Christianity

[Harry Baird]

But, that's a discussion for tomorrow. It's almost 11pm here and my old self is tired.

Rest up, hq. Looking forward to any further comments you might add tomorrow.

[Belinda]

The Empire of Lies
John C. Wright

After the coronation of Charles the Great, also named Charlemagne, as the Roman Emperor of the West, a strange and wonderful thing happened:

Not just in the Carolingian realm, but in all Western Europe, civilized society, as embodied in every major institution, was aimed toward a purpose, namely, to conform the laws and customs to the purest and highest virtues that can be envisioned, namely, Christian virtues. This is the international social order fitliest called Christendom.

This period, misnamed by Petrarch as “the Dark Ages,” was contrariwise the single period of greatest enlightenment in European history. Our current period under this present darkness, these ages, these are the true dark ages.

All of our current society, as embodied in every major institution, are likewise aimed toward a purpose, but a far less noble one. The purpose is the opposite of Christendom. It is Antichristendom. The purpose is to conform the current laws and customs to the most hypocritical, perverse, and most wicked vices that benightedness can produce.

The purpose is falsehood.

Our age ventures to destroy civil order, to denature man, to defame heaven, and to establish and maintain an Empire of Lies. For our age is devout toward unreality, and worships untruth. Every major institution is fraudulent, fake, and false.

Ours is an age is afflicted with a vision of blindness.

Doubt not that the Christian virtues are the purest and highest imaginable. When asked to provide a list of better, writers like Marx or Aristotle will either list virtues that make no sense outside the Christian worldview, as proposing equality to the poor, or which Christianity holds in common with all mankind, as proposing courage and fortitude. Writers like Nietzsche, sadly, merely take a vice, as hubris, or a self-delusion, as when a man demands to be honored as a god, which pagans denounced as entirely as Christian, and calls it strong and laudable.

Please consider that even those who mock Christian virtues can only do so by assuming their validity. One cannot call Christian virtue judgmental without assuming as valid the uniquely Christian maxim that condemning another condemns oneself.

Again, one daring to call Christian virtue hierarchical or oppressive, when it is the only egalitarian dogma that rationality permits, assumes as valid the Christian maxim holding all men, rich and poor, high and low, noble and base, sage and fool, law-abiding or criminal, to be all made in the image and likeness of the divine, hence all worthy of respect and honor.

Any criticisms leveled against Christian virtues where those virtues overlap the universal consensus of mankind, as touching charges of hypocrisy, or impracticality, or severity, could with equal justice be leveled against any vision of virtue, Christian, Jewish, Pagan, ancient or modern, western or eastern.

It is easy enough to compile a list of virtues and aspirations that are noble and enlightened — the writings of Aristotle or Confucius, Lao Tzu or the Buddha will promptly do so — but these writings both agree with the Christian virtues at all fundamentals, and where they disagree, do not contradict Christian teaching, but merely fall short. They say the same things but do not go far enough. The stoicism of the Romans is as admirable as that of Christian martyrs, but Cato of Utica did not rejoice as he died, whereas the Carmelite martyrs, killed during the French Revolution, who went to their deaths singing Laudate Dominum as they mounted the scaffold.

Doubt not that the so-called Dark Ages were dark. While the collapse of Imperial power, the etiolation of commerce, the drop in population, the loss of luxuries were indeed dreadful things, nonetheless, they were also the greatest good fortune to happen to Western history, and the sole reason why the West escaped the stagnation of the China, whose Imperial dynasties merely passed on one to the next until reaching modern Marxism, differing only in name.

The collapse of the Roman Empire is the sole reason why we even have a concept of stagnation, that is, a period when growth and progress is not occurring. The idea that future generations would live differently from past, and live better, was unknown to the ancient world. History was an endless cycle to the pagan, either, as the Greek saw it, a downfall from a golden age to current lamentation, or, as the Hindu saw it, an endless cycle, age after age of rise and fall.

The Catholic Age after the crowning of Charlemagne was a period when the absolute power of kings and emperors was curtailed to lawful limits; when a maiden could not be wed against her consent, nor a matron divorced without cause; when ancient and universal practices such as infanticide and the slave trade were curtailed or abolished.

The unworldly mysticism of paganism and the vulgar superstitions of witchcraft were excoriated and exorcised; rational investigation of nature was placed on a rigorous footing; and practical technology, in eyeglasses, clockworks, millworks, jib sails, horse collars, ploughshares, made novel and permanent progress.

The abolition of the slave trade was in large measure undone during the years of Muslim conquest in Spain, Austria, and Asia Minor, and the Spanish adopted, in small, what the Muslim practiced in large, during their conquests in the New World. Likewise, the Catholic advancements in limiting the despotism of kings was largely undone during the Reformation, culminating in the modern horrors of unlimited totalitarianism.

The Catholic Age advances in monogamy and chastity, which improved human happiness more than any other single revolution in history, including the universal condemnation of all manner of sexual vice and exploitations, as harlotry and pederasty, was undone with shocking suddenness during the Sexual Revolution.

No-fault divorce, and the corruption of manners, abandoned women to a sexual free-for-all, with obvious and expected results: see the rates of self-mutilation and suicide among women.

Sodomy is legal, and sodomite union is honored and celebrated not just as equal to matrimony, but granted privileges clearly superior: no homosexual baker fears to refuse to make a cake for a normal couple.

The ancient horror of killing unwanted infants, the practices of Carthaginians honoring Moloch, or the Spartans tossing stunted or crippled babes into the pit of Apothetae, has not only returned in a greater number and more grisly form, it has been honored as a legal right and sacred rite.

And horrors never practiced even in the darkest years of even the cruelest excesses of Aztec or Babylonian are currently promoted as necessary medical and psychological practice, namely, the castration and sexual mutilation of children, and drugging them with hormones to hinder adolescent development permanently.

All this is done in service of a vision of the self-anointed visionaries. At one time, it was done in the name of a coming Utopia, albeit that rhetoric has trailed off into awkward silence in my lifetime.

Now all this is done in the name of nothing and no one, for no clear purpose. Anarchic riots are funded and organized by proponents of totalitarianism; totalitarian thought-policing is done by private companies in the name of safety; socialism is promoted by plutocrats; racism is denounced by racists enacting racist policies in the name of anti-racism; atheists fund and applaud jihadist terrorism; and on and on.

Each policy or group promoted by the vision of the blind is contradicted by another. The riddle has a simple answer: the alliance of dogmatic relativists, anarchist totalitarians, socialist plutocrats, and atheist jihadists springs out of their mutual hatred of Christ, of Christendom, of the Western civilization in general, and America in particular.

This blind vision has no name, for to name it is to banish it, but it is nihilist in philosophy, subjectivist in ethics, socialist in economics, collectivist in law, totalitarian in politics. In theology, it is the summation and sublimation off all prior heresies distilled and combined into one. It is hence the total rejection of Creator and of all creation, hence of all things true and beautiful and good.

As befits a vision devoted to utter falsehood, all the names it assumes are false, signifying the opposite of their nature. Whenever a name starts to take on the connotations of what the vision actually signifies, the loyalty to untruth demands the untruthful to coin a new and more misleading term: so the liberal becomes progressive becomes socialist becomes woke, despite that the worldview is antiliberal, reactionary, antisocial and unenlightened.

The blind vision of modernism is best understood to be the culmination and sublimation of all prior threads of heretical thought: Gnostic, Pelagian, Arian, Millenarian.

Gnosticism takes a variety of forms, but in main outline, it proposes that God is the devil, who traps all souls in the world-system. The world is evil, and only the enlightened are wise enough to see the devil as the savior, who will make us gods. Pelagianism proposes man needs neither works nor faith for salvation, but only his own merit, unaided by heaven. Arianism in its various forms took Christ to be a being created by God, not coequal, and Mohammedanism took him to be a mortal prophet. Millenarianism proclaims that the thousand year reign of blessedness will be here on earth, and before the Final Judgement. Cerinthus, a Gnostic from the first century, pictured the pleasures of this one thousand years in gross, sensual colors, akin to the promise of the Mohammedan paradise with fountains of wine and seventy-two virgins for each of the faithful.

The blind vision is an incoherent admixture of Marxist socialism, Nietzschean antinomianism, Antifas jihad, and the disgusting sexual abnormalities of John Money and Alfred Kinsey.

The vision is Millenarian in that it proposes utopia on earth can be brought forth; it is Pelagian in proposing that to architect utopia requires only human reason and human will, but no divine patronage; it is Arian in reducing Christ to the “Historical Jesus” of humanist fantasy, an antiquarian character of merely human stature or academic interest, no longer the aim of society; it is Gnostic in proposing one’s own inner self or soul as the replacement for the dethroned Christ.

Theirs is the motto of the unhinged egomaniac: Thou art God.

As God, each man can establish for himself what to name as good or evil, or step beyond all names, into the lightless moral void proposed by Nietzsche; as God, one is as immune from cause and effect, as from the law of supply and demand, so socialism can produce wealth as if by the miracle of loaves and fishes, somehow making abundance from want by decree.

As God, each man decrees reality to be whatso he wills, for his will is now the only divine will there can be.

To question the divine will is blasphemy, if not deicide; therefore to speak against any man’s fancy or fantasy is Hate Speech, and to think against it is thoughtcrime.

However, the inner god of this gnostic and egomaniacal self-apotheosis is not a very sturdy god. To observe to a lunatic suffering from gender dysphoria or pervert that he is not the woman he decrees himself to be is an act of violence, if not murder, since said lunatic will most likely shoot himself in the head immediately. Since god is blameless, the blame for these self destructive hallucinations and acts surely lodges with you, the critical observer.

Hence the vision proclaiming all men to be omnipotent over truth, morality, and reality is, at its root, totalitarian, since only total control over thoughts and speech can allow the pretense to continue. The pretense must be universal, global, and total, that is, promoted and supported by everyone, everywhere, and at all times.

The result is the whole apparatus of postmodern society must be as devoted to the unreality of egomania as the men of the medieval period were devoted to the Truth of God.

For a time, the generous imagination might hope that the egomaniacs would curtail their mania at the boundaries of pragmatic and solid fact, as in matters of science and math, or the inescapable axioms of reason. Such hopes are not merely vain, but foolish, for the do not recognize that the culmination and point of this blind vision is to establish a kingdom of hypocrisy, where there are no limits to egomania. Surely if God can propound divine mysteries that seem paradoxical, men can do the same, and utter Orwellian self-contradictions with no fear of being contradicted.

To place underlings under a law one does not obey oneself renders one immune from law. This applies not just to literal and criminal law, but to such things as the laws of nature, the laws of morality, the laws of logic: Goods can be consumed before they are produced because I say so. Lying is a virtue, not a vice, when I do it because it is useful or pleasant to me. You wear the face-diaper of submission and shelter-in-place while I dine in fine restaurants because I decree it. You inject whatever I tell you to into your body. Good is bad because I say so. Man is woman because I say so. A is non-A because I say so.

Such insolent unreality is not just gaslighting, it is self-delusion externalized.

Doubt not that falsehood is the point and purpose of all the elaborate justifications, the Latinate jabberwocky of their excuses, the shifty-eyed evasiveness, the psychological projection, the banshee screams of gorgon and gargoyle.

These strange, sad, strident would-be godlings cannot tolerate the light of truth. They always lie; they always redouble their lies when caught; they always accuse others of their own crimes, sins, and shortcomings.

Doubt not all the modern institutions are devoted to falsehood. Let us count the ways.

The news media is a propaganda arm of Anti-American, Anti-White, Antichristian. They are the enemy of the people.
The entertainment industry discourages entertainment, promoting hectoring lectures instead, larded with social justice messages, and is deliberately engaged in the desecration of any and all popular franchises; they purchase intellectual properties of immense value merely to desecrate, defame, and destroy them.

The scientific community has promoted a global warming fraud after promoting a global cooling fraud, and now promotes a climate change fraud.

The law enforcement and espionage communities have betrayed the Constitution, and each man his oath personally, by conspiring unsuccessfully to overturn the 2016 election through a series of hoaxes, frame-ups, and false accusations, and by successfully overturning the 2020 election.

The industrial and financial community has betrayed its investors and patrons and society itself by making alliance with fascist schemes of one-world government, the communist schemes of Red China, the Marxist, Green-Marxist, Luddite, Black Supremacist and Anarchist schemes of various mad malcontents.

The treason of the clerks now reaches all professions, experts, academics:
The medical community promoted a dangerous, unnecessary, and improperly-tested inoculations, and aided in the suppression of accurate information from among their own ranks as to the nature and extent of its danger, and possible alternatives.

The universities actively discourage rational discourse, academic freedom, and refuse to transmit the intellectual legacy of mankind to the next generation.

Grammar school grooms kids for sexual perversion, indoctrinates them to become activists, discourages reading and critical thinking.

The entire intellectual class of the Western world is unanimously and vehemently engaged in the desolation and abolition of the civilization by whose grace alone men like them are permitted to exist.

Christian denominations routinely excuse and support sodomy, contraception, divorce, syncretism, and a wide variety of blasphemies and heresies, and the oldest denomination of all, the Roman Catholic Church, routinely hides pederasts among her clergy, or erects idols to Pachamama in the Vatican.

All these things are done to promote a worldly and anti-Christian vision of life as it would be if reality were not real.

In sum: Priests and pastors are Pharisees. Academia is bunk. Wall Street is fake. The election was stolen. The FBI are Gestapo. The CIA are traitors. Experts are frauds. The pandemic was fake. Hollywood is here to hate you, not entertain you. The publisher of books and comic books likewise. Social media cancels truth and put lies at the top of search results. The fake news is fake.

Henry I guess you need to learn how to judge what to credit and what not to credit. Do you ever watch good crime dramas?

[Belinda]

Henry I guess you need to learn how to judge what to credit and what not to credit. Do you ever watch good crime dramas?

[Alexis Jacobi]

It should be noted that John C. Wright is a sci-fi and fantasy novelist. His piece began, or should have begun, with the last paragraphs first, then his enunciation of the causal chain that has led to the present.

His argument — which is really an interpretation, a hermeneutical analysis —is similar to that of a range of philosophers who meditate on decadence. The condition of decadence is like an ailment that defies prognosis. One is sick but one cannot locate and describe why. But it is imperative to say something, to assign cause to something.

The act of interpretation, even if wild & whirling, is a balm in itself.

This is not to say that I do not understand his hermeneutical essai.

I am curious, Harry, what with your encounter with Richard Weaver and Ideas Have Consequences (a gloomy and prescient hermeneutic effort) what you make of the gathering tide of right- and conservative-tending interpretive conceptions.

Unless I am very mistaken in just a few weeks (in the US) a swell of reaction will manifest itself. The tones of Culture War will increase some notches. The crisis deepen. It will get worse (as we all intuit) before it gets better. And what is ‘better’ anyway?

[Immanuel Can]

Yep, I know: I've overindulged him in what really is a remarkable campaign of avoidance.

Not at all, actually.

There are two reasons, at least, for not responding to a particular objection: one is, as you are supposing, it's devastating and so intimidating that your interlocutor runs for the hills. The second is that it's ignorant of something which, if pointed out, would more shame the objector than anything. Such is the case in your last response, and because of your objection, I'll provide one such example that I was loath to bring to light.

You object that "rights" are just a given. This is an unfortunate error, one occasioned by your disinclination to read the context of the remark because you don't want to consult the book. But had you done so, you'd have discovered that "rights" were not being discussed in that context not because they are simply given and beyond discussion, but because, as a simple matter of fact, not of legitimation, they were not being discussed in that particular context, or at that particular moment.

To point that out would risk pointing out your lack of proper knowledge of the discussion in question, and your rather facile concluding that you could slide by an important point of discussion: so I simply elected not to engage the comment, because it was both plainly misguided and an occasion when the lack of knowledge of the speaker would be emphasized.

All of that, for pages and pages, to avoid answering a simple question!

This is similar. There is nothing "simple" about justice. Every philosopher who has considered it has concluded the same. And sociologists today are nearly unanimous about the fact of a thing they call "incommensurability," which simply means that concepts like "justice" in particular are different in different cultures, such that a win for one such conception inevitably entails the loss or defeat of another.

The fact of this is also easily demonstrable. Take your conception of "justice," and plug it into, say, the Hindu worldview, incorporating reincarnation cycles, samsara, caste, kharma and dharma. See how far you get.

Again, if you knew the philosophical discussion around justice, or the preponderance of sociological opinion on the question, or a few very basic facts about how Hinduism or Islam or Judaism, or Fatalism or Polytheism, views the question of "justice," you'd not have raised that objection. Did you really want me to point that out? I can't imagine you would; and I can't imagine my pointing it out now will make the discussion more happy.

Is it loving to condemn a person to an eternity of a hell which is, in your own words, "considerably worse than most people can even imagine"?

Is it loving to allow evil to exist forever? Let's ask that question, too: for clearly, a God who indulges evil is not better than one who judges it. In fact, the very concept "justice" calls for a judgment to be rendered. Why does it do so, if "love" is all that one needs?

So establish for me the appropriate penalty for evil, in your view. Take as easy or hard a case as you like. But be specific: name the crime and the "time," the amount and nature of punishment rightly associated with that particular deed. Then we can see if "justice" is being served or not.

But you have one more problem, too: and you're avoiding it so strenuously you've never addressed it even once, though this is the third or fourth time I've asked it.

On your worldview, who promised you "justice"?

[henry quirk]

Harry asks about finite crimes as though finiteness is the measure.

What of irrevocable crimes?

I can, for example, replace the loaf of bread I stole, but I can't replace the life I murdered.

[henry quirk]

Henry I guess you need to learn how to judge what to credit and what not to credit. Do you ever watch good crime dramas?

[henry quirk]

But, that's a discussion for tomorrow. It's almost 11pm here and my old self is tired.

Rest up, hq. Looking forward to any further comments you might add tomorrow.

Rested and now capable: what shall we talk about?

[Harry Baird]

I am curious, Harry, what with your encounter with Richard Weaver and Ideas Have Consequences (a gloomy and prescient hermeneutic effort) what you make of the gathering tide of right- and conservative-tending interpretive conceptions.

I don't think I'm qualified to even offer a comment here, given that I don't keep track of the right- and conservative-tending movement. I simply, then, offer some comments on a slight tangent:

While I recognise that I'm very contentious myself (especially as a participant in online fora like this one), I do think that it's very unfortunate that the divide between "conservatives" and "progressives" is as contentious as it is.

I think that there are a bunch of problems that we can all agree on despite our political differences: the growing wealth gap in many countries; the military-industrial complex and the wars it drives; the encroachment via widespread surveillance of the police state; the lack of affordable housing in many countries; the lack of meaningful political participation for the average citizen in most countries other than (at best) ticking a few boxes on a voting card every few years; and on and on they go.

A focus on solving those common problems, would, I think, be far more productive than turning the differences between political affiliations into problems and focussing on those problems of difference, to the bitter point that neither side even wants to consider its commonalities with the other side, but, rather, demonises it.

With respect to Richard Weaver, given that you bring up again the book of his that I have read, here are a few thoughts:

• Again, as I wrote many pages back in this thread: I am not convinced that the supposed victory of nominalism (over realism) those many centuries ago had any meaningful effect on the supposedly declining trajectory of Western society, whereas, that it did, and decidedly so, to our downfall, is RW's main causal hypothesis.
• I am much more comfortable with egalitarianism than is RW. I am generally in favour of the right of the general public to participate in the institutions which are intended to work in its interests. I accept that some people have skills that better suit them than others to perform certain tasks, including leadership, and to that extent I accept the need for "hierarchy" - but the hierarchy should always be directly responsible to the public, and even appointed directly by the public. That is, the public appoints you, and, should you blunder badly, the public removes you on the basis of your blunder(s). I'm even amenable to egalitarianism to the extent of democratic socialism, should a suitable arrangement of same not amenable to totalitarian control be worked out. RW definitely, definitely isn't. Basically, my philosophy is that, to the extent possible, a person (or group) should have an equal say in all of that which affects him/her (or them), regardless of the position (s)he (or it) holds in society. From what I have gathered, RW doesn't share this philosophy.
• In fact, the more that I mull it over, the less I find to agree with in Ideas Have Consequences. I might need to revisit it.
• Nevertheless, there are aspects of RW's critique in the book that resonate with me on a sort of visceral level, whatever my rational response might be, including the ideas that:
  • Modern people suffer from a "spoiled child" psychology. (My rational response: well, isn't that simply what the older generation always thinks, regardless of how true it is? Young people in particular these days have to work so hard for so little that it's crazy - owning a home in my country of residence is pretty much out of reach for the vast majority of them).
  • Modern people have been mistakenly led to expect that technology will solve all of the world's problems and, ultimately, absolve them of the need to work. (My rational response: I'm not as convinced as RW seems to be that working for a living is ideal, or, at least, that it is the only way to "prayerfully" labour. To be freed from the need to work for a living is to be freed to work on one's dreams and creative projects - and, yes, "prayerfully", in the sense that RW intends that adverb).
  • Modern media are propagandistic, providing a salve over the wound which is the deep difference in the worldviews of the citizens to which they are broadcast, uniting us all under the "sickly" dream of materialism. (My rational response: There's a lot of truth to this. On the other hand, modern media are also an incredible source of information available to all of us, which we've never before had in the history of the world).
  • And so on. That's enough for now.

Unless I am very mistaken in just a few weeks (in the US) a swell of reaction will manifest itself. The tones of Culture War will increase some notches. The crisis deepen. It will get worse (as we all intuit) before it gets better.

Hmm. That sounds worrying. On what are you basing this prediction?

And what is ‘better’ anyway?

Solving our common problems rather than warring over our differences, and increasing the meaningful participation of the average citizen in matters that affect him/her.

[Harry Baird]

I'll provide one such example that I was loath to bring to light.

I don't expect to be treated with kid gloves, dude. Bring everything to light.

You object that "rights" are just a given. This is an unfortunate error, one occasioned by your disinclination to read the context of the remark because you don't want to consult the book. But had you done so, you'd have discovered that "rights" were not being discussed in that context not because they are simply given and beyond discussion, but because, as a simple matter of fact, not of legitimation, they were not being discussed in that particular context, or at that particular moment.

Fine, but that simply raises the question: does the author consider the existence natural rights, at least insofar as they relate to justice, to be "problematic", especially to the point that they are "illegitimate", or, at least, in need of a "legitimation" that he cannot provide?

Is it loving to condemn a person to an eternity of a hell which is, in your own words, "considerably worse than most people can even imagine"?

Is it loving to allow evil to exist forever?

So, basically: nope, you're still not ready to simply and directly answer the question. You resort, instead, to questioning me in turn. This exchange, then, is pretty much over. I'll simply, so long as we both continue to participate in this thread, continue to remind you where applicable that all you've done is duck, dodge, weave, and avoid it. The invitation to a simple, direct, and honest answer remains open. You're free to qualify and explain it as much as you like.

But you have one more problem, too: and you're avoiding it so strenuously you've never addressed it even once, though this is the third or fourth time I've asked it.

On your worldview, who promised you "justice"?

Dude, you haven't asked me that question, not even once - until now. I know, because the answer is so obvious to me that I would have readily supplied it had you asked me prior to now:

Nobody "promised" me justice. Justice is an ideal, but there's no guarantee (promise) that it will be achieved.

[Harry Baird]

Harry asks about finite crimes as though finiteness is the measure.

What of irrevocable crimes?

I can, for example, replace the loaf of bread I stole, but I can't replace the life I murdered.

If, as the fundamentalist Christianity to which IC adheres claims, we are all immortal, then physical (biological) death is not truly irrevocable: it is simply the transition from here to there, wherever "there" ends up being.

If life did end at death, then eternal torment wouldn't even be possible, would it? I mean, unless through some sort of cybernetic enhancement (perversion) a person was kept permanently alive by technology. Now there's some scary s**t.

[Harry Baird]

Rested and now capable: what shall we talk about?

The black and white, of course!

[henry quirk]

If, as the fundamentalist Christianity to which IC adheres claims, we are all immortal, then physical (biological) death is not truly irrevocable: it is simply the transition from here to there, wherever "there" ends up being.

It almost seems as though you would dismiss here & now when here & now can be thought of, if we're talkin' Christianity, as the stagin' area for eternal reward/punishment. Joe, murdered by Stan, has lost time in the stagin' area, his preps for the afterlife have been cut short.

If life did end at death, then eternal torment wouldn't even be possible, would it? I mean, unless through some sort of cybernetic enhancement (perversion) a person was kept permanently alive by technology. Now there's some scary s**t.

Agreed. That's why you gotta get your licks in today, in the here & now. The transhumanists literally salivate over the idea of becomin' programs, of uploadin' themselves and livin' forever along side Donkey Kong.

[Belinda]

Henry I guess you need to learn how to judge what to credit and what not to credit. Do you ever watch good crime dramas?

I mean you must have a standard by which you judge whether a source of information is reliable or not. So what is the standard you used to evaluate the material you quoted?

[Nick_A]

His conclusions (the state of the world) are spot on. I don't agree, however, the dissolution of Christendom, in and of itself, is at the root of the current state of the world.

Thanks for your straightforward answer. For me, I think I get where he's coming from, but it's less black and white than he seems to portray it to be.

I think it's very black & white, nuthin' but black & white, in fact There is no gray.

But, that's a discussion for tomorrow. It's almost 11pm here and my old self is tired.

From the essay:

"The entire intellectual class of the Western world is unanimously and vehemently engaged in the desolation and abolition of the civilization by whose grace alone men like them are permitted to exist."

also

"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace." Simone Weil

So the quality of grace determines Man's potential to experience universal objective justice as opposed to man made subjective justice with all its learned hypocrisy. Since the intellectual class is closed to the help of grace, it is obvious why America is a dying culture. Grace is a deep Christian idea which is why it is rarely discussed since it opposes the imaginary supremacy of secularism