Random Thoughts on the Passing (Please!) Scene

St. Thomas thought about everything, including politics. When a degenerate people hand power over to demagogues, then "the elective power should, if it be possible, be taken from the multitude and restored to those who are good."

This seems too sensible to be remotely possible. Still, why should a bad and degenerate people have the right to make Biden the most powerful vegetable on earth?

St. Augustine was also on the case over 1500 years ago: "If a people gradually becomes depraved, if it sells its votes, if it hands over the government to wicked and criminal men, then that power of conferring honors is rightly taken from such a people and restored to those who are good."

Now, in our world we have one party that shamelessly purchases votes with cash and other valuable prizes stolen from the productive half of the population; this would of course be the Democrats. 

At the other extreme, we have a party that pretends not to do the same thing, i.e., Republicans. This is why the self-dealing degenerates of both parties so hated (and hate) Trump, and by extension, us. They are united in their contempt for the Good. 

The Founders of course knew that democracy eventually degenerates into mob rule, and thus tried to design a government around this melancholy fact. Everything the left does is designed to transform this M.F. into a principle -- a principle designed to counter and undo the work of the Founders.

But it's not really a principle -- unless an utter lack of principle can be elevated to one. This is why it is so futile to point out the daily hypocrisies of the left -- e.g., yesterday only the tinfoil hat crowd believed COVID was invented by the Chinese, today everyone knows it was. That's not hypocrisy, just the usual absence of principle. 

Note that the lack of principle is the left's version of "freedom." Any controlling principle would place constraints on the exercise of power, and in the struggle between principle and power, it's no contest. Expediency wins every time. 

This is also why the self-styled progressive does indeed progress: in the direction of absurdity. We are beyond the age of mere stupidity and well into the Age of Absurdity. 

This is what makes it all so unsettling. We'd like to think that what cannot continue won't continue, but this is probably what Augustine thought on the occasion of that previous barbarian invasion. They're just a disorganized bunch of illiterate malcontents. Besides, Twitter hasn't even been invented. What harm can they do to Civilization?

The current barbarian invasion has already breached the walls of nearly every institution of western civilization, e.g., the family, education at every level, journalism, science, art, entertainment. Even supposing we yanked on the brake right now, sheer momentum would carry the graveyard train forward another 50 years.

Which, in the Chinese perspective on history, is known as "six months."

You know how the left says "the personal is political?" Well, yes. If you can only manage to destroy the person, then there will be no limit to your political power. Regarding politics, Aristotle

starts from the study of the family, the first human community. The father, who rules the family, must deal, in one fashion with his wife, in another with his children, in still another with his slaves ["slave" is not the preferred nomenclature: helot-American laborer of color, please].

Hence, the family has been under constant assault by the left since forever, with predicable results: less stable families, more power for the left. It's why they want women to deny their natural inclinations and toil outside the home, why they want to subsidize bureaucratcare for children, why they disparage masculinity, why they redefine marriage, etc. You can't say the effort hasn't paid off. 

This is producing hordes of people who are simply unfit for the rigors of freedom -- even of free speech! Paraphrasing Thomas, Fr. Reginald writes that

the man who cannot provide for himself should work for, and be directed by, one wiser than himself.

Clearly not everyone is cut out for freedom. Indeed, there are whole continents and cultures that can't manage it. Problem is, the left once again elevates this to a kind of principle -- as if none of us can get by without the aggressive intervention of Big Sister because some can't. 

This reminds me of an observation by Schuon to the effect that we must recognize that there are indeed a great many adults that can't get by without adult supervision. It's a caste thing. 

There exist people --  e.g., the criminal, the revolutionary, the tenured -- for whom mere obedience to human norms would constitute their great virtue. All are badly in need of a proper Father. All evoke the reurn of the primordial Father, except in the form of the tyrant. Or perhaps a harmless looking vegetable as the face of tyranny.