Tag Archive for: Individualism

Going Beyond The Culture Wars

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How Western culture has been moulded by faith.

Faith Challenges Culture: A Reflection of the Dynamics of Modernity
Paul O’Callaghan | Lexington Books | 2021, 142 pp

In this terrific book, Dubliner Fr Paul O’Callaghan, a lecturer in the school of theology in the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, presents a succinct and insightful analysis of a daunting topic: the interaction of faith and culture.

He sets himself the task of examining how Western culture has been moulded by faith (by which he means faith in the strict sense of revealed religion, and not religion in general) and in particular how this is true of four realities key to contemporary culture: rationality, freedom, equality and (surprisingly) conquest.

As we might imagine, the faith-culture relationship will of necessity be a complex one. They are two very different realities: faith stems from a divine initiative, indeed an “interruption” into human history, while culture is the fruit of human endeavour. And nevertheless as the author points out, the West has developed without either element erasing the other; rather they “seek each other out”, each respecting the contribution of the other (for the most part):

“Christian revelation and grace are not meant to ride roughshod over reality, over the world as we know it, over the lives and dreams and projects of its inhabitants, over the traditions and civilizations consolidated over the centuries…”

And yet we know that Modernity (the period dating from around the 16th or 17th century) has been predicated on an elevation of man accompanied by a diminished view of God and a disregard for the West’s Christian roots — an unfortunate over-correction of the mediaeval world’s bias for the divine over the human.

The effects of the secularising tendency of modernity are apparent in the impoverishing effect on those four key areas of rationality, freedom, equality and conquest, distorting them in the direction of rationalism, licence, reductive egalitarianism and rapine respectively.

The interaction of faith and culture

O’Callaghan discusses briefly a number of core tenets of Western civilisation which have their roots in the Bible, such as the notion of intrinsic human dignity, the centrality of human freedom, and the sanctity of marriage.

He cites the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ most interesting distinction between the Judeo-Christian concept of “righteousness and guilt” and the pagan “honour and shame” culture. The former places man’s intrinsic worth on something interior and not immediately apparent, something at the realm of freedom and conscience, and ultimately a person’s interior relationship with God.

The latter on the other hand looks to the external actions alone, for which a person earns honour or shame from others. Such a culture easily (perhaps excessively) exalts its heroes and unequivocally and even brutally condemns its enemies (think “cancel culture”). Lacking the classic Judeo-Christian distinction between sin and sinner, it equates the sinner with their apparent sins, and so is merciless in shaming (and “cancelling”) offenders.

Many core elements of Western culture come from an “intelligent and practical assimilation of Christian Revelation” which is complex and ongoing. There has never been, nor can there ever be, a “purely Christian culture” (despite the nostalgia of some for a Medieval Golden Age of Christendom): sin is a constant in human existence, and has always been present in human culture. Modernity itself, despite all its secularising tendencies, is a “highly positive phenomenon”. As Pope Benedict has reminded Christians, Modernity’s own intrinsic merits as well as its “material fidelity to Christianity” must be acknowledged.

While the theme of the modern world’s fundamental indebtedness to Christianity has recently been revisited and popularised in Tom Holland’s highly successful Dominion, this is not Holland’s discovery: it has been covered in the past by the likes of Dostoevsky, Guardini, T.S. Eliot, and even Jürgen Habermas (for whom the West’s sense of personal conscience, human rights, equality and democracy is built directly on “the Jewish ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love… All the rest is postmodern chatter.”)

Unfortunately of course, the Christian roots of Western values are increasingly being ignored and forgotten, and it would be, in the words of the Dutch reformed pastor Wim Rietkerk, modern man’s biggest mistake if he thought “that he could keep enjoying the fruits without the roots, without walking humbly with his God. … There is no future for a Western civilisation cut off from its roots.”

The four key tenets

O’Callaghan then focusses his attention on those four concepts so central to the West’s very identity: rationality, freedom, equality, and conquest. The last, “conquest” is an unusual concept, and the author explains it as follows:

We assume that what we obtain, what is at our disposal, we have a right to, as if it were our very own and belonging to no-one else. Whether we are talking about children, or property, or space travel, or instant telematic communication to the other side of the world … we see the world around us as a terrain of conquest, of achievement, of success.

He examines how these four notions as we understand them in the West, are essentially the fruit of Christian revelation.

The first, rationality, was already much prized — as logos — by the Greeks. For them rationality could not be understood without reference to the divine. Nevertheless the Christian conception of reason is even more elevated and optimistic than that of the Greeks, for whom reason was marred by very significant limitations.

Human reason for Christians receives a greater trustworthiness on account of the trustworthiness of its author: God. Nevertheless the secularising tendency of Modernity has lost the vastness of the power of reason as glimpsed by the Greeks, and boldly affirmed by Christianity. It began by reducing reason to a merely “computational and mathematical” power, and even now tends towards a radical scepticism which jettisons all confidence in reason.

O’Callaghan goes on to discuss how much the Western notion of freedom owes to Christianity. For Christianity freedom is essentially the filial freedom of those who are called to become God’s children: it is the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” in the words of St Paul. This is the ultimate goal for freedom to aspire to, a true “freedom for”.

However, this Christian-inspired concept of freedom came gradually to be eclipsed by a reductive “freedom from” — which reduces freedom to the mere capacity to choose one thing over another, without any intrinsic direction or dynamism. This reductive freedom is developed by the likes of Ockham, Bacon, Luther and more recently Foucault. Nevertheless, there has been a recovery of the richer conception of freedom, in particular by the Personalist movement for whom freedom is inseparable from man’s fundamental relatedness to others, and to God.

The notion of the fundamental equality of human beings so central to Western values is equally something stemming from Christian revelation. Man’s social and relational nature is presented throughout the Bible as constitutive of his very being. Against this is a non-Christian understanding of relationality as a sign of weakness, insofar as it implies dependence on others; a lack of the autonomy so valued by Modernity (and to a degree even by the Greeks).

The equal dignity under God of all men receives an unequivocal affirmation throughout the Bible. And yet the manifest inequalities between men are not a scandal for Christianity in the way they are for modern culture (for which all “inequality” must be ultimately stamped out), because the presence of neediness is a divine call to the others to live out the charity which must be at the heart of all social relations.

There follows a most illuminating consideration of the fourth tenet: the idea of conquest (by which we see “the world around us as a terrain of conquest”). What O’Callaghan shows here is that the now dominant “anthropology of the self-made man who designs and constructs himself down to the last detail” has lost sight of the Christian notion of gratitude.

The radical individualism that has developed in the West rejects as “childish”, indebtedness to others. Dignity requires that the self must be “self-made” and autonomous. This produces a great incapacity to receive from others, and with that a systematic ingratitude.

However for the Christian, absolutely everything is a gift from God, and man is a receiver of gifts before anything else. This then allows us in our turn to give and receive from others — there is no shame, nor subjugation in receiving understood in Christian terms.

Modernity, on the other hand, is marked by a systematic rejection of gift and so is marked by a striking ingratitude. What is needed is a return to the sense of gratitude gestured at by Heidegger when he said that “denken ist danken” (“to think is to thank”); that even “thought itself is a grateful receptiveness to the giveness of being”.

And so the ungrateful West is faced with the important task of rediscovering true gratitude, also gratitude towards God. The secular world’s “eclipse of worship” (to coin a phrase from Charles Taylor in his work A Secular Age) means that “humans have stopped recognising God as the source of all good and intelligibility. They have stopped thanking God, they no longer recognise the world they live in as a gift, they no longer live ‘eucharistic’ lives.” And such ingratitude is a serious state of affairs: “the most abominable of sins” for Ignatius of Loyola. The author concludes that:

“This has led many of those influenced by modern culture to a generalised loss of faith and to a pathology of individualism and ingratitude, as they attempt to live out their lives in isolation from their fellows, unprepared to recognise the world they live in and the privileges they enjoy as so many gifts they should be profoundly grateful for.”

The question of the gratitude leads on in the Epilogue to a very interesting discussion on the integration of conservatism and progressive liberalism. O’Callaghan shows that both the conservative and liberal tempers are embraced by Christianity: it is conservative insofar as it is conscious of being the receiver of gifts from God, and handed down by others by tradition; the Christian is by definition a conserver of these gifts.

At the same time, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin necessitates the liberal dimension since certain elements from the past will of necessity be tainted by sin and in need of reform and purification; not everything merits conservation. But there is need of a delicate balance of these two opposed tendencies: too much conservatism produces a lazy complacency that is fearful of change, while too excessive liberalism fails to appreciate what has been received from predecessors.

Conclusion

It is hard to overestimate the value of this book. O’Callaghan shows how our contemporary culture simply cannot be understood without a deep grasp of its Christian roots. And furthermore, he shows what damage our culture has already suffered because the key tenets of rationality, freedom, equality and conquest have to the degree to which they have become unmoored from their Christian roots.

At the same time, these affirmations are never simplistic; O’Callaghan takes into account the great complexity of the relationship between faith and culture. And even though it is quite a short book, the author does not oversimplify the issues involved. For that reason, parts of the book will be challenging for someone unfamiliar with the issues involved.

Certainly, this book would make a wonderful basic text for a college course on faith and culture. It would also very beneficial for anyone interested in the deeper issues at play in our current “culture wars”, where much of the discussion is unfortunately as heated as it is uninformed by philosophy and theology.

AUTHOR

Fr Gavan Jennings

Rev. Gavan Jennings studied philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome. He is co-editor of the monthly journal Position Papers. He teaches occasional… 

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

INDEPENDENCE DAY TRUTH: Equal People Are Not Free and Free People Are Not Equal

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“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the “I have a dream” speech in Washington, D.C.

Today we are hearing about equality, equity, along with the big lies of “Wokeism.” These words are Marxist false flags that force, via government mandate, the elevation of one group over another group for political purposes.

MAKING PEOPLE EQUAL

The goal of Marxism is to make everyone equal as humans, as workers and as a people. The problem is when this is put into practice the individual is replaced by the state. As the powers of the government increase the freedoms of the individual shrink or disappear completely.

History tells us repeatedly that as government grows the individual shrinks. Just look at the former Soviet Union to understand what is now happening in America.

QUESTION:  Will Independence Day 2021 go down in history as the day we the people lost our freedom?

In The Revolution Betrayed Leon Trotsky wrote:

The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. Exactly how many Bolsheviks have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since 1923, when the era of Bonapartism opened, we shall find out when we go through the archives of Stalin’s political police. How many of them remain in the underground will become known when the shipwreck of the bureaucracy begins.

The people are replaced by government bureaucrats. The laws change from defending individual liberties to taking away the individual and replace the people with crushing state mandates, take the Covid pandemic as a recent example.

Covid shifted power from the individual to that state overnight. The pandemic was used by bureaucrats to take away individual freedom to assemble and replaced it with lockdowns and social distancing.

Covid took away the rights of business to remain open and prosper. It took away individual livelihoods and replace it with government hand outs.

Rev. William J. H. Boetcker spoke of the “Seven National Crimes.”

  • I don’t think.
  • I don’t know.
  • I don’t care.
  • I am too busy.
  • I live well enough alone.
  • I have no time to read and find out.
  • I am not interested.

These seven crimes are the fundamental laws of Wokeism writ large. When we stop thinking, understanding, caring and find ourselves alone, bored and uninformed then our freedom is lost!

A FREE PEOPLE ARE NOT EQUAL

In a truly free society people are never equal. They are different and do things differently throughout their lives. From birth people are influenced by both nature and nurture. No two people are exactly the same when born. The same is true about people who have different life experiences. Even biological twins do not have the same life experiences.

It is fundamental that society understand that it must create opportunities that encourage and use these natural inequalities for the good of all.

The following sentiments were created by the Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, who lectured around the United States about industrial relations at the turn of the twentieth century. They are all the truth.

  • You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
  • You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
  • You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
  • You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
  • You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
  • You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
  • You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
  • You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
  • You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
  • You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

There are those who are hell bent on tearing down big men, weakening the strong, destroying the rich, inciting class hatred and taking away man’s initiative and independence.

The founding fathers understood this and that is why they wrote the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.

CONCLUSION

QUESTION: How many American patriots have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since the 2020 election?

As we Americans approach Independence Day 2021, let us reflect on our freedoms and defend our liberties. If we fail to do so then American, as we have known it, will cease to exist as One Nation Under God and become one nation under big government.

Is this what we want for our children and grandchildren?

I think not.

Have a blessed July 4th.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Globalism: Persuading the Individual to Stop Being an Individual

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If society understood the reality of collectivism instead of the promise of collectivism then their support for collectivism would vanish.

The elite globalist leaders selling collectivism know this to be true and so they have had to rebrand collectivism as Globalism. Songs are written about globalism – John Lennon’s classic song “Imagine” is the globalist anthem. The successful marketing of collectivism requires the names to change from already rejected Communism and faltering Socialism (think Venezuela) to the promise of a New World Order renamed GLOBALISM that disingenuously pledges social justice and income equality.

Globalism is the new word for the old lie about collectivism – that surrendering individual rights and national sovereignty will deliver social justice and income equality.  

Philosopher Ayn Rand understood the sinister nature of collectivism and and wrote extensively about socialism/communism and how it persuades the individual to stop being an individual:

“Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.” 

The Islamization of Europe and the West demonstrates how mass social indoctrination toward collectivism leads to cultural suicide and the death of the individual.

Ayn Rand writes:

“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.”

Europe’s surrender of its national sovereignty began after WWII with the 1957 Treaty of Rome that created the European Economic Committee (EEC) which eventually became the European Union(EU) of today. Internationalizing Europe’s sovereign nation states into the EU left the United States as the single greatest obstacle to one-world government.

Macron’s victory in France is a victory for collectivism at the expense of French sovereignty and French individualism represented by Marine Le Pen. It is a surrender to postmodern moral relativism, and historical revisionism designed to destroy democracy and its incomparable individual rights and freedoms. The question is WHO benefits from Macron’s victory?? The globalist elite of course. Socialism (total government control) is the death of democracy and is the prerequisite for internationalizing nation states and the imposition of one-world government Globalism. The greatest single obstacle to one-world government is the nation state. National sovereignty is to a country what individual sovereignty is to a human being.

The left-wing liberal agenda seeks to destroy the socio-political capitalist infrastructure of America and transform it into a dependent European-style socialist state with cradle to grave control by the government. Their strategy is to destroy American democracy by dismantling the supporting American institutions of family, religion, and education that promote independence, adulthood, individualism, and ego strength – the same qualities that made America great.

Ayn Rand warns us:

“Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.” 

American education, our elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities, are a specific target and field of practice. The anarchists, socialists, and hippies of the 60s have become the teachers and professors now indoctrinating their students toward collectivism. The problem, of course, is that these narcissistic intellectuals have never lived under collectivist tyranny – they are armchair pundits living in subjective reality. Anyone interested in the objective reality of collectivism should be listening to those who have escaped from its tyrannical rule.

The entire narrative of the Left is designed to induce regression through educational indoctrination and the media – as Hillary Clinton famously remarked they need “an unaware compliant public.” Unaware and compliant are the hallmarks of childhood. The pitch might sound good to a childish mind who is seduced by candy from a stranger but the adult mind understands the sinister end-game. Once the public is entirely dependent on the government they lose all individual rights and national sovereignty as the socialized state becomes part of the internationalized one-world government. The doors of the car lock and there is no escape – only exploitation and enslavement.

One-world government is the big lie of the 21st century. It promises redistribution of wealth and social justice. What it delivers is unapologetically described in chilling detail by globalist elite English aristocrat Lord Bertrand Russell in his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society.

The left-wing liberal lemmings are the useful idiots who are too arrogant to understand that they are participating in their own destruction. They have been indoctrinated to believe they are fighting for “social justice” when in fact they are helping to establish the dystopian nightmare of one-world government where there is no middle class, no upward mobility, no national sovereignty, and no individual freedoms. There is only the ruling elite and the enslaved population who service them.

The left-wing liberal lemmings in Europe and in America should take a break from marching and “resisting” and start reading Bertrand Russell’s The Impact of Science on Society written in 1952. They will learn that their script was written 65 years ago by the globalist elites who dreamed of one-world government – a binary socio-political system of masters and slaves.

The globalist elite’s New World Order was their self-serving answer to the Malthusian problem of the earth not having enough resources to sustain the population growth. Tavistock Institute was exported to America with the purpose of indoctrinating Americans via education and the media – particularly television – the greatest vehicle for mass social engineering ever invented. The Hollywood glitterati and the protesting hoards should take a pause and understand there is no place for them in the New World Order – they are simply useful idiots who will be destroyed.

The aristocratic Lord Bertrand Russell and the late David Rockefeller had no moral problem with eliminating the useless eaters any more than Hitler with exterminating Jews, Islamists with exterminating infidels, or the Chinese Emperors with burying their concubines alive to service them in the afterlife. The point is elitism is supremacist – there is no egalitarian respect for human life only the pretense of humanitarian considerations. The Left and the Islamists have common cause in trying to destroy America from within – but it is the globalist elites who finance and disingenuously facilitate both groups because the social chaos they each engender is a prerequisite for imposing globalist one-world government. For the globalist elite whether in Europe or in America, the Left and the Islamists are BOTH useful idiots.

Socialism will never provide social justice – it will only provide the pathway to one-world government where no individual rights or self-determination exist. Socialism strips the individual of his selfness and transforms that individual into property of the state. The individual who willingly forfeits his selfness for socialism has been successfully persuaded to stop being an individual. Socialism is not a free ride it is slavery.

Trump the ‘Unifier’, Trump the Individualist, Trump the Republican

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Super Tuesday voters gave Donald Trump clear wins in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont. Senator Ted Cruz won in his home state of Texas and the neighboring state of Oklahoma. Senator Marco Rubio won in Minnesota.

trump supporters youngTrump made a short statement at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida following the super Tuesday primary results:

I will say this, we have expanded the Republican party. When you look at what’s happened in South Carolina and you see the kind of numbers that we got in terms of extra people coming in. They came from the Democratic party… and they were never going to switch and they all switched. They were Independents. We’ve expanded the party. Look at the number of votes we had in that area as an example. Four years ago they had 390,000 or so votes. We doubled it. We’re almost 800,000. The Democrats went down.

There’s much less enthusiasm for the Democrats. I’m a unifier. I know people will find this hard to believe. Once we get this finished, I’m going to go after one person on the assumption she is allowed to run. I don’t know if she will be allowed to run. I don’t think Marco will be able to beat her. I think Ted will have a very hard time… I just tell you this, we are going to be a much finer party, a much — we’re going to be a unified party. We are going to be a much bigger you can see that happening. We’re going to be a much bigger party. our party is expanding.

All you have to do is take a look at the primary states where I’ve won. Much larger number. I think we’ll be more inclusive and more unified. I think we’ll be a much bigger party. I think we’re going to win in November.

It is clear that Donald Trump has energized the electorate, driving voters to the polls to support the Republican party in record numbers.

Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today? Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

It is becoming clearer that on November 8th the battle will be between a Collectivist (either Hillary Clinton or Senator Bernie Sanders) and an Individualist, Donald J. Trump.

French historian Alexis de Tocqueville  (1805-1859)  wrote, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”

Let the people chose which path they will follow. Will they follow those who “bribe the people with their own money” or those who remain dedicated to preserving the Republic? That is the basic issue facing America today.

gop delegate count

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The Trump Insurgency

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Bernie’s Bolsheviks vs. Donald’s Trumpites

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Bolshevik: Russian for “One of the Majority.” There appear to be two movements in the 2016 presidential primary race. One is led by Bernie Sanders and his Bolsheviks. The other is lead by Donald Trump and those who “Want to Make America Great, Again”, known at Trumpites. One movement promotes collectivism, the other individualism. Ayn Rand defines the principles underlying these movements as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group (i.e. One of the Majority).

Question: Which movement will win on November 8th, 2016?

Chris Stirewalt from Fox News reports:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign network is riot with talk about socialism, seeping in under the door or perhaps in the fluoridated water. You never know where the “conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids” will turn up.

Among those warning of socialist creep is prominent Clinton booster, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who got double coupons for warning of a threat to the very heartland of the nation. “Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not — he’s a socialist,” Nixon told the NYT.

The sinister socialist to whom Nixon is referring is 74-year-old Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been in Congress since 1991 and for all of his adamancy about being an independent and a, yes, socialist has almost always been a perfectly pliant supporter of the Democratic party. Read more.

Megan Kelly Tweeted: A stunning new poll out of  with the below graphic:

poll out of New Hampshire

I recently wrote a column titled “The Trump Insurgency.” In that column I noted:

The definition of an insurgency is a “rebellion against an existing government by a group not recognized as a belligerent.”

Is it Trump who created an insurgency or is Trump following the lead of a growing insurgency that was already taking place? I have written that Trump leads his followers by following their lead. The movement began during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and continues today. It is a struggle between the individualist and the collectivist.

The choice for America is between a collectivist form of government or one that returns power to the people.

In a column titled “Government Caused the ‘Great Stagnation‘” Peter J. Boettke, Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, discusses how government has outgrown America’s ability to pay for it. Boettke writes, “Government is too big, too bloated. Washington faces a spending problem, not a revenue problem. But too many within the economy depend on the government transfers to live and to work. Yet the economy is not growing at a rate that can afford the illusion. Where are we to go from here?”

Boettke labels totalitarian government as “Stupidity.” Boettke notes that, “[W]e fought off (in the West, at least) totalitarian government (Stupidity).”

However, that has changed. Today stupidity reigns supreme with more and more citizens receiving government subsidies and largess.

If either Hillary or Sanders wins the Democratic Party nomination for president, we could see the party at the last minute recruit Uncle Joe Biden to run.

This would be a last ditch effort to end the stupidity, or maybe not?

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump is courtesy of AP/Jacquelyn Martin/Seth Wenig/Photo montage by Salon.

The Trump Insurgency

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trump at rally with supportersIf you Google the words “Trump” and “insurgency” you will get over 650,000 links to articles and commentary. I recently said to a friend that Donald Trump has gone from being a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President to the leader of a movement.

Can this movement now be called an insurgency?

The definition of an insurgency is a “rebellion against an existing government by a group not recognized as a belligerent.”

Is it Trump who created an insurgency or is Trump following the lead of a growing insurgency that was already taking place? I have written that Trump leads his followers by following their lead. The movement began during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and continues today. It is a struggle between the individualist and the collectivist.

Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today? Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.
trump supporters young

Trump supporters. Photo: Facebook.

Donald Trump has tapped into the “Individualism Movement.” Trump’s life is the embodiment of the individualist. Trump has been rich, then poor and then rich again. He has done this not with government handouts, but rather despite the government.

Members of the Individualism Movement go by many names: Silent Majority, TEA Party Patriots, Constitutionalists, Blue Dog Democrats, Anti-Establishment Republicans and the working class. They embody the insurgency.

Joseph P. William in his U.S. News & World Report column “New Insurgents, Old Problems“, wrote:

[Ronald Reagan in] His famous televised 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech for GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, tapped into deep-seated anxiety about communism and runaway government spending. Decades before the Reagan Revolution, The Gipper laid out a then-radical vision for vastly smaller government, shaking up the party’s blue-blood ruling class and setting his course toward political immortality.

[ … ]

“We’ve certainly seen this before,” says Norm Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank and a veteran political scholar. In uncertain economic times, he says, “we get populism.” In Sanders’ case, that means disdain for bankers and Wall Street; the brand Trump’s selling sweeps in nativism, trade protectionism and mistrust of the GOP establishment.

Is Trump the new populist or the old individualist?

Here are just some of the reasons Trump’s campaign is different than any other of the candidates, Democrat or Republican, running for President:

  1. Not a career politician.
  2. Not politically correct.
  3. Isn’t influenced by money or big donors.
  4. When he sees something he says something.
  5. Turns his negatives into positives.
  6. Attacks against him consistently backfire.
  7. Fearless and is therefore feared.
  8. Has broad appeal due to his forthright comments.

Each of these are indicators of individualism on steroids.

Donald Trump is saying what people have wanted to say but have been afraid to do so. When Trump speaks he is not speaking to the media or the elite, he is speaking to John and Jane six-pack. He is speaking to each an every American.

Trump has shown that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. He is the new Individualist and the people love him for it.

It truly is a time for choosing.

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Blurred Lines: The Humanitarian Threat to Free Speech by Aaron Tao

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“Think of liberalism … as a collection of ideas or principles which go to make up an attitude or ‘habit of mind.’” – Arthur A. Ekirch

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville was keen to observe that “once the Americans have taken up an idea, whether it be well or ill founded, nothing is more difficult than to eradicate it from their minds.”

Reflecting upon my experience as a first-generation immigrant who grew up in the United States, I concur with Tocqueville; this inherent feature of the culture and character of the American people holds true even today.

In America, there are no sacred cows, no one is above criticism, and no one has the final say on any issue. It is worth emphasizing that today, the United States stands virtually alone in the international community in upholding near-absolute freedom of personal expression, largely thanks to the constitutional protections provided by the First Amendment.

But without certain internalized values and principles, the legal bulwark of the First Amendment is nothing more than a parchment barrier.

As cliché as it may sound, it is important to recognize that our cherished freedom to think, speak, write, and express ourselves should not be taken for granted. Defending the principle of free speech is a perennial conflict that has to be fought in the court of public opinion here and abroad.

Unfortunately, a number of recent developments have greatly alarmed civil libertarians and may very well carry long-term negative repercussions for the United States as a free and open society.

In his new book, Freedom from Speech, Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and tireless free speech advocate, highlights a troubling cultural phenomenon: the blurring of physical safety with psychological and ideological comfort.

It is a disturbing trend that is not limited to the United States:

People all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. This is precisely what you would expect when you train a generation to believe that they have a right not to be offended. Eventually, they stop demanding freedom of speech and start demanding freedom from speech.

On the other side of Atlantic, Great Britain is undergoing what one writer describes as a “slow death of free speech.” The land of Milton is now home to luminaries who wish to reinstate Crown licensing of the press (not seen since 1695!).

Meanwhile, ordinary people face jail time for callous tweeting. In British universities, student-driven campaigns have successfully shut down debates and banned pop songs, newspapers, and even philosophy clubs.

While the United States is fortunate enough to have the First Amendment [to] prevent outright government regulation of the press, cultural attitudes play a greater role in maintaining a healthy civil society.

Lukianoff reserves special criticism for American higher education for “neglecting to teach the intellectual habits that promote debate and discussion, tolerance for views we hate, epistemic humility, and genuine pluralism.”

Within academia, “trigger warnings” and “safe places” are proliferating. In a truly Bizarro twist, it has now come to the point that faculty members are defending individual rights and due process and decrying mob rule, while their students run off in the opposite direction.

We now hear on a regular basis of campus outrages involving a controversial speaker or perceived injustice, and the “offended” parties responding with a frenzied social media crusade or a real-world attempt to shame, bully, browbeat, censor, or otherwise punish the offender.

A small sampling from this season include attempts to ban screenings of American Sniper at the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland, resolutions to create a Stasi-like “microaggression” reporting system at Ithaca College, and the controversy involving AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers speaking at Oberlin College.

These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.

With the endless stream of manufactured outrages, perhaps it is fitting that George Mason University law professor David Bernstein would raise the question, “Where and when did this ‘makes me feel unsafe’ thing start?”

My personal hypothesis: When postmodernism found itself a new home on Tumblr, spread across the left-wing blogosphere, became reinforced by mobs and echo-chambers, and spilled into the real world.

Luckily, not all progressives have sacrificed the basic principles of liberalism to the altar of radical identity politics and political correctness. One liberal student at NYU courageously pointed out the grave dangers posed by the ideology embraced by many of his peers:

This particular brand of millennial social justice advocacy is destructive to academia, intellectual honesty, and true critical thinking and open mindedness. We see it already having a profound impact on the way universities act and how they approach curriculum. …

The version of millennial social justice advocacy that I have spoken about — one that uses Identity Politics to balkanize groups of people, engenders hatred between groups, willingly lies to push agendas, manipulates language to provide immunity from criticism, and that publicly shames anyone who remotely speaks some sort of dissent from the overarching narrative of the orthodoxy — is not admirable.

It is deplorable. It appeals to the basest of human instincts: fear and hatred. It is not an enlightened or educated position to take. History will not look kindly on this Orwellian, authoritarian perversion of social justice that has taken social media and millennials by storm over the past few years.

I, too, am convinced that these activists, with their MO of hysterical crusades, are one of today’s biggest threats to free speech, open inquiry, and genuine tolerance, at least on college campuses. The illiberal climate fostered by these their ideologues seems to be spreading throughout academia and is continuing to dominate the headlines.

As of this writing, Northwestern professor (and self-described feminist) Laura Kipnis is undergoing a Kafkaesque Title IX inquisition for writing a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education and making comments on Twitter that offended a number of students. The aggrieved mobilized in full force to have her punished under the federal sex discrimination law.

These groups and their tactics represent what Jonathan Rauch would describe as the “humanitarian” challenge to free speech. In his must-read book, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Rauch identified how these “humanitarians” sought to prevent “offense” to “oppressed and historically marginalized” peoples. In the name of “compassion,” words became conflated with physical action.

As speech codes spread and the definition of “harassment” (reading a book in public, for instance) became broader within the bureaucracy of academia, an “offendedness sweepstakes” was cultivated and turned into the norm.

Rauch’s book was published in 1993, but his diagnosis and arguments still apply today, if not more, in the age of social media when the “offendedness sweepstakes” are amplified to new levels.

Nowadays, PC grievance mongers can organize much more effectively and more often than not, get rewarded for their efforts. The future of a free society looks very bleak should these types become a dominant force on the political landscape. I can’t help but shiver at the prospect of seeing the chronically-offended eggshells of my generation becoming tomorrow’s legislators and judges. The chilling effects are already being felt.

Even as numerous challenges emerge from all corners, free speech has unparalleled potential for human liberation in the Digital Age. The eternal battle is still that of liberty versus power, and the individual versus the collective. I remain confident that truth can still prevail in the marketplace of ideas. It is for this reason we should treasure and defend the principles, practices, and institutions that make it possible.

Last month marked the birthday of the brilliant F.A. Hayek, the gentleman-scholar who made landmark contributions to fields of economics, philosophy, political science, and law, and established his name as the twentieth century’s most eminent defender of classical liberalism in the face of the collectivist zeitgeist.

For all his accomplishments, Hayek practiced and urged epistemological humility (a position that should be natural to any defender of free speech) in his Nobel lecture. Looking back on his life’s work, Hayek was highly skeptical of the nebulous concept of “social justice” and its totalitarian implications. He even went as far as to devote an entire volume of his magnum opus, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, to completely demolish The Mirage of Social Justice.

Hayek concluded:

What we have to deal with in the case of “social justice” is simply a quasireligious superstition of the kind which we should respectfully leave in peace so long as it merely makes those happy who hold it, but which we must fight when it becomes the pretext of coercing other men [emphasis added].

And the prevailing belief in “social justice” is at present probably the gravest threat to most other values of a free civilization.

Hayek did not predict that “social justice” would be first used to silence dissent before moving on to its long-term agenda, but it would not have surprised him. Weak ideas always grasp for the censor in the face of sustained criticism — and feeble ideas made strong by politics are the most dangerous of all.

Humanitarians with guillotines can be found from the French Revolution to present day. Modern day defenders of individual liberty would do well to heed Hayek’s warning and resist the Siren song of “social justice,” the rallying cry of collectivists who cannot realize their vision without coercion.


Aaron Tao

Aaron Tao is the Marketing Coordinator and Assistant Editor of The Beacon at the Independent Institute.

Team Left vs Team Right

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Here’s a quick run down on the two opposing forces in the USA.

Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today? Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

The American Creed

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Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today?

Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.
dean alfange

Dean Alfange

I recently came across a credo written by Dean Alfange on entrepreneurship. The creed originally appeared in This Week Magazine, and a condensed version appeared in Reader’s Digest in both the October 1952 and January 1954 issues. The Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge gave Alfange an award for the composition in 1952. Here is what Alfange wrote:

“I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can,
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen.
Humbled and dulled by having the
State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build.
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect.
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done
All this is what it means
To be an Entrepreneur.”

Many are concerned that America has become anything but entrepreneurial and that government has grown to such a point as to make America anything but exceptional. There are growing concerns that individualism is losing ground to collectivism. That the American dream is being lost one government program at a time.

May I say that the naysayers are wrong. America will remain preeminent so long as it is guided by principled men and women who have character.

In her paper Rand wrote:

A great many people today hold the childish notion that society can do anything it pleases; that principles are unnecessary, rights are only an illusion and expediency is the practical guide to action.

It is true that society can abandon moral principles and turn itself into a herd running amuck to destruction. Just as it is true that a man can cut his own throat any time he chooses. But a man cannot do this if he wishes to survive. And society cannot abandon moral principles if it expects to exist.

While we are witnessing herds in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland, the greater part of America is peaceful and not cutting their own throats.  America will survive despite the efforts of those who wish to commit social suicide.

What is ‘the Basic Issue’ facing the World today?

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If you believe the basic issue facing the world today is the Ebola pandemic, the Islamic State, an eminent financial collapse, famine, poverty, government corruption, climate change or war you would be wrong. Some times people can’t see the forest for the trees. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then you can’t see the whole situation clearly because you’re looking too closely at small details, or because you’re too closely involved.

Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today?

Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

The Giver CoverI had read Ayn Rand’s paper and recently went to the movie theater to see “The Giver“, a film based on a 1993 young adult novel by Lois Lowry. The Giver is set in a society which is at first presented as a Utopian [Collectivist] society and gradually appears more and more dystopian. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth and thirteenth years of his life. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to “Sameness,” a plan that has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives.

One of the key quotes from The Giver is: We really have to protect people from wrong choices.

For Collectivists this is the key concept for their social system. Rand defines a social system as “a code of laws which men observe in order to live together.” For an individualist the power of society is “limited by the unalienable, individual rights of man.” For the Collectivist “the power of society is unlimited.”

There are several points in the film where the life of a new born child is taken, by lethal injection, because of a perceived defect that may negatively impact the collective. Ayn Rand wrote:

“Under individualism, it is illegal to kill the man and it is legal for him to protect himself. The law is on the side of the right.

Under collectivism, it is legal for the majority to kill a man and it is illegal for him to defend himself.

The law is on the side of a number.

In the first case, the law represents a moral principle.

In the second case, the law represents the idea that there are no moral principles, and men can do anything they please, provided there’s enough of them.

Rand gives examples of each principle. Individualism is embodied in the United States of America by the Declaration of Independence. The examples of Collectivism are the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Many are concerned that the United States is becoming a Collectivist society. Rand wrote, “When [Collectivism is] applied in practice, a principle which recognizes no morality and no individual rights, can result in nothing except brutality.” Rand notes:

Either the power of society is limited, or it is not. It can’t be both.

Rand and a growing number of Americans understand that the Constitution “is not a document that limits the rights of man – but a document that limits the power of society over man.” Rand defines a right as “that which can be exercised without anyone’s permission.” Inalienable rights means that, “Man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of man’s existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.”

What is the shield that protects man’s inalienable rights? Moral Principles.

Rand wrote, “It is true that society can abandon moral principles and turn itself into a herd running amuck to destruction. Just as it is true that a man can cut his own throat any time he chooses. But a man cannot do this if wishes to survive. And society cannot abandon moral principles if it expects to exist… Without a moral code no proper human society is possible. Without the recognition of individual rights no moral code is possible.”

Rand concludes “there can be no social system which is a mixture of Individualism and Collectivism.”

You see the Ebola pandemic, the Islamic State, a financial collapse, famine, poverty, government corruption, climate change and war are all symptoms of Collectivism. The cure for each is Individualism.

RELATED VIDEO: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. perhaps expressed the ideal of individualism best in a three minute sermon titled “The Street Sweeper”. Many believe this was his greatest sermon.

EDITORS NOTE: To download a printable copy of Any Rand’s paper What is the Basic Issue in the World Today, click here. If you are looking for a holiday gift to give yourself, your children, grandchildren or a family member or friend may we suggest giving either the novel The Giver or a DVD of the film or both.