Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Kurt Schlichter at Townhall writes on the topic, It’s Time For Conservatives To Play By The New Rules. Ed Driscoll picked it up at Instapundit, where I commented:
I count among the dimmer bulbs in the shop, but even my feeble illumination takes Schlichter here as raising sarcastic satire. Others here call it parody. I think it is closer to satire, with a bite. There is a difference.
Still, I think Schlichter wants to force and succeeds in forcing very useful questions upon the galleries. This one especially ” … consolidating our power for the greater good.” That is his most sarcastic turn of phrase, as I read his essay entire.
I think the greater good — than which nothing is more demonstrably ambiguous, if not also inescapably vacuous, torrentially squalid and a crashing bore — is not in the picture and is never a goal of the will-to-power. I think power is consolidated for the opportunity it bestows of defining meaning, as the balance of Schlichter’s essay illustrates.
The question is, what meaning does one intend to define with these huge gobs of power one seeks? Meaning one wants to be reality or meaning reality already says is reality? Well, the unity of power and meaning is the very definition of the dimension of spirit, which man, alone among creatures, inhabits.
He was a fool who said “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Power IS the good and absolute power IS the absolute good so long as it is used to define meaning that is real independently of whether the one deploying power says it is or not. Power defining real meaning is wonderful. Power defining meaning that is not real is not power, it is posturing. Power can only make the good as the real, it cannot make the bad or the unreal.
Americans have come to have a jaundiced, European-style grasp of power, that it is something inherently bad or inherently meant for doing good. It is neither. Power is good. Power is Goodness Itself (bonum ipsum). Power is a Presence of God. Meaning is a corporeality of God. The unity of power and meaning is the Concrete Spirit of God.
Power and meaning are the Divine/Human substance of the universe, of Creation. They give the universe, Creation, its knowable face, hands and feet. Americans, true Americans, think grandly of themselves. Their heads are high-held, their hearts calm-held, their thoughts reserved for the most fecund occasions, their tolerance and humility signs of their strength.
Upon seeing something, it is not Americans’ nature immediately to plot to change or abolish it, whatever it is. That is what Europeans do, not Americans. Americans do not believe in change. They believe in strength. Americans believe in power. And well they should, because power is God.
Americans should be proud and confident of power, their power. They made it, after all.
Europeans see ad pejorem. Americans see ad meliorem. That is why Europeans, such as the Frankfurt School and fellow travelers, hate America: people whose posture is ad meliorem are independent and content and Europeans hate that.
Related 1: Richard Grenier: The Gandhi Nobody Knows.
Related 2: Richard Fernandez: What We Learned Today.
Related 3: Piling on (good, about time!) Andrew Klavan and Jonah Goldberg at Instapundit. The comments are electrifying. Here is mine:
Klavan and Goldberg belong to the entertainment class, which is to say the chattering class, conservative-schtick section.
There is one principle worth standing on/fighting for: power. Power bestows opportunity to make value and meaning (e.g., Trump Tower, a presidential campaign, a brigade combat team, etc.). Love is power. Power is love. Seek power and you will have love.
Entertainers do not understand this phenomenology, this ways of the world. Their want is for an audience who pays to be entertained by them. That is their operating principle and it is powerless.
Update 4: Reconstituting The Militia.
Update 5: Charles Hill On The Iran Deal
Update 6: Sultan Knish: No More Mr. Nice Conservative
Update 7: Spengler: To Defeat Iran Deal, Republicans Must Admit To Mistakes In Iraq
Update 8: The President’s Successful Foreign Policy
Update 9: How The [Fraud’s] White House Runs Foreign Policy (a puff piece for the foul-mouthed harridan Susan Rice)
Update 10: George Will: Constitutional Vandalism
Update 11: Common SJW Phrases Translated Into English. Commenter: This made it worth chewing through the restraints this morning.
Update 12: The Myth of the Peaceful Woman
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
