
Belief in the rule of law

The basis of the conceptualization of Western natural law is Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle) while Western ideas of codified law and property right are Roman. The evolution of these ideas over time is largely the result of philosophers, theologians, and statesmen working within the Catholic paradigm, which directly and explicitly refers to Aristotlean and Jewish concepts of rights, laws, and society. The result is that Western civilization is called a Judeo-Christian civilization with strong Greco-Roman roots. These core beliefs are, thus, essentially Christian beliefs.

The idea that human life is valuable in and of itself combined with the idea that all rights are natural (meaning inalienable) leads to Western civilization having a tendency to grant more freedom and rights to the individuals within it. The rule of law means that no one is above or beyond the law, a belief that condemns corruption, nepotism, and tyranny, making governments more efficient, accountable, and prone to respect the rights of its people.

One of the strengths of Western civilization is its focus on personal responsibility, property rights, and individual freedom. Combined with the legal position that all are equal before the law and the theological position that all are equal before God, the result is a drive to succeed and the common belief that any person may achieve personal fulfillment. This is the core of the American Dream – to live free. This also means that personal wealth or power is not the only measure of success; indeed, the goal of many who first came to America was not great wealth, but simply the lack of financial obligation to a noble class. If an individual in Western civilization defines his own success by other criteria, they are free to do so.

In addition to driving individuals to excel, these values of freedom, personal responsibility, and property rights also mean that ‘outsiders’ are welcomed as long as they accept the rule of law. This allows Western civilization to tolerate non-Western enclaves within their own societies and to dynamically interact with other civilizations in their own areas with a minimum of conflict.

The dedication to the nuclear family has historically led to a division of labor amongst men and women, usually as a result of nothing more than societal norms. As has been noted by researchers, societies with a dedication to the nuclear family and a sex-based division of labor (generally referred to as ‘patriarchal societies’ by modern academics) have strong advantages in economic and political growth over time. The tendency of such societies to value large, stable families (and the resulting stable societies and economic growth) can cause this trend to be maximized over time, resulting in such civilizations having immense long-term advantages over civilizations that do not share these traits.

Indeed, history has shown these values to be so powerful individually that they were referred to not as ‘values’ (more of a squishy, modern term that implies ‘I like brand x’) but as ‘virtues’ (meaning ‘something inherently good’). History has also shown that, when combined, these virtues create civilizations that both improve the weal of the people within it and spread their virtues in an unequaled manner. The Greeks embraced many of these virtues and in addition to their city-states being economic, political, and military powerhouses of their day, their influence is still strong over 2,500 years later. Roman society adopted many Greek virtues and added their own laws and virtues, creating a more stable and more expansionist civilization. The Roman Empire was so successful that the majority of Western social details (parliaments, military structure, language, laws, titles, etc.) are still modeled on their structures right now.

Of course, Sparta and Athens fell into decline until they became merely places where great ideas once came from. The Roman Empire likewise declined and fell before waves of barbarians. Will Western Civilization also decline and fall? Probably, almost certainly.

But why?

The key is what happened to Rome. With its huge territories, vast wealth, and incredible influence, only one thing could bring down Rome. Barbarians. But I don’t mean the Visigoths and the Vandals. Those wandering tribes were just other, formerly weaker, civilizations that took advantage of Rome’s weakness. No, I use ‘barbarians’ as the late Greek philosophers meant it – ‘those who reject civilization’.

The Greeks were sophisticated enough, and world travelers enough, to know that people that didn’t speak Greek and didn’t have triremes were just as smart and cunning as they, themselves, were. Thus ‘barbarian’ came to mean those people who rejected weal, who wanted the benefits of civilization without participating in the virtues that produced them. “Values” that are not virtues are vices (from the Latin word that means ‘defect’) and those that hold them are vicious (which means ‘vice ridden’). The absence of good is not nothing, it is evil. Likewise, the absence of virtue is not neutrality, it is vice.

Individuals that strive for and hold fast to virtues are said (well, were once said) to have a good character and such people were also once praised for their virtue. This is because there was a broad recognition that individuals of character were the driving force of civilization – they are the ones who improve the weal of all and spread the ideals that make that weal possible. These “pillars of society” are, indeed, the pillars of society. People who lacked the virtues were not considered to have no character, they were considered to have a bad character, to actively degrade the society they were in.

I hate to belabor this point, but it is critical. Our ancestors, the much-derided Victorians and Gilded Age members, those “repressed” people with their rather extensive families and quite direct letters recognized that the core virtues of Western civilization had made the West prosperous and secure. They also recognized that the rejection of those virtues would lead, inevitably, to the decline of their prosperity and security. In short, they knew what was good for them and their children and praised it while rejecting what the recognized as damaging to their future.

Over time, however, upholding the virtues that underpin civilization always seems to fall out of favor. It happened in Greece, Rome, the Persian Empire, Han China, Imperial Japan, and many others. It does so for two reasons. First, civilization becomes so ubiquitous that it seems to be the natural state. Prosperity and security have been had for so long that many people come to believe not only that they will not go away, but that they can not go away. The even more compelling reason is – virtue is difficult to cultivate. It takes self-discipline, self-denial, and strength. After a good character is developed individuals realize that virtue is, literally, its own reward; but until then, it’s a tough row to hoe. It seems far easier to ignore self-denial and self-control and just, well, indulge in just a little vice.

This can go on, sometimes for quite some time, because so many other people remain virtuous. The fact that some people are corrupt and are overcharging the government for work is not critical when it is one contractor out of a thousand honest ones. People who deceive charities and receive things that they do not need do not make a big difference when they are few in number and there are many donors to the charity.

Once those little vices are commonplace, however, more and more vices and more and more extreme vices become acceptable. Eventually, virtues are ignored or mocked and the foundation that civilization rests on begins to dissolve. Soon, the majority of the contractors are corrupt because the honest ones can’t compete with the widespread cheating and bribes. Charities have fewer donors and worry more and more that the truly needy are competing with the dishonest. The warning signs of such decline are easily observed; the Greeks decried the loss of virtue, as did the Romans – the prophets of doom were sometimes heeded, especially early, and virtue was returned to esteem. Over time, however, the erosion of character advanced further and further until it was too late..

Within any society there are people that reject character. These are the barbarians that H. Beam Piper wrote about in language more modern than St. Thomas. The barbarians that mock the virtues that built the society they live in and believe that their rejection makes them the ones most qualified to control the society. Where the virtues of temperance and prudence lead people of character to realize that no endeavor, even government or society, can ever be perfect, the vice-ridden love utopian visions of what might be, if they were just in charge. Where the just realize that any worthy endeavor is full of frequent struggle and occasional failure, the barbarian sees struggle as weakness and failure and condemnation. Where the courageous realize that a worthy cause makes a worthy struggle, barbarians want an easy path and condemn all suffering as evil. Where people of character realize that there are sometimes things worth killing for and certainly things worth dying for, the barbarian declares their rejection of civilization by saying nothing is worth dying for or their moral cowardice by declaring that nothing is worth killing or dying for.

What’s that you say? Why does the declaration that there is nothing worth dying for and nothing worth killing for prove that you are a moral coward, you ask? That’s actually pretty simple, I reply. Think of it this way – if someone were to attack you child with the intent to cart them off and torture them to death and the only way you could stop them was to kill them, would you? If you were the sonderkommando in Auschwitz, would you have risen up in rebellion in the face of certain death? As a prisoner of war in Bosnia, would you have participated in the torture of fellow prisoners, or refused and been killed? When the Nazis were attacking Europe, would you have enlisted, or not?

I am drawing a difference here between pacifists who choose death before violence and the barbarian. A rejection of violence in all circumstances, which is the implicit statement that nothing is worth the life of another, while accepting death means that you have decided to value some ideal, ideology, or the lives of others more than you value your own life. To accept the potential of killing without accepting the potential of your own self-sacrifice may mean that you value your life above the lives of others, or that you believe that there are ideals, or causes, that have a higher value than the lives of others, but not higher than the value of your own life. People who declare that neither is acceptable have no ideals worth sacrificing for and have no value on their life or the lives of others. They have literally nothing that they value highly; they have refused to make a moral choice. They are moral cowards. This refusal to decide is a de facto rejection of prudence, justice, and temperance as well as courage. A prudent man realizes a decision must be made; justice demands that some choices are right and that some are wrong; the temperate man realizes that the desires to avoid error and upsetting others are not as import and the need to take some action.

The refusal to make moral choices leads to a slippery, sneaky sort of attack on civilization. While building civilization requires moral choices, sometimes critical ones, the moral coward decries all decisions as immoral, or states that decisions cannot be made. No war is worth waging, no enemy worth fighting. Their refusal of justice means that when conflict does arise they decide whom they support not by actions, or moral grounds, or evidence, but by emotion. Their refusal of prudence means that they are easily manipulated through their emotions and allow their emotions to override their reason. And their refusal of temperance means that they become extreme in the reactions to conflict.

Thus you have; peace activists who support suicide bombers; pacifists that declare indiscriminate bombing an acceptable tactic by one force (their emotional favorites) while controlled counter attacks are decried as evil (by their emotional opponents); Students for Peace and Justice that wave toy assault rifles as they accuse the elected leaders of a democratic nation of being butchers for attacking the unelected heads of a terror organization that purposefully kills children.

These barbarians see no dichotomy between their words, or their actions. They have made no moral choice, only an emotional one, leaving them free to say and do pretty much as they please as long as they ‘stay true to themselves’ (i.e., feel good about what they are doing). These barbarians go further, however, by rejecting people who do make moral decisions that affect their emotions in a negative way. Since they are emotional, not moral, anything that impinges on their fun is ‘bad’. Since civilization is largely about controlling impulses that can harm society and rewarding impulses that are beneficial to society, they spend a lot of time upset with civilization. And with those who make moral choices.

They demand that others not judge them (i.e., reach moral conclusions about them), nor take away their freedom (i.e., impose limits on their behavior, regardless of its moral dimensions). At the same time, they try to impose their emotional rules on moral players. Any failure by someone who upholds morals is seen as horrific, even though they do not share in the morals. While prudence and justice requires that we understand that no one is perfect, and that anyone can fail, the barbarians point to any stumble as “proof” that virtues are worthless, or that the people who value them are hypocrites, or both.

As a result, the barbarians are held to the lowest standards (‘staying true to themselves’) while civilization and its defenders are held to an impossibly high one. They uphold the cruel and unjust while opposing those who seek justice. They elevate their petty desires over the needs of society. And all the while they deny that they or their actions can be judged as anything but good, regardless of the consequences, all while claiming to seek ‘justice’.

This attitude is so dangerous because it plays upon the emotions so well. Why? Because it is so similar to the attitudes of a child. A young child has not yet formed a good character; they lack prudence as they lack experience. Children lack temperance because they are just learning their desires. Children lack justice for they have yet to be taught empathy. And children lack courage because they have not yet been taught to face their fear. This is natural and part of life; it is the duty of parents and society to instill virtues into children so that they may mature into adults. It is also natural for mature adults to indulge children as they learn, to be gentle as they learn the parameters of civilization.

But these barbarians refuse to change, they have rejected maturity. The natural inclination of adults to indulge children is abused and twisted by the demands of adults that they not only be allowed to keep the attitude of children, but that others find them praiseworthy for doing so. As a society, we seem to have forgotten that adults cannot be allowed to act like children without consequences.

This trend is going on throughout the West; in France the young riot because they do not want the guaranteed employment laws to change – even if those laws mean many of them will remain unemployed and on the government dole. The French government responded by doing as the rioting children asked. The German government announces so many people are retiring early while others simply don’t work, forcing them to cut unemployment benefits and the German people stage riots demanding the right not to work – even if it means bankrupting the nation. The most recent May Day marches in Europe were focused on amazing demands; free housing, free transportation, free internet access, free downloads of pirated movies and music, and a 4 day work week - all while being guaranteed that they never need to work (generous, life-long unemployment benefits with no requirement to work) and (if they have a job) cannot be fired. Rather than being met with derisive laughter, these ideas are upheld by some as the ultimate goal of government and society.

At the same time, I fear that derisive laughter is the only negative response. While the goal of the barbarians is to enjoy civilization without the burden of maintaining it (well, except for the anarchists; or the primitivists) the result is the same; the degradation of civilization. Just as the welfare states of Europe are collapsing under the weight of non-productive people, so can civilization itself collapse under the weight of those who won’t contribute – regardless of their desires. The Roman elites who refused to serve in the legions did not make their decision in hopes of destroying Rome, they made their decision so they could remain in Rome and live well without worrying about hard work, self-sacrifice, the demands of military duty, or their civic responsibilities. The end result was still the destruction of Rome. When the Roman government demanded military service regardless of the desires of their people, Rome grew. When the government no longer demanded it, but society still pressured the elite to serve, Rome was maintained. When it was no longer ‘fashionable’ for men to do so, Rome declined, rapidly.

So we must stand up to the barbarians. We must judge their words and their actions, and they must pay consequences for their words and actions if they are deserved. We must reject moral equivalency and moral cowardice. We must continue to believe, say, and act upon the fact that some things are good, and others are evil. We must continue to uphold the family, personal responsibility, honor, shame, freedom, personal property, and the rule of law. We cannot do so quietly, nor secretly.

If we do not, we are letting the hitchhiker take the wheel.

McCarthyism, Paranoia, and Things that Really Happened that You Don’t Know About

While reading about the newest Superman movie and how the writers decided to purposefully omit the phrase “the American way” from the movie, I ran into a phrase a few times that intrigued me. So, curious, I did what any geek would do; I googled it. When asked, Google reported that over 700,000 pages contained both the word ‘paranoia’ and the term ‘Cold War’, virtually always in reference to western feelings (especially American feelings) about Communism.

The conventional wisdom is, and has been since at least the ‘80’s, that the American fear of Communism, especially Soviet communism, was completely overblown. When I write “conventional wisdom” I mean it in the same way as the writers for Newsweek, Time, and the New York Times do – what academics, journalists, and Hollywood believe and tell the unwashed masses is true.

This sort of division between the self-appointed ‘intelligentsia’ and the ‘common man’ plays itself out in pop culture all the time. Overtly patriotic songs are automatically considered Country Music; critics pan patriotic films movies like Red Dawn and Invasion, USA while they do great business in the theaters; critics praise anti-American movies like Three Kings and Three Days of the Condor, films that are demonstrably no better than stuff like Rambo and certainly don’t pull in nearly as much money.

Quick Aside: before its release I read time and time again how super realistic Three Kings was supposed to be; heck, in one interview a member of the crew had to deny the use of a cadaver in filming a scene of a bullet entering a body. As a veteran of the Gulf War I was looking forward to seeing this film and went to a matinee on the first day it was open. Everything from uniforms to attitudes to gear to physics was so wrong I left after 35 minutes and demanded my money back.

So now, of course, ‘everybody knows’ that the paranoia of the Cold War was just a Red Scare; an unreasoning terror of Communism artificially created by Conservatives to whip up fervor for foreign wars and pump money into the military-industrial complex whole garnering the votes of the terrified sheep or middle America for the Republican war machine. Just ask Glenn Greenwald, Clint Willis, Jack Huberman, and Noam Chomsky. These best-selling authors, the critics who promote them, the academics who assign their books, and the actors who shill for them all want you to know that what was really going on during the height of the Cold War was a group of rabid Conservatives trying to gain fascist control of the nation by unfairly portraying innocent artists and Liberals of being baby-eaters, charges believed by the easily-deluded inhabitants of flyover country.

As usual with the topics I pick, all is not as we are told in school.

Long before World War II began, the Soviet Union was placing spies throughout the US. By the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union had spies placed very highly within the United States Government. While there had been some early successes for Soviet spymasters, the true breakthrough was the New Deal, when FDR and his cabinet swept hundred of academics into positions of political and economic control – academics who were unelected, untested, and largely uninvestigated. This led to literally hundreds of agents of the Soviet Union being in positions of power within the US on the eve of war.

During WWII a highly-classified program led to the decryption of thousands of classified telegrams from the Soviet Embassy. This project, called Venona, was so secret and its discoveries so profound that some presidents weren’t told of its existence, although they were told of some of the results. What Venona revealed was that Soviet spies were working at literally the highest levels in the US government, including agents within the OSS, the wartime precursor to the CIA, the State Department, Treasury Department, and War Department. Even a top presidential aide was a Soviet agent. Together, these various assets worked to not only hide and protect Soviet spies within the government, but to actually divert funds to allow these spy rings to exist; in effect, the US government was so badly compromised that taxpayer money was being used to fund Soviet spy rings in the US government.

The system was working so well, in fact, that the Soviet Union failed to properly ‘compartmentalize’ its system; members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) working in espionage routinely interacted with Soviet Intelligence agents doing the same. In the end, the defection of just a few people threw a bright light onto what was occurring in the shadows. These defectors painted a harsh world where a high-ranking member of the US State Department who attended Yalta and helped write the charter of the United Nations was, in fact, a Soviet agent. That the production and allocation of war materials to the Soviet Union was planned and controlled largely by Soviet agents, and that these agents were also stealing nuclear secrets and facilitating the illegal shipment of nuclear materials to the Soviet Union.

In the ‘30’s the Soviet Union had used its intelligence agencies (then called the NKGB or NKVD) to provide military assistance to the Republican government of Spain, to round up tens of thousands of Soviet citizens for the gulags, abduct Spanish anti-communists for torture and execution, to assassinate political leaders all over the world, and to destabilize foreign governments in preparation for Communist takeovers of power. The Soviet Union had begun WWII as an ally of Hitler and wasted no time after the war in seizing control of as many European nations as they could, in direct violation of a number of treaties and agreements. The level of oppression within the Soviet bloc was horrendous, the spectre of deportation to the gulags omnipresent, and the use of torture and murder by the leaders routine.

Communism had never made secret its disdain for Capitalism, Democracy, or America. The fomentation of war and revolution all over the globe was not only their stated goal, but an active project. Through the 1950’s it became more and more obvious that the brutal, oppressive Communist regime of the Soviet Union, a group that was publicly bent on world domination and the eradication of differing political and economic systems and openly advocated the use of assassination, terror, and violence to achieve their goals, had a large number of spies and agents highly placed within the US government. As time went on there was increasing proof that agents and sympathetic ‘fellow travelers’ in the media and entertainment were working to paint Communism and the Soviet Union in the best possible light as a way of aiding the subversion of existing political and economic systems, and that similar agents were well-placed in academia, as well.

In the face of this, is it any wonder that many people were openly terrified? Soviet tanks were crushing the native governments of Poland, Lithuania, and other Warsaw Pact nations – would that happen here? The KGB routinely assassinated people all over Europe and Asia – would that happen in America, too? The Chinese government had been subverted by Soviet agents and overthrown by violent revolutionaries – was America next? The government not only seemed powerless to stop foreign incursions, but all evidence seemed to point to America’s own government being unable to root out Communist agents inside itself. Many people reacted not with paranoia, but with genuine, justifiable fear.

The reaction of the media? Largely ridicule. Newspapers routinely referred to concerns about Communist agents ‘paranoia’. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, comparing the search for Communist agents to a witch hunt. Movies since that day extol the “Hollywood 10” as heroes, unjustly accused of being foreign agents. The movie Good Night, and Good Luck, released recently, again painted the search for Communists as a fool’s errand, or the work of fanatics. Indeed, years later when James Angleton, a counter-intelligence agent with a stunning record of dedication and insight, warned that there must be Soviet agents within US counter-intelligence groups, he was laughed right out of his career.

The term witch hunt is still commonly used today, implying that the House Un-American Activities Committee was chasing after something that never existed. Even at the time the Crucible was written many people pointed out that, while witches are a superstition, Communists were real and busily butchering millions of their own people. A number of people in Hollywood came forward and agreed that yes, there were Communists in Hollywood doing their best to create propaganda, not art. Philip Dunne, who actively opposed the HUAC for potentially trampling American civil rights stated that in Hollywood “the industrious Communist tail wags the lazy Liberal dog”, admitting that Communists existed in Hollywood and often dictated projects and message. Of the Hollywood 10, one had fought with the Soviet-supplied pro-Communist forces in the Spanish Civil War and another had raised funds to supply them with arms, three were members of the Communist Party, some of whom admitted that officers of the CPUSA gave them orders on what to include and exclude in their work to promote Communism, and many of the rest were identified by witnesses as pressuring people to include pro-Communist propaganda in their films and books.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in the ‘90’s western researchers gained access to the Soviet archives and many KGB records. This allowed for definitive proof of a number of allegations; Angleton was right and American counter-intelligence had been deeply compromised for over a decade; the CPUSA was funded by the Soviet Union and was explicitly and espionage and subversion tool; Alger Hiss was a Soviet Agent; the witnesses who testified to the HUAC that they were former Soviet spies were, indeed, ‘turned’ Soviet spies; the ‘loyalty boards’ and ‘loyalty oaths’, investigations, and clearances forced on Truman by Republicans (to cries of outrage from the Left) did force spies out and did make it much, much harder for the Soviets to introduce new spies.

Despite the evidence of the day, the revelation of the Venona transcripts, and the contents of the Soviet archives, many still dismiss the time as period of oppression by America and point to Conservatives as fanatics and fools for believing there was any danger. This view is especially prevalent in the “reality-based community”. No matter what was really going on, despite the fact that history has proven McCarthy and the HUAC correct, regardless of the violence, oppression, and slaughter inherent in every Communist regime, and in defiance of the stated Communist goal of making America just like the Soviet Union, all of the Conservative of the time were in the grips of “paranoia”.

The Communists were probably most effective in their penetration of art and academe. As the New Left spread out in an attempt to find a niche, it took root in academia, often with a vengeance. The basic ideology of the New Left was the use of Marxist theory applied to culture rather than labor in an attempt to transform society and seize control through social engineering, not violent revolution. For example, some openly Marxists historians argued that America was not responding to outside pressures but rather actively building an Empire; this highly revisionist picture, virtually devoid of actual evidence, became accepted as fact for decades before rebuttals were published. The revisionists scholars ignored the rebuttals and continued to paint the Soviet Union (with its purges, gulags, totalitarian policies, and assassinations) as morally equal to America. This attitude was accepted in academia and was the ruling paradigm in the 1960’s and 70’s, continuing on to the present day.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a heavy blow to Leftists everywhere. Over the course of the 20th Century Communism had had every chance to succeed; the sole result was economic collapse, the loss of civil and human rights, and the slaughter of tens of millions of innocent people. Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism – all had proven completely incompatible with their goals (equality, freedom, plenty), but very efficient at oppression and murder. Cultural Marxism flourished in the West within academia, the arts, and the media; what were its adherents to do? Well, the same thing they had been doing. After their success in portraying America as no different than the Soviet Union (despite the lack of secret police, gulags, or work quotas in America), they decided to portray America as the worst nation on Earth. While portraying America’s victories as defeats, triumphs as evil, and ideals as false, they also focused on undermining the core institutions, morals, and concepts of the society. The main tool of this attack is Critical Theory.

By ‘critical theory’ I don’t mean the majority of thought about the nature and structure of literature. I am referring to the philosophy coming out of the Frankfort School. The Frankfort School was a collection of Marxist ideologues in Frankfort, Germany. The academics of the Frankfort School were dedicated Communists of one stripe or another, primarily what would be called in modern America “paleo-Marxists”. They seemed dismayed by the opposition to Communism they saw in Europe and how Fascists were able to tap into this opposition to gain power. Over the course of decades the various members of the Frankfort School (who spent WWII in America to escape the Nazis) developed Critical Theory. Unlike sociology prior to this, critical theory is not conceptualized as a method of observing and understanding society/culture as it is but is rather designed to be a tool to attack culture/society and change it into what the theorist wants it to become.

This proved to be a very fruitful path for Marxists everywhere. Much of the early work of the members of the Frankfort School was aimed at discrediting reason itself as a tool; the argument that reason leads to totalitarian societies was routinely put forward. Another common argument is that morals and ethics are totally subjective or arbitrary side-effects of language. Oddly, there is also the occasional argument that all morals other than Marxist ones are subjective (perhaps not so odd when you consider the rejection of logic). A common tactic is to change the definitions of words to “subvert” the culture that uses them, or to deny that words have any meaning other than what the reader decides to give them (where the Frankfort School’s critical theory overlaps with literary critical theory).

The concepts of Critical Theory are very seductive to some; if you don’t like a particular aspect of society or believe that you have a superior vision of society, simply redefine the terms, attack what exists, describe a utopic vision of what you want, and stick to the script. Elements of this are strong in feminist theory, regional studies (especially post-colonial conceptualizations and studies of the Middle East), and the entire crop of new “disciplines” such as Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, etc. Indeed, it can be argued that these various “disciplines” were created out of whole cloth via Critical Theory specifically as a praxis of the subversion of culture/society.

Two threads that can be seen running through all these various fields of discourse are a commitment to Marxist theory and a disparagement of Western society, especially American society. Key members of the Frankfort School felt the Enlightenment itself was the key step toward fascism and only by rejecting reason and positivism can Man be free of the tyranny of, well, reason. Government, politics, mass culture, popular music, popular art, norms of speech, selection of words, literature, folktales – all are attacked, all are torn down, each is shown (through new definitions, the rejection of reason, or the imposition of meaning that the critic wishes the thing to have) to be a tool of fear, oppression, slavery, and death.

After 50 years Critical Theory suffuses academia; from [something] studies to sociology to literature to political science, Critical Theory holds sway. It is the cornerstone of people such as Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill and the basis of feminist theory. The entirety of gender theory boils down to a redefinition of words (or the stripping of meaning from words) in an attempt to change society. Journalists and educators are trained in the halls of Critical Theory and yearn for acceptance by the ideologues (if they do not, in fact, hope to some day join them), motivating them to embrace Critical Theory in the classroom and in the media. Entertainers, so very desperate to appear erudite, clasp Critical Theorists to their bosom and hope that some of the sheen of the self-appointed intelligentsia clings to them like fairy dust.

In the end, the result of the constant attacks, redefinition of terms, and utopic visions of what could be if the nature of Man/the world were different, is that Western culture in general and America in particular is portrayed not as imperfect, or flawed, or even evil – but as the most evil, the worst ever nation/culture/society. All elements of American society must be remade/abolished to erase the stain of being successful and surviving when socialism has failed and died.

And thus we return to the new Superman movie. Of course the Hollywood writers refuse to have an American icon support the American way. After all, what is so great about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, hard work, sacrifice, democracy, and the certainty that good is its own reward? While foreigners may be dying to come to America and live here, that doesn’t mean they want to hear something as offensive as the concept that America is worth living in, or that the ideals that it is built upon are worthy of respect or emulation.

In a few months the outrage over this most recent attack on America will fade, then become accepted, and then the attack will shift. In 20 more years another Superman movie will come out and they will drop the ‘justice’ (after all, how can an American icon speak of justice? Don’t you know that America is the most unjust nation ever?). And by the time another restart is made in about the year 2050 ‘truth’ will be dropped as an archaic notion, too (since you can’t be sure that anything is true. Well, other than Marxism, of course).


Thanks to the Miami Art Exchange

And hello to The Blorg