The challenge of our time

In the thread that started with Robert Locke’s speculations on the kinds of normalized perversions that may lie in the future, reader James M2 offered a disturbing angle on how this sexual derangement spreads as a result of the weakening and feminization of boys and young men. (The topic continues in that thread.) Then James wondered, how do we live normal lives, how do we raise children, in the midst of this increasingly depraved culture? I replied to him and that exchange is posted in this entry. (Note: I personally do not claim to possess any special virtue at dealing with the difficulties of life. But something came to me that felt true and right and that I thought would be helpful, and I wrote it down.)

LA replies to James M2:

Ok, I’ve posted our exchange. This is disturbing, you are right.

James M2 replies:

Yes. I am still in my 20s (barely), recently married, and my wife and I are planning to start a family in a couple of years. I wonder at my chances of successfully raising children in this environment, and get depressed and despairing over this stuff quite often.

LA replies:

I said to a friend yesterday: “Living through the disintegration of a civilization is not for sissies.”

It’s very tough. We’re living through a crisis unprecedented in history, in which evil and every kind of wicked perversity are normalized and celebrated, and normality is demonized. For example, how families with children dealt with the references to oral sex in the White House 10 years ago, how parents responded to such stuff coming on the TV news, how they protected their children and themselves from this (if they even bothered), I don’t know. And the onslaught is constant.

We’re born into the time that we’re born into. This is our time, with everything that comes with it, to deal with it and overcome it as best we can.

The highest example is the passion of Christ. Think of it: Jesus deliberately orchestrated his own arrest, torture, and death. And he went through it all, not only enduring it as an ordinary person would try to do, but totally transcending it, so that, through all of it, he was perfectly carrying out his job as teacher and God-man and saviour of the world, establishing this event that would live in eternity for all future believers. Just a few hours before his arrest, with his own horrible death closing in, at that moment he gave the greatest discourses of his ministry and established the Eucharistic service which is the central act of the Christian religion.

I’m not talking about the Catholic cult of suffering; I think the Catholic Church has historically greatly overdone that. The spirit of Jesus in the Gospels is not suffering but communion with the father, and with it, divine joy and perfect mastery. “My peace I give you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” He’s not talking about an ordinary human thing here, he’s talking about something above the ordinary human experience, a divine reality.

So if we think of the passion of Christ, not making suffering per se the main idea (as the Catholics tend to do), but rather seeing the overwhelming difficulty and horror of what Jesus was facing, and what he made of it, then that could inspire us, in the midst of great difficulties and the awfulness of what our culture has become, not only to endure it, but to rise above it and create something good and true.

P.S. I forget if you’re even religious, so I’m sorry if my comments were not right for you. But these things came to me in reply to your e-mail and I wrote them down.

- end of initial entry -

Billy Joe writes:

Q: “how do we live normal lives, how do we raise children, in the midst of this increasingly depraved culture?”

A: By forming transparent (invisible) colonies throughout the dominant media culture and the corporate entertainment culture. That’s how it has always been done. Nowadays, it will be a cul-de-sac here, a village there, a private college town here, and an Internet-connected group there.

Alan Roebuck writes:

James M2 writes:

I am still in my 20s (barely), recently married, and my wife and I are planning to start a family in a couple of years. I wonder at my chances of successfully raising children in this [sexually depraved] environment, and get depressed and despairing over this stuff quite often.

My wife and I have a 4-year old boy, and we have similar concerns. Here are some thoughts:

The most important gift parents can give their child is an understanding of how the world operates, including an understanding of morality, that is, what is right and what is wrong. Although I have not yet completed the mission I believe that if a parent can successfully inculcate in his child a proper non-liberal worldview, there is an excellent chance that the child will accept a proper morality. This is because, when a parent tells a child “That’s wrong,” or “That’s virtuous,” the child naturally wants to know, “Why?” If the parent can impart a proper worldview to his child, then he can successfully answer the child’s question, rather than just punt by saying “Because I said so!”

Young children have a natural curiosity about everything, a natural propensity to believe what their parents tell them, and a natural pride in what they have learned. If you begin their learning, when they are still very young, by telling them the truth (at a level they are capable of grasping) about how things work, then you can begin this process of properly building up the child’s mind and character.

With a proper understanding of what things are wrong, there is a good chance that your child can resist the perversion he will undoubtedly encounter. One can withstand almost anything, if one knows that it is wrong. It is the deliberate destruction of the once-common understanding of morality, the deliberate cultivation of the approval of the wrong, that is probably liberalism’s greatest sin.

The company you keep is also important, because it will influence the company your child keeps. If your circle of friends and acquaintances includes too many liberals, you should consider how you can keep more wholesome company.

Ben W. writes:

Alan Roebuck writes, “It is the deliberate destruction of the once-common understanding of morality, the deliberate cultivation of the approval of the wrong, that is probably liberalism’s greatest sin.”

The question I have for VFR posters is why liberalism has to proceed forward by destroying the past? In other words, why does liberalism have to progress at the expense of Christianity? Cannot liberalism build upon the truths of Christianity rather than attempting to displace them?

Or is liberalism a variant of Darwinism in which past forms are replaced and therefore progress is through replacement and extinction? Thus past modes of conduct and traditional concepts have to give way to new forms, new ideas.

Any thoughts why liberalism moves ahead through destructive channels?

LA replies:

Ben’s question goes to the basics of liberalism. Modern liberalism is a battle against pervading injustice, discrimination, and inequality. Therefore every advance of liberalism must be seen as an advance against a horrible past.

This is not a wholly new approach. It goes back to the Renaissance, which announced itself as a rebirth out of the previous darkness. Meaning that a thousand years of European history, during which Christian Europe was built up from nothing and created as a civilization, was dismissed as darkness and superstition, a mere contemptible interlude between the classical past and the reborn present. The Enlightenment did the same: it brought light where before there was darkness, implying contempt for everything that came before. So this sin of despising the past is deeply built into the West, it’s not just a feature of modern liberalism.

But modern liberalism in its infantilism makes the problem much worse. Post ’60s liberals can literally conceive of nothing positive to say about what is and what has been. The only way they can relate in a positive and affirmative way to a thing, is to see it as a victory over some injustice or ignorance.

This even relates to science journalism. In the New York Times, each new discovery is announced as a wiping out of the past, not as part of a process of building upon previous knowledge.

Gintas writes:

My wife and I homeschool our children. Guess what gets people all concerned about that? It’s never the academics, it’s always the “socialization.” If you put your children in public school, you will fight an uphill battle against all that socialization.

James M2 writes:

You wrote:

I forget if you’re even religious, so I’m sorry if my comments were not right for you. But these things came to me in reply to your e-mail and I wrote them down.

Remember, it was you and your site that caused me to reasses and return to Christianity. The more I think about what you wrote, the more I feel that it is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you.

I also especially appreciated the responses to the topic from Alan Roebuck and Dan MC.

LA replies

Oh, how about that. I forgot you had said that to me. Yes, I have in a folder the earlier e-mail by you about that.

James P. writes:

Ben W asks why liberalism has to proceed forward by destroying the past.

As Orwell said, he who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. Liberalism has a program for the future—a place where it wants to go. It cannot get to that place—or at least, it would be much harder to get to that place—if people truly understood where we are now and we they have been. If they knew what the past was truly like, they would be able to compare it to the present and to the liberal program for the future. Very likely, the present and the liberal vision for the future would suffer from such a comparison, since we are indeed less free and less moral as a society compared to what we used to be and especially compared to where the liberals want us to be. It is thus not merely desirable, but obligatory, for liberalism to destroy the past in order to realize its vision for the future. Remember, they are not called “progressives” for nothing! It is essential to their ideology that history must show the inexorable march of “progress” from the (bad, unjust, and reactionary) past to the (better) present to the (glorious, just, and progressive) future. If the past was not “bad”—if America is a worse place now than it was in 1968 or 1948 or 1908—then all the changes they have made over the decades would be invalidated and all the changes they hope to make would be questioned if not completely halted. If the past was not actually bad—if America was not unjust, racist, oppressive, and evil in past decades—then the past must be reconstructed so as to appear bad. Reconstructing the past justifies the political program of the present (rectifying past injustice!) and sets the stage for moving into the even more liberal future.

The requirement to reconstruct the past also highlights the importance of liberal control over academia and the media. If academia and the media did not largely control everyone’s understanding of the past as bad, racist, reactionary, exploitative, and so on, it would be much harder for the liberal program to succeed. It is much harder for alternative views of the past—that show the history of America in a favorable light—to reach the public ear, because, for example, such books are not used as academic textbooks and are not reviewed in the press. They quickly sink without a trace, and cannot provide a factual basis with which to resist liberal political programs.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 10, 2008 02:01 AM | Send