America, the industrialized culmination of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, is on a birth control drug-induced high like a heretofore Catholic nun who has thrown off her habit, bummed a toke and headed for a nude beach. The contraceptive Pill blurred the primary difference in male/female behavior and the girls forgot Judeo-Christian restraint and responsibility in a hurry, along with any prospects for future life as a housewife. That was quickly abetted by politicians eager to provide convenience abortion in exchange for votes. The heretofore restraining heavenly Lawgiver was tossed out with His laws, leaving a vacuum that ambitious proponents of the all-powerful State rushed to fill. The Post-Christian West is under way.
Western Judeo—Christian government is a product of created human nature and its legitimacy therefore rests upon its own conformance to that model; that is to say that it must be centered upon and try to empower the provisions of the Jewish Decalogue as a minimum. By definition, no post-Christian government can accept that defining premise; it must be ripped from the new society if that society is to be anything other than a continuation of its predecessor. The first stage of a new society is the destruction of the old. The new cannot be erected until the old has been buried. That proceeds first as destruction, stamping out vestiges of the old together with its supporters. This cannot be nice; too many people are always too invested in the old system. It is why so many died in the onset of Russian communism and Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward. And it is a period of madness as old restraints are tossed but new rules are not yet accepted. This may explain current and impending conditions in the United States.
The previous Judeo Christian control model is is under demolition:
- The basic family unit is no longer socially and legally reinforced but degenerates under a massive divorce rate, accepted unmarried cohabitation, abortion entitlement and entitlements for single parents. Compulsory public education reinforces the attitudes that promulgate these behaviors. Social and economic shifts have forced once full time housewives and mothers into full time work.
- Behavioral norms are demolished:: Women of child bearing ages are wasted in infantry combat, biological males legally compete in female athletics. Scholars, businessfolk and entertainers may lose their positions for disagreeing with the pronouncements of the political Left.
- A combination of Federal /State regulation and Federal Reserve monetization have converted once free markets into a politicized, managed (or mismanaged) economy.
- Public internet communication is increasingly subject to political censorship; major “news” media are little more than politicized propaganda outlets.
- Government has used fear filled propaganda to impose a sudden freeze upon much of the economy and many private activities in the name of a comparatively mild pandemic. It has increased the resulting economic damage from that by record-setting, debt-based “stimulus” spending. The present financial/monetary model now seems unsustainable.
- Massive, ongoing, well planned and financed public demonstrations are destroying property, people and demanding drastic changes in social norms, supported by left-leaning politicians and those parts of government they influence.
That a house divided against itself cannot stand has never been refuted. Whether it is predictive for the post-Christian United States and the West generally remains to be seen; it certainly fits the trend. At present however, that trend may present more the plans and efforts of societal leaders pursuing their own interests than it reflects the mood and desires of the societal masses. Two impending events seem likely to centralize and elucidate the mass response: the U.S. November presidential election and the presently undated arrival of general understanding that the economy has been mismanaged. The current politically imposed, pandemic related economic quasi paralysis seems likely to accelerate that realization.
During the Great Depression, many felt that standing in an unemployment line was personally disgraceful; that attitude remained among older workers even in the 1950’s. Government efforts to spend the economy back into health were distinctly controversial. That produced powerful effort by individuals to recover on their own, something considerably less likely today. The indoctrinated, less experienced young appear to see the government as owing them beneficence from an attitude of conditioned dependency. Government is also programmed, both to respond to its dependents’ needs and to organize and control them so that can be efficiently maximized. New technology empowers that.
The Great Depression that ended the dissolute Roaring Twenties brought fear and misery thatrevitalized religion and cleaned up both governments and motion pictures, subjecting the latter to censorship by the Hays Office. Such a restoration of the older behavioral model seems unlikely today; The Pill is irreversible and who is ready to assume penitence for millions of aborted humans? . Political advantage has replaced the Judeo-Christian Decalogue. That leaves the most powerful actor to impose a politicized order, as the Chinese Communist Party presently does. The imposition is more gradual in the post-Christian West but it is proceeding; travel is already controlled and both finances and faces increasingly monitored. Amelioration of this trend will require development of some organization independent of government that can replace the church as a bastion of personal liberty against the interests of government. Such is not presently visible or even imaginable. However, God is not mocked, progress will continue, though at its own pace. It is evident that politically controlled economies never maximize mass welfare; such internal contradiction renders them unstable over time. However long and unpleasant the interregnum, something new awaits the post Christian West. It will proceed as always, from outside government.
The Conservative Citizen 