Will the Great Play of Western Civilization........(Part four) Warning: Not for quick perusal.
I know that I will get plenty of flak from the apologists for today’s teaching methods of behavior in the schools and the homes of Americans and Europeans. To them I quote a letter by Prof. David C. Rose, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis. In this letter he comments on the poor return from Bill Gates’s education effort. According to Prof. Rose, and I agree, “everyone who goes to school today is exposed to the same set of bad ideas.” He states that even private schools “teach in a manner that would be considered absurdly fanciful by ordinary teachers just a generation ago.” He names, as pernicious the idea taught to children, that the truth is “a mere social construct.”
As you remember I have commented on that fact of a flexible measure of truth earlier. To that we can add that once we have provided the basis for really bad behavior, we do little to discourage it, because we do not punish severely when needed. The British prison doctor and psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, better known under his pen-name Dr. Dalrymple, author of more than dozen books, states that our average convict when asked why he steals: “is like asking you why you have lunch.” Meaning, that the thief sees something he wants and he takes it. To that he adds, “And since in Britain, the state, does very little to discourage or incarcerate them when they are caught, the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few.” Dalrymple calls this phenomenon “the toxic cult of sentimentality.”
Yes, we do have a toxic brew of sentimental emotions, ranging from churched do-gooders to liberals, who would like to see every criminal, even the most horrible, evil creatures, rehabilitated. The thing that is hard to understand is, why these people cannot deal with hard facts right before their very eyes. I have tried to understand this kind of thinking and come up with two justifications for their belief system.
1. One believes that goodness can overcome everything, because of the feel-good effect of being involved in the rehab of the awful wretches. The churched proponents for the rehabilitation of criminals bring a real dilemma to discussion. Did not Jesus say, forgive them seve times seventy? Yes, but he meant that in a spiritual not a physical sense. He would forgive many trespasses, but he also said give onto Ceasar what is Ceasar's do. Meaning, you follow the social and cultural dictates. If they mean incarceration--so be it!
2. One has broken the law on occasions and dislikes the prospect of harsh punishment if found out or, failing that, one has a close relative or especially a child, who is a law-breaker, for whom long prison terms or the death penalty looms.
These are the only two reasons that I can come up with to excuse or, better illuminate the thinking of rehab-crowd. To those who argue everyone deserves a second chance I say, “Yes, everyone can fail and needs a second chance, but not the third, fourth and fifth. So, whence arises the above mentioned sentimentality in our society? It began with Dr. Freud who, despite some great insights into the psyche, also brought along a plethora of excuses for our short-comings. I mentioned Nietzsche, who did away with God and left bereft of strength any number of people who had withstood injustice, terror and deprivation through their spiritual connection to God. Furthermore, deprived of guidance by their churches, a false emotionalism combined with an unhealthy, sanctimonious apologia arose.
In Germany I noted this trend arising with the death of Chancellor Conrad Adenauer. The great old states man had reformed and shaped West-Germany after the war in a way-both forthright and self-examining. Yes, Germany repented for not having protected its minority, for allowing Nazism (Nationalsozialismus, National Socialism) to overtake the country. However, the country did not fall during this time into the abject emotionalism and the endless and totally unconstructive mea culpas of the following years. Guenter Grass’s, author of “Die Blechtrommel” (The Tin Drum,) is the perfect example of this trend. Unfortunately, one cannot weep one tear more for a cemetery of dead as one can for just one.
Oh, and then, at the turn of the century, we received the new crop of the “New Intellectual.” They are best described by having acquired a special, usually narrow, field of knowledge; and after receiving their PhD they feel free to regale the rest of us with their comments on all aspects of modern life. Of course, they feel entitled to comment on things they have no real knowledge of. Thus, they foam at the mouth on issues like child-rearing, teaching, justice—making it not a matter of right and wrong anymore, but a win for the lawyer most able to conceal and obscure the facts. They preach the new morality, lecture on health and nutrition, on the perils of being religious, culture, multi-culturalism—you name it, they know it.
Over the last forty years I have recorded, with pleasure, that these arrogant voices are usually wrong. On multi-culturalism, for example, they have just been rebuked by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who tersely remarked that the experiment of multiculturalism does not work. Similar comments came from French President Sarkozy and other European leaders. Never mind that theprogressive minds, advocating multiculturalism, are usually proven wrong, because they ignore sensible reasoning, but they also have endowed themselves with exceedingly large amounts of superiority, enabling them to survey with obvious contempt the plebeians—us—the herd so much beneath them.
They can do this without the benefits of studying a broad field of academic wisdom. Their one-sided eminence also entitles them to a sense of indignation. An indignation that allows them to criticize, label and tear down the achievements of others, not belonging to the fraternity of the Ivy-League or the academic left. The ideology emblazoned upon his psyche by the new-progressive professor, clothes him in with a mantle of superiority. People, more erudite than I, have evaluated their shallow veneer and found it wanting in substance. Marshall Mc. Luhan labels this arrogant attitude thusly, “It endowed the idiot with dignity.” Well put Marshall.
The aloofness of these contemporary intellectuals and politicians from the mob, their snobbery and readiness and to dictate their terms to the mindless electorate—us—was predicted by Friedrich Nietzsche in his writings. He promised a flood of irony, contempt and cynicism of intellectuals. For our country, his daunting outlook came true in the way of intellectuals, reformers and socialist politicians, who slavishly though, are trying to this day to emulate the snobbish, sneering sophisticates of Europe. They could never admire a Winston Churchill or a Margaret Thatcher, but never lost their lust for the stale, lukewarm brew of socialist thinking. Might I remind you here, that Hitler, too, was a national socialist?
These intellectual “leaders, “ the chaff of our academic elite, unable to follow a straight line of thought, still hang onto the tenets of defunct Europe with lolling tongues. Yes, they would love for great, astounding America, the envy of the entire world to fall into the same ditch that Europe has dug for itself. God help us should they succeed.
P. S. I just read this morning in the WSJ that Germany is now underwriting the entire default of Europe. Will I see my ex-countrymen finally demonstrating in the streets??? I doubt it! They have been castrated a long time ago!
