Published on American Thinker
By Enza Ferreri
I was reading the blog of Daniel Greenfield, undoubtedly a great writer and an acute analyst of what is wrong in today's world.
But, the more I was reading, the more I felt a sense of dissatisfaction, as you may have when drinking doesn't quench your thirst but paradoxically increases it.
Then I discovered what it was. There was something missing: a conclusion.
We - the counterjihadists, the "Islamophobes", the conservatives, the "Right wing" - have many excellent thinkers and commentators (of whom Greenfield is an example) who are good in the pars destruens, the critical, negative part, of our arguments; but not enough who develop a pars construens, the constructive part that builds the positive alternative to what we are criticising.
This dearth of a firm propositive aspect in our positions is common to all Western countries.
The reason, I dare say, is simple. There is among us a widespread fear or unease in proposing a kind of society espousing ideas and values (some of which from the past) that have been ruthlessly, thoroughly mauled and massacred by the Left.
We are, probably without realising, the first victims of Leftist indoctrination. We may reject those ideas rationally, but deep down, emotionally, we have doubts. The Left’s are the views we grew up with, they permeated our culture, were ideologically dominant when we were teenagers and young adults. Our favourite bands endorsed them and were selling them with their records and their lives: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.
At university, both professors and students were full of them; who thought differently was a pariah.
The most fashionable authors were Marxists of various kinds, from Freudian Marxists to the Frankfurt School.
It would be totally unrealistic to think that an individual can go through all that brainwashing, peer pressure and gentle persuasion by his pop idols without taking with him a persistent scar, a lifelong influence on his mind.
So, when we slowly - it took a very long, long time - realised that those ideas (that for want of a better word I'll shorthandedly call "Leftist") were simply wrong, that they didn't correspond to reality - didn't "save the phenomena" as an obscure scientist named Sir Isaac Newton, among others, put it - and their acceptance and practical application were destroying both individuals and societies, we found our voice in denouncing them and their manfestations.
What we didn't find in equal measure was the audacity, the resolve to recover and re-propose the beliefs and principles that preceded the Leftist ones, and which the Left with its atheism and political correctness had demolished in our eyes.
No matter how much the world around us - in our surroundings, streets and urban ghettos as well as in faraway lands - was collapsing, there were words like "defending family values" or "sexual morality" or "not all religions are the same/religion can be a force for good" we just couldn't bring ourselves to utter.
We need to reclaim the convictions supplanted by Leftist barbarism. We mustn't be afraid to say that the alternative to Islam is Christianity, the answer to sexual relativism, pansexualism, radical feminism and homosexualism is in the Judaeo-Christian civilisation, and that the West can survive only if it reasserts its identity as Christendom.
This is the constructive, propositive part that at the moment is largely missing from the anti-jihad and conservative public discourse.
It's not enough to correctly identify what's wrong. If we don't have a positive recipe on how to fix it, we'll lose to those who have a proposal, however abysmal.
Enza, I thought you made a profound point in this essay. I'm editor/publisher of Stubbornthings.org and would love the privilege of re-running it. I can be contacted at info@stubbornthings.org. Thanks. --Brad
ReplyDeleteEnza, the Right's only program is opposition. They cannot have a positive program, because the only thing they are trying to preserve is the status quo. They have become merely the first half of Buckley's famous quote: "someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop."
ReplyDeleteThe other half of that quotation - that people should be restrained from head-long flights of fancy or abandonment of sound principles - has been lost by the current incarnation of conservatives. In its place is a fantasy. Nothing demonstrates this more than the irrational opposition to climate change. I never thought I would see the day when a conservative would reject scientific evidence merely because it meant they might have to make hard choices. When I grew up, that was a leftist thing - ignoring facts because you didn't like the conclusions. But it has changed; the two sides have switched; and now that conservatism has rejected science, it cannot forge a positive program. What would it forge it out of, if not hard facts and clear reasoning?
And of course global warming is only one example. Evolution, tax policy, Obama's birth certificate, the list of crazy ideas is long, and they all share the same root: rejection of common sense, scientific principle, and strict requirements of evidence. Rejection of change, not because of logic, but because the result would require unpleasant changes from the current status quo. Take tax policy as an example: rich people payed as high as 70% under Eisenhower. The country didn't go bankrupt. So, by common sense, we could choose to charge that tax rate again. It might not be what conservatives want, it might not even be ideal, but it's certainly workable. And yet - if you listen to conservative politicians, they seem to think that raising the tax rate on the rich from 15% to 35% (half of what Eisenhower charged) would destroy the nation. The line between "I don't want" and "I can't afford" has been erased.
We can argue about why conservatism has abandoned its once rock-solid grip on cold hard reality, but I think it is inarguable that the Right was lulled to sleep by Reagan's "Morning in America" lullaby, and like a cranky baby, simply refuses to wake up from its dreaming.
By "country" I meant the USA, of course. My apologies for my American-centroism. It's really inexcusable since I actually live in Australia now. But honestly this seems like a world-wide phenomena for the Right: here in Australia Tony Abbot is running Reagan's play-book to the T.
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