Know your enemy: Part 2

Know Your Enemy Pt.2

Last post I set a mental exercise of putting ourselves in the shoes of a malevolent spirit trying to destroy all that is good in the West.

I found it quite a daunting exercise, but here is what I concluded:

There are two levels, the microscopic and the macroscopic. The first is the level of individuals or small groups. Here the (usually petty) selfishness, meanness, greed, lust and even cruelty of the individual would be fertile ground for any malevolent spirit to incite thoughts words and deeds to destroy joy and multiply misery. But that situation is universal (except when and where it is better restrained by social mores, laws, or other means), so I thought it more helpful to concentrate on the macroscopic – trends effecting whole societies.

Here I found myself floundering a bit until I added in the idea that this posited spirit would be interested in causing misery over the entire world, not just in destroying the West. Then I saw a place to start looking:

So here are some of the things I thought up:

1. The road to hell is paved with god intentions they say. What if well intentioned human efforts could be cunningly or subtly pushed doff course so that they caused rather than alleviated human suffering. Here are some cases that occurred to me:

a) The Silent Spring. This film and the activism that surrounded it had the worthy aim of preserving the environment. It achieved a 10 year ban on the pesticide DDT. After 10 years research had shown that DDT was not as “bad” as activist had believed. But the damage had been done and could not be undone. When DDT was banned it was the key weapon against the malaria spreading Anopheles mosquito. The mosquito was, after a huge worldwide campaign, on the brink of extinction. This would have been the end, forever, of the killer disease Malaria. The ban on DDT meant the Anopheles rapidly increased and re-infested it former habitat. Tens of millions of people have died because of that one activist campaign.

b) Dams in India and other needy countries. Another activist campaign – doubtless with good motives – has been waged against building the dams needed in places like India to provide safe drinking water and irrigation for agriculture. The Western first world activists persuaded lenders such as the World Bank to refuse loans to these projects. Result: human misery plus a reservoir of hatred in these countries against “the rich West”.

c) Feminism. Good early achievements: the vote for women, equal opportunity for education, independence of property from husband – and so forth. By the early 1970's women no longer had to give up their job when they got married. Women had careers open to them – my sister was hired as a lawyer by a very conservative law firm in '68 and went on to become a partner. When my wife graduated from medical school in '74 about half the class were women. About that time banks began giving house loans to women. In so many ways important things had been achieved.

Then the cracks started to appear. The 1950's middle class dream had been of the garden suburb. Men ventured into the grime of the city to work, but their wives could stay out in their pleasant homes in pleasant suburbs enjoying some measure of leisure and raising a family. The early gain of women now having the choice to follow a career soured. Soon one income was no longer enough to support a family. To maintain their niche in society both had to work. We had poured scorn on the Soviets with children in daycare and both parents working – now we had created a same situation. Women faced a multiplication rather than a redefinition of roles, producing a crushing burden. Family sizes reduced to below that needed to maintain the population. Family stress and dislocation increased: net result: better for some, but worse for many, long term problem for country.

2. Church is a major sociological institution. I won't try to detail all the roles it plays in society, I'll just detail some ways it could be crippled to produce social harm.

By the 70's many protestant denominations were so debilitated by liberal theology that they lacked any spiritual vitality, and looking for a reason to exist turned their attention to social issues or became virtual museums. “Relevance” became an excuse to ape whatever was popular in the secular world, and even dress it up in Bible verses and call it “Christianity” - really just a sophisticated version of Aaron giving in to the people, making the Golden Calf and saying “here are your gods O Israel!

Protestant churches in particular were thus crippled so that even to their own members, let alone to the nation they failed to teach traditional morals. A clever twist was exploiting both the perverted lusts of some clergy and the typical reaction of a human institution to go on the offensive against criticism served to create the child sex abuse disaster for most denominations. As well as the actual harm to children, Christianity was besmirched and institutional churches lost all moral authority I the eyes of the public.

Traditional Christian morals, far from being wowserish, were in fact a prescription for individual, family and societal happiness. So the destruction of these roles of a church have led to less not more happiness in our nations.

Also the demise of genuine Christian influence allowed the rise of all sorts of ideologies based on a false view of human nature. Christianity says we are all sinners: human nature has a bias to evil. This bias has to be continually fought against and necessitates safeguards in all political schemes. The false view that generally replaces this assumes human nature is good: proper education is all that is needed. One can readily see this false assumption in most “progressive” ideologies, and can see then why their schemes are always doomed to failure!

There are many more examples but the above should serve the purpose of illustration.

3. The Long term goal: collapse of the West or it being overrun by some new equivalent of the Barbarians is well under way.

The 70's breakdown of sexual morals has recently extended to sexually perverted teachings to school children and the popularisation by film, television, internet and social media (aided by human nature) of gross immorality and addiction to pornography. Apart from the short term effects of destroying happiness in those seduced by it, there is a long term effect. Previous great cultures and empires have frequently become similarly dissolute just before they collapsed.

Again all over the West children from pre-school up have been saturated in progressive and collectivist propaganda. Just look at today's college students. As Hayek said so many decades ago: collectivism whether under the banner of Socialism or Fascism is the road to serfdom. This is the road we are dancing down to our doom, like mice after the Pied Piper.

We still have brave and patriotic people (especially in the US) enough to repel any immediate attack. But the rise of the “snowflake” generation who have been so coddled and brainwashed that they have no coping mechanisms for adversity means a future generation completely unable to fight and where some ruthless “barbarians” will find they can easily sweep us away. And there is no lack of peoples who would like to do just that!

I fear there is indeed a malevolent plan and a fall back position and it is already in progress! It aims to bring about: Socialism wit its inevitable economic collapse followed by descent into tyranny; or internal collapse and being overrun by some more warlike and ruthless peoples. Looking at the score so far, I fear the malevolent spirit is winning!

Know Your Enemy Pt.1

Know Your Enemy Pt.1

Let's try an “opposite sketch”. I've been looking at how to save the West; But what would a supernatural opponent of this try to do?

Imagine for a moment that you are some malevolent spirit and you want to destroy the West. I'll be more specific. Imagine you are the sort of spirit that wants to turn happiness into misery, health into sickness, peace into war, prosperity into poverty, freedom into slavery … and so on. What would be your strategy?

For the sake of somewhere to start, let's zoom in just after the close of World War II.

You have suffered a tremendous defeat. Your servants – Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito have been defeated. (OK Stalin is still in play!). War has given way to peace. The men and women of the Allied armies have fought against evil with courage and self sacrifice and have prevailed. They return to their homelands now seeking to enjoy the rewards of peace, prosperity in return for hard work, family and community. Moreover churches are full. Faith in Jesus and obedience to his commands are at a high. With the Billy Graham crusades true religion expands further and your opportunity for destruction seems to diminish.

Is your situation irretrievable? ...  No. As it happens plans laid a generation earlier come in to play. You cunningly beguiled theologians in the late 1800's. However clever, they were only human. They could be tempted in the area of their pride and prestige. Most fell. Thus was born so called “liberal theology” - the dogma of doubting and often dismissing all the great timeless truths of the Christian faith. Now, a generation later this scourge had filtered down to the level of the theological colleges training priests and pastors.

So even as Christian faith looked to be gaining strength, the seeds of corruption had already been sown in the field!

The new crop on ministers – however genuine they had been on entering their calling – had come out of the training colleges spiritually crippled. Worse, they came out infected with an intellectual disease fatal to faith. They preached human ideas instead of the truths of God. Then, bereft of the real Gospel, they looked for fulfilment outside of bringing men and women to faith and maturity in Christ. They became political activists and second rate social workers forsaking the high calling to which Christ had called them. If they had left the churches they would have only ruined their own faith. But no, like warships flying false colours, they stayed – they went on in churches – often rising to the top – all the while betraying their true Master. So whole congregations and denominations were subverted.

Meanwhile, from let us say the 60's on another string is set to your bow. It starts with Vietnam.

Was it virtuous of the US and allies to try to protect the South from Communist Viet Cong in their midst and straight our invasion by the North? Once I was of the “no” camp. Mature reflection leads me to believe emphatically “YES”. But ... Did the US do it wisely or well? … Sadly…. NO. Of course there were good men – watch the film “Once We Were Soldiers” for one heart-rending example. But you, the malevolent spirit was able to befuddle, mislead and tempt enough minds to bring about bad strategies and bad ideas – like sending drug-addled unwilling and unprepared teenagers against an unbelievably ruthless , cruel and merciless enemy where often one could not tell friend from foe – and in the spotlight of a hostile but ubiquitous media coverage. No … Not ubiquitous …. the widespread and ghastly crimes of the Viet Cong went largely unreported. But US atrocities got worldwide coverage.

So you (the malevolent spirit) bred, so cleverly the rebel generation. The anti-war marches (I'm now ashamed of it, but I was in those) were a start. The things that flourished in that milieux: Woodstock, drugs, sex, throwing away the wisdom, morals and the religion of the wartime generation. That was a good days work – This mixture of behaviours definitely led to an increase of misery and diminution of true joy.

Now so far I have been merely laying out what is plain from history – though from an American and Australian perspective because that is what I know about. For those in other countries you can modify this in the light of your history over this period.

This brings us up to say the early 1970's. Your homework for next week is this: Take again the unpleasant mental role of the malevolent spirit. What would you try to do from the 70's on to plot, with great patience, the destruction of virtue and happiness in the West?