The people lack virtue
People have lost their way, and the press fills their heads with propaganda. You could say it’s a vast conspiracy. And certainly the left is organized, and the internet helps spread the word.
But it wouldn’t matter so much if so many people weren’t already receptive to the message. You see can the evidence of this around you. Fifty years ago, Americans wouldn’t have been so cowed by a virus of this magnitude. In fact, in 1957 we weren’t cowed by one that killed the equivalent of well over 200,000 people in the US and about 3 million worldwide (when corrected for today’s population). Fifty years ago, we also knew much better what socialism and Communism were. We knew the value of free speech, and even the ACLU defended it (how quaint!).
In sum: we knew what we had, and we didn’t want to let it go.
What happened? The decline of family stability, religion, education, journalism, the arts, entertainment, morality, historical knowledge, language, dress – and I’m sure I left some things out.
And this above all:
To our Founding Fathers, it was obvious, or “self-evident,” that self-government, or a democratic republic, could only be perpetuated by the self-governed. Reflecting these precepts, a contemporary German writer to the Founders, J. W. von Goethe, stated: “What is the best government? — That which teaches us to govern ourselves.”…
John Adams stated it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.”…
George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”
Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
James Madison stated: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical [imaginary] idea.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and … their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice … These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”
Samuel Adams said: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue.”
Patrick Henry stated that: “A vitiated [impure] state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.”
John Adams stated: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
So wise, so true. I think that’s why the fingers we have had in the dike for so long just aren’t doing enough, and the onrushing water threatens to overwhelm us. Perhaps it already has.
It’s not surprising that now the Founders’ names are being tarnished and their statues toppled. It takes a group of people without virtue to do it, and a larger group without virtue to allow it. The irony is that these same people think of themselves as the most virtuous of all.
[NOTE: “Virtue” can be a tricky word. For example, Robespierre thought he was the very embodiment of it, and he justified the Reign of Terror as a necessity in order to further solidify virtue. He wrote, among other things: “Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue.”]
More than twenty years ago, Richard Bernstein (once upon a time a reporter for the NYT, when it was still a reasonably good paper) wrote an excellent book, entitled The Dictatorship of Virtue, about the many modern descendants of Robespierre and the Jacobins who imagine themselves possessed of a superior progressive morality (as in today’s SJW/Antifa/BLM obsession with “woke” moralizing regarding diversity, multiculturalism, identity politics, anti-fascism, anti-racism, etc) which renders obsolete and unacceptable the traditional morality of generations past.
It’s gone, and we gave it away. We tolerate dissent; the Left marches collectively, and the Right does not. We gave it away, inch by little inch as the Left converted those inches to miles. Look today how the Left treated the Attorney General. Mannerless, bullying, vulgar.
Our Left will win, just like Mao did with his “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, and will rule increasingly like him. Having an inconsequential (in terms of legislative accomplishments) black Congressman “lie in state”for ten days in the Capitol rotunda as if he were a deceased president is symbolic. It is inappropriate, obeisant, submissive.
The EPA is a good example, created by Nixon at the outset of environmental concern. Now the country, its air and its waters have never been cleaner, and we live dutifully under the burden of ever-proliferating EPA regulations, and see the Leftists proclaim the need for a Green New Deal to Save The Earth. While China pollutes merrily along without a whisper from our Greenies.
It’s humanity following its basic instincts, right?
There’s no immediate reward to studying history or philosophy. It’s hard work. It’s even harder work to apply those and other disciplines to one’s own immediate worldview.
Compare that drudgery to the thrill of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a building that can’t shoot back at you. Balance years of banging one’s head against the marvels of Western Civilization with the immediate dopamine hit of doxxing your neighbor because he said that all lives matter.
I’ve worked in this Internet field for decades. I feel so dirty for any minor contributions I’ve made towards this ridiculously irresponsible social bazaar.
Clarification: “this ridiculously irresponsible social bazaar” is not this site nor comment section!
I don’t know what it means to be an American anymore. I used to think that having a national identity based on a set of shared founding principles was far superior to an identity based on ethnicity. But now it seems we no longer share these principles and there really isn’t anything left that binds us together.
The virtue deficit is the major problem today. It is one of the things that scare me.
“The irony is that these same people think of themselves as the most virtuous of all.” Neo
I think where things have gone off the rails in our culture is the Left’s allowance (where they come off being the arbiters of what is acceptable) for the rule of law not applying to “fill in the blank” specially designated group (i.e. blacks, women, homosexuals, the poor, being upset by some injustice, etc etc). This is the over-riding virtue. The very idea that bending the law or breaking the law is OK, if (???) destroys the fabric of the Republic which is “justice is blind”. Of course this can’t be achieved perfectly, hence the 3 branches of government and the branch that makes the laws, bilateral, to try and best achieve this. The Founders were pragmatists. The French Revolutionaries were ideologues. The latest is looking the other way while these “protestors” destroy private property because of a grievance and now government property, we’re not even sure why. How ridiculous.
“…virtue deficit…”
But one must be careful here, since one could call it equally, “virtue overload”.
The problem is the definition of “virtue” and what constitutes “virtuous” behavior.
And WHO is doing the defining.
Today in the US, as was the case in France (starting in 1789), in Russia (starting in 1917), in Germany (starting in 1933) and in China (starting in 1948)—several of the more prominent examples—those who define “virtue” are also “virtuously” determined to destroy anyone who doesn’t agree with them and/or anyone with whom they decide they DON’T agree (or otherwise have “issues” with).
These people are increasingly in a position to impose their destructive will, empowered, as they are, by their fervent belief in the VIRTUE of their cause, and also by the INHUMANITY that they perceive in their opponents and—ultimately—anyone who dares disagree with them.
It is the politicization of “virtue”, the radicalization of the road to achieve Paradise on earth.
The totalitarian imperative.
The well-proven result of such power-driven messianism is, necessarily, horrific; the road is—MUST BE—paved with destruction, misery, madness and mass murder.
If they are allowed to succeed.
(RIP Professor Mike Adams.)
What happened? The decline of family stability, religion, education, journalism, the arts, entertainment, morality, historical knowledge, language, dress – and I’m sure I left some things out.
and WHAT movement was at the fore of that, and exterminated the voters that were then replaced? The family was a happy gulag anyway, right? Religion oppressed that group too… they had to change education and kick the oppressors out from kinder garden all the way up… arts had to bow… language had to change from manhole covers to anything else… oh, and dress? yeah, they changed that too… oh, and slut walks, etc was just a morality play of Greek proportions..
but their work is not done, in fact they think they have done nothing yet.
i have a hot air popper, and just watching
The Founders knew what they were talking about. Still, “virtue”, like any idea of ‘the good’ requires a standard.
If we want to live as free men and women, we should be able to identify such a standard.
IMHO, the proper standard is something along the lines of ‘life as a rational being.’ There are specific acts (or virtues), like honesty, justice, and productivity that are required by such a standard. More to the point, these virtues (and others like it) make it possible to be a self-supporting individual.
The so-called protestors exhibit none of these virtues.
I disagree. If a constitution needs a virtuous people to operate correctly, then no constitution will ever be successful. Root Cause Analysis posits that People are hardly ever responsible for a failed
Process. It is the Process, in this case the Constitution, which MUST be at fault. When I see people on both sides blame politicians and bureaucrats for “not following the constitution”, I just laugh.
Well, however they managed, they have been successful. I can see it in my family. Intelligent, good hearted people have bought a big chunk of the message. No, they aren’t going to burn, loot, or attack anyone. But, they will march in protests to advocate for reform; a rather unfocused and nebulous concept. They are more sympathetic to some of the alternative ideas than I would have imagined.
After a couple of false starts we have been careful to avoid discussions that might become heated. I have had a change of heart; and decided that I must go on record. I am drafting a letter–five pages in the current draft–to my grand children in which I lay out the arguments for our system; and the pitfalls if it is over turned. I review some relevant history; and I challenge some of the myths that are feeding the current narrative. I also discuss the relative merits of the Presidential candidates. I am debating whether to send it to my daughters as well.
I offer suggested alternatives to some of the more radical internet and social media sites. The list includes thenewneo.com; Urgentagenda.com: and ManhattanContraian.com. I also call their attention to the writings of Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson for alternative perspective. I cite Justice Clarence Thomas and Dr Ben Carson as examples of men who succeeded within the system after beginning against long odds; and are now strong advocates.
I close the letter by observing that they must make their choices; and if I don’t agree I will still love them.
Neo, your post about trying to change one vote was the motivation to venture into uncharted waters. I will be waiting somewhat anxiously for the reaction, if any.
Jack Wayne, you cannot be serious, surely.
Oldflyer:
I hope it goes well!!!
I have been venturing out more in that manner, too, and so have other people I know. It can feel quite frightening, because the left is unpredictable and people on the left seem to take it very very personally.
But it seems necessary to take more of a stand.
JackWayne:
Well, the Founders certainly disagreed with you.
As do I.
What you say doesn’t even make sense to me. Any law – a constitution, or otherwise – only works if the bulk of the population agrees to be bound by it. There is no way to enforce law if the majority of the people don’t respect it for other, more spiritual or moral or psychological reasons.
“Robespierre thought he was the very *embodiment* of it”.
As Hitler saw himself.
Along with millions of Germans, who could only be uber-impressed by his sporting the Iron Cross, *First* Class (rarely given to an EM).
And, he had nationwide radio, sending his booming voice across the land.
Once mass A/V media got going, the masses would be putty in hands like his.
Jack don’t know (fill in the specific).
He may know Root Cause Analysis but doesn’t seem to know history or the Constitution. Misapplication of any tool is a common problem.
We need the Jack system of government. Rule by the technocrats and bureaucrats who know jack. Not.
Oldflyer and Neo, Read the Federalist and Anti-federalist papers. The Federalists (Madison, Hamilton and Jay) explicitly said over and over that government MUST be run by Best Men for successful government. The Anti-Federalists said over and over that Best Men Was a chimera. Further they asked in many papers for the Federalists to insert language that would be helpful to the Constitution if Best Men turned out to be regular men.
As to the idea that a Constitution only works if the majority of People support it: well yes. That’s childish. The point I’m trying to make is that if a constitution like ours gives too much latitude to government, then they will rule with a heavy hand. For example, the constitution gives every branch of the government full power to make their own rules. This is a Fatal Error. You want decent government? Then the constitution must EXPLICITLY limit government.
Finally, we see a lot of bullshit about Checks and Balances. Ask yourself if this mechanism is real or a mirage. The Federalists explicitly said that each department will vie with each another for power and therefore limit the power of other Departments. Not true! It turns
out that departments work together to limit the power of the People and to increase the power of government. Exactly what ANYONE would expect from the humans working under a lax constitution.
I can hardly claim to be a paragon of virtue, but—horror of horrors–judgments must be made–“discriminations” made between what is good vs. what is bad.
And it is quite obvious that, generally, far too many of us have lost the simple, direct “virtues” that our Founders saw/knew would be absolutely necessary if our Republic were to survive, to flourish, and to endure or, more properly, far too many of us have been “led astray,” have been deliberately swindled out of these virtues by the Left, most effectively by our “educators” and “entertainers.”
The comparison that I keep seeing is today’s America to Ancient Rome, as it became “transformed” from being a rather simple, agrarian-based Republic—one with hard and simple virtues–into an Empire, and as the simple virtues of its original culture became transformed into ones more cosmopolitan, more cultured, and rarified i.e. as the blood ran thin, and Romans became decadent.
This is the increasingly lost and decadent America I see today, and I mourn for what my country used to be, what it has lost, and may never find or become again.
What happened? We have become a society where 50% are enraged cowards or really bad sissies.
Robespierre said that he was the savior of France and everything he did was for the people. Of course, he was a lawyer and everybody knows that lawyers are corrupt and dishonest,
Exactly what ANYONE would expect from the humans working under a lax constitution.
You are trying to draw a rather fine distinction between a “lax constitution” and a strict constitution that nonetheless cannot prevent unethical people from violating it. The U.S. Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government, with everything else left to “to the States respectively, or to the people.” That doesn’t sound lax to me. I’m not sure how one could write a constitution that prevents subsequent generations from flouting its provisions. Hence all the warnings that Neo cites by the Founders.
Oldflyer: Best wishes in your efforts. And blessings to you for your thoughtful effort.
You might want to introduce your grandchildren to Norm Bourlaug and the Green Revolution (1 million people saved!) as counterpoint to the gloom and destruction promised to them with climate change. And Hans Rosling: Point them to “Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years” on Youtube.
Life has never been better. They need to know that. There are many things in this world that work, and we Americans can be rightfully proud of the good we’ve brought to the world. But we can’t stop now. There is still work to be done.
Neo, I have to ask what arts and entertainment have declined? As someone who loves art [painting, illustration etc] music, theatre and movies I would have to disagree with you on this. In fact, regarding movies it was over 50 years ago that movies began to have a lot of sex and violence. More so [and grittier] than today which has begun to lean toward cartoon violence and less sex because todays Left finds sex demeaning. [The right used to find it immoral – times change].
So I have to disagree with you on the arts. They have thrived.
I would add that movies today are not clean and neat like they were in the 1940’s and 50’s but that’s a very long time ago so any decline there – as noted – started well before this era if you particularly love movies that show on TCM [I do but I like new movies as well].
Our constitution limits government, not the people..
so there is no lax constitution, there is only the one we have, or one that would have let the politicians run roughshod over everyone sooner than now….
when people say the constitution is too lax, they side with the communists who would write one that put the people in their place, not the leaders.
Im just going to pop the popcorn and hope the alligator eats me last
if not, maybe my wife and i will go to her country and hope it eats us last..
What is missing is the sense of civility underpinning our mutual agreement to be governed by the Constitution in a peaceful society, under law. Civility is the social compact that holds society together. Civility is what allows for the exchange of ideas; the building of societal trust; the peaceful transfer of power after elections. It is a mutual preference to be willing to keep the peace in order to coexist and prosper.
Civility is also the first principle to be jettisoned in the name of tactical advantage by the unscrupulous radical left. But while the concept of civility is as fragile as a tender green seedling, the threat of violence must always lay just beneath. And for civility to work as a mutually-held concept, both sides must be willing to use violence. Otherwise, the one who chooses to remain civil will be always subject to ambush by the others.
Unfortunately the traditional American culture has lost its appetite for outrage and retribution when civility is unilaterally stripped from the ambiance, as it is routinely these days by Progressives. What is called for is outrage – and immediate, overwhelming savagery to put it right before an incivility is allowed to stand as a successful outcome.
With law enforcement being disenfranchised in city after city, we’re getting closer to that moment. The uncivil among us don’t seem to be aware that they are losing their protective cover by their own action.
Part of the problem is that history has been stripped from our curriculum now. There are plenty of examples in America’s past where pent-up frustration of a population led to an explosive conclusion – after which civility returned and life resumed as normal.
While historically virtue ethics have sometimes been unfeminist or anti-feminist, the method itself is seen by many feminists as a way of approaching moral living which is more psychologically healthy and more morally sensitive than that dominant tradition which emphasizes impersonal rules of action.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- So they had to remove it it was oppressive -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Concern about feminist methods of articulating ethical theories arise during this time and continue. These debates can be found in the scholarship of intersectionality, Black feminist thought and women of color feminism, transnational feminism, queer theory, disability studies, and twenty-first century criticisms of feminist ethics. They are of special concern whenever feminist ethicists seem to uphold a gender binary and simplistic conceptualizations of woman as a category. Questions about the shortcomings of traditional ethical theories, about which virtues constitute morally good character in contexts of oppression, and about which kinds of ethical theories will ameliorate gendered oppressions and evils generate critical scholarship in every decade.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- So they had to remove it it was oppressive -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
once they did remove it, we lost our moral compass, and so any direction was ok..
and perversion is ok, once you got used to it… debasement stopped being debasement and somehow became liberating…
pass the popcorn..
Where the current craziness began…
https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/07/24/the-frankfurt-school-and-excellent-foolishness-how-the-left-infects-impressionable-minds-n696846
But the Left will not concede to reality in attempting to advance its doctrine with mental sedatives like “social harmony,” “classless society,” “planetary village,” “unitary existence,” and so on. Its apostles and epigones have been thoroughly indoctrinated. And so their folly seems poised to prevail. We need to acknowledge that once in power the Left will enact policy predicated not on promoting the freedom and prosperity of the nation or recognizing the empirics of economic life but on a sweeping “narrative” of human perfectibility ushered in by an all-seeing aristocracy of political authoritarians. The Social Democratic “narrative” is an ideological tissue of unsustainable ideas, no matter how imposingly it may be formulated. Thanks to the Frankfurters and their infecting a generation of impressionable students with the illusion of human perfectibility and the dogmatic assurance of a self-regarding master class, excellent foolishness has become the air we breathe and the order of the day.
The People cannot be better than their Elites. I’m no historian so I don’t know how common is has been through the ages for societal rot to start at the bottom and leach its way to the top but in today’s case, the fish is rotting from the head down.
Mike
JackWayne:
Perhaps you’re not aware that insulting people with pronouncements such as “that’s childish” doesn’t win arguments.
Our constitution is a brilliant document for many reasons, but one of those reasons is that it’s flexible in some ways but limiting in others. For example, the power of the federal government is quite strictly limited in the Constitution. It is the courts and the amendments that have extended that power. SCOTUS was not originally meant to be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for example. It took that power on itself long ago. And to take another example, the flexibility of the amendment process – which was made difficult, but not impossible – allowed the country to pass the income tax. Once it was passed, it had tremendous repercussions and affected the quality of the United States and its people, and what they expected of government, which ended up with much more power.
Since the Founders could not foresee everything, they had to provide for amendments to respond to changes and to the will of the people. They tried to make the process hard enough so that it wouldn’t be done lightly, and yet it would still be possible. The Founders are not responsible for what the people later decided they wanted to add to the Constitution in that manner.
The US Constitution is a relatively short one compared to many other countries’ constitutions. It also has been fairly stable. Many countries have had constitution after constitution. But stricter constitutions have not necessarily prevented periods of tyranny.
Until now, our Constitution has mostly stood us in good stead. It has now been undermined by the left, but I cannot imagine a constitution that would have prevented that, unless it was so strict that it established a police state with no freedom of speech to begin with. Obviously not a good idea.
Jimmy, I’m not talking about a strict constitution or a lax one. I’m talking about real limits on power. For example, have a constitution that does not allow the Senate to have 7 layers of amendments (one on top of the other) to a bill. There are a million examples of things that can be detailed. The big thing is to realize that a Constitution is a living document in the sense that if it is properly constructed, it should be easy for the People to amend it to curtail improper activities. Politicians are essentially criminals. The secret to success is to turn them into petty thieves instead of grand larsonists. Lastly, we are gonna be here in planet earth for a long time. Do you really believe this constitution is so perfect that it needs no changes? That it will last for a million years? I don’t.
Neo says “ It is the courts and the amendments that have extended that power.“ Thanks for making my point. Somehow you think the courts are not a part of the government. Are they not virtuous people? Where did they get the power to usurp the completely clear constitution? For 230 years the government has been amassing more and more power. How did that happen when the perfect constitution limits government power? If politics is downstream of culture, maybe the culture is downstream of the constitution. In any event your view of the constitution will be severely tested in the years to come.
Rap music, Piss christ, 50 Shades of Porn, Cats the movie, Hamilton (which must be canceled), …..
Yes the arts are a fine kettle of fish and never finer. 😉
Jack doesn’t recognize “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Root cause his analysis, the problem is Jack.
Ammendments? Doh, Jack?
Convention of States, Doh?
Marxists of various stripes and lesser progressives an immediate problem? Doh?
JackWayne:
An easily amended constitution can be easily amended for good or for ill.
As I said, it really depends on the people, no matter how you design the constitution.
“I can see it in my family. Intelligent, good hearted people have bought a big chunk of the message. No, they aren’t going to burn, loot, or attack anyone. But, they will march in protests to advocate for reform; a rather unfocused and nebulous concept. They are more sympathetic to some of the alternative ideas than I would have imagined.” Oldflyer
ditto… They are enabling the fashioning of their and their children’s future enslavement.
“The point I’m trying to make is that if a constitution like ours gives too much latitude to government, then they will rule with a heavy hand. For example, the constitution gives every branch of the government full power to make their own rules. This is a Fatal Error. You want decent government? Then the constitution must EXPLICITLY limit government.” JackWayne
There is some validity to that argument. However, it ignores how deceitful men violate written and explicit restrictions; “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
in•fringe:
intransitive verb:To transgress or exceed the limits of; violate.
intransitive verb:To defeat; invalidate.
The American Constitution’s most fundamental ‘check’ is, in the aggregate the people’s virtue. Absent that, no amount of specificity will prove to be sufficient.
JackWayne:
Well, now you’ve made it clear that you are a troll – or at least, behaving as one for the moment. “Perfect constitution”? Who said that? No one here. Have fun playing with your strawmen.
No constitution can ever be perfect. No law can be perfectly drafted, either. In the end, it always depends on the virtue of the people.
Not the leaders. Not those people. The “people” we’re talking about is the electorate who votes the politicians in. It is the electorate who votes for amendments, for all politicians, and for the presidents who nominate SCOTUS justices and for the senators who approve them, as well as the Congress that can impeach them if needed.
In the end, the people have the power, which is delegated by them to the leaders they elect. If the people lack what the Founders called “virtue,” they cannot act as the ultimate check on government, which in the final analysis is the role they hold. It’s not within the ability of any constitution to be perfect.
“I’m talking about real limits on power.”
The only limits on power are those you accept for yourself and those forced upon you by others. There is no document anywhere that can “limit” power.
For example, I don’t think you can read the Constitution or any of the Framer’s other writings and conclude they ever intended or imagined the U.S. Supreme Court would become a defacto sovereign, routinely overturning Presidential and Congressional actions and ruling contrary to the public will.
Yet that is exactly what it has become and it happened because the Executive and Legislative Branches and the public allowed it to happen.
Mike
Jack longs for the good old days when there were only colonies in the western hemisphere?
I think that a basic problem with our Constitution, with our present government, and especially with our current politics and political system is that they were not set up to deal with the level of “bad faith” that we see.
That they were constructed based on the fundamental assumption that people would mostly be working within certain boundaries and norms, that there would be some level of “good faith,” that they were built on the assumption that a wary and sceptical citizenry would make “good faith” efforts to try to keep informed and aware, especially about threats to their Freedom and Rights, and would jealously protect and defend them, that Christian religion would always be a central, pervasive, and potent force to teach and maintain morality and virtue, that the people running things would make an honest effort to promote what was good for our Republic and not what was inimical to it, would enforce our laws and not ignore them, would interpret things fairly, and not deviously and/or maliciously.
Increasingly, this has not been the case, and more and more I wonder if our mostly taken for granted Republic can withstand the citizen neglect it has been subject to, it’s subversion and undermining, and the attacks against it?
MBunge, my sense, of “how common is has been through the ages, for societal rot to start at the bottom”, is, probably rather uncommon.
But, much hinges on what you mean by “rot”.
By the lights of the Papacy, the printing press “rotted” the Pope’s position (vs. Luther), leading to mass slaughters in the next 130 years, esp. in the Thirty Years War.
Europe did manage to recover from that carnage, for reasons which are worthy of debate.
Was recovery inevitable, or did luck smile on 1650s Europe?
What additional stresses might’ve been enough to bring super-collapse?
Historiography is a rough field, for serious students.
Snow on Pine,
Your comment on bad faith reminded me of a quote. Some of the smarter people here can probably tell me who said it but I can’t remember. I’m sure I’m paraphrasing it and I don’t have it exactly:
“Once the people of a democracy realize they can vote themselves all the money, the end of the democracy is near.”
It seems to go for republics and representatives, dealing in bad faith, as well, as those representatives take money and bribes.
Om
– Rap music, Piss christ, 50 Shades of Porn, Cats the movie, Hamilton –
Hmm. Rap music is one part of current music and it’s certainly not all – however it is you are defining it.
Piss Christ was one piece of art work over 20 years ago that was controversial but no way the norm. Cats the movie LOL. Okay, yeah a bad movie but hardly indicative of an entire industry. Even the industry acknowledged it was bad.
Hamilton is a phenomenon and all accounts I’ve read genius. If you have seen it and hated it you’re in the minority. But it too is only one musical. I watch a lot of theater and there’s some great plays out there.
Anyway, the arts may be changing with the cultural times but most are not ‘bad’ or declining. And one can still enjoy art made today that does not flow with the times.
The void created by absence of virtue is filled by profanity and demonization. 12 years ago I noticed a new level of aggressively abusive profanity on the left during Obama’s run in the ’08 primaries. It was first deployed against Hillary supporters, then McCain. The phenomena was closely associated with a racialist view of reality, which in practice boils down to a slightly nuanced version of hardcore racism. Obama did not instigate the movement, but, per his pattern of ‘leading from behind’, happily luxuriated in its favor.
Like racists of old, ‘critical race theorists’ utilize simplistic historical fictions to demonize a targeted racial group. Demonizing gins up emotional animus, and the movement is off to the races in campaigns of destruction and all manner of persecution.
Racists always seem to think they are unique in history, but their movements are unimaginative retreads. The higher challenge would be to dump the worthless and debunked concept of race altogether, but addiction to it appears impossible for them to break.
Montage:
It’s not a question of one work here and one work there. The arts as a whole are in a state of tremendous across-the-board decline. You are free to differ, of course. But I’m a person steeped in the arts from earliest childhood – theater, dance, music, art, literature, movies – and have loved the arts since earliest childhood, and that’s what I see.
And I have watched each of those arts sink down down down.
I’ve taken a lot of time on this blog writing about the decline in ballet, an art I know very well. Technically more and more perfect, artistically more and more cold and soulless. Pop music? Not just rap, but overall decline into extreme vulgarity and emptiness (not entirely, of course, but in large part). Art exhibits are now political; there is very little there of aesthetic value, not to mention beauty. It is enough to make you weep. Novels are boring and too long, about empty people leading empty lives for the most part. Poetry – another favorite of mine in the past – abominable, terrible.
As for “Piss Christ” – well, it makes me think of an art exhibit I described in this post that was quite literally nauseating. Take a look there, and also here.
The arts as a whole are in a state of tremendous across-the-board decline.
It’s the same phenomenon–lack of virtue, the decline of religion, etc. The goal of art used to be to elevate and enlighten, bring one closer to God–not necessarily explicitly, but through its impact on the emotions and intellect. Now so much of it is just the equivalent of tossing Molotov cocktails at police cars.
Montage:
The point about Hamilton is that it is being canceled by the ‘Art Culture.’ The current progressive psychosis dominates art and culture, or haven’t you noticed? All they see is racism, social justice, and power.
Neo put her finger on the decline in the arts — and, I think, in the national character and virtue — with the word “soulless.” If there is nothing greater than ourselves to hope for, nothing transcendent to believe in, nothing sublime to imagine — how can art inspire or enlighten? If there’s nothing greater than the self, and whatever power and material wealth the self can aggrandize, then what can a poet say that matters to anyone? What is a dance or a painting or a jazz composition going to reveal? Why bother to lead a virtuous life?
We hollowed the souls out of ourselves when we lost the capacity and imagination for faith, and left ourselves with nothing to make art — or a nation — out of.
Fractal Rabbit–
The full quote, components of which first came to light in the 1940s, according to WIKI, has been floating around for a long time—and is attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813)
“who was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh” says WIKI.
However, looking around the Internet, it appears no one has apparently been able to cite a specific source among Tytler’s lectures and writings for this particular quote.
Whatever it’s source, though, this observation–flawed in some of its parts as it is–does seem to have a ring of truth about it.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
P.S. Benjamin Franklin is also said to have made a similar observation i.e.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”
But again, I have seen no specific citation to an actual source for this quote from among Franklin’s works.
Snow on Pine,
Thank you. The Tytler reference sounds familiar. And I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that someone like Ben Franklin would get attributions to something like that either, true or not.
It seems to me that some of the major blame for how we came to have lost the “virtues,” behaviors, and attitudes we need to keep our Republic viable can be laid at how we have transformed from a rural agricultural society to a technological one, and the changes in living conditions, mind-set, world view, and value system that has brought about.
Our Founders were the product of that rural agricultural society and of the farmer mentality which, it seems to me, produces people who are tough, hard-working, observant, cautious, persistent, realistic, and frugal individuals who plan ahead, people who understood and practiced “delayed gratification.”
That rural agricultural society was also characterized by multi-generational families and small, often isolated tight-knit communities, and you didn’t travel far from home.
You took care of “family,” you usually knew all of your nearby neighbors, which is why your “word” and your “reputation” were so important, and why shaming and shunning worked so well.
Your chances of survival in a wild and dangerous frontier society were markedly reduced if no one would deal with you, trade with you, or offer you help.
Then, of course, there was the omnipresent Christian religion, which acted as a bonding force, a major creator of social cohesion, and a common set of values and expectations.
All that has dissipated in our current society, where economic developments and advances in transportation and communications have resulted in families that are fragmented, spread out, in big cities where anonymity rules, you probably don’t even know your next door neighbor’s name and have no real relationship with him, and the old farming way of life (I’ve read we have gone from being more than 90% farmers at the time of our founding to being less than 3% farmers today) and that farmer ethos have all but disappeared.
Oy Vey!
Out of 51 comments so far, only a handful can bring themselves to even mention religious morals – which is obviously what the founders meant when they used the word “virtue” in most of those quotes.
Instead we have namby-pamby talk about civitas and agrarian societies. Because left-leaning tastemakers have striven our entire lives to infuse society with the vague notion that religion is vulgar, icky, not cool.
And this from ostensible conservatives!
Let’s try it this way:
Despite the technical need to separate Church and state, post-Enlightenment democracy depends on Judeo-Christian concepts of man and G-d:
Monotheism + man in G-d’s image = the basis for “secular” notions of fundamental equality and brotherhood.
Add in Free Will and you get universal suffrage, consent of the governed, limitation of government in favor of individual liberty – all of it balanced by individual responsibility.
———————–
That is what the Founders meant by “a virtuous nation” – only people who explain themselves in these terms can maintain a democracy. Because this is the part beyond the reach of the law, upon which the law rests in this Republic.
It was “self evident” to them that all are created equal, endowed by their Creator…. in a generation when Harvard was still a Christian seminary.
The Left knew exactly what they were doing when they targeted religious community and family – the 2 major venues by which this unlegistatable identity is transferred.
The intelligent but compliant folks we see are compliant because they have nothing to hold on to – no other anchor for their self-identity besides the media muckstream.
Cont’d–Factor in the relentless, several generation’s long, all spectrum, social, cultural, and political undermining, subversion, disruption, destruction, sabotage, and parasitization that has been the direct result of the Left’s Gramscian “Long March Through the Institutions/Culture,” and its quite clear why we are in the dire situation we are in today.
Bottom line, it’s our fault, but we’ve sure had a lot of help along the way.
I’m slightly optimistic. [It’s probably genetics and a sick brain.] But look at web sites like this. Everyone here is a thoughtful decent person. Well, almost? The ideas expressed here are helping people, and our culture has to be incrementally creeping ahead because of this interaction. And there are lots of nodes on the Net that are fine and elevating. One can guess that the reason the world feels psychotic now is because the bad guys sense that their game is up and they are losing. They are becoming frantic. People are deciphering critical theory and postmodernism and they don’t like it. Progressive demeanor is a desperate screeching whine because they know—that we know…what they are trying to do and we are disgusted. Look at that Congressional meeting with Barr yesterday. Those are the behaviors of children who sense they are losing a game. Look at everlasting anti-Trump only CNN. Look at the academy and it’s snowflakes. These tantrums are stigmata of minds that aren’t coping well. They are not signs of victory or winning.
I think this statement by JackWayne is incontrovertible:
“If a constitution needs a virtuous people to operate correctly, then no constitution will ever be successful”
It doesn’t necessarily follow that today’s times are the fault of the Constitution, of course.
We may need to go further into Hard Times before people stand up and make things better. Think of the elder generation going through the Great Depression, World War II, then returning to build a prosperous and united America. They didn’t start off well-educated or necessarily virtuous or wise. But in the end they worked their tails off and achieved a lot. The “right stuff” was latent in them, just as it is in us.
We are ALL to blame, in my view, for not fighting back more when it was easier. Too much time watching football on the couch or gossiping over lunch when we should have been attending PTA meetings and poring over the contents of our kids’ textbooks.
And no Constitution is perfect. We may learn that ours has obsolesced. It’s possible, of course. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with our Constitution. We just need more citizens to pay attention, be willing to engage and deepen their personal wisdom.
We have to throw off the idea that “well, someone ELSE is going to handle this right? Right? Right?”
Neo…”Art exhibits are now political; there is very little there of aesthetic value, not to mention beauty.”
I have noticed that in all the discussion about various statues, there has been NO discussion of their artistic merits or lack thereof.
For a democracy (small-d) to thrive, it depends on an informed and engaged electorate.
Unfortunately, these days we have neither. We’re hanging by a thread, which is the few of us who are.
“Informed” comes from two directions: public media, and self-directed search for answers. The Media have long ago dropped the pretense of sharing fact. They’ve become Purveyors of the Narrative. Our efforts at looking for answers gets stifled right away, in schools. In case that isn’t enough, it’s perfected in colleges.
There may be hope yet – but I’m worried.
David Foster:
Not to quibble (too much) but the statue of V. I. Lenin that was brought to the Freemont neighborhood of Seattle in the 1990’s from a formerly Soviet puppet state was rescued from destruction because of it’s “artistic merit.” It is still there and still “valued” for it’s artistic significance (LOL).
On the Freemont Lenin statue from Wickedmedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin_(Seattle)
It is a privately owned hunk of bronze on private property so that makes it all good, onward progressives for justice!
…many modern descendants of Robespierre and the Jacobins who imagine themselves possessed of a superior progressive morality (as in today’s SJW/Antifa/BLM obsession with “woke” moralizing regarding diversity, multiculturalism, identity politics, anti-fascism, anti-racism, etc) …
————————————————-
Also called ‘self-licensing’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing
Ben David:
I mentioned the decline of religion in my post.
Nowdays conservatism is impotent, and is doomed to be so. There is pretty nothing left to conserve, so to restore normalcy it is simply not enough to be a conservative: one need to be a true retrograde, a counter-revolutionary, and a rather radical in that. To acheive now true conservative values the whole edifice of cultural establishment must be dismantled and overthrown, and it is possible only by using executive powers more wide than Constitution allows. To restore liberty, we now need an authoritarian government, probably, even a dictatorship. As an example, see Chile. We need an American version of Pinochet to stop Leftists when they were at the brink of seizing power completely and irreversibly. If it sounds like “to liberate a village we need first to destroy it” – sometimes this is true.
Neo,
You like an occasional break. I stumbled across this guy quite some time ago with regard to a video he did on why pop music is so crushingly bad, and …. stupid.
Purely by accident I now see this one done on cinema. Although he self-deprecatingly adverts to being part of a generation currently being supplanted, it’s clear he is a couple “generations” – as generations (or emotional cohorts) are figured nowadays – younger than most commenting here.
Might cheer you up to see the level of critical thinking manifested by one of his relative youth in cultural matters not directly related to politics.
“The Truth Why Most Modern Movies Are Terrible”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI9RSlHqu-w
It’s probably a truism that humans should never join movements that lack humor or beauty or love. Our DNA must have these fine emergent qualities within else we would not be so successfully social. Thus a movement totally absent these is missing some truth.
“The arts as a whole are in a state of tremendous across-the-board decline.” – Neo
I was looking for a get-well card yesterday (for the first of my personal friends to go into hospital with Covid), and noticed (not for the first time) the vulgarity, and sometimes even obscenity, on greeting cards displayed in public for children to see — I can’t even imagine buying one of them for anyone I know, but obviously a lot of people do.
What kind of value system does that kind of commercial enterprise presuppose?
(And I won’t even apologize if that hurts the feelings of anyone here who likes those cards; you can’t complain about the decline of culture if that only includes everyone’s taste but yours.)
Pingback:Strange Daze
Yeah, it’s fun to read vdl. 🙂 🙂