October 4, 2020
MY
CORNER by Boyd Cathey
The
Philosophy of Progress is Killing Us
Friends,
Over the past few years I have written about
what I term a “triumph of lunacy” in our society—most significantly on our college
campuses and in our schools, in our entertainment, in the media, but also in
our culture generally. The post-Marxist progressivist Left, after the apparent
political set-back of the 2016 elections, has redoubled its efforts with a
frenzied fanaticism unknown in our history, at least since a few years before
the War Between the States.
What distinguishes our revolutionary period
from previous upheavals is that today’s revolutionaries have, in effect,
created a “counter-reality” in which they base their thought and actions. That reality they have manufactured out of a critical misapprehension of the nature
of creation and the nature of mankind. That counter-reality is totally
subjective, anchored in fractured internal thinking processes which have been
infected and warped from their inception. That counter-reality is the inverse
of the two-millennia of Western civilization; it possesses its own language,
its own precepts, its own rules of conduct, its own goals and objectives,
undeterred by the inexorable laws of nature or the historic teachings of the
Christian faith. Indeed, it is the contrary of historic Christianity.
In a very substantial sense the raging
post-Marxist Left and its nostrums are grounded in the “idea of
progress,” a broad conceptual movement in history that dates back
several centuries, at least to the Enlightenment of the 18th
century, but which achieved a large degree of intellectual triumph in society
in the 19th, most especially with the social theories of Auguste Comte,
Herbert Spencer, and others. The late conservative philosopher, Robert Nisbet,
wrote comprehensively about it in his volume, The
History of the Idea of Progress. It posits that history is a process
materially leading to the improvement
and refinement of our technological and scientific environment, and, philosophically, leading to more
“individual freedom” and the abolition of what are considered hindrances to that
expanding freedom and what are perceived to be any obstacles to the irreversible
expansion of “rights” and “equality”—which become over time almost
inexhaustible and unlimited. Nothing can stand against the ideas that
proponents of progress propound. If you do, you are a hopeless reactionary, a
bigot, old-fashioned, and probably a racist and a misogynist.
Of course, material progress is observable,
constant, and measurable, and is to be welcomed generally. Going from oil lamps
to electric lights, or from horse-and-buggies to automobiles is seen positively
by most everyone. There are, certainly, a few negatives in such progress (e.g.,
damage to the environment, altered living patterns, etc.), but most of those
negatives are outweighed by the positives and the material enhancement of
civilization.
The real problem comes when the “idea of
progress” is made the benchmark for intellectual
thought and how political and social goals are presented and achieved under its
banner. For it then becomes, depending on how it is defined, the vehicle for
ideologies that use it to shape and push their agendas—whether the liberals of
the 19th century, or the Marxists and Communists of the 20th.
To be “on the side of progress,” to be part of the irresistible “forces of
history,” is to grant to one’s beliefs a kind of inescapable inevitability: you
can’t oppose what I am saying and doing, because it’s simply going to happen, and you can’t stop it!
In our society, and in Western society
generally, the inevitability and positive nature of intellectual progress is
more or less taken for granted. Most conservatives, including those opposed supposedly
to the current revolution on our campuses and in our streets, accept it as a
given. They may demur and disagree about what the goals should or ought to be,
but the essential premise, the template idea, remains fixed and unassailable.
Thus, on Fox News most pundits applaud
greater “rights” for minorities, both racial and sexual. They just don’t agree
with some of the more vigorous applications coming from the Left. For “establishment
conservatives” increasingly same sex marriage must be a full constitutional right—full
transgender normalization and acceptance in society is desirable—women must
have equal access to every position or role that men have (e.g., no more
male-only academies, no more “Boy” Scouts, etc.)—absolute racial equity, even
if that means special advantages, must be pursued—and “American democratic
values” are in all parts of the globe demanded (even at the point of an M-16
rifle).
The progressivist Left goes much further.
Indeed, the same demands for equality, and expanded and newly-discovered
“rights,” in the slogans and proposals of Leftists often become props in an
overpowering effort, not as much for desired “social justice,” but more for the
acquisition of power: a means to an end, the control of society and its
structures.
Right after the death of George Floyd in
Minneapolis and the first violent riots here in North Carolina, a couple of
black college students videotaped a group of exclusively-white “millennials”
demonstrating in a frenzy in Raleigh, North Carolina. The black videotapers
noticed and commented that all the demonstrators were white, probably the sons
and daughters of wealthy white (liberal) parents, and graduates of prestigious
universities like Duke or UNC. The irony wasn’t lost on the two blacks, who wondered:
“What do those privileged whites know about black issues?” Indeed, what they
know is undergirded by and laden with the intellectual progressivism and
post-Marxist ideology they’ve learned in classrooms at those very same
prestigious universities.
In effect, these protesters demonstrate
against “white supremacy” and “institutional racism” in a not-so-hidden effort
to expiate their own sin of “whiteness,” inculcated into them by “woke”
professors and an ideologized educational system.
But they are also out in the streets attempting
to create a “new world order” in which the real objective is power, and that
power recurs to global elites. “Systemic
racism” may be a target but actually and more significantly, opposition to it
is a means of advancing the overall goal of completely restructuring and
recasting society—and the destruction of two millennia of civilization and its
culture, annealed by the Christian faith—on behalf of those elites.
Until conservatives understand the fundamental
dangers in embracing the “idea of progress” philosophically and in praxis—until
they learn that beginning with the same premises on “equality” and “rights” as
their purported opponents will inevitably conduct them to giving way to those
opponents…and to denying implicitly, if not finally explicitly God-given
creation and its natural and Divine Positive Laws--until they recognize this,
they will remain prisoners of a dialectic that leads them always to eventual surrender
to the Left.
The post-War Between the States Southern divine
and essayist Robert Lewis Dabney summed up this type of conservatism succinctly
and presciently 150 years ago. That quotation is apt and applies to far too
many members of today’s “conservative loyal opposition”:
“This is a
party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to
each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a
respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the
innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the
accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting
to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its
timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and
then adopted in its turn.
“American
conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward
towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always
advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor:
wherewith shall it he salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It
is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of
sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the
truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It
always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose
path it essays to stop, that its ‘bark is worse than its bite,’ and that it
only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of resistance.
“The only
practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough
exercise to Radicalism to keep it ‘in wind,’ and to prevent its becoming pursy
and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women's
suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly
admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness
in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that
too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the
American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There
it will assume, with great dignity, its final position." [From “Womens’ Rights Women,” Discussions, vol. IV,
Secular Discussions.]
Will they learn before it is too late? Or
will they—far more likely—give way like previous temporizers in the face of the
lunacy?
Mencius Moldbug takled this issue 10 years ago in his 'Dark Enlightenment' tome. Modernity has not lived up to it's billing. It has not been worth the human cost. Traditions rooted in universal ideas cannot just be pushed aside for the assumed good of 'progress'. We haven't rapidly evolved overnight. Long held norms exist for a reason. If you allow that norm to be pushed aside for progress then you have no root in anything and this is why you're just getting carried along by the tide. Moldbug is entirely libertarian, but with intent, not just as A label. I've been trying to push the Lew Rockwell crowd towards his work for years but alas most of the contributors there are just selling books', supplements and podcast subscriptions. Moldbug's libertarianism actually has actionable points and workable plans, not just Libertarian principles wrapped up in some petty complaints. We cannot survive this forward rush to progress. There's nothing in it for us morally or ideologically. Libertarianism cannot stand against it absent a firm stand against it. It just becomes old ideas talked about between old irrelevant guys, a la what you see on LRC every day. When you're ready to march against the forces marching on you, read Moldbug. If you just want to complain while your world is ripped from your hands, by all means LRc has great articles about Nancy Pelosis 'illegal' haircut. "Oh the double standard. Wahhhh".
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