Recommended Reading For Christmas

It's Christmas--so I'm taking a break. However, I came across a couple of provocative articles that I wanted to at least link to.

First up, because there's been so much commentary about secession v. revolt, is Tom Luongo's Luongo: End The Great American Myth - Secession, Not Revolution. Luongo seems to be a bit of a thinking man's Libertarian, in that he appears to sense--if not fully grasp--the shallowness of Classical Liberalism. He understands that the Classical Liberal vision of Man is patently failing, but doesn't realize that Classical Liberalism's own theoretic weaknesses--its flawed understanding of human nature and ignorance of history-- foredoomed it to failure. Nevertheless, it makes for an interesting read even if, like me, you can't totally buy into his version of American history:

... as a libertarian, I always think in terms of secession first, rather than revolution. It sits on my shoulder whispering in my ear the truth of what’s in front of us.

We’ve reached a very important moment in world history. It is that moment where the promises of classical liberalism are failing in the face of a creeping totalitarian nightmare.

America as mythology has always stood as the ‘shining house on the hill’ for this enlightened idea that the wishes of the individual pursuing his bliss creates the community and culture which lifts the world out of a Hobbesian State of Nature.

The war of all against all, (bellum omnium contra omnes).

But America as Mythology and America as Reality are two vastly different rough beasts. And it is that difference between them that is being exploited today by The Davos Crowd to set the process in motion for their next victory.

 

This final paragraph that I'll quote is important. We'll return to it a bit further down:

But, leftism as practiced today, is aggressive. It is rapacious and rests on the idea that no one can exist outside their preferred outcome lest anyone see their world for the nightmare it truly is.

UPDATED: Christopher Dawson's Profound Understanding Of Modernity

I turn once more to the ideological roots of the Current Crisis and, in an ultimate sense, even of what the Russia Hoax is largely about. Big Picture stuff.

When I was growing up I lived in a house that was full of books, and of great importance for me was my father's collection of books by Christopher Dawson (1889-1970), the great English historian. He's little known now, and sometimes sneeringly referred to as an "autodidact" and enthusiast of the Catholic nostalgia for the Middle Ages. But he was much more than that. Dawson was a philosopher of history--as you can learn from these Dawson references on this blog. In his day he was ranked with such as Toynbee and in the 60s was sought after for lectures at Harvard.

So I was delighted to discover a Twitter feed that preserves the memory of Dawson's profound understanding of the nature of Modernity. Dawson died in 1970, but already in the 1930's he had a clearly developed understanding of the coming tyranny of Modernity that we see emerging in fully developed form around us--Post Modernist, Gramscian Marxism. And the "Church of Vatican II" is among the most ardent converts to the message of the Neo-Gnostic prophet of modernity, Hegel. (See, for example, by the Italian historian Roberto de Mattei: The Roots and Historical Consequences of Modernism)

Of course, such movements of thought or of the human spirit of rebellion, have deep roots. Dawson traced those roots to the Reformation but, as I've tried to show on this blog, the roots go much deeper into the Platonic and Augustinian traditions that are the true Western tradition. Here is the tweet that first caught my attention yesterday, in which Dawson captures in his typically condensed and trenchant form (almost a paradoxical style for a shy, retiring man) the roots of Modernity in the "Reformation":


Christopher Dawson:‏

@cdawsonquotes

What Hegel valued in the Reformation was in fact that it had destroyed the Church as a substantial unity and had restored the unity of human consciousness in one universal objective moral organism — the State.

12:33 PM - 1 Mar 2019

​And this is precisely the agenda of Modernism and of the Church of Vatican II (V2). Rather than two kingdoms, one of which orients Man toward Christ the King who directs Man on earth--with all the limitations of human institutions that implies--toward his transcendent goal, the V2Church rushes to embrace the tragic results of the Protestant Revolt--the State ascendant in all human life, an Ecumenic State for a new Ecumenic Age (Eric Voegelin's term). And this is quite explicit in the V2Church's embrace of and idealization of the two State sects--Anglicanism and Lutheranism, one named for a country, the other for a man.

​This explains, if explanation is needed, the nature of Bergoglio's "ecumenism", which is intended to include all men in a universal earthly State without borders--one State to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. It also explains why the V2Church has no sympathy for persecuted Christians, e.g., in China or in Islamic realms.

Another Attempted Defense of Ratzinger's Orthodoxy

Sandro Magister has published a second blog in which a writer attempts to defend Ratzinger's orthodoxy against Antonio Livi's initial critique of Ratzinger: Why Ratzinger Is Not a Heretic. As in the case of the first defense of Ratzinger that Magister published, this defense is written by a person who is not a professional, philosopher: Francesco Arzillo, "an administrative magistrate of Rome who is also an esteemed author of works of philosophy and theology." While avoiding addressing the specifics of Livi's critique of Ratzinger--which revolve around Ratzinger's concept of faith--Arzillo attempts to portray Ratzinger's views as substantially identical to those attributed in Acts to St. Paul in his address to the Greeks at the Areopagus. This metaphor has a certain significance. Paul's address at the Areopagus is regarded as a model for the Church's outreach to non-believers and an expression of the Church's natural theology, so Arzillo is using this metaphor to suggest the same regarding Ratzinger: not only is Ratzinger to be viewed as a bulwark against heretics but he's a model for outreach to non-believers. As we will see, however, Ratzinger's attempts to assimilate Paul's views to his own simply don't work. Arzillo begins his defense by quoting a number of passages from an address Ratzinger gave in Paris as Benedict XVI.