Obama and End-Stage Metastatic Liberalism

With his trademark smug stupidity, Barack Obama affirmed the following absolute truth in his The Audacity of Hope: "Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or 'ism,' any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course...."

Where to even begin? In a single stroke of blind ignorance (or is it malevolence?) that only a tenured barbarian could believe, Obama transmogrifies the most important conservative political document in history into a monstrous recipe for perpetual revolution that would appall the men who risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in defense of principles that were and are absolute, timeless, and universal, precisely.

And if these principles are not conserved, mankind is finished -- or at least Man as such is. There will always be room for the little human beastlings who cash in their manhood for the soul-grinding security offered by the swaddling state, and hop around like Nietzsche's fleas at the end of history.

This is how it begins -- and ends. That is, the decadent myth of liberalism is ultimately rooted in a crude relativism that reduces truth to opinion, and therefore exalts cosmic stupidity above all. The bang of Marx ends in the whimp of Obama. Or at least Obama's bong gives off a whiff of Marx.

Once this is accomplished, there is no longer any ground for permanent truth, nor any way to arbitrate between competing truth claims. Therefore, raw power rushes in to fill the vacuum. It's as simple as that. The irony is that so many "sophisticated" liberals supported Obama for his "brains," when they were actually ratifying his muscle. The Chicago Way is not about thinking. It is about shoving and bullying -- the Ferragamo boot on the neck. It is the politics of the mid-brain, not the frontal lobes.

It is also necessarily about "action" rather than reflection, and action quickly reduces to "change," or just agitation. But since Obama has already assured us that there are no permanent truths, this is change that necessarily "goes nowhere," for where is there to go in a meaningless and truth-free world? Like purely Darwinian change, it's all horizontal, not vertical. One place is no different than any other. Legs, fins, wings, wheels, what's the difference? It's the journey that matters, the bracing sensation of a dog with its head out the car window.

But real liberalism -- i.e., conservatism -- situates the American journey in a much wider context of divine revelation, or universal history. For we recognize that there is actually only one story, and that it is (among other things) the story of liberty. But obviously not the liberty of the left, since they detach it from the truth, beauty, and virtue -- the permanent things -- without which it is just another name for confusion, disorientation, blundering along in the dark. Being lost is hardly the same as being free, although it can feel like it for awhile, at least until the provisions run out.

The contemporary liberal violently severs the ombiblical cord that connects us to the past and future generations who share our journey, and to whom we owe a measure of our allegiance.

For mankind is not just unified in space, but in time -- which is why hundreds of thousands of men and women who gave their life for America -- the real and permanent America that is the champion of universal truth in this benighted world -- weep for what Obama is doing to the country they loved. We know this because we are connected to them. The contemptuous liberal cannot know it, for in his world, the person who risks his life for this hopelessly flawed country is either a dupe or a moron or psychopath with violent tendencies and imperialistic designs.

The difference between a conservative and a liberal is that the former loves America, while the latter loves some abstract idea of what America should be in his Marxian fantasies. This is why they want to punish the men and women who kept us safe since 2001, while giving the benefit of every doubt to the terrorists who seek to destroy us. It is quite obvious where their sympathies lie.

To reject the sacred truths that uphold reality and course through the arteries of existence is not only a kind of desecration of the dead, it is also an auto-lobotomy, for it is to sever oneself from the collective wisdom and experience of mankind -- as if the tiny stock of blinkered opinions and provincial attitudes Obama absorbed while floating amongst the tenured can in any way compete with Madison, or Tocqueville, or Adam Smith.

Truly, it's like going through life with vital organs amputated, except that these are organs of intellect and spirit, or psyche and soul. These organs are designed to know truth, not to replace it with the intemperate follies and fashions the day.

Russell Kirk notes that decadence "amounts to the loss of an end, an object." Obama openly and explicitly severs America from its spiritual end, its telos, its reason for being. We will either continue to decay and deteriorate with bat-faced liberals leading the way down into darkness, or be reborn in the light of our original mandate and purpose, forged and fought for by men both wiser and braver than the hollow poseur who occupies the White House, and sanctioned by heaven.

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Radiant Stupidity or Cosmic Narcissism?:



A slightly more soothing image of the backyard of the slackatoreum this fine morning (click to enlarge):