I want you to consider something. One of the fastest ways to tear a culture apart is to get people within that culture to forget who they are and eventually to disclaim it.
Part of the 1960’s counterculture movement was the phrase “God is dead”. Of course that phrase was brought to us in “the parable of the madman” written by Friedrich Nietzsche…
Take the time to actually read that work, and you will see that the parable is a warning…. Without the moral framework the basis for everything disappears. How ironic, then, that the social left took it not as a parable and a warning, but literally… Thus bringing about the events that Nietzsche was warning us about.
As it happens I am just now rereading Russell Kirk’s “Roots of American Order“(1974).
In that work, Kirk, who is as much as a philosopher of history as anything else, suggests that our Roots can be drawn directly to five different cities… Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London and Philly.
As Russell Kirk himself summarizes it, it is a story of five cities. Jerusalem for the revealed source of order … The concepts of the sacredness of Life, the sacredness of property, and so on– Athens for arts and science — Rome for government — London where these influences grew and coalesced — and of course Philadelphia.
Kirk looks at all of this and makes a the observation that…
“… the imprints of Athens, Rome, and London are still upon us. But the all-important endowment of Jerusalem has been tossed to the winds.”
Now, keep in mind this is 1974. We have progressed somewhat down the road since then.
Western philosophy has always had the Judeo-Christian mindset at the root of it. That mindset informed us of the value of the individual. That the rights of the individual are paramount because of that worth. It is the foundation of our very way of thinking in the West.
So what happens then, when Jerusalem and lessons that it teaches are rejected? Remember that the concepts of the rights of the individual came from the lessons that Humanity learned in Jerusalem. When you remove the foundation from a building, what happens to the building? I suggest to you that we are already seeing the results of that rejection.
Now before you start warming up about freedom from religion, keep in mind I’m not talking about establishing a theocracy here. That was never the design or the outcome in early America. Re-embracing the judeo-christian mindset, rather, to acknowledge that Jerusalem has in fact taught us some truths about the human condition and the purpose of our existence.
The end result of freedom from religion as it is currently promoted by some atheists is a Surefire way to eliminate the rights created by the moral order that Jerusalem gave us, because it eliminates the moral framework that informed us of those rights.
I’ve been saying this for years now…
Here it is; Rights are a cultural construct, and meaningless outside that construct. As I said in the article linked above: Rights are not universal.
When Jefferson wrote that “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” he was not speaking a universal truth at all. The operative word in that phrase is “WE”.
Rather than talking about a universal point of view, a universal truth, if you will, he was instead talking about the point of view of WE the new American culture. With this angle, many of the long-held myths about rights tend to disappear.
Consider; if it was in fact a universal truth that all men were created equal, it wouldn’t have been such a radical idea, for the time, much less then to now. Last I checked, it is quite true that a vast majority still do not consider these as any kind of truth, universal or otherwise; they consider them to be anything BUT self-evident. Royalty still exists, as do class structures, and slavery, as well.
Again, I say…Jefferson was speaking of the point of view of OUR culture, not that of others.
The fact of the matter is that RIGHTS ARE A CULTURAL CONCEPT, and are nigh on meaningless outside that construct.
And so we come back to Jerusalem and the lessons that it taught.
As Insidious as the movement away from Jerusalem in the lessons it teaches is, it is in a larger sense an attack on our individual rights. If the judeo-christian ethic is the foundation of our ideas about individual rights what happens to those rights foundations of that philosophy is ripped away, and finally outlawed?
As One reviewer to “American Order” puts it…
Order is organic; that which was inherited by the new American republic was the product of care, cultivation, and time. It is recklessness to quickly and radically reshape it, and still expect a just and free society. To engage the immense privilege of reconciling liberty with law we must recognize the roots of American order that have even made that task possible.
As an aside, and with that quote in mind, serious questions are raised about the recently Departed Administration in Washington and its goals, stated and otherwise. Remember, they came into office with the stated goals of fundamental change. And if you want a symbolic reference to frame all of that in, what was the removal of the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office but a rejection of London?
How does one execute that fundamental change without fundumentally changing the perception of the nature of Rights?
With the idea that rights are cultural concepts comes the concern about other cultures and the attempt to change the baseline culture of America into a Multicultural Society or at least into their image, and replacing ours.
As an example, let’s look at Islam, And its effects on our culture and our legal system thereby. Islam is at the heart a complete rejection of Jerusalem. I’ve said it many times, there is no way that an America would be created with Islam as its philosophical foundation.
Proof? Easily had. [1]
I could certainly go on at much greater length on that particular subject but I hasten to point out that America would never have been founded in what is being promoted now as a secular worldview… Or Islam, or any of the pantheistic cultures …. Nor can it be preserved in any of them.
I mean, has it slipped everyone’s notice that the farther behind we leave Jerusalem and its moral framework, the sicker our society becomes?
As I have suggested elsewhere…
1: Who invented the concept of government?
2: What purpose would that entity have had in such creation?
One way we can answer those two questions at once, would be to look at what existed as the most powerful force before government was invented, and therefore what was the most likely inventor of government: CULTURE.
If we make the logical assumption that governments were originally created by the individual cultures, then it follows that each culture constructed their respective governments in their own image… governments that best reflected and advanced each culture’s interests.
The original purpose of government, therefore, is to protect, nurture and defend, and if possible expand the influence of, the culture that gave it life. As such, to the greatest of degrees possible, each government’s laws, on the whole, were the culture, codified. It follows, then, that any government holding to the original purpose of government will perform this task.
There is a reason my friends why India for example did not succumb to Marxism. It’s culture was far too strong.
As I have said often …nature abhors a vacuum. Continuing to deny and reject the culture and the values that this nation was founded upon… the continuing moving toward a completely secular society… Our nation… Our culture… not going to be strong enough to defend itself when the time comes, and I am sure you have seen yourself the evidence that that time if not already upon us is it least very near and the threat very grave.
Absent the effort to allow the culture back into the role and value set… The perceptions of morality, of right and of wrong, that it had at the founding of this country, we are not going to save it.