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
IMHO, the most significant and impelling fact to emerge inside the predictable flooding of Houston this past week is that authorities and officials requested and welcomed voluntary citizen assistance, with their equipment, comprising boats, trucks, fuels, knowledge, skills, networks, monies, time, energy, strong bodies and many, many more assets those citizens posses in abundance.
The posture of official attitude now is at such contrast with what is was during the past eight years and more!
Then, officials worked from the concept that government — themselves — is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and can handle any situation, alone. Citizen input is necessarily toxic and absolutely not wanted!
Now, with an humanitarian in the White House, officials are more prone to admit that they are servants, not masters, of citizens and in consequence welcome citizens’ participation in relieving distress in the polis … and importantly, having a good time into the bargain.
I think this phenomenon illustrates a very large-scale reality of political philosophy and the concourse of history.
Latin (Western) Europe and the Americas, fundamentally, are inimical to the totalitarian ambition. The allergy to totalism is embedded in their Christian essence. They were taught, observed and learned to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16).
However, pre-Christian Europe also had this blessed allergy to totalism. I think Celts rather embody the allergy. In their Greek and Roman celestial hagiographies, prefigured as they are by Indian precursors, Celts dilate upon struggles for freedom and heroism amidst envy, savagery and deceit. In other words, realistic human experiences projected onto an etherial, even sempiternal screen. Even the Germanics/Franks north and west of the Bug and Vistula, while war-like and imperialistic, were not totalitarian by habit or even by nature.
There is a story told of Alexander, the Macedonian, that when he was in India he heard of a great saint living near to his Army’s line of march. He went to visit the saint and found him, seated in deep meditation. Alexander prayed the man rise and greet him as befitted the world-conqueror. The saint remained in meditation, seated. Raising his voice, Alexander yelled out an order for the man to rise and greet him. The saint awoke from meditation but did not rise. Furious, Alexander drew his sword intending to lop off the man’s head. The saint now laughed at Alexander and said, “You cannot kill me. Am I born? Do I die?” These words brought Alexander, an educated man, to his senses. He sheathed his sword and knelt before the saint saying that his words were true and brought him to realize the truth of his situation in life. Alexander left the saint’s cottage happy that he had come to visit the man. One can be a world-conqueror without being a totalitarian.
Excepting Latin (Western) Europe, the Americas and countries of the Anglosphere, to include India, most areas of the planet have made nations who accept and foster totalitarianism. This includes the Levant, most of Asia, most of Africa, Arabia and Greek (Eastern) Europe. In recent centuries and especially now, Latin Europe has been losing its native allergy to totalitarianism whereas Greek Europe has been contracting one.
Under attack from Levantine and now Arab and African totalism, big chunks of Latin Europe have accepted Levantine (aka Talmudic/Communist) eisegesis of the Parable of the Good Samaritan and tired therefore — unsurprisingly — of the fight for freedom, aka truth. Meanwhile, big chunks of Greek Europe, to include Russia, have tired of totalism and are willing to fight for freedom, aka truth.
The planet is a dramatic stage at this point in our history. Really, only the African and Asian continents, plus Asia Minor and elements of the Levant and Arabia support nations committed to totalitarianism while only the Germanic/Frankish genetic sheaves of Latin Europe are dedicated to putting themselves under it.
Totalitarianism is an ambition of spoiled children who are thwarted.
Strange that in the USA, of all places, dedicated as we are to republican government, totalitarianism should seemingly suddenly and without warning — actually, there has been plenty of warning, and for decades — find promulgation in the mouths of leading and bleeding citizens, plus others. How did the State Department and the CIA — and their constellations of conniving NGOs, aka foundations and think tanks — come to imagine themselves in authority to decide who may and may not control the mechanisms of government of the USA? What an extraordinary attitude! It is absolutely totalitarian.
At issue is the question of authority. That is the deepest way of saying that at issue is the question of political philosophy. Not political science, political philosophy. I have every confidence that the USA’s republican answer to that question is prevailing against all the best minds in the country, male and female, who have lost their reason, demanding totalitarianism for themselves grasping the levers of the mechanisms of government. Of course.
At its root, totalitarianism denies personhood,
even that of its denier.
An inauspicious beginning to a forlorn hope.
Authority resides in the heart of the person. Authority resides most impressively in the heart of the person who is faithful to God.
Update 1: Scott Johnson: Off The GRID: The observations of Professor Daniel Mahoney in his review of Ryszard Legutko’s new book (highly recommended) are in all likelihood far off the GRID:
We have reached the reductio ad absurdum of the liberal subversion of liberty with the coming of the bathroom wars in North Carolina. In the name of equal dignity and equal respect, the transgendered (whose freely constituted “gender” has no connection with biology or human nature) have the right to use the public restroom of their choice, or so the Department of Justice tells us. The rights of parents and children, or those reasonably concerned with safety and propriety, are dismissed out of hand. The notion of dignity affirmed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch is incapable of honoring common sense distinctions. Every choice and affirmation is worthy of our respect (except, of course, the views of those who challenge the regnant relativism) even if it flies in the face of common sense and common decency. In the name of equality, and a groundless and relativistic conception of dignity, we erode the self-government of the American people. And more reasonable accommodations for the transgendered are dismissed out of hand. A point has to be made at all costs, and it must be directed at those Americans “on the wrong side of History.” One will have noticed one more affinity with the totalitarianism of old.
Update 2: John F. Sutherland, commenting at Power Line: I am, I guess, along with AG, a deplorable bitter clinger. And, as a student of history, I know what happens to deplorables and bitter clingers when the statists (a/k/a communists, a/k/a fascists, a/k/a “progressives”) get in full control. As one antifa recently put it succinctly: “Your existence is violence to me.”
The intellectualoids think that, because of their (just ask them) intellectual and moral superiority, they will be in charge when statism (see above) reigns, and thus will be able to order the peons around (for the good of the peons, of course). In fact, history teaches that in a statist polity the biggest thug will eventually take over, and the intellectualoids will get to join the deplorables wherever the deplorables were sent.
Update 3: These people include public school teachers and devotees of Norman Douglas.
Update 4: Angelo M. Codevilla: The 2016 Election Is Not Reversible
Update 5: Sundance: ¹China tells DPRK to do stupid thing. ²DPRK does stupid thing. ³Trump hits China with economic punishment for [doing] stupid thing.
AKA: If you have leverage, use it! Don’t hesitate, deploy your assets. This is statecraft, not afternoon tea. Parable of the Ten Talents territory.
Update 6: Congress does not write laws or legislation, special interest groups do. Lobbyists are paid, some very well paid, to get politicians to go along with the need of the legislative group.
When you are voting for a Congressional Rep or a U.S. Senator you are not voting for a person who will write laws. Your rep only votes on legislation to approve or disapprove of constructs that are written by outside groups and sold to them through lobbyists who work for those outside groups.
Update 7: Kurt Schlichter: All This ‘True Conservative’ Talk About ‘Principles’ Is Just Another Lie
Update 8: Regarding liars.
Update 9: Angelo M. Codevilla: Replacing The Republican Party
Update 10: Over the past two years the increasingly skeptical citizenry of the United States and Europe has been treated to a stream of op-eds and television appearances lamenting the looming collapse of the liberal world order, to be accompanied by a surge of illiberalism, nationalism, and fringe politics. Rarely, however, does such hand-wringing stray beyond shopworn comparisons of the “complex interdependence” of the glorious past and the parochialism and narrow-mindedness of the current era. In truth, we are not witnessing a dramatic systemic change driven by conniving external forces, but a meltdown of political authority in the West caused by the relatively straightforward indolence of its political class. Our troubles are less about liberalism’s decline or the ascendancy of left or right politics. Simply put, the citizenry in the West has been frustrated for decades with its elites’ inability to deliver workable solutions to the problems of slow growth, deindustrialization, immigration, and the overall decline of self-confidence across the West.
The legitimacy, and hence stability, of the international system rests to a degree on the ability of the leading powers to deliver at home—or, simply put, to govern. The increasing volatility of international politics is in part a byproduct of systemic dysfunction across the West at the level of domestic politics. Americans and Europeans alike are running out of patience with the governing class. In Europe, the government’s inability to control mass migration or develop effective solutions to domestic terrorism are two important drivers of the growing public discontent. In the United States the middle and working classes have been frustrated for decades with the government’s inability to remedy de-industrialization, urban decay, and declining economic opportunity.
Glenn Reynolds comments: And in both places, as the “elite” has grown demonstrably less competent and honest, it has also grown visibly more contemptuous of the people it purports to govern. That contempt is, I think, the most poisonous part of the whole equation.
My essays on the question of authority are here.
Update 11: Sarah Hoyt: Fools To The Left Of Me, Clowns To The Right
Update 12: Federal Contracting Explained Simply
Update 13: Kurt Schlichter: All This ‘True Conservative’ Talk About ‘Principles’ Is Just Another Lie
Update 14: What I Saw In The Floodwaters Of Houston
Update 15: Andrew Roberts: The Wall Street Journal: “It’s Time To Revive The Anglosphere”
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
