T. Belman: The left worships democracy and constantly holds the right to account if it deviates from it. In the past I have questioned democracy as the be all and the end all. It is common knowledge that democracy will be the end of democracy. By that I mean democracy results in give-aways to the detriment of the state. This article analyses how democracy gave way to entitlements, political correctness, multriculturalism and Islam. Well worth thinking about.
By Enza Ferreri, AMERICAN THINKER
I’m not sure how conservative Americans will view the recently-published book Democracy as a Neocon Trick by Alexander Boot.
It’s an unusual work: whereas critics of America are generally on the political Left while those on the Right defend it, this is a criticism of the U.S. from a non-Leftist viewpoint, indeed from a traditional, conservative, Christian, pre-Enlightenment viewpoint.
I don’t agree with everything the author says about America, but he’s such a brilliant philosopher in so many respects that whatever he writes is worth exploring.
Born in Soviet Russia, Alexander Boot emigrated to the USA in 1973 and then to Britain in 1988.
I’ve been reading his blog almost daily since I’ve discovered it almost two years ago. When I found it I thought I had struck intellectual gold. Then I started reading his books. We’ve become friends.
You don’t find many thinkers these days with Boot’s ideas, so he needs an introduction.
For some time I’ve regretted the lack of a constructive alternative to the Left’s program. Islam is a major problem, but it’s only a symptom. Why did the West throw its doors wide open to it? What’s the disease of which Islamisation, multiculturalism, political correctness and all our other social evils are symptoms?
Boot provides the general framework we need. It’s not just a critique of Islam, or socialism, feminism, environmentalism, “gay rights”, EU, unrestricted immigration, welfare state, public education, nationalised healthcare, our degenerate culture and corrupt political system, although it’s all of these things.
Through his lens we acquire a reason for all the many ways we’ve arrived at the present surreal situation where we’re overjoyed at the prospect of being subjugated by Islam, aren’t unduly bothered by our future extinction as a race and collapse as a civilization or worried about turning our countries into Third World outposts and our cities into replicas of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We need to understand where we went wrong, at what point we lost our compass — totally. Ideas of how advanced, enlightened, free and prosperous Western society is were obviously based on false assumptions if it all leads to the current Alice-in-Wonderland reality and suicidal urge.
Alex Boot identifies the crucial moments of this gradual process as the Renaissance’s humanism replacing God with man, the Reformation making everyone his own priest, and the Enlightenment sowing the seeds of totalitarian thought conducing to socialism, egalitarianism and Marx.
It’s difficult at first, after the prolonged indoctrination transforming history and philosophy into tools of propaganda, to come to terms with Boot’s ideas of the superiority of the Medieval over the modern world.
Each book I’ve published since, though perfectly capable of standing on its own, is but another chapter in an ongoing attempt to ponder the shattered temple [of Western civilisation], to understand why it was destroyed and by whom… Each of my books focused on one aspect of modernity, be it culture, religion or economics. This one is about politics, which in today’s West is dominated by totemistic worship of a mythological ideal that is misleadingly called liberal democracy.
This is how Boot sets the scene for his new book.
Democracy, he says, became deified. Like God, whose cult it’s replaced, it cannot be questioned.
Boot’s not opposed to democracy (in its etymological sense of rule by the people) but to unchecked democracy.
The system of government that most approaches Boot’s ideal is Britain’s historical constitutional monarchy.
“God, king and country” represents the Church, monarchy, and Parliament.
In case of conflicts among them, the highest authority on earth remains the Church, accountable only to God.
The Parliament’s division into two chambers is essential. The lower chamber, House of Commons, is the democratic part of the whole system. It’s elected by the people to represent their interests.
But it must be checked by other authorities: the monarch, whose power ultimately descends from God, and, in a fine balance between the monarch and the people, Parliament’s upper chamber, the hereditary House of Lords, composed of aristocrats who, due to their historical ties to the land and territory, can go beyond their personal interest in favour of the public one. Their not being elected guarantees that they’re not corrupted and swayed by desire for votes.
After what we’ve seen on both sides of the Pond, unelected power counterbalancing elected power seems the right solution. Politicians’ giving people all they want even if it bankrupts the state and ruins the economy, namely an unsustainable welfare state epitomised by the free Obamaphone lady in the infamous video, is no less than a freebies-for-votes bribery exchange.
Not content with that, politicians have imported their own voters from other countries, thus creating their made-to-measure electorate.
In the end, the “rule of the people” has become the final undoing of the people.
Boot is right on this. If this is not sufficient argument against democracy without proper checks and balances, I don’t know what is. Unchecked democracy, like communism, requires an unrealistic dose of trust in humans.
We should limit universal suffrage. Not allowing people who economically depend on the state to vote would reduce clientelism. Voting age should be increased.
The book describes how the pre-modern West comprised organic states that developed gradually, not through revolutions.
The central state had little power, mostly taken by intermediary, local authorities like parish, guild, village commune, township, and clan.
This reflects the relative importance that Christianity attributes to the state and the individual. The former is transient, the latter eternal. Christianity, therefore, has an intrinsic tendency to protect the freedom and dignity of the individual, with its spiritual value, against the power of the state.
What the Church called “subsidiarity” dominated the political scene: it was localism, the devolution of power to the lowest sensible level.
The West, aka Christendom, centered around God. Its final purpose in every sphere, political, social, cultural, economic, was to make it as easy as possible for every individual to achieve salvation.
If democracy has become a religion (the American religion), and if Tocqueville — with his book Democracy in America explaining what the new religion was about and extolling its virtues — is its St. Paul, neocons are, according to Boot, its belligerent missionaries.
He thinks that worship of liberal democracy has today become an ill-advised messianic policy aggressively followed by many Western countries but especially the USA and, to a lesser degree, Britain. And neoconservatism is the political movement mostly responsible for the urge to export democracy to every corner of the world with whatever means.
He compares neocons to Trotskyists, wanting to make the whole world communist.
For him neoconservatism is a misnomer, as the movement has much more in common with socialism than real conservatism. “Cryptosocialism” would be better.
Both reject with hostility two millennia of Christian civilisation and want to create paradise on earth, using violence as utopians do.
In fact, as the Marxist striving for the perfect society has proved to be the most tragic and catastrophic failure in mankind’s history, so the neocon-inspired American policies in the Middle East have replaced unsavoury but secular regimes with fanatical Islamic ones, and unleashed the violent potential of that part of the world that the necessary tyrannies of the likes of Saddam, Mubarak and Gaddafi kept under control. And neocons are still at it, wanting to transform Syria into another Iraq.
Boot’s criticism of the country that, unlike Europe, is still strong on Christian faith may be a bit harsh.
But his message still offers a lot to reflect on. It’s obvious that we are light-years away from where we’d like to be, and that all the promises of rational Enlightenment have materialised only, at most, in the techno-scientific sphere. Even the economy, where we thought we would be strong and which, in a Godless and material world, attracted most efforts, has turned out to be a house of cards.
We really need to approach our problems from a completely different angle, as Boot would put it not physical but metaphysical.
Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based Philosophy graduate, writer and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L’Espresso, La Repubblica.
She blogs at www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk.
@ M Devolin:
thanks, Mike, just saw your greeting.. Happy chanukah to you and your family 🙂
@ honeybee:
Good. Let ma know if you need anything.
@ mar55:
I shall send my daughter to Whole Foods for matzo meal and Hanukah candles.
@ honeybee:
Send me an address where I can send you plenty of matzo meal. I does not have to be your own. It could be a PO Box number or that of a sibling. Or, you could do what a friend of mine did once. She was in Florida where in some parts you cannot easily find Italian products. She went to the telephone directory and looked for Italian surnames.
Called one of the numbers and explained she was from out of town and could not find Asiago cheese. The person on the other side of the line knew where to send her. Call a Jewish name and you might find the matzo meal. Amazon has the probability of having a vendor who sells it. Otherwise, I am more than happy to send it. That what friends are for.
If you give me a list I can send several items at once. Soon because I’m leaving the 17th. In any case, Bon appetite!
@ yamit82:
Bright boy !!!!!!!!!!!! No more chit-chating here, Ted has his limits.
honeybee Said:
Learning by the day how true.
@ mar55:
Matzo meal is not that easy to come by. My parents were married for many years. My Father’s greatest fear was that my Mother would die first. My Mother lived to be almost 91.
yamit82 Said:
I am a women of infinite talents.
@ honeybee:
Your father had a long life. Very romantic. How did it work the marriage? Peace and harmony I hope.
@ D. Bene:
If you were a friend of thinking Jews you would not be propagating the BS that comes out from your mouth. Or…Perhaps…does it come from somewhere else? In that case we can provide you with a big box of TP (toilet paper) that you can wipe your mouth after finishing talking> BTW if you pay in cash we will give you a discount on the TP.
@ honeybee:
honeybee, try it with the matzo and the light oil. They come out lighter and crispier. Years ago people did not know hoe the foods we selected were hurting our bodies. You are a young woman. Take care of your arteries. What do men know about cooking? I think he misses you and will agree with anything you say to get your attention. Look at him. Don’t you feel sorry for him? He is wagging his tail like a poor puppy. He is going out of his mind. He is right in one thing. Where did you get that video from? It is funny.
@ yamit82:
yamit82 since you are a traditionalist why don’t you go to her house and grate the potatoes for her and bring her the matzo meal. Traditionalist? Ha,ha,ha…Be honest and tell her:
I’m lying. I just want you to throw me a bone with a bit of meat also. Hum….Los hombres son todos unos descarados.
Ask and you shall receive.
@ honeybee:
Where did you dig that one out from??? 🙂
@ mar55:
My Father died at 82. He was a life long Diabetic. He was one of the first to receive insulin at the Unvier. of Chicago where he was a student. My Mom was his nurse. que romatico.
@ mar55:
@ yamit82:
For yawl’s entertainment and edification:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFofqe26t-4
@ honeybee:
Your father and me are traditionalists.
The heck with arteries if we lasted this long a little chicken fat a couple of times a year ain’t gonna do us in 😛 I hope not????
Did your father died young? No chicken fat. People are not using it anymore. It taste great but, your arteries do not benefit from it. I use it only to saute the onions for chopped liver. Plenty of onions. I use steer liver and some chicken liver. Chicken liver alone is kind of bitter. The proportions are: 1pound steer liver to 1/4 of a pound of chicken liver. The rest you know. Again matzo meal is excellent but in this case after the liver has been processed with the onions and salt and pepper, add one boiled egg and a bit of matzo meal (the one for cake). I put it in a mold and serve it cold with tam-tam crackers. Decorate it a bit after
it has been taken out of the mold. BTW frozen hash browns are a good idea in a pinch.
@ D. Bene:
In the name of peace and that we can have a great Holiday Season. In the name of whoever you worship. PLEASE LEAVE.
We do not want your preaching and do not appreciate your presence here. GO AWAY and DO NOT come back. Sell your wares
elsewhere. LEAVE. Stand next to the Salvation Army guy. You have no audience here.
Good night!
@ mar55:
My Father insisted on chicken fat. I fix a lot of roast chicken and I render my own fat. I am stich with the hash brown, no soaking , no draining. The men do the frying.
@ honeybee:
Neither Bisquik or flower. Forgot, but the best and fluffier latkes
come if you add matzo meal. There are two kinds. One for cakes and regular. The regular matzo meal instead of flower makes a great and crispy latke. Chicken fat? Do you want to clog your arteries at an early age? Almost nobody uses chicken fat anymore. Even in the Jewish Market is hard to find. You have to go to the butcher for rendered chicken fat
“smaltz” I’m not sure if I spelled right. The previous message
has lots of mistakes. Need a new typing board. This one is sticking and repeating the same letters, missing others and making a mess in general. Ready for Hanukkah? After la paliza that you took in Thanksgiving are you ready for more? You must have a very large family.
Buy yourself a cuisipro grater. There there others in stainless steel that are similar but, the Cuisipro have
a new technology that cuts much sharper when you grate. It is excellent. Makes grating a breeze. Fresh potatoes always. Put TX to grate. My son in law is a great helper.
Look for the Couisipro graters in William Sonoma or Chef’s Catalogs. The imitations are not good. Order in their websites. Efficient and you avoid the crowds. Happy Hanukkah honeybee. Say hello to auntie Deborah. The one from Deborah dicha.
@ mar55:
I use frozen hash browns defrosted, no fuss, no mess. Use flour eggs and lots of grated onion, and lot salt and a little pepper. I fry them in ” chicken fat” like my Grandmother. My Aunt uses Bisquik instead of flour.
@ M Devolin:
Happy Hanukkah to you Mr.Devolin. We all like you. Remember when making latkes to use Yukon Gold potatoes. They taste buttery. Add onions, little parsley and eggs. Remember to beat the egg whites before you add the yolks. Fist drain the water from the potatoes and them, mixed all together. Salt and pepper to taste. Fry them in a light oil like canola oil and enjoy them. I’m going to bee in Bethesda, MD. If you are near Washington DC. Email me and come to my daughter’s house. You are invited. Always welcome. Forgot. You can have them with sour cream or apple sauce. Enjoy! We are going to try to make the donuts this year. Happy Hanukkah!
D. Bene Said:
No you are no friend of Jews. Especially thinking ones.
You are trolling for victims.
Your good news is bad news for any “Thinking Jew” heard it all before anyway and prefer to remain the witness people.
This isn’t the place, go stand on street corners and peddle your snake oil.
He’s Dead!!!
D. Bene Said:
If yawl would ask a civil question, but Bless yawl’s Li’tle O’l Heart !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am a friend of thinking Jews.
Hmmmm…. As a people, as a nation you have been beaten-up and beaten-up. I guess that’s why you seem to be so ready, willing, and able to be hostile.
Have y’all no desire for civil dialogue?
@ yamit82:
you win.
@ honeybee:
There are certain delicacies that no matter how they are called or served up are always a special treat and delightful in short a real culinary treasure.
@ Bear Klein:
Dichas of Deborah: “Better to keep silent to hide your ignorance, then to speak and prove it”.
@ D. Bene
Common Sense says when entering a Jewish House one does not start babbling out the differences between Jews and Christians and start peddling the Christian version of religion. It is sure to offend and alienate the people of the Jewish House.
However some peddlers are not very tactful and look like used car salesmen wearing an ill fitting suit and wig.
yamit82 Said:
I thought you would prefer me peeled.
Happy Chanukah to you too, honeybee. Sorry I missed mentioning you in my post. I was in a hurry (as usual). With love from the Great White North.
@ M Devolin:
Thanks Dev and a Happy Chanukah to HB!!!!
She is anything but (Not) Chopped Liver!!!!!!!!!
@ yamit82:
So amusing my Dear !!!!!!!!!!
@ honeybee:
Scalpel more like it. 🙂
@ M Devolin:
What am I, Sugar grated potatoes?????????
Have a good Chanukah, Yamit. Same to all my Jewish friends here. Dove and phoenix and Mr. Ross, etc. And of course Ted. Thank you all for your light to my life.
yamit82 Said:
Did he use a Firehose ?????????? Darlin
Small g indeed.
@ M Devolin:
Has nothing to do with being bright as the first part of his comment is probably true and thought out. He couldn’t leave it there because his real message is not the republic or democracy it’s having everyone accept his idea of a god… Small g. He preaches the ten commandments but omits at least four of them as not operable to christians… Funny how they don’t connect the dots.
@ M Devolin:
Ted cleaned my comment up but the message was clear all the same…. I have nothing really against them but they show an enormous amt of disrespect towards us and that pisses me off.
And then they wonder why so many Jews despise Gentiles. Duhhh.
Agreed, Yamit. As my dear old Dad would say, “He’s about as bright as soapstone.”
@ D. Bene:
Go peddle your yesu crap elsewhere.
The USA founders knew and stated over 230 years ago that a democracy/republic without a godly electorate was doomed to anarchy…and worse.
–Now, world-wide, all are guilty and at fault, but especially the Jew and the Christian. (AND it is not some sociological err, it is spiritual!)
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God!”
In his heart the fool says, “There is no God!”
The wise would read Ecclesiastes and take to heart what it finally concludes: Ecc12:13,14: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
The wise will, by grace, purpose to do/be/live Micah 6:8: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
And, when humans do not be/do/live and love these things, God makes them blind until they again humble themselves: IE: “IF My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, …and IF they will pray, …and IF they will seek My face, …and IF they will turn from their wicked ways,… Then, only then would I hear from Heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their everything.” IIChronicles7:14
By definition, ‘the wise’ is knowledgeable of “God” and purposes to please God.
A living person always serves either good or evil, or, more one than the other.
The godless, the fools, are not godless, they simply proudly refuse the desires of Almighty God and default to loving/serving the god of Evil. For there are but two major spiritual entities: 1. God = Good, 2. Satan = Evil.
— FACT: A person serves more one or more the other in every situation (25% vs. 75%, or 75 vs. 25, or 51 vs. 49, or 95 vs. 5, etc.).
— ‘In his heart the fool says, “There is no God!”‘, meaning: there is no good.
“God” created humans with hearts that are wicked beyond human understanding, and set the Prince of Evil upon them; spiritual warfare between humans and Satan/demons began in The Garden and continues to this day. Humans are easily tempted/fooled to replace “God” and His later goodies with Evil’s immediate pleasures of a thousand types.
The chronicle/history of intrinsically unwise humans bears this out. Here are a few famous occurrences of that dangerous lack of wisdom in action:
A) Adam & Eve
B) Cain & Abel
C) Noah’s whole culture
D) Nimrod & Tower of Babel
E) Abraham’s/Israel’s Isaac & Jacob
F) Sodom & Gomorrah
G) Israelites in Egypt, & the exodus & the desert
H) Human sacrifice
I) Jesus, Son of God, crucified.
J) The saved Gentiles/”Christians’: enabled to love, and empowered by very God’s very Spirit, seduced, lukewarmed, and stymied to the continuous sin of practical spiritual powerlessness!
FACT: there is no concrete and lasting “good” in a nation unless the people and their leaders seek to be/do/live in God’s lap.
The USA founders knew and stated over 230 years ago that a democracy/republic without a godly electorate was doomed to anarchy…and worse.
–Now, world-wide, all are guilty and at fault, but especially the Jew and the Christian. (AND it is not some sociological err, it is spiritual!)
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God!”
In his heart the fool says, “There is no God!”
The wise would read Ecclesiastes and take to heart what it finally concludes: Ecc12:13,14: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
The wise will, by grace, purpose to do/be/live Micah 6:8: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
And, when humans do not be/do/live and love these things, God makes them blind until they again humble themselves: IE: “IF My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, …and IF they will pray, …and IF they will seek My face, …and IF they will turn from their wicked ways,… Then, only then would I hear from Heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their everything.” IIChronicles7:14
By definition, ‘the wise’ is knowledgeable of “God” and purposes to please God.
A living person always serves either good or evil, or, more one than the other.
The godless, the fools, are not godless, they simply proudly refuse the desires of Almighty God and default to loving/serving the god of Evil. For there are but two major spiritual entities: 1. God = Good, 2. Satan = Evil.
— FACT: A person serves more one or more the other in every situation (25% vs. 75%, or 75 vs. 25, or 51 vs. 49, or 95 vs. 5, etc.).
— ‘In his heart the fool says, “There is no God!”‘, meaning: there is no good.
“God” created humans with hearts that are wicked beyond human understanding, and set the Prince of Evil upon them; spiritual warfare between humans and Satan/demons began in The Garden and continues to this day. Humans are easily tempted/fooled to replace “God” and His later goodies with Evil’s immediate pleasures of a thousand types.
The chronicle/history of intrinsically unwise humans bears this out. Here are a few famous occurrences of that dangerous lack of wisdom in action:
A) Adam & Eve
B) Cain & Abel
C) Noah’s whole culture
D) Nimrod & Tower of Babel
E) Abraham’s/Israel’s Isaac & Jacob
F) Sodom & Gomorrah
G) Israelites in Egypt, & the exodus & the desert
H) Human sacrifice
I) Jesus, Son of God, crucified.
J) The saved Gentiles/”Christians’: enabled to love, and empowered by very God’s very Spirit, seduced, lukewarmed, and stymied to the continuous sin of practical spiritual powerlessness!