The Premise of Power and the Power of Premises

Myrhaf · October 7, 2008

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I chatted with a liberal Democrat today. She denounced Sarah Palin as an idiot. Like a parrot she recited the impression of Palin the MSM have been working overtime to convey to voters. Palin is stupid, dangerous and unworthy of power.

And Obama and Biden are what? Geniuses?

Democrats never think Democrats are stupid or inferior. Democrats can smell the aura of power lust in their fellow party members, and this aroma -- an intoxicating blend to the left -- gives their side legitimacy and weight. If a politician has nothing else but the will to power, he has enough for the left. To want to control others -- to deprive them of their freedom and dictate how they should live their lives -- is the be all and the end all of leftist politics. It is their moral and political ideal.

Democrats can sense that Sarah Palin is not consumed with power lust. She is a typical middle class American, with values outside the quest for power that are as important to her as her political career. To the left she should be among the ruled, not the rulers; among the cattle, not the cowboys. Their outrage at her is like that of a slavemaster in the ante-bellum South toward a slave who wants to learn to read. This one is uppity. This one must be put back in her place.

This year we have seen the premise of power intensify on the left. For the first time, a major party candidate has taken on elements of a cult of personality usually seen in communist countries. Children sing mawkish songs praising the great Obama. Obama has used legal threats and intimidation to shut up those who would speak against him. The MSM act like Pravda in the old Soviet Union, self-censoring any news that makes their glorious leader look bad. On top of all this, the financial crisis has led to greater government intervention in the economy. Things are changing quickly for the worse in America.

Most people, I would submit, do not understand how bad things will get or how quickly we can lose our freedom. Many Americans, especially pragmatists, have a hard time understanding that principles tend to work for those who act most consistently by them. Philosophic premises follow logic to its extreme end, despite the denunciation of extremism by moderates.

Perhaps the greatest example of the logical working out of premises in history is the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius that climaxed at the Council of Orange in 529 a.d. Wikipedia explains:

Pelagianism

is a theological theory named after

Pelagius

(ad. 354 – ad. 420/440). It is the belief that

original sin

did not taint

human nature

(which

God

called very good), and that mortal

will

is still capable of choosing

or

without

. Thus,

's

was "to set a bad example" for his progeny, but his actions did not have the other consequences imputed to Original Sin. Pelagianism views the role of

Jesus

as "setting a good example" for the rest of humanity (thus counteracting Adam's bad example). In short, humanity has full control, and thus full

responsibility

, for its own

salvation

in addition to

full responsibility for every

sin

(the latter insisted upon by both proponents and opponents of Pelagianism). According to Pelagian doctrine, because humanity does not require God's grace for salvation (beyond the creation of will),

^[1]

Jesus' execution is devoid of the redemptive quality ascribed to it by orthodox Christian theology.

...

Pelagianism was opposed by

Augustine of Hippo

, who taught that a person's salvation comes solely through a free gift, the

efficacious grace

of God, and that no person could save himself by his works.

It would have been much better for Christianity and the west if Pelagianism had held sway and man had not been condemned with Original Sin. But the logic of Christianity's premises made Augustine's victory inevitable. Man was stripped of nobility and considered a worm, a helpless wretch entirely dependent on the grace of God for salvation. Life on Earth was belittled as an illusion; this was a place where one could be tempted by Satan. Augustine denounced science as "the lust of the eyes." This was the philosophic death blow to classical civilization.

The triumph of Augustinism resulted in the Dark Ages. Though the empiricist-minded love to cite 20 or 30 reasons that might have contributed to the Dark Ages, from weather patterns to barbaric migrations, those factors always existed. They had the power to devastate civilization in the 6th-10th centuries because the west was disarmed by philosophy. People were not taught to look at reality scientifically in order to find solutions that would improve human existence. What was the point? This world was an illusion. Only life after death had any meaning.

Doubtless, there were many upper class Romans in the fourth and fifth centuries who scoffed at the idea that Christians would take things to extremes. How could anyone without a suicidal death wish want to destroy their glorious classical civilization? Why would they let their institutions, their cosmopolitanism, their learning and their rule of law slip away and be forgotten? Rational people don't do such things.

And yet it happened. It had to happen because people would rather be moral than practical. In a conflict between the moral and the practical, people go with their morality. (A proper morality does not conflict with practicality, but the west does not follow a proper morality.) The premises of Christianity are at war with happy, productive life on Earth. Christians followed their premises into darkness and chaos.

Today the premises of altruism, statism and collectivism are leading America toward a fascist dictatorship. The left is more consistent with these premises and more committed to following them to their logical end. And that end -- make no mistake about it -- is totalitarian dictatorship. Many will scoff at this as those Roman patricians did, but we have already caught a glimpse this year in that list of trends noted above where the logical working out of our premises is taking us.

The lust for power is greatest on the left, but the right is catching up. The right is declining rapidly as it forgets its heritage of half-hearted mumblings about free markets and becomes a full-throated welfare state party. In the long run the right is more dangerous than the nihilist left because it brings with it that great destroyer of civilization, religion. People cannot live long with nihilism; they can, however, accept the destruction of values on Earth if they think they will be rewarded for eternity after death. Religionists will make hell on Earth for the promise of heaven in a supernatural realm.

Altruism, the idea that only sacrifice is moral, is a morality of death. It is opposed to the Enlightenment values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The premise of altruism is leading America toward the abyss. Our only hope is to change our philosophic premises.

For those who yearn for good news, I will say this: we are much better off than the west was in the 6th century a.d., for now we are philosophically armed. Now we have a defense of the morality of rational self-interest, the epistemology of reason and the metaphysics of reality. We have the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It's just a matter of spreading the news.

Until then, things will continue to get worse. Before this year I thought we had plenty of time to get the word out. Now I'm not so sure.