Undermining The Fabric Of Civilization
William R Collier Jr- In the 1990’s I was vehemently opposed to President Clinton. In the early 1990’s I ran a local newspaper and was guilty of alarmist rhetoric myself which I aimed at the President every week. Eventually, by 1995, I grew up. I moved past that phase, and my headlines, while critical, were more measured. I was among the few who saw the entire impeachment process as undermining the very fabric of our civilization, one stitch and one thread at a time.
We have entered an era of scorched earth politics in which all parties are deluded into thinking the other parties pose an existential threat, even if they don’t. What this has given rise to is the reality that all the major players in American politics and culture, it’s hard to separate the two now, do pose an existential threat to the average citizen’s rights, security, and prosperity. Moreover, they all seem hellbent for leather to undermine our collective sanity.
I am not speaking as one unaffected by this alarmist zeitgeist, and in fact, for me, the trend among Progressives really does pose an existential threat for anyone trying to live out a Christian life and openly share their faith, morals, values, and convictions. If Progressives have their way, based on how they run college campuses and the corporate media, nobody who refuses to embrace their amoral relativism and globalist envirosocialism will be much tolerated to speak, to own a business, or even be employed in a high level job. That is not alarmist, you can go to academia and the corporate media and see this is exactly how Progressives conduct themselves when in positions of power.
But the progressives are making a huge mistake now, one for which we will all suffer. Their scorched-earth campaign against Republicans, which started under Nixon and has only increased, is meant to legitimize every Republican who opposes them. They do this against the Republican Party, against the the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, against Republican judges, and, of course, against Republican Presidents. They put a microscope to these people’s lives and actions, always concealing the good and exponentially dramatizing the bad.
It isn’t that nobody on the other side does this against Democrats, it’s just that no mass media carries their water and none of the leading figures of the Republican Party establishment use such tone. Certainly you don’t see Fox News, Mitch McConnell, or Paul Ryan sensationalizing the misdeeds of the Democrats. Not even President Trump resorts to the guttural accusations of treason or criminality used by prominent Democrats and their cheerleaders in Academia, Hollywood, and the Corporate Media.
But the Progressives are tearing down their own walls in their own house.
You see, for people like me, we can visualize life without government services or benefits. I am no anarchist, but I tend to think that, given a government collapse, private persons and even local governments could find a way to survive, unless a large portion of the populace was totally dependent on government for their necessities and not equipped to take initiative on their own.
For Progressives, however, the state as an institution is equal to or more important than the family. Indeed, Progressives pursue social policies that seem to indicate they hold little value for the old notion of a father and mother raising their own children together as the ideal and preferred way to propagate the species. Their view of the state is much more defined and precious. For them, the state is the primary agent of social cohesion and the prime mover in human progress. With the right kind of state managing society, human nature itself can be molded to fit an ideal of absolute equality and the absence of all greed or self-interest.
Little do they understand that the average person does not differentiate easily between Republicans and Democrats. When Democrats use lies and exaggerations to delegitimize Republicans in Congress we see overall faith in Congress as an institution slides. The same goes for the Presidency, not to mention the Federal Government itself. They may love the fact they are keeping Trump’s approval rate down and his strongly disapprove rate high by a constant barrage of sensational and alarmist headlines, but the overall net effect doesn’t end with Trump: people are losing faith in the entire system.
What is more, this alarmism is breeding extremism on both sides. I myself really have no defense for modern republicanism. The idea of one-man, one-vote really makes no sense when people are ignorant of both history and our Constitution and when they are making decisions for petty self-gain at public expense based on outright falsehoods and alarmist nonsense. Truly, if republicanism was good it would have been able to defend itself against all of this.
But others on the right are going to feel compelled to go further, they are going to conclude that they have to fight fire with fire. They will conclude that the only choices are an America run by Progressives like they run academia and the corporate media or one run by conservatives with as little tolerance toward Progressives as is shown by Progressives toward conservatives in Universities. Given a choice between “my side” ruling with an iron fist or “your side”, knowing that you have made those the only options, what would the normal person choose? It would be suicide to let the other side rule with an iron fist, especially given we see how unfair and unjust they are where they do actually hold power!
The final possibility may be a collapse in general.
You see, in any civilization trust is the single greatest factor that determines cohesiveness. Whether it is trust in persons who rule, institutions, or just ideas and values, when trust is undermined too far collapse becomes inevitable. What people call gridlock is the inability of a society’s decision-making bodies to create and carry out problem solving plans of action. Disagreement and competition are always going to be present, but when a broad consensus that most people back cannot be created we see this gridlock in a society. And, throughout history, it is this gridlock that predicts the ultimate collapse.
Progressives are undermining civilization itself because they have a narrow view of reality and history. As to reality, they have fantasized about an ideal world that doesn’t match human nature or even the laws of creation, and anything that doesn’t affirm that fantasy is ignored or ridiculed. As to history, they have no sense of the lessons learned from the past or the consequences of undermining people’s faith and trust in the very institutions (the state, academia, entertainment, the corporate media) they wish to use to shape society and humanity itself into their ideal image.
In the event this is unchallenged by Republicans and any opposition capable to offering real resistance, this process of delegitimizing the institutions upon which Progressives depend for their agenda will run its course. The rebellion against human nature and the laws of creation will also carry its own very real consequences, translated into conflict, poverty, loss of freedom, and the such.
In the end, the progressive will tear down his or her or their own house, and, in the process, undermine the fabric of civilization to a point where a major disaster or crises will see the collapse of the whole edifice.