Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn en Buenos Aires ...

Conferencia

Martes 17 marzo - 18:30

Universidad Austral - Cerrito 1250 - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Inscripciones:

https://institutoacton.org/event/solzhenitsyn-y-la-revolucion/

The willingness to suffer for the truth is at the core of the final message

Among The National Conservatives

ROD DREHER
FEBRUARY 4, 2020

I thought I would report a lot of big political ideas from the big National Conservatism conference in Rome today. But not what we’re at the end of the day, that’s not what sticks out in my mind.

There were some big ideas there. I really liked the speech that Marion Maréchal gave, though my European (especially French) conservative friends here were cooler on it than I was. This is because the sort of integral conservative points she made are fairly normal in continental Catholic conservative circles, though still pretty radical by American standards. For example, she talked about the importance of protecting the environment, and agriculture, and human dignity by opposing transhumanism, etc. She said all this at her CPAC speech last year, I was reminded, so it didn’t make as big a splash with those who were already familiar with these ideas. Still, I thought she was marvelous. Maybe it’s because this is the only time I’ve heard an actual conservative politician advocate the kinds of traditionalist things that I talked about in my 2006 book Crunchy Cons.

Viktor Orban was great, as usual, and about a thousand times smarter and shrewder than anybody else. The difference between the actually existing Orban and the Orban presented in the Western media is really remarkable. Douglas Murray is as lovely a speaker as he is a writer. He’s a gentle man, so much so that you would never guess how completely brave he is. He really is one of the most courageous men in British public life, but to spend time with him, you think he’s just this kind, friendly guy.

That was a sign for me about the meaning of this conference. For me, by far the most interesting part of the day was what I learned from conversations among people attending this meeting. I met men and women from all over Europe. Everybody had a story. I met Mattias Karlsson, a leading politician in the Swedish Democrats party — the so-called “far right.” I didn’t know who I was talking to at first when we met at the bar. He told me he was from Sweden, and a politician. One reason he got involved in politics was because he was sick and tired of hearing stories about women in his life being raped by immigrants — and this being denied by official Swedish culture, because the facts were politically incorrect. When he sat on a panel at the conference, Karlsson spoke briefly about how he loved “the beauty of old, diverse institutions, for me, that is Europe.” And: “Without pride, we cannot restore anything.” He was talking about simple love of Swedish things, the things that Swedes have built over the centuries. He was talking about a plain love of Home, and a desire to defend it.

Here’s the thing: there was nothing angry or cruel about Mattias Karlsson and the things he said. It was normal. This is how the Left is today: they pathologize and demonize normal things like loving your own home, and the ways of your people. Before I knew who Mattias Karlsson was, I thought, he sounds like the kind of decent guys I grew up with.

I met a lot of people like that today. In fact, I wish people had talked more about this kind of thing than about sovereignty, which was by far the dominant topic in all the panels and speeches. After all these private conversations, I thought about how weird it is that all these people — Italians, Croats, Swedes, Germans, English, and so on — have been deemed as dangerous far-right weirdos by the media, often simply because they love their homes, and do not understand why they must hate themselves and their cultural inheritance to prove their virtue.

I heard stories today that would shake most of you up. I can’t give details, because they were said in confidence, but look, I can tell you that I spoke to people who are living with, or who have lived with, astonishing persecution from the Left in their home countries. One young man told a story about how he intervened in a particular case to tell a foreign person that what they were doing in that moment was against the rules of the place where they were. It turns out that the foreigner, an ethnic minority, was the son of a wealthy, powerful dignitary back home, and accused the young man (white) of racism. The white man cleared his name, but not after undergoing two investigations, including one by the local police, on a hate crimes accusation. This, simply for saying, “I’m sorry sir, but you can’t do that here.”

This really resonated with me. It reminded me of stories I heard from people who had lived through communism. They had talked about how civil society was not possible, because you lived in total fear of other people. You never knew who you could trust, and who might report you to the police on the basis of a single comment.

Someone who wasn’t here, but whose story totally fit in with these narratives, is this Finnish politician:

https://twitter.com/PaiviRasanen/status/1224757614669705216

This is persecution, straight up. A man I spoke with this evening told a story about how the tax authorities in his country moved against his political organization based on information that a leftist sympathizer within the government leaked. The man’s organization prevailed in court, but their defense cost them three times what they won in damages. These kinds of things are happening all over.

Today a British friend at the conference whispered to me, as a warning, “There’s a Guardian reporter going around trying to get people to say outrageously right-wing things.” I saw the reporter behind him. I know better than to speak to a Guardian reporter, but I appreciated the heads-up. Here’s the insane story that the Guardian printed about the conference today. I heard everything this MEP said, and it was perfectly normal. This is a vicious case of left-wing smearing by association. Marion Maréchal’s grandfather is Jean-Marie Le Pen! Daniel Kawczynski is appearing under the same roof as Viktor Orban, who is a Bad Person! I mean, honestly, that’s all these nitwits have. When I tell you that you cannot trust a thing that the Western media say about the “far right,” I’m talking from personal experience. The Left operates on shaming people. We know this. There is real power in refusing to be shamed. People stood up and cheered for Viktor Orban today, and I have to think that is in part because he does not care what the respectable European establishment thinks. He just keeps going.

Walking back to my hotel from today’s events, I was thinking about the meaning of loyalty. That is the overall impression I got from today: that the people in that hotel ballroom were a fairly diverse lot, and some of them were contradictory, some were eccentric, and some were maybe even sort of a mess. But I tell you, it was a coalition of the normal. A Brit told me that he was standing in a big crowd in London on Brexit night, amid a throng singing, “God Save The Queen” and “Rule, Britannia!”, and how great it was to feel that it was okay to love his country, and to be proud of it.

Why is this wrong?

It’s not wrong. It’s not wrong at all. I’m leaving Rome proud to know these people and their stories. I am sure that somewhere in that crowd today, there were unsavory people. But all the people I talked to were just more or less ordinary people who realized that there was nothing wrong with them at all, no matter what the establishments in their own countries say. Yes, there were big ideas talked about on the stage today, but for me, the sense of solidarity gained from meeting and talking with people face to face, and hearing, in one form or another, “Oh, it happened to you too, did it?” — that is priceless.

I gave the keynote address, which I’ve pasted in below. I’ve got to tell you something neat that happened as I stood in the wings waiting to be introduced. A Croatian-American came over and said hi, reminding me that we had met at a Notre Dame conference a couple of years earlier. He knew that I was going to talk about what we have to learn from people who had lived under communism. He said that his father had escaped communist Yugoslavia with the help of a Catholic priest. He started talking about this priest, who his family knew and loved until the old priest died, and I thought, “Surely he doesn’t mean Father Kolakovic.”

The man said, “The priest’s name was Father Tomislav Poglajen, but he changed his name to Kolakovic.”

I told the man that I knew all about him, and that I dedicate my forthcoming book to Father Tomislav Kolakovic, the man who made the Slovak Catholic resistance possible. “I’m about to give a speech where I talk about him!” I said.

Two minutes later, I walked up onto the stage to give the speech below. I should tell you that the Croatian man put me in touch via e-mail with his 92 year old dad, who lives in America, and the father and I will be talking next week about this hidden hero of the anti-communist resistance.

That seemed providential. Here’s my speech. It seems sketchy to me, but I was only given 20 minutes to talk. I was happy to give notice to James Poulos’s Pink Police State coinage, which is exactly right:

Five years ago, I received a phone call from an American physician, who was rather alarmed. He told me that his mother emigrated to America from Czechoslovakia. When she was young, she served six years as a political prisoner because she was part of the underground Catholic resistance to communism. Now, as an old lady living with her son and his wife, she said to her son: “The things I am seeing in this country today remind me of when communism came to my homeland.” 

She was talking about the growing intolerance, even hysteria, from the Left against anything that conflicts with their ideology. I knew that political correctness was a big problem, but this sounded exaggerated to me. Maybe she is just a frightened old woman, I thought. 

But over the next few years, I began talking to immigrants from the Soviet bloc – men and women who once lived with communism, but who escaped to the West. I would ask them: “What are you seeing today? Is this old Czech woman correct?” 

Over and over, I heard the same thing: YES! It really is happening here. We can feel it in our bones. Almost all of them are quite frustrated and angry that no American believes them. 

I understand the skepticism. I was skeptical too when the doctor first called me. Today, though, after interviewing a number of these people, and spending much of the last year traveling throughout the former communist countries of the East to interview former dissidents and political prisoners, I am convinced that they are right. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said:
“There always is this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the same here; such things are impossible.’ Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.’” 

It is not only possible here in the liberal democratic West, but it’s taking form right now. People who lived through communist totalitarianism are trying to sound the alarm. They are trying to wake the rest of us up before it is too late. As Marek Benda, a Czech politician who comes from a dissident family told me last year in Prague: “The fight for freedom is always with us. Only one generation divides us from tyranny.” 

The fight against the new totalitarianism is the fight of our generation. It is here. It is now. And it cannot be avoided.
Before we go further this morning, let’s define our term. What is totalitarianism? 

In her classic 1951 study “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt examined both the Nazi and communist movements in an attempt to discern why they appealed to the masses. Totalitarianism makes every aspect of life political. It not only seeks obedience from the people, but it attempts to force everyone to welcome their own oppression. We have to internalize the ruling ideology, and make it our own. As George Orwell put it, the goal is for everyone to learn to love Big Brother. 

Many of the conditions that Arendt saw as the seedbed of totalitarianism are present today, in our decaying liberal democracies. Here is a short list of Arendt’s pre-totalitarian signs that we see very strongly in our society: 

• Widespread loneliness and social atomization• Loss of faith in institutions and hierarchies• A desire to transgress• A rise in the power of ideological thinking• The increased use of propaganda• The value of loyalty – to a person or to an ideology – more than expertise• The politicization of everything 

As I see it, we have two basic things that distinguish us from pre-communist Russia and pre-Nazi Germany 

First, the all-consuming ideology among us is not racist nationalism or Marxism-Leninism, but rather a globalist, victim-focused identity politics, often called “social justice.” The revolutionary class is not the German volk or the international proletariat, but the “marginalized” and “oppressed” – the Sacred Victim. Like Bolshevism, social justice is a utopian political cult. It sounds like a political platform, or maybe a therapeutic management system, but the best way to understand it is as a fanatical religion. 

Second, the technological environment today is vastly different from a hundred years ago, when the twentieth century’s totalitarianisms emerged. The most important difference is that we now render all human life and experience as digital data that is storable, searchable, and that can be exploited by surveillance states and the surveillance capitalists of Google, Amazon, and others. The People’s Republic of China, for example, now has the capabilities and the will to surveil and to control its own people to a degree of which that Mao, Stalin, and totalitarian tyrants of the twentieth century could only have dreamed. 

Here’s why many of us have been very slow to appreciate the totalitarian nature of contemporary liberalism. It’s because the emerging totalitarianism is not going to be a version of the grim scenario imagined by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Rather, it is going to be more like the alternative dystopia imagined by Aldous Huxley in “Brave New World.” Orwell imagined a world much like Stalin’s Russia, where the state controlled society by fear, pain, and terror. By contrast, Huxley imagined a world where the state controlled the masses through managing pleasure and comfort. 

Western people will surrender political power to a state, and to authorities, who promise to protect their therapeutic desires – especially maximizing sexual freedom. It will do this through some version of China’s social credit system, where one’s freedom in society is decided by an algorithm that rewards or punishes one based on one’s beliefs, one’s friends, and so forth. As in “Brave New World,” the most important values will be “safety” and “well being.” If religious and political liberties threaten either, then they will have to be eliminated. This is already happening within universities and other institutions that, in a very Soviet way, are stigmatizing dissent as pathological. 

This is what the American social critic James Poulos calls the “Pink Police State.” The Pink Police State – which entails the government, academic and cultural institutions, as well as large corporations — is the form that the new totalitarianism is taking. 

So, how do we resist? The good news is that there are people who retain living memory of communist totalitarianism. They have seen this kind of thing before. They are warning the rest of us that we are walking into a trap. We need to hear them. 

You will hear today speeches and comments by my colleagues who will speak of the resistance in political terms. This is important. But let us begin by talking about the cultural resistance, without which political resistance cannot succeed. 

First, we have to reclaim and defend cultural memory. 

When the Nazis invaded Poland, their ultimate plans were not simply to rule Poland, but to destroy the Polish nation. The Germans sought to do this the way all totalitarians do: by controlling the cultural memory of the Polish people. They had to make the Poles forget their history, and forget their religion. 

A young Polish actor, Karol Wojtyla, committed himself to the patriotic resistance. But he didn’t pick up a gun! He and his theater friends wrote and performed underground plays on religious and historical themes. These theatrical events happened in secret. If the Gestapo had discovered them, all the actors and all the audience would have been shot. Wojtyla and the theater company literally put their lives on the line to keep alive the cultural memory of their nation. 

We have to do the same in our time. The globalists try to make the nations ashamed of their heritage, in the same way the communists did to the masses they wished to control. We have to refuse this! We do not have to believe in a triumphalist myth of a golden age. We only have to look around us with eyes of gratitude for the good and beautiful things that our ancestors have given to us – and defend them as our own. 

I should add that the ideology of consumer capitalism also tries to disconnect us from our past. If we are nothing but individuals defined by our desires, it’s easier to sell us things. We of the Resistance must declare that some things are not for sale! As John Paul the Second said, man is not made for the market; the market is made for man. 

Second, we must establish and defend solidarity. I am not talking specifically about the Polish trade union. I am talking about something more intimate: the bonds among small groups of people.
In every postcommunist country I visited, I heard the same thing from former dissidents: that the strong bonds of solidarity with others gave them the courage to fight back. Last year, I stood in a secret underground room in Bratislava, where Catholic samizdat was printed for a decade. My guide was Jan Simulcik, a historian who, in the 1980s, was part of the underground who distributed that samizdat. He told me that like everybody else in the movement, he was afraid – but the camaraderie of his friends gave him the courage to keep going. 

Dr. Vaclav Benda, a hero of the Czech resistance, worked to bring Czech people together, face to face, to remind them that they were actually a people. The state demoralized the masses by making them feel isolated and alone. As Dr Benda saw, the simple act of rebuilding social solidarity was counterrevolutionary. In our time, the state doesn’t force us to choose loneliness and isolation behind a glowing screen; we do it to ourselves. We can fight back by rebuilding the bonds of community in practical ways. 

Third, we must strengthen our religion. I don’t simply mean that we must go to church more. Rather, we have to be far more radical than that. In my book “The Benedict Option,” I write about St. Benedict of Nursia, the 6th century Christian who responded to the collapse of the Roman imperial order by creating a parallel society dedicated to disciplined prayer and service to God. Over the next few centuries, the Benedictine monks played an absolutely key role in civilizing barbarian Europe. It began, though, with St. Benedict developing a Christian way of life that was resilient in the face of the extraordinary stresses of the early medieval period. 

This past Sunday I made a pilgrimage to the cave in Subiaco where Benedict lived alone for three years as a hermit, praying and fasting and seeking the will of God. From that little hole in the side of a lonely mountain grew a seed of faith that, over the next centuries, would rebuild Western civilization. If you feel powerless and despairing, go to Subiaco and see what God can do with a single man who puts the search for Him above everything else. 

We now live in a post-Christian civilization. Right now, while there is time, Christians at the local level must commit themselves to creating new ways of living out old truths. Every one of the anti-communist dissidents I interviewed were strongly believing Christians. Pawel Skibinski, a biographer of John Paul the Second, told me that humanity is like a kite. As long as it is connected to the earth by a string, it can fly very high. But if the line is cut, the kite falls to the ground. 

We are the kite. The line is our connection to God. Without the God of the Bible, we will not be able to resist both the coming totalitarianism, or the parallel temptation to embrace evil forms of resistance. 

Here’s what I mean. In 1939, the English poet W.H. Auden was living in Manhattan. He went to see a movie in a part of the city where lots of German immigrants lived. As a newsreel came on describing the Nazi invasion of Poland, German-speaking members of the audience leaped to their feet and began shouting, “Kill them! Kill them!”
Auden was deeply shocked by the nakedness of the evil displayed by the Nazi sympathizers. And he understood that mere humanism would not be enough to defeat it. After this dark epiphany, Auden returned to the church. 

Finally, we must do the must counterrevolutionary thing of all: embrace the value of suffering. This strikes at the heart of the Pink Police State and its therapeutic totalitarianism. 

If you are not willing to suffer the loss of social status; if you are not willing to suffer the loss of a job; if you are not willing to suffer the loss of freedom – and, if it comes to it, even your life – for the sake of the truth, then you have already surrendered to evil. This is the lesson we learn from the anti-communist resistance. The essence of their Christian hope was that suffering has ultimate meaning, if it is joined to the transformative passion of Jesus Christ. 

The willingness to suffer for the truth is at the core of the final message Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave to the Russian people on the eve of his 1974 exile, in an essay titled, “Live Not By Lies!” A few years, later, the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel urged his readers to “live in truth.” Havel told a fable about a greengrocer who has the sign “Workers Of The World, Unite!” in his shop window – not because he believes the slogan, but because he doesn’t want trouble.
One day he removes the sign from his window because he wishes to live in truth. And he will suffer for it, says Havel. He might lose his business. He will not be able to travel. His children might not get into universities. The pain will be real. But his act will have ultimate value. The humble greengrocer will have shown that it is possible to refuse to conform to the official lies. It is possible to live in truth. 

The life of Vaclav Havel, the first president of a free Czechoslovakia, and the other anti-communist dissidents shows that those who are willing to suffer for the truth might, in the end, triumph. Very few dissidents expected communism to end in their lifetime. They resisted communism because that was the right thing to do. What about us? What will we do in our time and place? 

The Pink Police State is kindlier than its totalitarian predecessors, but in its ideology of globalist homogenization and technological reach, it is no less a threat to the existence of religion, of families, of tradition, and of peoples. Yes, we must fight it politically when we can, but we must also fight it inside ourselves. 

I want to close by telling you about a hidden hero who deserves to be rediscovered. In 1943, a Croatian Jesuit named Father Tomislav Poglajen was organizing Catholic anti-Nazi resistance in his home country. When he learned that the Gestapo was going to arrest him, the priest fled to his mother’s country, Czechslovakia. He adapted his mother’s last name, Kolakovic, and began to organize Catholic anti-communist resistance. 

Why anti-communist resistance? Father Kolakovic knew that the Germans were going to lose the war. But as he told the young Slovak Catholics who gathered around him, communism would ultimately come to power in their land. And that, he prophesied, would mean horrible persecution for the Church. 

Father Kolakovic did not sit around waiting for it to happen. Instead, he organized cells around the country – groups of young Catholics who gathered for prayer, Bible study, and lectures. They also learned the arts of resistance – for example, how to survive an interrogation. They established resistance networks across the Slovak region. When the communist dictatorship installed itself in 1948, Father Kolakovic’s network was ready. It became the backbone of the underground church, which was the chief source of Slovak anticommunist resistance. 

Today we await a new Father Tomislav Kolakovic – a visionary who can read the signs of the times, and who builds the ways of life, and the social networks, capable of resisting the coming evil. 

My friends, one way to define hope is the marriage of MEMORY with DESIRE. If we can remember what we once had, and desire to have it again, we have something to hope for. There is no better place than Rome to ponder the cultural memory of our common civilization. From St. Benedict’s cave in Subiaco, to Wojtyla’s hidden theater under occupation, to the underground samizdat room in Bratislava – these are all part of our cultural memory. Let these memories shape our desires – for God, for truth, for liberty, and for home — and may they give birth to the joy of resistance.

Source: www.theamericanconservative.com

Tout le mal qui a été commis au XXe siècle est possible aujourd’hui et partout

Convention National Conservatism

le 4 février 2020 à Rome

Discours de Rod Dreher

Il y a cinq ans, j’ai reçu un appel d’un médecin américain. Il semblait très inquiet. Il m’a dit que sa mère avait émigré de Tchécoslovaquie en Amérique. Quand elle était jeune, elle a fait six ans de prison politique, parce qu’elle faisait partie d’un réseau catholique clandestin de résistance au communisme. La vieille dame, qui vit aujourd’hui avec son fils et sa belle-fille, a dit à son fils : « Les choses que je vois dans ce pays aujourd’hui me rappellent l’époque où le communisme a émergé dans notre patrie. »

Elle parlait de l’intolérance croissante, voire de l’hystérie, de la gauche contre tout ce qui est en contredit leur idéologie. Je savais que le politiquement correct constituait un vrai problème, mais la comparaison me semblait exagéré. Ce n’était qu’une vieille dame effrayée, me suis-je dit.

Mais au cours des années suivantes, j’ai rencontré davantage d’immigrants du bloc soviétique – des hommes et des femmes qui vivaient autrefois sous le communisme, mais qui ont fui vers l’Ouest. Je leur demandais à chaque fois : « Comment appréhendez-vous la situation actuelle ? Est-ce que cette vieille femme tchèque avait raison ? »

À maintes reprises, j’ai entendu la même chose : « OUI ! C’est vraiment en train de se passer, ici, sous nos yeux. Nous le sentons dans notre chair ». Le fait qu’aucun Américain ne les croit les met hors d’eux.

Je comprends pourtant le scepticisme auquel ils sont confrontés. J’étais sceptique aussi quand le médecin m’a appelé pour la première fois. Aujourd’hui, cependant, après avoir interviewé un certain nombre de ces personnes et avoir passé une grande partie de l’année dernière à voyager dans les anciens pays communistes de l’Europe de l’Est pour interviewer des anciens dissidents et des prisonniers politiques, je suis convaincu qu’ils ont raison. Comment ne pas songe à ce que disait Alexandre Soljenitsyne :

« On rencontre souvent ce préjugé tenace : ce ne serait pas pareil ici ; de telles choses seraient impossibles. Hélas, c’est tout le contraire : tout le mal qui a été commis au XXe siècle est possible aujourd’hui et partout. ».

Cela n’est pas seulement possible ici, dans l’Occident libéral et démocratique. Le mal prend forme en ce moment même. Les gens qui ont vécu le totalitarisme communiste essaient de tirer la sonnette d’alarme. Ils essaient de réveiller le reste d’entre nous avant qu’il ne soit trop tard. L’an dernier à Prague, Marek Benda, un homme politique tchèque issu d’une famille dissidente, me disait : « La lutte pour la liberté est toujours nôtre. Une seule génération nous sépare de la tyrannie ».

Lutter contre le nouveau totalitarisme qui vient

La lutte contre ce nouveau totalitarisme est le combat de notre génération. Ce combat a lieu ici et maintenant. Et il ne peut être évité.

Mais avant d’aller plus loin ce matin, définissons notre sujet. Qu’est-ce que le totalitarisme, au juste ?

Dans son célèbre ouvrage de 1951, Les origines du totalitarisme, Hannah Arendt a étudié les mouvements nazi et communiste afin de comprendre pourquoi ils attiraient autant les masses. Le totalitarisme englobe tous les aspects de la vie politique. Il ne cherche pas seulement à obtenir l’obéissance du peuple, il tente de forcer chacun à accepter l’oppression qu’il subit. On nous somme d’intérioriser l’idéologie dominante et de la faire nôtre. Comme l’a dit George Orwell, chacun doit apprendre à aimer Big Brother.

Nombre des conditions qu’Arendt considérait comme le terreau du totalitarisme sont présentes aujourd’hui dans nos démocraties libérales en déclin. Voici une courte liste de ces signes pré-totalitaires que nous pouvons observer aujourd’hui dans notre société :

– Une solitude généralisée et une atomisation sociale ;

– Une perte de confiance dans les institutions et les hiérarchies ;

– Un désir de transgression ;

– La montée en puissance des idéologies dans les mentalités collectives ;

– L’utilisation accrue de la propagande ;

– Le primat de la loyauté – envers une personne ou une idéologie – sur la connaissance objective ;

– La politisation de tous les sujets de société et des pans de l’existence.

Cependant, nous avons selon moi deux choses fondamentales qui nous distinguent de la Russie précommuniste et de l’Allemagne prénazie.

Premièrement, l’idéologie qui nous anime n’est pas le nationalisme raciste ou le marxisme-léninisme, mais plutôt une politique identitaire mondialiste et victimaire, celle du courant autoproclamé de la « justice sociale ». La classe révolutionnaire n’est pas levolk allemand ou le prolétariat international, mais les « marginalisés » et les « opprimés »., sacralisés derrière le statut indépassable de « victime ». Comme le bolchevisme, la justice sociale est un culte politique utopique. On peut lui trouver une ressemblance avec un programme politique, ou bien un système de thérapie managériale, mais la meilleure façon de le comprendre est de le considérer comme une religion séculière, un fanatisme séculier.

Deuxièmement, l’environnement technologique d’aujourd’hui est très différent de celui d’il y a cent ans, lorsque les totalitarismes du XXe siècle sont apparus. La différence la plus importante est qu’aujourd’hui toute la vie et l’expérience humaine se trouvent traduites sous forme de données numériques qui peuvent être stockées, analysées et exploitées par les États et les grandes compagnies comme Google, Amazon et autres. La République populaire de Chine, par exemple, a maintenant les capacités et la volonté de surveiller et de contrôler son propre peuple à un degré dont Mao, Staline et les tyrans totalitaires du XXe siècle ne pouvaient que rêver. Les moyens de l’État et du capitalisme s’hybrident pour donner naissance à une société de surveillance.

La dictature rose

Voici pourquoi beaucoup d’entre nous ont été très lents à apprécier la nature totalitaire du libéralisme contemporain. C’est parce que le totalitarisme émergent ne sera pas une version du sinistre scénario imaginé par George Orwell en 1984. Il ressemblera plutôt à la dystopie alternative imaginée par Aldous Huxley dans Le Meilleur des Mondes. Orwell a imaginé un monde semblable à la Russie de Staline, où l’État contrôle la société par la peur, la douleur et la terreur. En revanche, Huxley a imaginé un monde où l’État contrôle les masses en pourvoyant aux plaisirs et au confort de la population.

Les Occidentaux abandonneront renonceront au pouvoir politique au profit d’un État qui leur promettra de pourvoir à leurs désirs et leurs besoins thérapeutiques ; notamment en maximisant leur liberté sexuelle. Il pourra le faire par le biais d’une version alternative du système chinois de crédit social, où la liberté des citoyens est circonscrite par un algorithme qui récompense et punit les hommes en fonction de leurs croyances, de leurs fréquentations, etc.

Comme dans le Meilleur des Mondes, les valeurs les plus importantes seront la sécurité et le bien-être. Si les libertés religieuses et politiques menacent l’une ou l’autre, elles seront éliminées. C’est déjà le cas dans de nombreuses universités où, comme chez les soviétiques, tous ceux qui s’opposent à l’idéologie dominante sont considérés comme des déviants et des aliénés.

C’est ce que l’essayiste américain James Poulos appelle le « pink police state ». Cette dictature rose – qui implique autant le gouvernement, les institutions universitaires et culturelles que les grandes entreprises – est la forme que prend ce nouveau totalitarisme[2].

Comment lui résister ? Une bonne nouvelle pour ce qui nous concerne, c’est qu’il y a des gens qui conservent la mémoire vivante du totalitarisme communiste. Ils ont déjà vu ce genre de choses auparavant. Ils nous avertissent et nous mettent en garde contre le piège vers lequel nous nous dirigeons. Nous devons les écouter.

Vous entendrez aujourd’hui des discours et des débats qui parleront de la résistance en termes politiques. C’est important. Mais commençons par parler de la résistance culturelle, sans laquelle la résistance politique ne peut réussir.

Défendre notre culture

Nous devons d’abord recueillir et défendre notre mémoire commune et notre histoire.

Lorsque les nazis ont envahi la Pologne, leurs plans ultimes n’étaient pas simplement de gouverner la Pologne, mais de détruire la nation polonaise. Les Allemands ont cherché à le faire de la même manière que tous les totalitaires : en contrôlant la mémoire du peuple polonais. Ils devaient faire oublier aux Polonais leur histoire et leur religion.

Un jeune acteur polonais, Karol Wojtyla, s’était engagé dans la résistance patriotique. Mais il n’a pas pris une arme ! Avec ses amis du théâtre, il a écrit et joué des pièces de théâtre sur des thèmes religieux et historiques. Ces événements théâtraux se sont déroulés en secret. Si la Gestapo les avait découverts, tous les acteurs et tout le public auraient été abattus. Wojtyla et sa troupe ont littéralement mis leur vie en jeu pour maintenir vivante l’héritage culturel de leur nation.

Nous devons faire de même à notre époque. Les mondialistes essaient de faire en sorte que les nations aient honte de leur héritage, de la même manière que les communistes l’ont fait pour les masses qu’ils souhaitaient contrôler. Nous devons refuser cela ! Nous ne devons pas croire à ce mythe triomphaliste et présomptueux qui veut nous faire croire que nous vivons un âge d’or, une époque indépassable indépassable qui rendrait notre passé caduc. Au contraire, nous devons regarder ce qui se trouve autour de nous avec gratitude, et cultiver une vraie reconnaissance pour toutes les belles et bonnes choses que nos ancêtres nous ont transmises – et les défendre comme si elles nous appartenaient.

Je dois ajouter que l’idéologie de la société de consommation tente également de nous déconnecter de notre passé. Si nous ne sommes que des individus définis par nos désirs, il est plus facile de nous vendre des choses. Nous, hommes de la Résistance, nous devons déclarer que certaines choses ne sont pas à vendre ! Comme le disait Jean-Paul II, l’homme n’est pas fait pour le marché, mais le marché pour l’homme.

Renforcer nos liens de solidarité

Deuxièmement, nous devons établir et cultiver une réelle solidarité. Je ne fais pas seulement référence au célèbre syndicat polonais Solidarnosc. Je parle de quelque chose de plus intime : ces liens qui se nouent entre des petits groupes de personnes.

Dans chaque pays postcommuniste que j’ai visité, j’ai entendu la même chose de la part des anciens dissidents : les liens de solidarité noués avec les autres leur donnaient le courage de se battre. L’année dernière, j’étais dans une pièce secrète souterraine à Bratislava, où un samizdat catholique a été imprimé pendant une décennie. Mon guide était Jan Simulcik, un historien qui, dans les années 1980, faisait partie de l’organisation clandestine qui distribuait ce samizdat. Il m’a dit que, comme tous les autres membres du mouvement, il avait peur – mais que la profonde camaraderie qui le liait à ses amis lui avait donné le courage de continuer.

Le Dr Vaclav Benda, un héros de la résistance tchèque, a travaillé pour rassembler les Tchèques, et leur rappeler qu’ils formaient un peuple. L’État démoralisait les masses en faisant en sorte que les citoyens se sentent seuls et isolées. Comme le Dr Benda l’a vu, le simple fait de reconstruire une solidarité sociale était contre-révolutionnaire. À notre époque, l’État ne nous oblige pas à choisir la solitude et l’isolement derrière nos écrans ; nous le faisons nous-mêmes. Mais nous pouvons riposter en reconstruisant nos communautés de façon très pratique.

L’humanisme ne suffira pas

Troisièmement, nous devons réinvestir notre religion. Je ne veux pas simplement dire que nous devons aller plus souvent à l’église. Nous devons plutôt être beaucoup plus radicaux que cela. Dans Le pari bénédictin[3], j’ai raconté comment saint Benoît de Nursie, ce chrétien jeune chrétien vivant en Italie au VIe siècle, avait répondu à l’effondrement de l’ordre impérial romain en créant une société parallèle dédiée à la prière disciplinée et au service de Dieu. Au cours des siècles suivants, les moines bénédictins ont joué un rôle absolument essentiel dans la reconstruction de la civilisation alors que l’Europe était envahie par les barbares. Mais tout a commencé lorsque saint Benoît a développé un mode de vie véritablement chrétien, qui a pu résister aux tensions extraordinaires du début du Moyen Âge.

Dimanche dernier, j’ai fait un pèlerinage à la grotte de Subiaco où Benoît a vécu seul, en ermite. Pendant trois ans, il s’est adonné à la prière, au jeûne, afin de découvrir la volonté de Dieu. Depuis cette petite cavité dans le flanc d’une montagne esseulé, a poussé une graine de foi qui, au cours des siècles suivants, allait reconstruire toute la civilisation occidentale. Si vous vous sentez impuissant et désespéré, allez à Subiaco et voyez ce que Dieu peut faire avec un seul homme qui place son Amour au-dessus de tout.

Nous vivons aujourd’hui dans une civilisation post-chrétienne. Aussi, pendant qu’il est encore temps, les chrétiens doivent s’engager à créer de nouvelles façons de vivre ces vieilles vérités évangéliques. Tous les dissidents anticommunistes que j’ai interrogés étaient des chrétiens convaincus. Pawel Skibinski, un biographe de Jean-Paul II, m’a dit que l’humanité est « comme un cerf-volant ». Tant qu’il est relié à la terre par une corde, il peut voler très haut. Mais si la ligne est coupée, le cerf-volant tombe au sol.

Nous sommes le cerf-volant. Le fil est notre lien à Dieu. Sans le Dieu de la Bible, nous ne pourrons pas résister au totalitarisme à venir ni à la tentation de céder de mauvaises formes de résistance.

Voici une anecdote qui devrait éclairer mon propos. En 1939, le poète anglais W.H. Auden vivait à Manhattan. Il est allé voir un film dans un quartier de la ville où vivaient de nombreux immigrants allemands. Alors qu’un film d’actualité décrivait l’invasion de la Pologne par les nazis, les spectateurs germanophones se sont levés d’un bond, et ont commencé à crier : « Tuez-les ! Tuez-les ! »

Auden a été profondément choqué par la déconcertante brutalité de ce mal, exhibé sans fard par les sympathisants nazis. Et il a compris qu’un simple humanisme ne suffirait pas à le vaincre. Après cette sombre révélation, Auden est retourné à l’église.

La grande valeur de la souffrance

Enfin, nous devons faire ce qu’il y a de plus contre-révolutionnaire : accepter la valeur de la souffrance. C’est cela qui touche au cœur de l’emprise de cette dictature rose et son totalitarisme thérapeutique.

Si vous n’êtes pas prêt à subir la perte de votre statut social ; si vous n’êtes pas prêt à subir la perte d’un emploi ; si vous n’êtes pas prêt à sacrifier votre liberté – et même votre vie – pour le service de la vérité, alors vous avez déjà cédé au mal. C’est la leçon que nous tirons de la résistance anticommuniste. L’espérance qui animait ces chrétiens était que la souffrance a un sens ultime, si elle est jointe à la passion rédemptrice de Jésus-Christ.

La volonté de souffrir pour la vérité constitue le cœur du dernier message qu’Alexandre Soljenitsyne a adressé au peuple russe à la veille de son exil en 1974, dans un essai intitulé « Ne vivez pas dans le mensonge ! ». Quelques années plus tard, le dissident tchèque Vaclav Havel a exhorté ses lecteurs à « vivre dans la vérité ».

Havel raconte cette fable. Un marchand de fruits et légumes a suspendu une enseigne au-dessus de sa vitrine. Elle dit : « Prolétaires de tous pays, unissez-vous ! ». Le marchand n’adhère pas vraiment à ce mot d’ordre. C’est juste qu’il ne veut pas d’ennuis avec les autorités.

Mais un jour, il retire son enseigne parce qu’il veut vivre dans la vérité. Et il va souffrir à cause de cela, prévient Havel. Il risque de perdre son entreprise. D’être empêché de voyager. Ses enfants ne pourront peut-être pas entrer à l’université. Les épreuves et les peines seront réelles. Mais son acte aura une valeur ultime. L’humble marchand de fruits et légumes aura montré qu’il est possible de refuser de se soumettre aux mensonges officiels. Qu’il est possible de vivre dans la vérité.

La vie de Vaclav Havel, le premier président d’une Tchécoslovaquie libre, et des autres dissidents anticommunistes, montrent que ceux qui sont prêts à souffrir pour la vérité peuvent, en fin de compte, triompher. Très peu de dissidents s’attendaient à ce que le communisme prenne fin de leur vivant. Ils ont résisté au communisme parce que c’était ce à quoi les appelait leur devoir. Qu’en est-il de nous ? Que ferons-nous, à notre époque et à la place qui est la nôtre ?

La dictature rose est plus aimable que ses prédécesseurs totalitaires. Mais son idéologie mondialiste et techniciste n’en est pas moins une menace pour les religions, les familles, les traditions et les peuples. Oui, nous devons la combattre politiquement autant que nous le pouvons, mais nous devons aussi la combattre à l’intérieur de nous-mêmes.

L’exemple du Père Tomislav Poglajen

Je voudrais conclure en vous parlant d’un de ces grands « héros cachés » qui méritent d’être redécouverts. En 1943, un jésuite croate, le père Tomislav Poglajen, organisait la résistance catholique anti-nazie dans son pays d’origine. Lorsqu’il a appris que la Gestapo allait l’arrêter, ce prêtre s’est enfui dans le pays de sa mère, la Tchécoslovaquie. Il a repris le nom de jeune fille de sa mère, Kolakovic, et a commencé à organiser la résistance catholique anticommuniste.

Pourquoi était-il entré en résistance contre les communistes alors qu’il venait à peine de fuir les nazis ?Le père Kolakovic savait que les Allemands allaient perdre la guerre. Mais comme il l’a dit aux jeunes catholiques slovaques qui se sont rassemblés autour de lui, les communistes finiraient par prendre le pouvoir dans leur pays. Et cela, prophétisait-il, signifierait d’horribles persécutions pour l’Église.

Le père Kolakovic n’est pas resté assis, à attendre que les choses se produisent. Il a organisé des cellules clandestines dans tout le pays – des groupes de jeunes catholiques qui se réunissaient pour la prière, l’étude de la Bible et des conférences. Ils ont également appris fondamentaux de la résistance – par exemple, comment survivre à un interrogatoire. Ils ont établi des réseaux de résistance dans toute la région slovaque. Lorsque la dictature communiste s’est installée en 1948, le réseau du père Kolakovic était prêt. Il est devenu l’épine dorsale de l’Église clandestine, qui a été la principale source de la résistance anticommuniste slovaque.

Aujourd’hui, nous attendons un nouveau Père Tomislav Kolakovic – un visionnaire qui sait lire les signes du temps et qui saurait construire les modes de vie et des réseaux capables de résister au mal qui s’annonce.

Mes amis, je vous propose une façon de définir l’espoir : c’est le mariage de la MÉMOIRE avec le DÉSIR. Si nous pouvons nous souvenir de ce que nous avions autrefois, et que nous désirons l’avoir à nouveau, nous aurons quelque chose à espérer. Il n’y a pas de meilleur endroit que Rome pour réfléchir à l’héritage culturel de notre civilisation commune. De la grotte de Saint-Benoît à Subiaco, jusqu’au théâtre caché de Wojtyla sous l’occupation, en passant par la salle de samizdat souterraine de Bratislava – tout cela fait partie de notre mémoire. Que ces souvenirs façonnent nos désirs – pour Dieu, pour la vérité, pour la liberté et pour la paix de nos foyers – et qu’ils fassent naître une résistance joyeuse.



Traduction: Yriex Denis pour Conflits. Avec l’aimable autorisation de Rod Dreher. Les sous-titres sont de la rédaction.

Source: www.revueconflits.com

What we have already done wrong and why: are we to believe that Sodom is the answer?

Surviving Sodom

by Anthony Esolen

A contributing editor at Crisis, is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. Dr Esolen has authored several books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Regnery Press, 2008), Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010) and Reflections on the Christian Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2013).

Back in 2014, I wrote a book called Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity. I spoke not as an interpreter of Scripture or of the teachings of the Church. My arguments were based on observation, logic, history, anthropology, and culture. As far as I know, no Catholic on the left has taken them up. My arguments included analyses of what we have already done wrong and why, and predictions as to what must happen if we yield to the lures of Sodom.

Opponents at that time fell into two groups. By far the larger of the two predicted thatnothing would happen. The re-definition of marriage would only extend to a relatively small number of couples a good that was available to everyone else, and that would be no less available to them for being so extended. A development unprecedented in human history, involving any society’s most important institution, would have no effect upon the common good. The second group consisted of a small number of theorists and activists who had sought the change in order to destroy the institution, which they saw as atavistic, patriarchal, and resistant to the ambitions of progressive politicians who for our own good would oversee and direct all that we otherwise do, from the womb to the grave.

We should listen to what our opponents say when they are speaking to one another, rather than to their easy marks among journalists, television audiences, school teachers, little children reading cartoon propaganda, and women riffling through the pages of Cosmopolitan. When they tell us they want to destroy, we should take them at their word. Still, intentions do not imply results. So I would like to revisit my arguments, one by one, and show that observation, logic, history, anthropology, and culture were more reliable than indifference, sentimentality, and wishful hoping.

The first argument was thus: We must not give the sexual revolution the force of irrevocable law. Implicit in the argument were two claims, one as to historical fact (though anthropology and logic can show why we should have expected it), and one as to moral logic: the sexual revolution was a calamity; Sodom implies the sexual revolution.

First things first. The sexual revolution was a calamity—and the calamity continues. It is based upon a deliberate ignoring of what is real. We can see as much in a variety of ways. People talk as if sexual congress properly speaking were not essentially the child-making act. Indeed that is its sole biological purpose. The child is not an accident. It is what you get when everything is working as it should. Contraception is not medical, because it does not remediate. It shields against no communicable disease. It cures no disease already caught. It heals no limb. It restores no function to an organ. The problem is not that the organs are not working, but that they are, all too well. A healthy reproductive system is exactly what the contraceptors do not want, at least not in the instant.

But this severs the act from its fullest human meaning. It is no longer the act whereby every single person has been brought into the world. It is not what fathers and mothersdo but only what people with this bodily makeup do with people of that other bodily makeup, because of the powerful feelings the act expresses or arouses or imitates. The man’s seed is no longer seed, but lubricant. The father—the man who in the act stands as the exemplar of a father, even if the act happens not to result in a child—is not a father, but a tool-bearer. The mother—the woman who in the act stands as the exemplar of a mother—is not a mother, but another tool-bearer. The meaning of what they do is wholly subjective and therefore uncertain. If “love” is its motive, that love can shift or fade or vanish. But even if it does not, neither the man nor the woman will find it easy to place their actions in the context of grandparents and parents, sisters and brothers, or aunts and uncles and cousins. The act is existentially truncated.

Catholics of the left, above all, should understand how deeply antisocial the doctrine oflaissez-faire is when it is applied to what ought to be the cement of every social relation. The old understanding of sexual intercourse was relentlessly realistic. Every tenet of sexual morality derives from the reality of the act. But if we deny the reality, if we pretend that it is not what it is, then those other social relations will fray in turn. The force is reductive, and it bears upon us all. “Who does not know at least one family,” I wrote, “whose children require an essay merely to describe who under their roof is related to whom, and how?” Nor will they be able to tell how long they will remain related to one another by law, or how long they can expect even to know one another.

I have called the sexual revolution the Lonely Revolution. It must have been so. Its premises are those of individuals regarding their frictions with other individuals. It was to have delivered us peace and happiness and freedom from outdated moral laws. It delivered instead exactly what Shakespeare could have shown, as I wrote:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.

“Yes,” says the heretic, “but we are arguing for love, not lust.” Sorry, but the distinctions are by no means easy to draw in the heat of passion. We human beings have a remarkable capacity for self-deception. This is why clear laws are so necessary and so salutary. You can fool yourself into thinking you are in love, but you cannot fool yourself into thinking that you have been married. These clear laws channeled sexual desire into the fruitful haven of marriage. The absence of clarity leaves everyone uncertain, and, as marriage recedes, many a young person will not only take lust for love, but will take determination—the determination that we must feel something, anything, just to fend off the loneliness of this world—for lust.

Reader, when was the last time you saw, outside of the shelter of a Christian school, a boy and a girl holding hands as they walked across a field? Imagine asking that sentence in your grandparents’ time. People would have looked at you as if you had dropped down from Mars. It would have been like asking, When was the last time somebody had seen a dozen children playing pick-up ball in a back yard or a vacant lot. Yesterday? An hour ago? But those questions are related, are they not? The world in which fornication is the rule is a harsh and unforgiving one. The boy and girl—outside of that shelter—cannot hold hands without giving everyone the sign that they are in bed with one another, and so they do not do it. The boy does not ask the girl on a date, because that too implies the bed.

We have given them no healthy ways to grow in confidence with one another, no healthy ways of sexual innocence developing alongside sexual maturity. The young people who keep the moral law are therefore lonely, often intensely so, and their friends who do not keep the law are often lonelier still. For as there is nothing so lonesome as being in a crowd of laughing people who do not really enjoy the company, so there is nothing so dispiriting as knowingly going through the motions of married love with someone whom you will almost certainly leave.

If the Catholic says, “Many sins are worse than these,” I will surely agree, as I concede that it is worse to be shot in the head than to catch pneumonia. But pneumonia can kill, too. When millions were dying of the Spanish flu a hundred years ago, it was no wisdom to say that rabies was more deadly. The sexual revolution is destroying lives by the millions, right before our eyes, and has corrupted the culture beyond what the worst pessimists ever imagined. And, in this situation, are we to believe that Sodom is the answer? The Church has the answers if she would but heed them and preach them forthrightly. These answers are available to anyone using natural reason. Let them who have eyes open them.

Source: www.crisismagazine.com

Conservatives finally have something to talk about again...

A War of Ideas?

by JOHN G. GROVE

Conservatives finally have something to talk about again. That is how I recently heard the current moment in American conservatism described. Indeed, uncertainty swirls around conservatism today. The old “fusionism” has—for better or worse—cracked apart. Political and judicial victories are balanced against cultural defeats. Debates rage over economic protectionism and free trade. The aims and principles of the American founding—long treated as sacrosanct—have been brought into question. And, of course, the figure of Donald Trump—rescuer of national greatness or shameless demagogue—hovers over it all.

The Power of Ideas?

There is a tendency in many of these arguments—sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit—to see the current political crisis in terms of comprehensive sets of ideas that purport to explain all of political life. We are often encouraged to understand the past, present, and future in terms of what set of ideas has been or will be adopted. These ideas, in turn, mold our social and political life after their own image.

There are countless examples, often from subtle and perceptive critics of our political climate. Consider the opening lines of Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, which speak of “a political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States.” The political and cultural decay we see around us today, the book goes on to explain, is simply the logical conclusion to the liberal premises accepted at the American founding.

Likewise, Ryan P. Williams, the president of the Claremont Institute—one of the hubs of intellectual conservatism—argued in a 2018 essay on the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings that the extreme partisanship on display there was the result of differences on “fundamental questions of human nature, constitutionalism, and justice.” These underlying worldview differences will determine the future of America: “Our cold civil war and partisan rancor will only end when one party finally wins the argument about these fundamentals in a decisive and conclusive victory…” (emphasis in original).

Such language becomes most stark among Catholic “integralists.” In 2018, Thomas Pink defended integralismby arguing that states are inherently “confessors”—either of truth or falsity: “For if a state is not so committed [to the Roman Catholic faith]…the state will give false witness about the bonum commune and what would further it.” The state must be committed to the Truth, or it will inevitably attach itself to and promote a false notion of the good. Again, the state is defined by a definite, comprehensive dogma. This inordinate emphasis on universal ideas has implications for the way we think about our past and our future.

Mainstream conservatism was heavily mixed with classical liberalism in the 20th century, and it had a distinctive way of understanding America’s past. The essence of America was to be found in the few philosophical, Lockean lines of the Declaration of Independence. America is an idea, they taught, and its institutions, practices, and historical evolutions all were to be understood in light of that idea. Interestingly, this insistence on the vital importance of “founding principles” seems to be shared by those who now attack the old consensus. Post-liberal conservatives increasingly define America by the atomistic liberal theory which purportedly informed its founding and see our present discontents as the inevitable result of the embrace of such principles. America is an idea, they argue—just a bad one.

There are also implications for the way we think about the future. Inordinate emphasis is placed on a winner-take-all “war of ideas” which will determine the outcome of all our political and cultural tensions. The coercive power of the state, moreover, is seen as the key to winning this war: we must control the levers of power and use them to promote and enforce our vision of the good. Some conservatives, then, have begun to argue that we ought to treat politics like an actual war—identifying political rivals as enemies and using any means necessary (including the abandonment of civility, dignity, institutional norms, and the traditional conception of statesmanship) to win. If everything we hold dear hinges on the outcome of this war of ideas, we ought to be willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary in order to make sure the right ideas prevail.

The Limits of Universal Theory

Do political ideas have this kind of power? As Daniel E. Burns has argued in his excellent essay in National Affairs, the societies (including America) that are sometimes defined by their “liberalism” often do not at all reflect the characteristics of liberal theory, classical or modern. America utilizes many institutions that have no grounds in liberal theory. Its federal system does not fit liberal assumptions all. The American people, by and large, have no conception whatsoever of what liberal theory prescribes. Politicians routinely challenge liberal assumptions. A theory, he concludes, is not an “authoritative interpreter” of practice. One might go a step further: A polity is not (or, at least, is very rarely) defined by any particular set of ideas.

When arguing over the extent of Parliamentary sovereignty over the American colonies, Burke warned his opponents against the tendency to try to fit reality into a comprehensive theory. Defenders of parliamentary authority presented the American crisis as a simple “either-or” question: Either accept the theory of Parliamentary sovereignty and allow Parliament to tax the colonies at its leisure, or deny the sovereignty of the head of the empire over its parts. Burke, however, argued that the politics of the empire ought not be subjected to any single theory: “The old building stands well enough,” he wrote in his Observations on a Late State of the Nation, “though part Gothic, part Grecian, and part Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it into uniformity. Then it may come crashing down upon our heads in much uniformity of ruin.”

A strong case can be made that America is much like the building Burke described. Liberal ideas have played a role in its development. So have classical ideas and Christian ideas. Liberal rights and institutions have shaped it. So have uniquely English ones and uniquely American ones that may not fit the “liberal” label. None of these necessarily cohere theoretically with one another, nor need they.

Burke’s language—both substance and style—is reminiscent of that which he would later use in his denunciations of revolutionaries. It is noteworthy, however, that he also thought such admonitions were needed for those who saw themselves as conservative defenders of order and authority. The desire to generalize and fit our political life into a single form is often a two-way street.

Tocqueville is also informative. He described the formation of “general ideas” and noted how the excesses that may sometimes come from their use can be tempered. Importantly, he saw these universal theories arising from the social state of a people which, in turn, is the product of “fact and law.” The generally-prevailing ideas that the people of any given society tend to profess come from their observation of the “facts” they see in front of them—from the practical reality in which they live. Democratic citizens, he notes, can be prone to understanding the world through rigid ideologies, not realizing that they are usually superimposing their own reality on all of humanity. This is particularly true, he observes, of the “Cartesian” Americans who have a strong tendency to generalize from their own personal experiences. Our ideas, then, are not typically the first cause of the successes or failures of our political institutions and practices. It is rather the other way around. Understanding this origin of our ideologies also allows their influence to be tempered:

When there is a subject on which it is particularly dangerous for democratic peoples to give themselves to general ideas blindly and beyond measure, the best corrective that you can employ is to make them concern themselves with it every day and in a practical way; then it will be very necessary for them to enter into details, and the details will make them see the weak aspects of the theory.

If there is a tendency in our society to see the world through a rigid, corrosive ideology, the solution is not the inculcation of a different ideology, but an examination and rededication to the details of life which have given these ideas currency. Rather than focus on what set of ideas America must revive, embrace, or reject, we ought to examine carefully the political and social experiences that have given rise to the dysfunctional cultural and political ideas that seem to reign. We might then work toward reforms that engage the people with these details of life, that seek to adapt them to the felt needs of society, and that may, incidentally, change people’s perceptions of their culture and their government (tasks that many are undertaking). Theory will adapt to or give way to a government and society which keeps the “old building” standing and working well.

Ideas and Consequences

None of this, of course, is to suggest that ideas do not have any impact on political outcomes. To be sure, they do. Those committed to particularly bad theories of politics are likely to have a destructive effect on our political life (though the inverse may not always be true). But it is important to remember that their impact passes through a filter—the actual people promoting them. At certain moments in history—the French or Bolshevik Revolutions, for example—a distinct, cohesive set of ideas takes hold of a people in such a powerful way that it might make sense to describe the events as driven by ideas. But politics usually doesn’t operate that way.

Compared to 20 years ago, there are plenty of radicalized ideologues looking to impose their will upon society by any means necessary. But a broader historical perspective may provide reassurance that all is not lost and that cockpit storming is not necessary. As Burns points out, after all, the vast majority of Americans have no clue about the teachings of liberal theory—classical or modern. It is all well and good to compare today’s social justice warriors to French or communist revolutionaries until you consider that the guillotines and Gulags of the latter were real, not metaphorical. Most of America’s left-wing radicals today are just a little too dependent on their lattes, iPhones, and other comforts of modern life to do the yeoman’s work of real revolution.

I also do not mean to suggest that thinking about political theory is unimportant. (That would certainly make my days much more boring.) The conservative debates now raging are bringing up important questions that haven’t been asked enough. Indeed, much good can come from this questioning of long-held conservative beliefs, and we may emerge with a better framework with which to understand and discuss our polity, the meaning of conservatism, and the common good. But the common good is not an abstract dogma, and we should not expect the present discontents to be solved by the promotion of a new theory or the intellectual defeat of an old one.

The late Roger Scruton often argued that the core essence of a nation need not be defined by the ideology propagated by the state or the intellectual class. And Tocqueville seemed to agree, observing in a draft manuscript that “you must not judge the state of a people by a few adventurous minds that appear within it.” There are destructive, poisonous ideologies at work today, to be sure, and they have had a pernicious influence on our politics and law. But conservative habits, conservative instincts, conservative associations, and conservative institutions remain. Study of, investment in, and—critically—improvement of these, rather than an intellectual war of ideas, may be the most productive way forward.

John G. Grove

John G. Grove is Associate Editor of Law & Liberty. He is the author of John C. Calhoun's Theory of Republicansim. Before Joining Law & Liberty, he taught political science at Lincoln Memorial University.

Source: www.lawliberty.org