The mainstream’s intellectual exhaustion

With the fiasco of the Bush Iraq and Mideast democratization policy, the neocons are out. With the beyond-brain-dead idiocy of the Iraq Study Group report, the “Realists” are out. The left, of course, has been out—and out of it—for many years. (In fact, the ISG report is so out of touch with reality and so devoted to abject surrender to our enemies that the difference between the “Realists” and the left has vanished.) Whom, then, does that leave to provide intelligent understanding and guidance in America’s national and international affairs?

Traditionalists! Our time is coming. We are realists too, but civilizational realists.

What is the central fallacy that the “Realists,” the universal democratists, and the left all have in common? They believe that all people are essentially alike and can get along as equals and partners in a single system. The only real disagreements among the three factions relate to how they conceive of that single system. Liberals and Modernists all, they have rejected the traditional truth of man’s life on this earth, as told in Genesis 11, verses 1–9: that the world consists of different cultures, nations, religions, races, and civilizations, that these distinctions are constitutive of human order and indeed provide the very structure of a world in which man can live.

RB writes:

Re the mainstream’s intellectual exhaustion. You’re right. Perhaps in some way we can’t understand, all of this is necessary. First the (phony) moderate Democrats known as the Clintonistas had to be morally discredited. Now the policies they followed during the nineties are in the process of being historically discredited and they know it—that’s why Clinton was so upset with Chris Wallace and so disturbed about that 911 docu-drama and why Berger felt it necessary to stuff documents into his briefs. Then it came the turn of Bush the Younger and the neo-cons whose attempt to spread democracy has flopped. Now it is once again the turn of Bush the Elder and the “realists,” most of whom are in the pay of the Saudis and of open borders interests, to be discredited. It is also the turn of Pelosi and the wacky Democrat left to show what failures they will be now that they have power. It is too bad that this has been and will still be so costly in terms of lives and treasure but maybe there is “an angel in the whirlwind directing this storm.”

LA replies:

Nice summary.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 08, 2006 10:42 AM | Send