CommentnI see the Liberal Culture as resting on many mighty pillars,none of the most powerful of which is the cult of deficientnthinking.nThe symptoms of the latter are everywhere. Its effect is thenerosion of the American ethos, that is of the set of principlesnand values by which this nation wishes to live. Even if America’snefforts have fallen short then and now, in making this wishncome true, this wish has always conditioned America’s fortunesnas an ideal worth striving for.nIts disintegration has many causes, of which the mostndisturbing is, perhaps, the perversion of freedom. Freedom isnAmerica’s element, a sort of force of nature, with all thenblessings and unpredictability of naturalness. An extremistnapproach to freedom, however, brings more harm than good:nit is as if we imagined precipitation as not only a fertilizer ofncrops, but as something we are constitutionally forbidden tontake shelter from. Freedom converted into licentiousnessnthreatens the fabric of organized life; all we need is commonnsense to tell us this. In the ’60s, freedom as an absolute broughtnus a specific moral vacuousness, or permissiveness, as a proclaimednbeneficence. Many saw in it a breeding ground forn”new” virtues. “New virtues?” Saul Bellow wondered notnlong ago in To Jerusalem and Back, “Are there any.”” Neitherntheorists nor practitioners of the Liberal Culture could havenanswered his question, “New” virtues is a classic construct ofndeficient thinking. Integrity, truthfulness, independence ofnmind, loyalty, heroism are as old as mankind and nothingnindicates their obsoleteness.nAhe cult of deficient thinking is a complex phenomenon.nIts ubiquity makes it unassailable. Neither formal knowledge,nnor moral courage, not even wisdom, is sufficient to expose itnclearly and irrefutably. One of the few effective weapons againstnit is common sense—that is the human faculty to be adamantnthat 2 and 2 makes 4 not 5. Common sense is the only litmusninstrumental in debunking deficient thinking and its cultists.nThis is why the Liberal Culture is hellbent on eradicatingncommon sense from the face of the earth; it denigrates andnvillifies it at each step, and calls it the low-brow philosophynof rednecks.nSome areas of social actuality have gathered more of thencult’s intoxicating dust than others. Let’s have a look at them.nUntil recently, man and woman shared both an existencenand the human condition. The code of their interdependencenhas, through the millenia, been ratified by both nature andncivilization. Recently, the code was declared invalid and replacednwith a separateness of goals: the basic premise of modernnfeminism is that man and woman can exist without one another.nThe divorce of destinies is supposed to bring absolute parity,nthus improvement of humanity.nCommon sense whispers into our souls that this is deficientnthinking; that, in the end, it will terminate the mutual neednwhich man feels for woman, and vice versa. This need hasnChronicles of Culturennnalways been the non-biological DNA, the source of humannlife on this planet. Men and women have always known that itnis difficult to live with one another and impossible without. Itnis a self-evident truth and its denial drowns us in grotesquenabominations. However, countless books and movies promotenthis aberration daily in print and on the airwaves: they intenselynadvocate the abrogation of the sexes, while serious criticsnrecommend their messages as a panacea for man’s and woman’snills. A fallacy originating in fantasies has been molded into annalmost compulsory belief and is being injected into minds.nThe deception is so gross, and its promoters are so shrill, thatnit can be categorized neither as faith, nor as idea—only as cult.nUn I nder the Liberal Culture’s sway, social morality hasnbecome a paradise of deficient thinking. After the demise ofnsin, accused of having been just a figment of religiosity, thenultimate relativization of guilt turned big cities into jungles—anmetaphor unfair to the latter, for no one purposelessly takesnlife in a jungle. The cultists assume that a scientificallynprescribed morality can legislate consciences, they worshipnthe academic Baal on every TV talk show. In the light of thisnethic, and according to its frequent social implementations,nboth Lady Macbeth and Raskolnikov, for example, would benunpunishable if their crimes were uncovered with the help ofnunauthorized bugging. More liberal courts may even deemnShakespeare’s and Dostoyevski’s literary imagination a fullyninappropriate device to opine on what’s guilt; in such a casenwe have to assume that both the Scottish lady and the Russiannstudent would have been acquitted. And common sense tellsnus that there is something oddly deficient in this approach tonmorality and law.nIn a recent story. Time—thzx stronghold of listless objectivitynin .socio-moral matters—reported on the unheard-of crimesnthat are being committed daily in American high schools,nonce the incubators of civic virtues. The magazine ascribednthe anarchy of conduct and atrophy of humaneness to thendownfall of authority in the ’60s. But it does not mention thatn/^efl5—especially moral ones—brought about this collapse.nThose were half-baked, callow, meretricious concepts ofnliberation, right and wrong, individual conscience as thensupreme guidance. They were promoted by specious “philosophers”nand “moralists,” who, in turn, were given freneticnadvertisement in the pages of Time. It was cheap and easy tonbecome a “spiritual leader” in those times; it sufficed to climbna soap box and shout: “War is Evil!” or: “People Are Beautiful!”nor anything equally profound and revealing, to earn the cheersnof spaced-out crowds, and the enthusiastic reports of the nationalnmagazines. The leaders and crowds vanished, but the sleazynideas have stayed with us, and today they flourish in the nation’snhigh schools, and give rise to the crudest violence a society innpeace has ever known. Those who preached such ideas stillncall themselves liberals, or radicals, today, and are still veneratednby Time for their never-ending quest for the perfectibility ofn
January 1975April 21, 2022By The Archive
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