01 Dec 2024

“The Cruelty of Heresy”*

, , , , , ,


The Albigensian massacre, chronicle of Saint-Denis, 14th century, London, British Library.

As Edward Feser astutely recognizes, perverse instincts apparently lurk in the depths of human nature causing repeated outbreaks of pathological religious impulses featuring the embrace of fanatical dualism, communal ownership of property, sexual deviance, and rejection of normality, tradition, and the existing order of society.

In the Middle Ages, they did not let the crazies take over the universities, the culture, and the arts, they went in and wiped them out.

In a Catholic World Report essay not too long ago, I argued that the so-called “woke” phenomenon, which has in recent years suddenly risen to enormous influence in Western politics and culture , is best understood as a new riff on the Gnostic-Manichean style of politics identified by Voegelin. There is the characteristic thesis that the everyday world is utterly suffused with evil – “systemic racism,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “heteronormativity,” “transphobia,” and the like, all interlocked to form a suffocating structure of “intersectional” oppression. There is the appeal to various forms of gnosis (Critical Race Theory, feminist theory, gender studies, etc.) that purportedlyallow the adept to perceive this oppression in a way others cannot. There is the Manichean divide between those who are enlightened by this gnosis and the wicked who resist it.

But attention to the details reveals disturbing further parallels with Catharism in particular, even if they manifest in secular rather than theological terms. For example, the “transgender”phenomenon evinces an alienation from the body and from the natural end of sex no less radical than that of the Cathars, and with comparable intellectual incoherence and moral disorder as its sequel. For the Cathar, the body is like a dark prison from which the spark of light that is the true self seeks release. For a “trans” person, his male body (for example) belies his true self as a “trans woman,” or as “non-binary,” or as having some other “gender identity.” For the Cathar not ready to advance to the status of the Perfect, the body’s appetites may nevertheless be freely indulged, even to the point of extreme debauchery, so long as procreation is avoided. For the trans person, the body’s sexual organs might be destroyed and refashioned so as to reflect his true gender identity, but they might instead be preserved and deployed in a manner that gratifies his governingsexual fetish. Thus do we have the bizarre claim that a “trans woman” is simply a “woman” full stop, even if “she” has male genitalia.

The Cathar hatred of corporeal life and its procreation also finds parallels in the extreme environmentalist component of the wokemovement, which regards the human race as a “cancer on the planet,” and in the normalization of abortion, euthanasia, and childlessness. The Cathar condemnation of state violence for the sake of upholding law and order finds a parallel in woke calls to “defund the police” and end the “carceral state.” The Cathar eschewal of meat and dairy products finds a parallel in the contemporary vogue for moralistic veganism (in the name of animal rights or sustainability or the like). The Cathar rejection of private property finds a parallel in woke refusal to enforce laws against vagrancy and shoplifting.

Like that of the Cathars, woke rhetoric often sounds superficially peaceful. But also like the Cathars, the wokenevertheless practice coercion and even violence when they judge it useful for advancing their cause. This includes doxxingand other forms of intimidation; rioting, looting, and even occupying large areas (as in 2020’s CHAZ protest in Seattle and the siege of the federal courthouse in Portland); the shutting down of roadways and the vandalism of paintings, public statuary, and the like as routine protest tactics; the mutilation of bodies in the name of “gender identity”; and the promotion of “gender transition” even among children, along with the imposition of extreme ideological curricula, against the wishesof parents.

In general, wokeness, like Catharism, is essentially about the radical subversion of normal human life in the name of a paranoid Fmetaphysical delusion. Like Catharism, its fashionableness has nevertheless found it support among a large segment of the wealthy and powerful. And like Catharism, its rise has been facilitated by the Church’s being in such a low state that it is unable to provide an effective counterbalance.

RTWT

* I was disappointed by the book, but I thought the title was very apt.

29 Nov 2024

Heads It’s Climate Change; Tails It’s Climate Change

28 Nov 2024

Kamala’s Speech (Uncut Version

, , ,

They can do hilarious stuff with AI these days.

28 Nov 2024

Bummer! Hitler Has Seen the New Jaguar Ad

, , ,

28 Nov 2024

The Real Story of Thanksgiving

, ,

Thanksgiving1

Mike Franc, at Human Events in 2005, identified the real reason for celebration at the first Thanksgiving.

Writing in his diary of the dire economic straits and self-destructive behavior that consumed his fellow Puritans shortly after their arrival, Governor William Bradford painted a picture of destitute settlers selling their clothes and bed coverings for food while others “became servants to the Indians,” cutting wood and fetching water in exchange for “a capful of corn.” The most desperate among them starved, with Bradford recounting how one settler, in gathering shellfish along the shore, “was so weak– he stuck fast in the mud and was found dead in the place.”

The colony’s leaders identified the source of their problem as a particularly vile form of what Bradford called “communism.’ Property in Plymouth Colony, he observed, was communally owned and cultivated. This system (“taking away of property and bringing [it] into a commonwealth’) bred “confusion and discontent” and “retarded much employment that would have been to [the settlers’] benefit and comfort.”

Just how did the Pilgrims solve the problem of famine? In addition to receiving help from the local Indians in farming, they decided allow the private ownership of individual plots of land.

On the brink of extermination, the Colony’s leaders changed course and allotted a parcel of land to each settler, hoping the private ownership of farmland would encourage self-sufficiency and lead to the cultivation of more corn and other foodstuffs.

As Adam Smith would have predicted, this new system worked famously. “This had very good success,” Bradford reported, ‘for it made all hands very industrious.” In fact, “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been” and productivity increased. “Women,” for example, “went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn.”

The famine that nearly wiped out the Pilgrims in 1623 gave way to a period of agricultural abundance that enabled the Massachusetts settlers to set down permanent roots in the New World, prosper, and play an indispensable role in the ultimate success of the American experiment.

A profoundly religious man, Bradford saw the hand of God in the Pilgrims’ economic recovery. Their success, he observed, “may well evince the vanity of that conceit–that the taking away of property– would make [men] happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.’ Bradford surmised, ‘God in his wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”

The real story of Thanksgiving is the triumph of capitalism and individualism over collectivism and socialism, which is the summation of the story of America.

28 Nov 2024

The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving

, , ,

———————————

28 Nov 2024

A Proclamation

, ,

As published in the Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

27 Nov 2024

Sad

, ,

Public reaction

27 Nov 2024

What Is Krampus Doing in Norway?

, ,

He’s an Alpine folklore figure. And there’s only one of him. Butin Norway, unaccountably, they had a whole Krampus parade. Very strange.

27 Nov 2024

Someone’s Having Fun

27 Nov 2024

Employee of the Year

27 Nov 2024

Thanksgiving Greetings From Elon

,

Links
Philosophy
  • Overcoming Bias
  • More or Less Sound Blogs
  • A Mind Aroused
  • Aaron’s cc
  • ABFreedom
  • Ace of Spades HQ
  • Albion’s Seedlings
  • Alphecca
  • American Conservative, The (Buchananite Paleocons)
  • American Nihilist Underground Society
  • Amused Cynic
  • An Antique Dealer’s Blog
  • Andrew Cusack
  • Ankle Biting pundits
  • Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
  • Art of the Blog
  • Assistant Village Idiot
  • Assistant Village Idiot
  • Augean Stables
  • Austin Bay Blog
  • Becker-Posner Blog
  • Begging to Differ
  • Bidinotto Bog, The
  • Big Lizards.net
  • Black and Right
  • BlameBush!
  • Blue Crab Boulevard
  • Brainster
  • Brussels Journal, The
  • Brutally Honest
  • Captain’s Journal, The
  • Carnage And culture
  • Cato at Liberty
  • Cato Unbound
  • Cave of the Curmudgeon
  • Chaos in Motion
  • Chequer-Board of Nights and Days, A
  • Chicago Boyz
  • Claremont Institute
  • Clarity & Resolve
  • Clayton Cramer’s Blog
  • Cobb–Curious,Skeptical,Analytical
  • Cold Fury
  • Colonel Robert Neville Always Dresses For Dinner
  • Conblogeration
  • Confederate Yankee
  • Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid
  • Corner – National Review Online
  • CounterIntelligence Center
  • Coyote Blog
  • Crosspatch Chronicle
  • Cubachi
  • CultureGrrl
  • Daily Pundit
  • Daisy Cutter
  • Dalrock
  • Damnum Absque Injuria
  • Dangerous Times
  • David Bellavia
  • David Frum
  • David Thompson
  • Dean’s World
  • Death By 1000 Papercuts
  • Democracy Reform
  • Dennis the Peasant
  • Diminished Expectations
  • Dinocrat.com
  • Don Surber
  • Doug Ross
  • Dust in the Light
  • Eject! Eject! Eject!
  • Enchiridion Militis
  • Error Theory
  • ex-Liberal in Hollywood
  • Faster, Please (Michael Ledeen)
  • FKIN
  • Flit(tm)
  • Flopping Aces
  • Forward Movement (Jules Crittenden)
  • Fraters Libertas
  • Front Porch Republic
  • Future Uncertain, The
  • Gates of Vienna
  • Gateway Pundit
  • Gays Defending Marriage
  • Greg R. Lawson's Blog
  • Grouchy Old Cripple
  • Hog on Ice
  • Horsefeathers
  • Hugh Hewitt
  • Ideas
  • IMAO
  • In Mala Fide
  • In the Bullpen
  • INDC Journal
  • Interested-Participant
  • Irish Pennants
  • Isegoria
  • Jack Lewis
  • Jawa Report, The
  • JayReding.Com
  • Jeremayakovka
  • Jeremy Lott
  • Jon Swift
  • Just One Minute
  • Ken McCracken
  • Kim du Toit
  • Kobayashi Maru
  • Law of the Bad Premise
  • Left Exposed
  • Likelihood of Success
  • Lileks
  • Lone Pony
  • Make Haste Slowly (Trad)
  • Man Without Qualities
  • Mark Levin
  • Mike Stopa
  • Modern Art Notes
  • Mr. Blonde’s Garage
  • Musings of the Geek with a .45
  • Nation of Riflemen, A
  • New Majority (David Frum) -Neocon Sellout Blog
  • Nickie Goombah
  • No End But Victory
  • No Left Turns
  • Obsidian Order
  • Oh, That Liberal Media!
  • One Cosmos
  • One Hand Clapping
  • Only Republican in San Francisco, The
  • Other Things Amanzi
  • Outside the Beltway
  • Palmetto Pundit
  • Patterico’s Pontifications
  • Pileus
  • Point Five
  • PoliPundit.com
  • Political Horizons
  • Political Teen, The
  • PostLiberal Blog, The
  • ProfessorBainbridge.Com
  • Prospero; the Home of the Generative Thought Experiment
  • Protein Wisdom
  • QandO
  • Radio Blogger
  • Rage Against the Kakistocracy
  • Rantingprofs
  • Reason Online – Hit and Run
  • RedState.org
  • Republican Dan
  • Revolutionary War Veteran’s Association Weblog
  • Revolver Guy
  • Riding Sun
  • Right Reason
  • Right Wings News
  • Rightwing Nuthouse
  • Roger L. Simon
  • Room 12A
  • Samizdata.net
  • SayUncle
  • Scylla & Charybdis
  • Secular Right
  • Shot in the Dark
  • Shrinkwrapped
  • Solid Surfer, The
  • Soxblog
  • stikNstein
  • Stop Obama
  • Stop the ACLU
  • Strange Women Lying in Ponds
  • Sultan Knish
  • Sweetness & Light
  • Taki’s Top Drawer
  • Tech Central Station
  • The Buck Stops Here
  • Three Rounds Brisk
  • TigerHawk
  • Tim Chapman Blog
  • TKS
  • Tom Delay
  • Tongue Tied
  • Transterrestrial Musings
  • Unqualified Offerinds
  • Unqualified Reservations (Mencius Moldbug)
  • Vanishing American
  • VariFrank
  • Victor Davis Hanson
  • View from the Right
  • ViewPointJournal.Com
  • Vince aut Morire
  • Vodka Pundit
  • War and Piece
  • Watcher of Weasels
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction
  • Western Confucian
  • What Would Charles Martel Do?
  • Will Wilkinson
  • Winds of Change
  • Wizbang
  • Xavier Thoughts (Pawn Shop Guns!)
  • YARGB – Flares into Darkness
  • Blogs From Australia
  • Dissecting Leftism
  • Tim Blair
  • Blogs from Mauritius
  • An Economist in Paradise
  • Blogs From the Philippines
  • Pinoy Stupid
  • Blogs From Israel
  • Zionist Conspiracy
  • Racial blogs
  • Undercover Blackman
  • Blogs From Russia
  • Mat Rodina
  • Blogs From Japan
  • Gaijin Mama
  • Linguistics
  • Language Log
  • Statistics
  • William M. Briggs
  • Shrink Blogs
  • Dr. Sanity
  • Macho Blogs
  • FKIN
  • Business
  • OilPrice.com
  • Blogs From Germany
  • Observing Hermann
  • Photo Blogs
    /div>








    Feeds
    Entries (RSS)
    Comments (RSS)
    Feed Shark