The Politics Of Disgust
One of the hallmarks of civilization is the rule of law. Another is the ideal of private property. The third is the primacy of contracts. We can continue to a few more ideals but let it be said that the Rule Of Law is the prime directive of any civilized society for upon it hangs all other ideals. The tribal society hinges upon the rule of the supreme leader, the patriarch for it is he who gives all laws, all social conventions, all sense of social conventions and as such as dependent on his existence. The next tribal leader can easily undo the previous patriarch’s rule for society. Thus we are beholden to those who disregard patriarchy in favor of an impersonal rule of law. I say impersonal rule of law because the risk of injustice becomes higher when bias is elevated for those whom it favors. This is the problem with all governments regardless of their ideology, for special interests subvert both law and its application rendering the governing process weak and ineffective for all members of society.
Throughout the history of mankind we have seen societies recognize themselves in terms of in-groups and out-groups. This is a natural phenomenon of human behavior as well as animal behavior. Group size has played an important part in the organization of social groups due to the need to identify those who are members of one group from those individuals who are members of another. This is often called the patriarchal model where the elders of the group hold sway as the political elites over the rank and file, so to speak. Normally these groups range between 100 and 200 in number and often join in common cause with other similar groups. Intermarriage is often the glue that holds such groups together in common cause. But it was Christianity and other religions that allowed groups to become larger in their social and political cause. Religion is the mother of civilization and once abandoned civilizations tend to collapse due to a lack of common cause. To say that western civilization and America have reached such a precipice is an understatement. Common beliefs are the glue that holds society together and any destruction of such belief systems tends to destroy a society or even a civilization.
Every society and even every civilization carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. This has been the discussion among many historians through the last few centuries. For us here in America these seeds are now taking root and threatening the destruction of our society. Protestant Christianity was part of the foundation of this country and provided hope for the future generations, now not so much for even religion can corrupt itself with secular ideals. Soon such corruption leads to the moral corruption of a congregation and then a people. This process can be called a type of moral relativism where all anchor points are abandoned and there are no hard and fast rules for human behavior. All beliefs are equal in this marketplace save those based on any religious value. Were we simply subject to invasions by the Mongol Hoards we might have cause to understand better our predicaments, but the invasion came slowly through our educational institutions. A society that was based on self reliance in the face of hardships, a society that expanded and grew a separate nation apart from the rest of the world, a society that conquered a frontier, a continent, has become addicted to the ideal of progress, of reaching for perfection. We are not alone in such undertakings for Europe started that course with the Enlightenment, the idea that religion could be taken out of the hands of powerful prelates and placed into the hands of the people. It was the ideal of perfecting governments so that monarchs and nobility would no longer rule over the common man. It was the moral relativism that sought to replace God with Nature because one could see and feel the latter and thus indulge in the shortcuts to perfection.
The price of short cuts is a high one for one tends to lose one’s way in life. Progress became the new religion, the new belief, the new mantra of ‘liberalism’. The Enlightenment had begun as an invitation to think about the human condition and try to define what being human meant. For much of the known world at that time, monarchy was seen by the philosophers and intellectuals of the Enlightenment as a condition that was opposed to nature. Nature became the defining order of thought. Of course one need not dare to look too closely at the reality of natural being lest one’s views appear contradictory. So began a top down approach to defining how lives should be lived. All men were created equal but what did that mean? For one, commoners were now to be seen as equals to the nobility, the idea being to lift that lower class up in society. Funny thing was that those who were advocating for such uplifting were members of the middle and upper classes themselves and rarely bothered to ‘walk their talk’. Now equality is equated with sameness as in we are all the same and individual differences do not matter. We who are taught reason and logic ascribe such qualities to all men regardless of their education and training. We failed to see that in Nature individuals differences occur and are the rule, not the exception.
Where the Liberalism of the Enlightenment was defined by the wresting of rights of the individual from monarchs and established churches and liberating men from the mercurial dictates of sovereign kings, liberalism has now come to mean the total acceptance of whatever is new in the behavior of men unfettered by tradition or rules for behavior. To be a ‘liberal’ today means that one accepts the rationale that ‘Anything Goes’, there is no moral center that will guide us. This, I believe, is our current state of affairs. For those on the left side of the political spectrum, those whom we may call leftists, liberals, and even progressives, Their ‘sense of morality’ is guided not by universal principles as agreed upon with others but by their ideology central to their belief systems. Thus, to disagree with any part of their particular ideology is to disagree with their ‘moral stance’ and hence to be a heretic and punished as such. One can never question the ends of their ideology nor the means with which it is implemented. The fact that those who would call themselves intellectuals or even experts and who vouch their authority with academic degrees or other certifications must be ‘respected’ and listened to without question never enters the minds of the many who make common cause with such individuals and movements.
One can easily see the parallels in the history of religion where once a particular religious theology is into concrete so that there is no room for debate let alone a nod for discrete discussion that the heretics, the non believers, and the apostates are persecuted even to death. These are not the oppressed workers, the majority of the citizens treated as peons of the rich, these are the affluent, the educated in social sciences and the humanities, the chosen elite, if you will, and they know best for the rest of us. They have become the new nobility sans the rank of a noble class or rulers. Very often they may have PhD before their names or political titles such as the honorable Senator or Congressman. They castigate the rich, the wealthy, the privileged groups while creating a new class for themselves that include wealth by ill gotten gain. And of course, members of their families also get to share the wealth. They talk about the great divide between rich and poor and how the one percent must share or give up its riches while they revel in the glories of their new found wealth.
Social “Scientists” has declared that morality is a human construct and thus culturally relative yet the continuing discovery of evidence from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology show otherwise, there is a natural sense of right and wrong behaviors and a raw sense of morality that we, as social animals, have developed. The sensation of Disgust in one of those natural senses and has played an important part in the development of mankind from early societies to modern civilizations. There are three domains of disgust: pathogen disgust which motivates the ingestion of infectious microorganisms; sexual disgust, which motivates the avoidance of dangerous sexual partners and behaviors; and moral disgust, which motivates people to avoid breaking social norms. What is interesting is that women reportedly have a greater sense of disgust than men and yet seem to be at the forefront of the politics of disgust. That is they advocate for greater relaxation in the domain of moral disgust and in sexual disgust.
Women had always been describes as the more faithful adherents in religious practices as religion has been seen as a means to socialize men into the business of family, that is marriage to one woman, providing for that wife and the children that results from her loins. It’s about the stability of the family and society in general. Yet in our more modern times we have witnessed women advocating for more sexual freedoms, removal of social taboos, and moral relativism. We have always expected men to cheer for more sexual freedom and the removal of social taboos and even more moral relativism, and yet in our modern times we see more men taking a strong stance against this politics of disgust. Indeed, religion is playing a stronger role for both sexes and the lines are being drawn. The idea that a family contains both parents and the children is reforming the public debate yet the left is not listening. Indeed the far left is doubling down on their assault against the idea of family, against the idea of marriage, the idea of child rearing, against the idea of individual freedoms, the idea of personal responsibility, the idea of society as a civilization force. They are pushing the poverty of pure power while believing they hold the moral high ground. The progressive ideal for them is akin to the old Mercantile economies of the 19th century. Back then the goal of government was to make sure that trade with other nation states resulted in filling the treasury with as much gold as possible. Most currencies were supposedly backed by physical gold in the nation’s bank vaults and hence the nation that held the most gold was the richest. But that is not how money and trade work. Hording gold reduces the flow of money which in turn reduces the flow of trade and in return starves the economy. It works the same way with political power for to horde it and deny the people some measure of control over their lives and their futures reduces them to abject poverty of morality, education, and common cause as a society.
The New Green Society, this excuse for repression, poverty, and a life fettered to the whims of the state is what has been promised. The elites delude themselves that we will applaud their leadership and their unbridled lust for power. The time is coming to go long guillotines. We are destined to see our nation more greatly divided against itself for when political beliefs turn into a religion blood will flow. How many times has that occurred in the history of peoples and nations?
Say Goodbye To Our Town 