God May be Known by His Absence

"Nihilist rebellion," writes Fr. Rose, "is a war against God and against Truth."

Which, by the way, is one of the more convincing proofs of God. In short, God may be known -- "unKnown" -- by his absence, an apophasis of which I frequently remind the young master. Where you see shadows, look for the Light without which the shadows couldn't exist. Where there is godlessnessness, there lurks the God of Irony in the background.

For which reason the old Meister remarked that "the more they blaspheme the more they praise God."

Thankfully there is a whole lotta blaspheming going on these days, which is precisely How We Get More Trump.

It is difficult to conceive of something more nihilistic than the drive to eradicate human sexual differences, AKA the Bathroom Wars. When we speak of "natural rights," this is generally because we are able to make distinctions that are "in the nature of things" and thereby available to any man whose soul is relatively intact.

These universal distinctions include, for example, parent and child, husband and wife, individual and group, and member and outsider. It is not coincidental that the left wishes to eradicate each of these, for example, via the redefinition of marriage, open borders, and now their preposterous Bathroom War.

Last night Tucker Carlson interviewed a spokesthing for the ideology of gender over biology, and it was the usual evisceration.

The spokesthing was insisting that words trump biology, such that if I say I'm a woman, then that is what I am. This itself, if true, implies some shocking properties of language, but this is not a new idea, as it forms the basis of magic. For example, the etymological meaning of abracadabra is "I create as I speak."

Which is another way of affirming that In the beginning is the Word, and the Word is with God. Except that this word is with (and of) godlessness. And that this godlessness, if you follow the logic, simply elevates its speaker to godhood. Which is precisely the distinction between magic and religion: magic is a misappropriation of divine magic in order to aggrandize the personal ego.

So, for example, "God created them male and female." But godlessness overrules the Creator and his stupid biology and maintains that we can choose either one.

Now, you will notice an extreme irony at work here. Note again that God creates us male and female. The godless still retain God's categories of male and female, but insist that we get to assign them based upon our own superior wisdom. So once again God and his categories are affirmed in their denial.

It reminds me of the old story about an argument between God and a scientistic atheist:

God was once approached by a scientist who said, “Listen God, we’ve decided we don’t need you anymore. These days we can clone people, transplant organs and do all sorts of things that used to be considered miraculous.”

God replied, “Don’t need me huh? How about we put your theory to the test. Why don’t we have a competition to see who can make a human being, say, a male human being.”

The scientist agrees, so God declares they should do it like he did in the good old days when he created Adam.

“Fine” says the scientist as he bends down to scoop up a handful of dirt.”

“Whoa!” says God, shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast. You get your own dirt.”

Similarly, we might say to the biology deniers: Not so fast. Get your own genders!

Here we see that there cannot really exist a literal nihilism, for what is Nothing but the more or less distant echo of Something? What can nothing be but the negation of something? Likewise, what can absolute relativism be but a blackhound tribute to the Absolute? What is materialism but a pronouncement -- a wacky pronouncement -- of Spirit?

"Nihilism, in a word, owes its whole existence to a negation of Christian Truth; it finds the world 'absurd,' not as a result of dispassionate 'research' into the question, but only through inability or unwillingness to believe its Christian meaning" (Rose).

Did you ever wonder why the left is so irrationally frightened of Trump? It calls to mind the old gag that if you strike at a king, you had better kill him.

Analogously, if you strike at God, you'd damn well better kill him too. The left has been striking at God for over a century, and as recently as 9:00 PM EST last November 8 considered the matter settled. God was, if not dead, then grievously wounded. This was not supposed to happen, "progress" being a one-way phenomenon.

Along these lines, Rose observes that "no Nihilist is so blind that he fails to sense, however dimly, the ultimate consequences of his action." Thus, "the nameless 'anxiety' of so many men today testifies to their passive participation in the program of antitheism." This is merely a fall from their own imaginary height; or from a faux being that evaporates into non-being upon contact with Truth.

The Aphorist says that In order to challenge God, man puffs up his emptiness. In order to avoid the sense of falling into non-being, the atheist maintains his counterfeit center by fighting God:

"To the man afflicted with such Nihilism, the sense of falling into the abyss, far from ending in passive anxiety and despair, is transformed into a frenzy of Satanic energy that impels him to strike out at the whole of creation and bring it, if he can, plummeting into the abyss with him."

George Soros and his minions have their marching orders.

Existential and Essential Threats

Dennis Prager often talks about how concern for the soul has morphed into an obsession with the body, i.e., with health, fitness, diet, etc. If the soul is the form of the body, then in these soulless times people are left with only the husk, unconcerned with -- if they are aware of it at all -- the fate of the kernel.

There must be considerable overlap between these soulless utensils and the radical environmentalists who confuse heaven and earth, thereby displacing notions of sin, purity, armageddon, and apocalypse to hysterical fears about the weather.

Yesterday while listening to the radio in the car, someone said something about "existential threat," and the notion popped into my head of essential threats, i.e., threats to our essence as opposed to our existence. For we can survive an existential threat but lose our essence -- which is the collective equivalent of "gaining the world but losing one's soul."

For example, we purportedly "won" the Cold War in 1991. That had been seen as an existential threat, but it was also an essential threat, being that communism and Americanism are at philosophical antipodes. Prager refers to the "American trinity" found on any coin, consisting of of Liberty, E Pluribus Unum, and In God We Trust, each a reflection of the others.

Conversely, the unholy trinity of the left would consist of illiberal and unjust Equality, divisive Multiculturalism, and a satanically inspired In Man We Trust.

Coincidentally, I'm reading Steven Hayward's new book (his two volume biography of Reagan here and here is indispensable). Apropos of what was said above in paragraph two, he speaks of his bewonderment at "how so many people who are concerned about understanding ecosystems and preserving the right order of wild nature could seem so indifferent or hostile to the idea of human nature and of the protection of human ecosystems." As if those things will just take care of themselves!

One side effect of the devolution from soul to body is the reduction of quality to quantity, or vertical to horizontal. The left is the horizontal party par excellence, not only failing to nurture the soul, but harboring an overt and unrelenting hostility to its very existence.

Thus, Hayward speaks of "the central obsession with much of the intellectual class," which understands problems in the most "simplistic terms" and deploying quantity "as a cudgel against existing institutions and structure."

This is consistent with our last post, which touched on the implicit agenda of the left, which is destruction per se -- in this case, quantity used as a weapon against quality. For example, the left uses any benign instance of quantitative disparity as proof of malevolent discrimination -- unless, of course, the numbers are in their favor, as in academia, the NBA, journalism, or the permanent shadow government.

Similarly, they use raw income statistics to promulgate the fiction that women are underpaid, or crime statistics to advance the lie that blacks are discriminated against in the criminal and judicial systems.

Anyway, because we have tended to focus on existential threats to the exclusion of essential ones, we have failed to take cognizance of the threat to our essence posed by the left. I've only just begun Patriotism is Not Enough, but Harry Jaffa certainly knew that "the most fundamental political question is the nature of the human soul."

For the same reason, he recognized in 1991 how our existential victory over communism could conceal the left's essential victory over us:

The defeat of Communism in the USSR and its satellite empires by no means assures its defeat in the world. Indeed, the release of the West from its conflict with the East emancipates utopian communism at home from the suspicion of its affinity with an external enemy. The struggle for the preservation of western civilization has entered a new -- and perhaps far more deadly and dangerous -- phase" (Jaffa, in Hayward).

Precisely. Looked at this way, the difference between Obama and Bush is just a family squabble between global elites, whereas Trump is the uninvited guest crashing the party.

For example, we've never had an administration that spoke truth to the satanic Powers and Principalities of the UN as Nikki Haley did the other day. That is the kind of firm pimp hand needed to deal with these truly awful human beings.

The same pimp hand, by the way, that Trump is applying to the Democrat operatives in the MSM. He must slap at them and continue slapping until journalistic morale improves.

Hayward paraphrases a formulation by Jaffa to the effect that the fate of the world hinges on the United States, the fate of the U.S. on the conservative movement, and conservatism on the... Republican Party, of all things. I would only add that the fate of the Republican Party hinges on the preservation of the American trinity alluded to above. But in any event, "the Democratic Party is just as intellectually corrupt today as it was in the 1850s" and at every point in between.

For it has no "intellectual" basis at all, only an "anti-intellectual" one. Not anti-intellectual in the sense of uneducated, uncultured, and hostile toward ideas. Rather, they are the enemy of the intellect per se, such that they literally use man's intelligence in order to undermine the intellect -- or use thinking to render coherent thought impossible.

To take one obvious example, this is what Darwinists, sociobiologists, and evolutionary psychologists do when they use the miraculous gift of intelligence to affirm that intelligence is just a side effect of random mutation, ultimately rooted in mere matter -- a flagrantly self-refuting absurdity if ever there was one.

"Nothing," writes Schuon, "is more contradictory than to deny the spirit, or even simply the psychic element, in favor of matter alone, for it is the spirit that denies, whereas matter remains inert and unconscious. The fact that matter can be thought about proves precisely that materialism contradicts itself at its starting point."

In short -- and try to disprove this! -- "the subjective could not arise from the objective, and to believe otherwise is to understand nothing of subjectivity."

In the same book, Schuon mentions how "the internal contradiction of Marxism is that it wants to build a perfect humanity while destroying man" -- again, build existence while destroying the essence.

To exist means to survive. But is the survival worth it if it is only in the material sense? "One readily speaks of the duty of being useful to society, but one fails to ask whether this society is useful, that is to say, whether it realizes man's, and thus a human community's, reason for being."

To ask this question is to indict multiculturalism, collectivism, feminism, and the rest of the left's anti-intellectual arsenal. For "it is the individual, in his solitary station before the Absolute and thus by the exercise of his highest function, who is the aim and reason for being of the collectivity" (ibid.).

If the left prevails in its anti-human mission, it will be a quintessential case of "the operation was a success but the patient died."

"God is Dead and I Hate Him!"

We're still on the topic of the mass hysteria of the left, which cannot be explained with recourse to the usual psychological categories -- which means the mass can't just be "hysterical" but must be drawing upon a deeper source.

While casting about for inspiration this morning, I've been thumbing through an oldie but goodie, Father Rose's Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age. He would certainly agree that the left is diabolically inspired. Which is the point of the book.

He notes that the Revolution -- and the desire for Revolution is what distinguishes the left from classical liberalism -- "has a theological and spiritual foundation, even if its 'theology' is an inverted one and its 'spirituality' Satanic." The revolutionary impulse is destructive and nihilist at its core, although always disguised as a desire for "change."

Destruction, of course, must precede the change, but it turns out that destruction is the change. As Stalin, used to say, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." But as the rest of the Soviet Union asked, "where's the omelet?"

And it goes without saying that if you like your eggs you can keep your eggs.

Now, "construction" is not possible in the absence of truth. This is as true on the concrete/material plane as it is on the abstract/metaphysical. Just as you cannot build, say, a functioning airplane without knowing about the laws of nature, you cannot have a functioning civilization without knowing about the laws of man. The left starts by denying the latter, but they also have no compunction about meddling with the former (e.g. "climate change," gender nonsense, IQ denialism, etc.).

Rose alludes to the nihilist "revelation" that "there is no truth," which is functionally equivalent to the death of God. Truly, if one is intellectually honest -- and cognitively adequate -- one understands that the choice is between God and Nihilism. There can be no third, except in an imaginary or magical sense.

The other day I read a piece about the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. I don't have the link to the piece, but it mentioned a number of ideas derived from him which the contemporary left has followed to the letter, including:

--There is no truth, only competing agendas.

--All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

--There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

--The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

--Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

--The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

--For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

--When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Call them planks in Satan's platform. Or Bernie Sanders's Bucket List.

For those who relate to this diabolical madness, "an entirely new spiritual universe opens up, in which God exists no longer, in which, more significantly, men do not wish for God to exist" (Rose). In the words of the Aphorist, The atheist devotes himself less to proving that God does not exist than to forbidding Him to exist.

Nevertheless, The death of God is a report given by the devil, who knows very well that the report is false. And Atheism is the prelude to the divinization of Man (which is when hell breaks loose from its transpersonal restraints).

Formal atheism is merely "the philosophy of a fool," whereas "antitheism is a profounder malady" (Rose). While the former "errs through childishness" and "plain insensitivity to spiritual realities," the latter "owes its distortions to a deep-seated passion that, recognizing these realities, wills to destroy them."

"It may be doubted, indeed, if there exists such a thing as 'atheism,' for no one denies the true God except to devote himself to the service of a false god." You gotta serve somebody, as the poet said.

It is important to note that these hyperkinetic zombies are anything but spiritually "lukewarm." Rather, they are en fuego for the Evil One, a truth easily discerned in the demented faces of their howling mobs.

I suppose there exist some a-theists who are able to live in a fragile equilibrium between God above and infrahuman below. But most fall into an aggressive and destructive anti-theism that worships its own false absolute.

Fr. Rose quotes the anarchist Proudhon, who wrote that "The first duty of man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience. For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature.... Every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity." It's called progress.

The Serpent could scarcely have said it better. Bakunin channelled the same Serpent, expressing the view that if God actually existed, "it would be necessary to abolish him."

Man cannot be happy unless his existence comports with the nature of things. But the counter-faith of the left does precisely the opposite; not only does it fail to comport with the nature of things, it is at war with those "naturally supernatural" things.

Thus, the left's spiritual illness revolves around "envy, jealousy, pride, impatience, rebelliousness, blasphemy -- one of these qualities predominating in any given personality." (He left out raw stupidity and refusal to learn -- or more generally, refuse to submit to, or even recognize, one's superiors -- which is often mingled with the others.)

"This rebellion, this messianic fervor that animates the greatest revolutionaries, being an inverse faith," is driven to destroy its "rival faith." Thus, we commonly see how "doctrines and institutions" are "reinterpreted" by the left, "emptied of their Christian content and filled with a new, Nihilist content" (ibid.).

Which calls to mind Iowahawk's apt description of the strategy of the spiritually intoxicated left: