Leddihn & McAtee On The Conservative Disposition

“Conservatism on the Continent was based on disciplined thought from the start. Chronologically it falls into the period of late Romanticism and opposes ideas and ideologies emanating from the sentimental disorders of early Romanticism. Its opponent is the French Revolution (including the Napoleonic aftermath) with its egalitarianism, nationalism and laicism. But, as it so often happen in the battle of ideas, the good old principle fas est ab hoste doceri (it is right to learn even from an enemy) is applied a great deal to liberally, with the result that early 19th century conservatism has a rigidity and harshness reminding us of the hard school through which these early conservatives had to go: the school of French Revolution and the interminable sanguinary wars caused by the Napoleonic aftermath. Their school, as we said, was tough and therefore an element of severity and repression characterizes early conservatism, a certain belief in force if not in brutality, an unwillingness to enter any sort of dialogue or to conduct gentle and shrewd reeducation of its opponents. One does not discuss with assassins from whom one never expected humaneness, leniency, or tolerance. They must be mastered, fought, jailed, and, if worst comes to worst, locked up or exiled. In view of the horrors of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s trail of blood all over Europe from the gates of Lisbon to the heart of Moscow, this attitude is not surprising.”

Leftism; From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn — pg 387

Conservatives practice tough love born of a love for God and people. This tough love that comes across, in Leddihnn’ words, “as rigid and harsh” and “severe and repressive,” is born of both a knowledge of where matters are going if Leftism and its practitioners are not stopped and of a love for God and people.

Epistemologically self conscious conservatives (and such people are always Christians) are aware of the stakes. They have read Shire, Conquest, and Solzhenitsyn. Epistemologically self conscious conservatives understand the anti-Christ ideology that animates Leftism and because conservatives are familiar with history they know where that ideology leads. Epistemologically self conscious conservatives have read the stories about what happened to those who have tried to resist the plans of the left; the Vendee, the Kulaks, and the Boer. They can recite the cruel accounts against Maria Luisa of Savoy, Hans and Sophie Scholl, and Isaak Babel. Countless are the names of those who have had the cruelty of the left visited upon them. Epistemologically self conscious conservatives are familiar with the cruel tools of the left; Necklacing, Gloving (peeling the skin off the hands,), aborting, and Madam La Guillotine. Epistemologically self conscious conservatives can tell you about the Gulag, the Concentration camp, and the Psychological ward — residences provided by the left for the burgeoning legion of dissenters. Epistemologically self conscious conservatives are mindful of the left’s brainwashing, propaganda, and manipulation machine. You can hardly blame epistemologically self conscious conservatives for not being sunny and cheery when it comes to warning people off of the ideology and practice of the Left. How many of millions of graves must conservatives weep over — graves that need not had been filled if conservative counter-revolutionaries had been listened to — until epistemologically self conscious conservatives will be cut some slack regarding the fact that they are not as nice as they might otherwise be?

It is not Conservatives who are the cold-hearted, rigid, and repressive bastards. Any edginess you see in a epistemologically self conscious conservative is a edginess that is born of compassion for people. We have seen the ugly maw of Leftism and we would walk through bedlam and chaos in order to deliver people from the Christ-less ugly and monochromatic world that the left always try to produce in its mad pursuit of Utopia.

When Presbyterian Were Presbyterians

“The nations are bound to recognize the Bible as the supreme law of the land; as the standard of civil legislation. God’s law as recorded in the Bible, reaches all the possible relations of humanity; extends to every duty that can be performed, and fastens its claims on associated bodies of men, as well as upon individual persons. Were this not true, we should have this monstrous anomaly in Jehovah’s government, that while men, as individuals, are bound by the laws recorded in the Bible, in their congregated capacities, they may set these laws at defiance, and even contemn as citizens, what as Christians they are bound to honor and obey. If we admit that kings, as such, are not bound by the laws contained in the Bible, they commit no sin in acting contrary to them, while they act in their official capacity. The moral laws recorded in the Holy Scriptures, are but a fairer copy, and more full and explicit declaration of the eternal and immutable principles of righteousness, which are contained in the law of nature.”

–James R. Wilson
THE SUBJECTION OF KINGS AND NATIONS TO MESSIAH

A SERMON, PREACHED ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1819,

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DISPENSATION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER,

IN THE REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

The Program Of Religious Humanists

www.amazon.com/The-City-Man-Declaration-Democracy/dp/B000EO93EQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350069999&sr=8-1&keywords=The+City+of+man+A+declaration+on+World+Democracy

The book linked above was written in 1940. It is but one book of many document of humanism that reveals the world-view and agenda of the religious humanists. (Sometimes mistakenly referred to as secular humanists.) One could easily compare the Humanist manifesto I and II with the The City of Man; A Declaration on World Democracy,” and find a common motif. The religious humanists today still have much the same agenda and goals as those in this book who openly expressed the desire for a World Government animated by a type of Democracy that has been apotheosized into a unitary world religion. According to those who affixed their signatures to this manifesto,

“Democracy is nothing more and nothing less than humanism in theocracy and rational theocracy in universal humanism.”

That in this religious humanism envisioned a one world order that would create a kind of multi-faithism can be seen by their acknowledgement that democracy, as the highest all embracing religion is a,

“universal religion of the Spirit acknowledging with reverence the incorruptible substance of truth which lies under the surface and errors of the separate confessions risen from the common ground of ancient and medieval civilization — democracy, in the catholicity of its language, interprets and justifies the separate creeds as its own universal vernacular.”

Of course what we get here is a Democracy that champions not only the brotherhood of all men but also the brotherhood of the faiths of all men, as long as those faiths are reinterpreted through the prism of humanist theo-democracy. Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, Islam, Judaism all speak the same truths as those truths are filtered through our undoubted holy Democratic faith and because there is only one faith, there will only be one amalgamated people and one World order.

The day comes when the heresy of nationalism is conquered …. Then above the teeming manifold life of free communities … there will be a Universal Parliament representing peoples, not states, — a fundamental body of law prevailing throughout the planet in all those matters that involve interregional interests … an elected President, the President of Mankind — no crowned emperor, no hereditary king … embodying for a limited term the common authority and the common law; and a federal force ready to strike at a anarchy and felony.”

Of course anarchy and felony will be defined as whatever runs contrary to the theo-democracy of world-view religious humanism that is supported by a multi-faithism that has a universal meaning given to it by religious humanism.

In the book “City of Man,” we are given a thirteen point program for achieving the new world order.

1.) The Promise of Utopianism — One of the integral components of any world-view is a teleology. The humanist teleology (end goal) is some kind of promised Kingdom of Man — Utopia.

In the religious humanist world-view some sort of salvation for all lies in the future and every piece of legislation is a building block to craft the coming salvific age of man. The latest building block being put into place is universal health care.

Of course this teleology is taken as a article of faith as religious humanism has no evidence whatsoever for the flowering of a Utopian New World Order.

2.) Planning — According to the book, “Planning is implicit in the spirit of Democracy.” Of course this planning is Statist planning and not individual planning. In point of fact the Statist Democracy planning obviates the need for individual planning. Freedom for individual planning is eliminated in favor of planning by the democratic elite.

Planning starts with economic planning (5 year plans) and moves to social engineering done in order to create “New World Order” man. Eventually the theo-democracy ends with planned elections.

3.) Centralization — No planning is possible without centralization, and there is no Utopia without planning. This is the centralization of the hive and the anthill. There is a non-resolvable contradiction here. The religious humanists believe in the inevitability of Utopia, yet in order for the inevitable to come to pass there has to be a humanist plan for it that requires centralization. Centralization as found in the State is God and so rejects any free will except the free will of the elite Centralizers. Man is only free to live and move and have his being in the New World order State.

4.) Identity, Sameness — Individuals are cogs in the machine of the social order. They are interchangeable undifferentiated grains of sand. This is why the term “masses” arose in our lexicon. Individuals do not exist in religious humanism but merely belong to the masses. Religious humanism requires the cult of sameness (sometimes called egalitarianism) where if differences exist they must be dismissed as meaningless. Where differences actually exist they must be explained away. Where difference cause problems to the Utopian plan those differences square pegs must be pounded into round holes. This demand for Identity and Sameness explains our current move towards claiming all sexuality and gender to be equally valuable.

5.) Majoritism — Here we will simply quote Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s analysis written in 1974,

“There are minorities (‘never majorities’) who are obnoxious and are declared to be the real cause of all or at least most iniquities. These conspiratorial and domineering minorities are not content to ‘be like everyone else.’; they crave privileges, thus depriving the ‘underprivileged’ of their rights; they destroy equality, identity, and ‘social harmony.’ The main criminals are the ‘ruling classes,’ composed in the United States of the ‘white Anglo Saxon Protestant minority….’ Leftist ideologies rest on the existence of ‘badmen’ who can be made objects of general hatred.”

6.) Hostility against organized religion — The standard religious humanist reaction to religion that does not bow to the humanist elite establishment in lapdog subservience by reinterpreting its belief system through the prism of humanism is the effort to marginalize and eliminate that religion from the marketplace of ideas and from the public square. We see this today in our culture by the never ending attempt to “otherize,” and “demonize,” the Biblical Christian who dares question the hostility of the humanist world and life view.

7.) Socialist hatred of free enterprise — Free enterprise runs contrary to centralized planning. If individuals are free to be entrepreneurs who plan for their own future and their own goals they get in the way of the humanist elite central planners. Free enterprise also runs contrary to the goals of Identitarianism, Egalitarianism, and sameness since a free economy gives man the opportunity to build up something that might make him unique from the hoi poloi.

8.)Anti-familism — The family as a closed and emotionally marked-off unit is an obstacle to total sameness and worse yet, from the religious humanist point of view, the traditional family contains its own hierarchic structure that is distinct from the hierarchic structure of the World Paternal-State. Progressive taxation, as well as our current Death Inheritance tax, is an attack by the State on the family as the State works to make sure that it is strengthened by its work to weaken the family. This anti-familialism also explains the States propensity to support every type of deviant perversity that demands recognition. When perversity is given sanction the effect is not to raise the perversity up in status but the effect is to drag down the traditional family in esteem.

9.) Intolerance

“Inflexible principles must be stated in a renovated law, beyond which freedom is felony.”

Religious humanism forever moans about tolerance but it is itself one of the most intolerant belief system in existence. Religious humanism (and remember religious humanism comes in various flavors and stripes including the Christian flavor) wants freedom only for the various “isms” that make up its constituency (i.e. — Feminism, Sodomitism, Liberationism, etc.). Because this is so, religious humanism is prone to carrying out all kinds of different inquisitions in the name of “tolerance.” Universities shut down academic freedom when ideas challenge the religious humanist world and life view. Hollywood will shut down people who don’t share their view of tolerance. Politicians will be intolerant towards those ideas that don’t fit their view of toleration. (Witness Obama’s latest speech that those who recently said in a UN speech, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Here we see that Tolerance will not be extended to those who know and say true things about the prophet.

10.) Statism — This has already been implied with our categories of “planning,” and “centralization.” Religious humanism believes that everything within the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State. In the State we live and move and have our being. Statism is Hegel’s vision come to pass.

11.) Messianism — Messianism is linked to Utopianism. Every Utopia must have a Messiah that leads men into the great new promised future age. The Messiah is not only a King but a savior. In religious humanism the Messianism can come in the way of the “great leader,” (think of Obama and the Greek Colonnades when he accepted the 2008 Democratic nomination and his language about slowing the rising tides of the oceans, etc.) or it can come in the way of a racial character (think of the Nazi’s and their Aryan vision or James Cone and his vision of Black nationalism) or it can come in the way of some kind of Nationalism that has run off the rails. In whatever way it expresses itself you will always find a element of Messianism is religious humanism.

12.) Colonialism — This Messianism has the task of eventually saving all mankind. As such there will be a push towards Colonialism of one form or another. We have seen this recently with the US led colonizing of Ethiopia. People think that the Arab Spring is about “freedom,” but this isn’t “freedom” we are seeing but religious humanism Colonialism.

13.) Interventionism — Due to its Utopianism, Messianism, and Colonialism, a highly aggressive interventionist and bellicose element in Religious humanism. The “City of Man” Declaration tells us that,

“Peace at any price is peace at the price of submission.”

and so we learn that war is a price that will be paid in order to cause those who disagree with the tenets of religious humanism to submit. Indeed, religious humanists usually love armed conflicts because during war a crisis is created whereby the State can use as excuse to expand its powers of centralization, and Messianism.

That the book, “City of Man” was written in 1940 is irrelevant because it can be clearly seen that the religious humanist agenda has been the same for hundreds of years. The goal is a New World Order Utopianism.

Leddihn On Leftist Identitarianism

“Leftism with its strongly identitarian bent and a non-spiritual, materialistic, enthusiasm either declares race and nationality to be supreme values to which everybody has to conform (as the Nazis did) or they want to ‘explain them away’ and ignore them with iron determination … because they are an obstacle to identitarian uniformity. The Nazis wanted to eliminate by brute force those who did not racially conform, those nationally (ethnically) not conforming by cultural high-pressure methods. The ‘international leftists’ wants us to close our eyes and ignore facts. This is just another process of ‘elimination.’ The rightist, who is a liberal in the genuine (classical) sense of the term, keeps his eyes open and gladly and charitably accepts diversity of mankind. Rejecting egalitarianism (no less than identitarianism), he knows that God’s gifts are distributed in mysterious ways — not only among persons but also among nations and races. Though they cannot be expressed in simple scientific formula and never work out mathematically in time or space, they do not invalidate the rightist principle of suum cuique.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Leftism — pg. 223

Leddihn, Lasch, & Berman On The Decline Of The West

“The French Revolution is still with us in every way. Not only are its ideas ever-present, but there is much in its historic evolution that can teach us — in North America no less than in Europe. Its initial period began with the undermining of traditional values and ideas, coupled with the demand for moderate reforms. With Voltaire a whole series of scoffers, facile critics, and agnostics in the literal sense of the term made their appearance. They subverted religion, convictions, traditions, and the loyalties on which state and society rested. The process of decomposition and putrefaction always starts at the top — in the royal palace, the presidential mansion, among the intellectuals, the aristocracy, the wealthy, the clergy — and then gradually enmeshes the lower social layers. In this process it is interesting to notice how the high and mighty develop a sense of guilt and with it a readiness to abdicate, to yield to expropriation, to submit to the loss of privileges, in other words, to commit suicide politically and economically. For this masochist act, however, they are well prepared by the ideological propaganda coming from their own ranks…. The members of the nobility who took active part in the intellectual or political undermining of the ancien regime and then participated in the Revolution are very numerous, without their support the French Revolution is well-nigh unimaginable…. One is inevitably reminded of the fact that, statistically speaking, the natural death of states and nations as well as of classes and estates, is not murder but suicide. However, this act of suicide is usually preceded by a period of delusions and follies. Quen deus vult perdidi prius dementat.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Lefism — pg. 88

I would only add here that before political and economic suicide can be committed that theological suicide must first be committed, since politics and economics descends from Theology. I would also observe that when Leddihn speaks of “ideological propaganda,” as Christians we should understand that such ideological propaganda is but a form of theological propaganda.

Leddhin’s observation in this quote supports Christopher Lasch’s, inked 20 years after Leddihn, in his book, “Revolt of the Elites.” In that book Lasch lays the deterioration and decline of the West squarely at the feet of the cultural elite. Lasch cites chapter and verse on how the cultural elite had become the cultural despisers of Western tradition and values. Lasch contends that the overthrow of the West was not orchestrated by the masses, contra Ortega y Gasset’s, “Revolt of the Masses,” but that we have been damaged from within by our cultural gatekeepers.

Morris Berman’s book, “The Twilight of American Culture,” also factors into this theme. Berman, like both Lasch and Leddihn, sees the unraveling of American culture although Berman is inclined to lay the fault at the feet of mass-produced cutlure. Still, that mass-produced culture that Berman speaks of, I would contend, comes from those elites that Lasch excoriates and that Leddihn puts in the dock.

Our problem in the West today is that our best and brightest no longer believe in what made the West the West. Leddihn teaches us that the “Un-Westing” of the West began with the French Revolution and has continued unchecked as Biblical Christianity has lost its power to challenge the various incarnations of the French Revolution that have propelled its agenda of “anti-Reformation,” for each subsequent generation.

Berman, in his book mentioned above, believed it was too late for the West to recover.

I hope he was wrong. I fear he is right.