We are heirs of a tradition. Each of us is born into circumstances that were created by our parents, by our grandparents, by our ancestors, and by the civilization in which they lived. Human life existed before we were born and will continue after our deaths. As children we inherit the past. As parents we create the future. Wisdom requires us to understand ourselves as a single link in an infinite chain of human existence, rather than to imagine ourselves as free-floating atoms unconnected to others.
Popular ideas of “democracy” — the modernistic idolatry that speaks the language of “rights,” “choice” and “equality” — obscure the truth of human existence, trapping us in the present tense, isolating us as rootless individuals removed from the authentic traditions of our inheritance. Children are taught that the past is not merely useless, but actually harmful, because human history is nothing but a catalog of oppression, atrocities and victimhood. Thus, the modern child cannot be allowed to believe that his grandparents were wise or virtuous, that the great achievements of our civilization are worthy of respect.
The great idol of modernity is Progress. Everything that happened prior to today is “old-fashioned” and obsolete, and nothing is more obsolete than yesterday’s ideas. Whatever your parents or grandparents believed in 1980 or 1950 or 1920 is presumed to be wrong. Your ancestors were all racist sexist homophobes enslaved by patriarchal religious bigotry. Never mind that their beliefs enabled your ancestors to survive hardship that would be unimaginable for most Americans in the 21st century. In a remarkable span of six decades, America survived the Great Depression, triumphed in World War II and destroyed the Evil Empire of Soviet tyranny. Yet the American child today is taught to despise the values of the people who accomplished all that. The child cannot cherish his own inherited tradition or respect his own ancestors, and is instead commanded to bow down at the altar of Progress.
“To live for the moment is the prevailing passion — to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity. We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future. . . .
“Narcissism emerges as the typical form of character structure in a society that has lost interest in the future.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)
What has resulted from this modernistic idolatry of democratic Progress — the utopian fantasy of an imagined future where we all live in absolute equality, free of “old-fashioned” beliefs — is a sort of social epidemic of bipolar hysteria, in which minds unmoored from cultural tradition constantly shift between utter confusion and radical certainty. Anyone who paid close attention to the “Occupy” protests of 2011 saw evidence of what kind of disordered personalities this progressive epidemic has produced. Young people who were clearly incompetent to manage their own lives nevertheless felt themselves entitled to dictate to the rest of us how “society” must be changed so as to “empower” these mobs of emotional unstable misfits. Refusing to take responsibility for their own failures, the Occupiers believed they were supremely qualified to pass judgment on the “system” that served as an all-purpose scapegoat onto which they could externalize blame for their misfortunes.
Duke: The lights are growing dim Otto. I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.
Otto: That’s bullshit. You’re a white suburban punk just like me.
Duke: Yeah, but it still hurts.
Great art speaks great truths and the death of Duke in Repo Man is an under-appreciated highlight of 20th-century cinematic art. Whatever the authorial purpose behind Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic, that scene speaks eternal truth. Duke and his girlfriend Debbie try to rob a liquor store, and Duke laughs in psychopathic glee as he points his pistol at one of the clerk: “I’m going to kill him! I’m going to kill him! I’m going to kill everybody!” Unfortunately for Duke, there is a thing called karma in the world, and when Duke is momentarily distracted, the store clerk gets his shotgun and fatally wounds Duke. Debbie responds by shooting the clerk dead and it is then that Duke’s death scene plays out. Breathing his last gasps and spitting up blood, Duke speaks his own epitaph, expressing the worldview of every worthless punk who ever lived: “I blame society.”
Irresponsible people always need a scapegoat to blame for their faults and failures. They can never be satisfied to let their own shortcomings or disappointments be blamed on bad luck. Other people may be unlucky — indeed, many millions are far more unfortunate in their circumstances than the punk — but bad luck won’t do for him. No, the punk must always have someone to blame. His own failures and the problems that he has caused for himself? Not his fault. Blame society.
A punk’s entire life is basically one long quest for revenge, an attempt to even the score with “society,” to get back at the people he blames for whatever it is that has made him unhappy or unsuccessful.
The Cult of Progress has spawned a Punk Generation of people with no system of values except intellectual abstractions — “democracy,” “rights,” “equality” and so forth. They have learned nothing of sturdy virtue, nothing of classic Stoicism, nothing of the Calvinist ethos of enduring life’s hardships with a spirit of reverent gratitude.
We are told that democracy is synonymous with freedom, but we see how a false belief in “equality” between the wise and foolish, between the evil and the good, must ultimately enslave us all.
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
— Romans 1:22 (KJV)
[…] Robert Stacy McCain We are heirs of a tradition. Each of us is born into circumstances that were created by our […]
Oh, you HAD to quote Repo Man!
But you left out the rest of the exchange between Duke and Otto: ‘Society! That’s bullsh*t! You’re just a white middle-class punk, same as me!.’ ‘But it still hurts!!’ And the best part, as Duke goes into a retching fit, Otto says, ‘You’ll be okay, man! Uh, maybe not.”
Lots of wisdom in that movie.
Wow, and I check back 5 minutes later and Stacy has the rest of the exchange in his piece. Talk about customer service!
Yes, I hit the tip jar!
There is a reason over the last fifty years, our young people have been taught to refer to the U.S. as a democracy and not a republic of citizens, which place restraints upon themselves in governing each other. Unfettered power, whether held by a single tyrant or vested in the demos is still unfettered power. It never works out well for those being governed.
Postmodern leftists hate MORE than just the USA; they hate Western Civilization itself. They hate it becaue they blame it for: sexual repression; Third World poverty; most of history’s genocide; and global pollution is killing people and which threatens an imminent global climate catastrophe.
Each of these postmodern leftist positions is demonstrably false, but are now accepted as basic presuppositions by today’s postmodern left.
FACTS:
In the 20th C alone, socialism killed more people than did Judeo-Christianity in the preceding 19 centuries.
Since its inception – and globally – Islam killed more people than socialism – or any other ideology… EVER.
Industrialization has extended life-spans and living standards; it doesn’t hurt them. Life-spans and living standards are lower in the un-industrialized Third World. And they were lower in pre-indisutrialized Europe than in the cities of industrializing Europe; this is why folks on the farm moved to the cites; it’s why they still do!
The Third World is NOT poor as a result of colonialization – the Third World is poor because they haven’t industrialized and have too much socialism. The West did not impoverish the Third World; the Third World’s lack of westernization is keeping them as poor now as they have always been.
For thousands of years, the West’s traditional sexual mores and institutions have helped stabilize families – (the basic building block of society) – and helped families raise pro-social children who grow up to be responsible adults. Societies with non-Western sexual mores and institutions have a poorer record of this, and statistics prove that fatherless homes of any/all races raise criminals and populate our prisons. Wanton sexual promiscuity spreads criminality and disease.
People on the postmodern left ignore history; they ignore socialism’s consistent record of failure – both in economic growth AND in delivering goods and services to the masses; they ignore islam’s record of tyranny and genocide and intolerance and ignorance; and they have always excused the totalitarianism of their fellow leftists.
The postmodern left also ignores the fact that traditional, bourgeois, capitalist, and industrial societies are responsible for everything good about modern life: our longer and healthier life spans, our greater material prosperity, and our ability to enjoy our innate rights and liberties.
They are an amalgamation of the brainwashed, willfully ignorant anjd the deliberately nihilistic.
Their hatred for the West is why they function as a fifth column for the islamo-fascists.
Because they dominate the academy and the mass media, they comprise nearly a third of the West’s population – enough in many parliamentary democracies to gain and hold power. The nations where they have help power are weaker economically and more vulnerable to islamization and dhimmitude as a result.
And because the West is an alliance of sorts – via transnational insitutions such as the UN, NATO, the EU – the postmodern left has weakened our entire civilization.
Which is why I have long argued that we need to defeat the postmodern left before we can defeat the islamists.
Of course, everyone who participated in OWS demonstrations was a clueless, unemployed loser, and the anger had nothing to do with the big banks perpetrating a massive fraud which crippled our economy, and not a single person being prosecuted for it. I guess the message here is the status quo is fine as is, and needs no reform or changing, especially if infringes on white, middle class privilege? What a load of reactionary bullshit.
This sort of thing is what kills me about SJW types. Oh, they are aware that something called “the past” has happened. They even have a dim idea that things were worse then than they are now. But they speak and behave as if it’s still 1859, slavery is a going concern, women can’t vote, &c., and that there is jo world outside the United States.
I can’t make it out. Is it:
— A pose, and cynical act to get power, like a naughty child throwing a tantrum in the belief that he’ll get a cookie?
— Anger because the world isn’t perfect?
— A genuine misunderstanding of the world, how it works and their place in it?
— Simply being morally, spiritually and intellectually so adrift that fighting against mostly-imaginary evils gives them some feeling of self-worth?
I really don’t know. I think I’ve written before about one particular SJW type with whom I’ve crossed swords. This person comes across as well-educated, thoughtful and genuinely interested in “doing good”, but at the same time petulant, arrogant, utterly hypocritical, and with all the strength of a snowflake. WTF? I just don’t get it.
Half-right. The status quo, defined as regulatory capture, revolving door between government and big banks, governmental incompetence, and VERY ill-considered efforts at social engineering, needs to go.
Unfortunately, the clueless, unemployed losers (you forgot “spoiled”, “privileged” and “woefully ignorant”) who made up the bulk of IOWS didn’t get this.
Well, sh!tting on cop cars, staffing rape tents and trying to recover stolen iPads while also worrying about how one is going to pay off $100k in student loans racked up while getting that BA in Queer Gender Literature Studies is a full-time occupation (YSWIDT), leaving no time for pondering what actually goes on in the world.
You do realize that those “big banks,” were directed to pursue certain courses of action by the federal government, beginning with the Clinton administration, right? You do realize that the Federal government was up to its eyeballs in the fraud that was perpetrated, right? You do realize, it was the federal government which mandated a lowering of loan standards which allowed anyone with a pulse to borrow money, and then guaranteed that those loans would be paid by taxpayer dollars, right? You do realize there’s a reason the current administration is beloved by “Wall Street,” right? You realize that had the “status quo ante” of, oh say, 1982 been in force, 2008 would not have happened, right?
No, thought not.
Those are your words and not the words in this article.
This is one of the most shoddy attempts at strawman and misdirection I’ve seen in …. well … at least a week
How can anyone take you seriously, when you refer to bullshit concepts like “white privilege?” You need to understand, the whole point of constructing a threat narrative like that one is to justify abuse.
Think, man! How can you be so concerned with both “big banks” and “middle-class privilege” at the same time? Someone got in your head, big time.
Bravo!!
May I suggest cutting down the amount of straw in your diet?
[…] knew it as well. There is a huge difference between our form of government and a democracy. Stacey McCain explains why those that claim we are a democracy are many times, not interested in anything […]
You nailed it with the first one.
“— A pose, and cynical act to get power, like a naughty child throwing a tantrum in the belief that he’ll get a cookie?”
HEAR HIM! HEAR HIM!
I’m gonna have to be the unpopular one here and say that your comment is too much of a rah-rah oversimplification for me. Industrialization CAN harm, and does so on a regular basis. Bhopal was a visitation of Hell on Earth. Fukushima is producing childhood cancers that the Japanese press is actually forbidden to discuss.
Industrialization isn’t the answer; mere hygiene is. Industrialization produced some hells of pollution. Read up on the true life of Joseph Merrick “the Elephant Man” and the world he grew up in. 1880s industrial London was ghastly – far ghastlier than life in the country. Another good read is “Lark Rise to Candleford”: a great rundown of English hamlet life shifting into the modern age from someone who lived through it.
You’re spot-on with your observation of sexual mores that guard us. But those mores are based on restraint; realizing that sex is necessary and good, but needs to be restrained. I wish we could do that with science, but so far it seems impossible.
It’s pretty difficult to cheer innovation when it’s supplying technological goodies if you realize that the impulse to invent new machines is the SAME impulse that causes us to laughingly throw out traditions. “We must keep going in this direction! We’re never done! Never done! Never done!”
Can we produce a civilization that gives us power plants WITHOUT also giving us Bruce Jenner’s “transformation”? I think they go hand in hand because “Never done!” goes into every aspect of thought.
I believe that the West is now a global problem because of our hedonistic culture. Science may have given us a higher standard of living in some respects, but is any of that worth it if they also give us the blasphemies of sex changes, and then try to foist that thinking on the world?
I always balk at “life span statistics,” as they’re loaded with biased B.S. Native Americans lived into their 80s and 90s. (Native Americans also never produced teenagers who gleefully pissed on tradition just to piss on tradition. They are to be commended for this.) And the people in the aforementioned English hamlets fared just as well life-span-wise as those in the cities.
It really doesn’t take much to live on into one’s 80s. Sanitation, decent food, and heat.
Exactly so. I understand how it’s easy to demonize banks (they have the money, they charge interest, they foreclose when people don’t pay back, &c.), but the world is a bit more complicated than, “They’ve got all the money! We should make them share!”
I doubt one of these IOWS yahoos could explain what they want any better than that. And now they’ve appropriated the “white privilege” nonsense.
What a pack of maroons.
Well, I’ll give him this much credit: that’s much of what *I* think ofvthem, anyway.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The go-to ideology of the PC is one of sociopaths who feel the world hates them. In fact the world doesn’t hate them but acknowledges their inability to produce anything anyone wants.
You’ll notice that when it comes to hard disciplines like commercial illustration, rock climbing or advance martial arts and a thousand other things political correctness drops off in a steep curve.
There is a dearth of gender feminists or their disciples out there in the world hiking the Inca Trail, climbing live volcanoes or motorcycling Asia. The reason for that is one of character vs. lack of it. How far down to you have to be to look up and think internet shut-ins like Amanda Marcotte, John Scalzi or Ta-Nehisi Coates constitute some kind of worldly wisdom? How psychotic do you have to be to dote on Audre Lorde or Judith Butler. They all have one thing in common: they are passive sociopaths with a deep distaste for the world they claim to know so much about but in fact have rejected in favor of scanning the internet and declaring white is privileged and being heterosexual or even thin is an unfair advantage. This is an ideology that elevates the craziest and most ignorant people to pedestals.
They are really easy to get away from. Just go to any place that remotely resembles where the action is and suddenly sanity sets in.
Probably using their skills at investigating the SEC would be the place to start, not camping in a fricking plaza so “someone” would do “something.”
How about all of the choices?
Bhopal has been intensely studied, precisely because it was so horrible. It turns out that it happened because of a cultural mismatch.
Union Carbide duplicated an American plant, but they couldn’t duplicate American culture. Indians have a more hierarchical culture — a literal caste system — and the night-shift guy who was supposed to respond to the alarm did not have enough personal agency to do so.
Why do I know that off the top of my head? Because it’s important.
[…] The Errors of ‘Democracy’ We are heirs of a tradition. Each of us is born into circumstances that were created by our parents, by our grandparents, by our ancestors, and by the civilization in which they lived. Human life existed before we born and will continue after our deaths. As children we inherit the past. As parents we create the future. Wisdom requires us to understand ourselves as a single link in an infinite chain of human existence, rather than to imagine ourselves as free-floating atoms unconnected to others. […]
Very true. Working in telecom has me conflicted: on the one hand the problems are interesting, and I get to deal with the kind of people that like interesting problems. On the other hand, whatever you see on the internet — good or bad — I’m enabling it.
[…] The Errors of ‘Democracy’. […]
So, we should blame you for all the depravity we see?
Or thank me, and I have to share the blame/thanks with innumerable others. 😉
Blame Al Gore.
He invented the Internet.
Arrogance and ignorance are a bad combination. Alas, we’ve got millions of people with that combination, and they’re all on the Internet.
Of course, everyone who participated in OWS demonstrations was a clueless, unemployed loser
Remember, I was in the middle of that wretched mob when they tried to storm the AFP Summit. I saw them, I heard them, I smelled them. “Mike check!” — and another drug-addled slacker would recite his whiny complaints about student loans, his mental health problems, his parents kicking him out of the house at age 29.
Yeah, the world’s just really hard on you, isn’t it, punk? Blame society.
I’m a middle-aged heterosexual white male. Every day, I wake up and go to work oppressing the Third World. Before I go to bed at night, I randomly rape a few college girls, just to make sure they know the patriarchy’s still in change. For my tireless labors, I receive six-figure monthly payments from the Koch Brothers, via wire transfer to my secret accounts in the Cayman Islands.
It’s thankless work, but I’m happy to do it.
You’re welcome, America.
Actually, it was there the whole time. I think you were so excited you skimmed over it the first time you read it.
Bravo!
I blame you for inspiring many of us to start our own blogs.
Hope you hid the kitchen knives from Mrs. Other McCain before you embarked on this new stage in your career of evil. As you’ve remarked before, she’s got a drawer filled with them, and you have to sleep sometime. 😉
To be fair, some of them are mumbling on street corners, talking to the voices in their heads, and not ruining the Internet for the rest of us.
[…] The Errors of ‘Democracy’ […]
He’s using the income to buy her clothes and kitchen stuff.
Dan said he was an enabler.
We can tie you and RSM to neighboring posts. Meet with your satisfaction? 🙂
Industry is a power. It can help or harm.
Exactly my point. It’s not a faultless miracle.
The fault was in knowing too little about the workers, not too much about the work.
I don’t get your point here. One stupid move is just as stupid as another stupid move.
One op-ed in 2011 called the Occupiers “powerless gods”. They had figured out life and were ready with big plans for everyone–but were unfortunately stuck working off their student debt at Panda Express.
Typo? “Human life existed before we born” — we were born?
“I regret that I cannot do my duty as a true modern by despising everything that made me whatever I am.” – G. K. Chesterton
Thanks! Fixed it.
I was recovering from some neurological issues when OWS was going on (old injury with long term effects). I still have family and friends near NYC and I thought about going there out of curiosity. Then I saw a video recorded by an old friend, the OWS-ers appeared to range from the merely directionless to borderline personality disorder types holding up signs echoing the eeeevil Joooo Banker trope. He said certain parts of the encampments smelled like the open sewage trenches in rural Korea and it might be unwise for a guy on crutches to go there and become mugger-bait. However it was his video and the others I saw on the interwebz that convinced me. It seemed to have all the appeal of visiting a landfill, why bother unless there’s an actual need. He asked one of the guys holding up a “eeevil Jooo” sign his opinions about fractional reserve banking, the guy didn’t have a clue aside from slogans.
Color me surprised that I’m getting these kinds of responses from Boomer scum that champion the neo-liberal economic order that has plunged us into this nightmare, and we’ll keep us there for the foreseeable future. Much easier to blame it’s victims than be accountable for awful ideas that only help the wealthy. Perhaps you’ll wake-up as social strife, and class divisions continue to grow, inevitably leading us to a complete collapse of the social order, but even then I’m guessing it will just be more of the same deflection, blaming the victims for their plight, and defending oligarchy.
You do realize that’s only a fraction of the story, and the rest was created by unregulated derivatives in the form of CDO’s and credit default swaps, predatory lending, fraud in the form of lying for borrowers on mortgage applications in order to keep feeding the real estate bubble growing (why should the bank care since the loan will be packaged, and resold because of the securitization chain), telling investors they were buying a stable, growing product, and hedging on bad loans they made. There are reams of information on how the banks committed mass fraud(hence the fines they’re paying)but you go right ahead and buy the right wing lie that it’s the fault of borrowers, and the federal government. Furthermore big banks lobbied for an easing in lending standards because they saw a great opportunity to make some more money.