Saturday, January 9, 2021

Universalism's Dogma

“Modern thought insists on conceptual simplicity. It tends to create polarities and then suppress one of the poles.”James Kalb

We live in interesting times—always! As such, I am often trying to look past recent events to their causes. Not material causes necessarily, but metaphysical if at all possible. I do believe a fundamental aspect of today's extreme political factions stem from a move from a transcendent universalism to a worldly one.

The worldly universalism that I am pointing to that I see advancing is an imminent one only—where the aim is emancipate people from Tradition, from patriotic national identity, from Judeo-Christian religious affiliation, and from heritage values. These inherited institutions are now seen as unjust and therefore must be done away with. 

Instead, the only consensus allowed would be around a limited progressive diversity—a sort of pluralism without a coherent center. This movement toward a secular pluralistic system organizes itself around the dissent of fragmented political/cultural identities that compete for equality at the cost of liberty. Yet, this simplifies things by governing elites, allowing them to centralize control to manifest the agenda of suppressing non-liberal traditions that can now be outsourced to the state. 

But most of our social afflictions can't be solved by the state—especially one that intends to override local traditions and connections that truly unite people. Kalb notes, 

“Created things have inevitable limitations, and we live in a fallen world, but Christianity offers a way to transcend limitations and restore what is fallen through principles that place differences in perspective and make them part of a higher unity in which each contributes to the others, while maintaining its distinctiveness. It is radically at odds with liberal modernity, which abolishes the transcendent for the sake of a doomed attempt to construct a wholly this-worldly realm of peace, justice, and radical equality.”

It's not that state reform isn't relevant—but any change needs to be prudently contrasted against an absolute principle or it just becomes change for the sake of change! Is that change about fulfilling our deeper principles as a country and based on Reason, or undermining them for the sake of a global elitism and based on Will

Moreover, we as people are always adhering to some loyalties—even so called globalists. Human nature at its essence is tribal. The beauty of the nation-state is that it can cohere warring factions around a unifying center with transcendent-based principles. Yoram Hazony says, 

“The transition from an order of tribes and clans to the national state offers a great improvement in the possibilities for the collective self-determination of the tribes. This is because the great obstacle to the self-determination of clans and tribes when they are armed and politically independent is the incessant harm they do to one another through their relentless warfare. The national state takes advantage of the basis for a genuine mutual loyalty that already exists among these warring tribes—a common language or religion, in addition to a past history of defending one another as allies in the face of common enemies—to establish a unified national government, thus greatly relieving the constant proximity to war, while creating a vast new arena for the expression of a joint self-determination for these tribes.”

He goes on to say that, “no dramatic improvement occurs from national state to empire [globalist regime].” Such an unnatural organization around disparate states forces them into a false universalism not based on bonds, trust, or sentiment. People today see this as the trend, and for many, it does not serve them nor do they feel represented by it. It is as if they are outcasts slowly being dominated by a managerial elite who don't see them or the country they hold dear. 

“The nationalist, we may say, knows two very large things, and maintains them both in his soul at the same time: He knows that there is great truth and beauty in his own national traditions and in his own loyalty to them; and yet he also knows that they are not the sum of human knowledge, for there is also truth and beauty to be found elsewhere, which his own nation does not possess.”Yoram Hazony