Yesterday Glenn Ellmers very kindly pointed us to his new essay at the Claremont Review of Books. The essay resonates strongly with a number of themes that Meaning in History has attempted to set forth over the years, so I’d like to highly recommend the entire essay:
When the Covid Regime ordered us to mask up, lock down and get jabbed, they thought they held a 'trump card'. They told us we would die if we didn't. They told us we would be responsible for Grandmother's death if we didn't. Given all the uncertainties (another coverup?) around the disease, it was hard to argue with them.
I’ve always known my education is incomplete. Be it my own lack of concern or my “victimization 🤣” by public school changes in methods and emphasis every year. In college you couldn’t get me near a philosophy class because that’s where the last of the “hippies” hung out.
So reading your blog often forces me back to the education process via search engine to understand all that you or others write. Thank you Mark, never too old to learn a few new tricks.
"An adequate response to the pandemic crisis would mean holding people responsible. But it would also mean recovering a deeper understanding of the moral and metaphysical basis of responsibility." Responsibility, our duties, what we owe others; what is justice, what is the ground for justice? Strength?
Just this weekend I listened to an August 10 interview with Mr. Ellmers at First Things discussing his new book, The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy. Highly recommend, easy listening. We find out why we should read Foucault to understand how the Left understands itself... and why Foucault is hard to read.
Brilliantly put together. One of my top Wauck posts. Revealing and disappointing that only 37 likes and 20 comments as at the time of my comment. Kinda odd. Your presentation really aids our understanding of how we got here and what's going on. Particularly interesting, at least for me, was the toe dip into mechanistic thinking. More please.
Seriously, I'm here only because years ago, my sons' elementary school was adopting a new mathematics curriculum based on constructivism (the flip side of deconstruction?) and it forced me to find out why we were not supposed to teach children algorithms.
The old narrative of “Liberalism good, Communism and Fascism bad” was a deeply flawed, but comforting fable. All three ideologies/systems are in fact sibling rivals, the misbegotten offspring of Modernity. (This unholy trinity is nicely encapsulated by the French Revolution’s slogan “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!”) As such, they all inherited common genetic flaws. While the rate varied by which each patient became symptomatic, we should not be surprised to see all three ultimately succumb to the same basic maladies.
It’s also “no accident,” as Comrade Lenin would say, that, to one degree or another, all three ideologies/systems deployed the “giants” of modern thought — Nietzsche, Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, Marx, etc. — and cast Christianity as their implacable enemy.
To be more precise, Rousseau and saint juste knew what was good for you and you had better comply or else. I have found echoes of talmon’s conclusions in the USA today under the democrats.
I would direct your attention to the work of the Israeli scholar J. L. Talmon, specifically The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952). A refugee in Great Britain from Nazi germany, he sought to understand both nazism and Stalinist communism. Like you and the two authors reviewed, he traced totalitarianism to the enlightenment. However, he is not concerned with “scientism” and any mechanistic conceptions. Instead, he demonstrates with thorough scholarship that totalitarianism stems from French thinkers, specifically Rousseau and, if I recall correctly, saint juste. They wanted to help people live the better life even if it meant killing them.
I'm familiar with the name and the ideas, I just can't recall off hand whether I've read his book. When you look at that period I think it becomes clear that political totalitarianism and scientism do share common roots.
People by default and apathy place their trust in almighty government and the science.
Many have forgotten to nourish their spiritual selves and so easily succumb to empty ridiculous promises.
The distractions and bustle of modern life means majority relinquish their responsibility to judge the merit of narratives, ideas, and people. If questioned about their abrogation of power to not accept things at face value, they angrily respond that they don't have time and, they have effectively fallen for the ruse invented by the US government in the 1960's to dismiss anything labeled as conspiracy theory.
If you don't believe in God, you will believe in anything.
We received an email early last year telling us (HCW’s) to get the booster vaxx by April 8 or be terminated. I resigned - was able to, though many people were not, and they have my heartfelt sympathy.
This Covid thing, I’m afraid, has altered mine and many more lives forever. What a despicable turn of events. I vividly recount telling a coworker in March of 2020 while at work (we happened to be among the “essential workers” that had to show up in person to our jobs everyday throughout) that what we were about to experience and go through was world altering in ways that we could not at the time phantom. That events and circumstances would be unleashed that would change our lives and the world forever. I crudely attempted to use the example of a history textbook to my friend. Where when one reads a history book a whole series of events that actually took years and years to unfold is simply condensed into a twenty to thirty page chapter. But that to those actually living through it at the time it unfolded slowly in their own time. Day by day, adding up to months and years. Today, trying to use the same analogy, I’m thinking that we have barely gotten past chapter one in our own participation living the history as it is being written. We have many, many more chapters to go before the book is finished. Ugh.
When the Covid Regime ordered us to mask up, lock down and get jabbed, they thought they held a 'trump card'. They told us we would die if we didn't. They told us we would be responsible for Grandmother's death if we didn't. Given all the uncertainties (another coverup?) around the disease, it was hard to argue with them.
Not any more.
I’ve always known my education is incomplete. Be it my own lack of concern or my “victimization 🤣” by public school changes in methods and emphasis every year. In college you couldn’t get me near a philosophy class because that’s where the last of the “hippies” hung out.
So reading your blog often forces me back to the education process via search engine to understand all that you or others write. Thank you Mark, never too old to learn a few new tricks.
"An adequate response to the pandemic crisis would mean holding people responsible. But it would also mean recovering a deeper understanding of the moral and metaphysical basis of responsibility." Responsibility, our duties, what we owe others; what is justice, what is the ground for justice? Strength?
Just this weekend I listened to an August 10 interview with Mr. Ellmers at First Things discussing his new book, The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy. Highly recommend, easy listening. We find out why we should read Foucault to understand how the Left understands itself... and why Foucault is hard to read.
Thanks for the extremely thoughtful analysis. It’s gratifying to know that the essay may have been helpful.
Always. America is at a point at which political philosophy comes to the fore, whether we want it or not.
Brilliantly put together. One of my top Wauck posts. Revealing and disappointing that only 37 likes and 20 comments as at the time of my comment. Kinda odd. Your presentation really aids our understanding of how we got here and what's going on. Particularly interesting, at least for me, was the toe dip into mechanistic thinking. More please.
PS What are your favourite posts?
"whether we want it or not"
Seriously, I'm here only because years ago, my sons' elementary school was adopting a new mathematics curriculum based on constructivism (the flip side of deconstruction?) and it forced me to find out why we were not supposed to teach children algorithms.
The old narrative of “Liberalism good, Communism and Fascism bad” was a deeply flawed, but comforting fable. All three ideologies/systems are in fact sibling rivals, the misbegotten offspring of Modernity. (This unholy trinity is nicely encapsulated by the French Revolution’s slogan “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!”) As such, they all inherited common genetic flaws. While the rate varied by which each patient became symptomatic, we should not be surprised to see all three ultimately succumb to the same basic maladies.
It’s also “no accident,” as Comrade Lenin would say, that, to one degree or another, all three ideologies/systems deployed the “giants” of modern thought — Nietzsche, Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, Marx, etc. — and cast Christianity as their implacable enemy.
To be more precise, Rousseau and saint juste knew what was good for you and you had better comply or else. I have found echoes of talmon’s conclusions in the USA today under the democrats.
I would direct your attention to the work of the Israeli scholar J. L. Talmon, specifically The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952). A refugee in Great Britain from Nazi germany, he sought to understand both nazism and Stalinist communism. Like you and the two authors reviewed, he traced totalitarianism to the enlightenment. However, he is not concerned with “scientism” and any mechanistic conceptions. Instead, he demonstrates with thorough scholarship that totalitarianism stems from French thinkers, specifically Rousseau and, if I recall correctly, saint juste. They wanted to help people live the better life even if it meant killing them.
I'm familiar with the name and the ideas, I just can't recall off hand whether I've read his book. When you look at that period I think it becomes clear that political totalitarianism and scientism do share common roots.
The most dangerous people on the planet are philosophers, leading away from God (Jesus Christ)
You will want to read Ellmer's essay all the way through to the end; you will be cheering for Socrates to succeed in his final endeavor.
Tom Luongo (Head Sneetch)
@TFL1728
The trial balloons were clearly shot down out of the sky with .22s
zerohedge.com
Trump Lockdown Tyrant Does 180, Says No New Mask Mandates
"We don't need to mandate..."
9:52 AM · Sep 4, 2023
·
People by default and apathy place their trust in almighty government and the science.
Many have forgotten to nourish their spiritual selves and so easily succumb to empty ridiculous promises.
The distractions and bustle of modern life means majority relinquish their responsibility to judge the merit of narratives, ideas, and people. If questioned about their abrogation of power to not accept things at face value, they angrily respond that they don't have time and, they have effectively fallen for the ruse invented by the US government in the 1960's to dismiss anything labeled as conspiracy theory.
If you don't believe in God, you will believe in anything.
If You Can Question it
it's Science
If Not it's Propaganda
My t-shirt is grey
What’s amusing is the masked covadists also think it’s a great shirt.
https://a.co/d/5F5Pz4H
kind of a feel good story: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/hospital-fired-nurses-refusing-vaccines-now-begging-return/
We received an email early last year telling us (HCW’s) to get the booster vaxx by April 8 or be terminated. I resigned - was able to, though many people were not, and they have my heartfelt sympathy.
This Covid thing, I’m afraid, has altered mine and many more lives forever. What a despicable turn of events. I vividly recount telling a coworker in March of 2020 while at work (we happened to be among the “essential workers” that had to show up in person to our jobs everyday throughout) that what we were about to experience and go through was world altering in ways that we could not at the time phantom. That events and circumstances would be unleashed that would change our lives and the world forever. I crudely attempted to use the example of a history textbook to my friend. Where when one reads a history book a whole series of events that actually took years and years to unfold is simply condensed into a twenty to thirty page chapter. But that to those actually living through it at the time it unfolded slowly in their own time. Day by day, adding up to months and years. Today, trying to use the same analogy, I’m thinking that we have barely gotten past chapter one in our own participation living the history as it is being written. We have many, many more chapters to go before the book is finished. Ugh.