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America's institutions and best traditions are being undone by a rising enemy within

Do You Believe In The Devil?



I once took a class taught by a sly French-Canadian lecturer with a propensity to chuckle at his own jokes, as though they were intended primarily for his own amusement. One of my classmates, a Polish immigrant with all the correct Euro-liberal attitudes (atheist, socialist, vegetarian, etc.) liked to engage our teacher in debates about religion. One time, this student tried to short-circuit the debate with the common trick of challenging his opponent to concede belief in something so out of touch with modernity that his position would seem laughable.
"Do you really believe in the devil?" he asked incredulously. The teacher, whose English was weak, chewed over his answer just long enough to allow the student's pride to swell, and then said: "I believe the devil is never more dangerous than when you don't believe in him." The Republican Establishment's latest attack in its war against Rick Santorum comes in the form of a banner headline on The Drudge Report announcing that in 2008, while speaking at Ave Maria University, Santorum claimed that Satan has his sights on the United States of America. Imagine that: a Catholic, speaking at a Catholic liberal arts college, used the word "Satan" to identify the source of the political and moral ills leading to his country's decline.

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Most Americans profess belief in some kind of God, usually of the Judeo-Christian variety. It seems inescapable, therefore, that they also believe, at least implicitly, in some notion of "Satan." (After all, the devil's theological function is, in part, to explain how evil is possible in a world ruled by a good God.) Nevertheless, while mentioning God is still considered respectable—or at least permissible—in most circles (heck, even President Obama does it occasionally), mentioning God's opposite number is apparently evidence, if not of mental instability, then certainly of a desire to establish a theocratic dictatorship in America. The problem, frankly, is that while belief in a higher power that brings happiness, peace and joy is regarded as consistent with modern feel-good sensibilities, belief in Satan is tacitly regarded as un-American. Notions of "The Devil" are inextricably linked to a belief in "evil"—and the very idea of evil runs counter to every modern instinct. The primary objection to suggesting that some recent cultural developments are the work of Satan is not so much that it implies religious belief, as that it implies that the changes in question are unequivocally wrong, harmful, or mistaken. In the relativistic modern age, the only evil is passing judgment—on anyone or anything. Of course, as has often been pointed out, this is itself a moral judgment, and hence self-contradictory; nevertheless, it has been the official moral position of most of modern civilization for several decades, and for most of the academy for a few decades longer than that. Thus, hating anyone who dares to pass negative judgment on certain aspects of modern morality and politics, is the one acceptable—indeed, necessary—judgment. This one and only allowable form of moral condemnation—hatred for those who pass judgment—can be heard around us continuously, in all its quotidian manifestations. It is present in every politician who boasts of being able to "reach across the aisle," as though compromising with socialists were a great act of statesmanship. It is present in everyone who prefaces any criticism of liberal policy-makers with, "I know [insert name of authoritarian here] is a good person and a patriot, but...." It is present in every congressman or senator who begins his critique of a new bill by saying, "We all want what's best for America; however...." Some people really don't want what's best for America. They want to bankrupt her, bury her in insurmountable debt, render her citizens hopeless and dependent, stack her elections with fake voters, or compliant voters who have no feeling for freedom, but only for free stuff—in short, to produce the perfect conditions for a non-violent authoritarian usurpation of "government of the people, by the people, for the people." A politician or political appointee who is willingly working towards such a result is neither a "good person" nor a "patriot." He or she is an anti-American schemer; anti-American in so far as America is, fundamentally, a nation founded on individual self-governance and natural rights, and a schemer in so far as even today, at this late stage in the process, no one could win broad support for a plan to create a permanent underclass of dependent human chattel if they openly identified their goal as such. Rhetorical flourishes such as "a good person" and "a patriot" suggest good breeding and collegiality when used in scholarly dispute, or when politicians are disagreeing about the means of achieving genuinely similar ends. When spoken in the context of today's American politics, on the other hand—when one's opponent is actively seeking to undermine the spirit and letter of the nation's founding documents, and to replace almost every rational restraint on government with a corresponding restraint on individual freedom—such collegial banter betokens a profound distortion of the language, connected to a profound assault on the intellectual sources of that language. (For example: If Barack Obama is a patriot, then who isn't? By using the word "patriot" in this loose way, a useful and highly significant concept has been reduced to a meaning no more specific than "nice" or "okay.") When Republicans speak this way, they play into the hands of those who would make of America something altogether different and less appealing than the rational, moral, hopeful nation its founders envisioned. When self-described "conservative" voices in the culture offer support to this way of thinking, by overtly or implicitly aligning themselves with those in the Washington Establishment (both Democratic and Republican variants) who see the defense of principle and the Constitution as threats to their power and machinations, then the jig is up on the so-called conservative media. The New Media begins to look awfully old. When I read about Santorum's reference to "Satan," with his emphasis on the latter's status as the "Father of Lies," I thought I understood exactly what he meant—and I think all those seeking to create alarmist visions of the Inquisition around Mitt Romney's latest challenger understood perfectly well what he meant, too. He meant that America's institutions and best traditions are being undone by a rising enemy within, an intellectual enemy that uses moral relativism as its argument, and every human's weakness for self-absorption and immediate gratification as its emotional supports. In other words, America's greatest danger is not any particular man, or any particular faction, but rather our species' two greatest temptations: the temptation to give up the long and difficult search for truth, in favor of the easiest answer of all for one who is weary of the strain—to decide that there is no truth; and the temptation to give in to one's desire for easy pleasure now, rather than hold out for the greater but less certain gratification that must be earned over years, and ultimately over a lifetime—the kind of happiness that the greatest expert on the subject, Aristotle, proved cannot be ascribed to any man until he is dead, when the entirety of his effort and success can be weighed. These two great, never-ending temptations—to reject the search for truth, and to allow pleasure to become the enemy of happiness—have unquestionably gained predominance in Western civilization, and are, at present, tearing the fabric of the American polity to shreds. Calling attention to this fact, whether one uses the religious language of "Satan," or some other, more theoretical, vocabulary, is more than merely legitimate. It is an urgently necessary first step in preventing a once-great nation's irreversible collapse into evil—or, if you prefer a different lexicon, into dissolution, into brutality, into tyranny. Into nothingness.


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Daren Jonescu -- Bio and Archives

Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon National University in South Korea.


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