An Argument For Moral Courage – Part II
I seldom post articles by others, since it is seldom that I see one with content that should be fully understood so that we have more insight into the underlying factors that have created the tumultuous circumstances that we find ourselves in, today.
The author has given permission for me to repost this article. You may wonder why I am posting Part II before I post Part I. So, I’ll explain. Part I was written first, anticipating Part II to be written later. Part II, however, provides the foundation to more fully understand the implications brought out in Part I. Consequently, Part II is being presented to provide the proper foundation for fully understanding the ramifications of Part I.
Understanding how we have arrived in our current situation is far more important than dealing with the multitude of “situations” that crop up daily, detracting from our efforts to understand and deal with the real problems that we face.
I do hope that you will find the following enlightening, as I have, and encourage you to pass it on to those who you feel might benefit therefrom.
Gary Hunt
Outpost of Freedom.
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An Argument For Moral Courage
Part II
By David Allison
Contagion
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.” – Charles Mackay
Cultural erosion is progressive, destructive, contagious. Fueled in part by pathological reverence to insane behaviors, anyone caught within its domain is certain to be affected – There is no escape.
We like to believe our individual autonomy somehow insulates us from the frailty of our humanity – from being vulnerable to suggestion, propaganda and ‘group think’. Indeed, we are not. The subtleties of propaganda are well defined; so well, in fact, most of us aren’t even aware when we are operating within parameters established for us by forces upon which we have depended and from which the substance of our individual value systems has been collected then defined.
The construction of our values begin at birth. The dimensions of those values must be formalized for any of us to function with some degree of ‘normalcy’ within society. The values we acquire depend upon any number of factors; many values, however, are theoretically universally shared.
Aberrant behavior, such as murder, thievery rape and child abuse are generally abhorred. These skewed behaviors force laws that define the metes and bounds of human behavior. In no little part, the purpose of laws is to maintain and perpetuate culture; the converse is true as well: Culture perpetuates laws. It may said, ‘the culture is diseased’ – “When aberrant behavior threatens the continuity of the culture”.
Cultures are not static organisms. Volkgeist is dynamic, fluid and sometimes contrasts with enduring cultural values. A culture that formerly considered public nudity unacceptable, for instance, may alter those values to the extent public nudity not only becomes acceptable it becomes the ‘norm’ (normal). Behavioral patterns that threaten the sovereignty of the culture, such as murder, rarely become the norm, yet, as we have seen throughout history, any culture is capable of selecting a group from within its midst that then becomes the subject of murderous genocide. So, even the act of murder can become ‘rational’.
Cultural collisions are not uncommon and sometimes foment wars. When the ideology of one group clashes with another, frictions are generated that can and often do lead to some form of formalized conflict. The nature of that conflict is dependent upon the depth of the animosities between the two groups. Simmering hostilities create a volatility that can be ignited by minor slights. Long-held resentments are primed for explosion and often do explode when one group is subjected to prolonged abuses by another.
The strength of the collective often suffices to cause individuals to temporarily or even permanently suspend long-held values. The power of suggestion, of propaganda, and the contagion of like-minded values, can cause an individual to become little more than an automaton who moves along with the group and in so doing voids his personal value systems.
We’ve all seen the madness that can be generated by crowds – riots, looting, and lynching. When the collective mind kicks into gear, individual reverence to long-held values is often temporarily suspended. One hopes the moment will come when sanity will be restored and individuals within the crowd will re-affirm values that are consistent with individual and collective survival. At some point, one hopes the storm will end.
Imagine a group of individuals who temporarily suspend the belief that murder is unacceptable and thus begin to murder one another. Will the murdering continue until only one man remains standing? Not likely but also not impossible.
A state of moral insanity can prevail for long periods of time within a culture. The extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany occurred over many years; similar behavior occurred in Uganda during Idi Amin’s reign of terror. Humankind’s capacity to do evil is spatially unlimited, though at some point evil consumes itself.
Without some sort of regulating mechanism – values that sustain the security of individuals and the collective – a culture can become consumed by behaviors that are destructive to select individuals or to the whole – “Madness is contagious”.
Terms like ‘madness’ or ‘destructive’ are meaningless until they are defined by cultural values. Consider the word, “evil” – Although we may believe the concept of evil is universal such is not the case. As many of us are discovering, evil has become increasingly subjective. Your concept of evil may markedly differ from your neighbor’s. So it is that the erosion of cultural values is forcing us to alienate ourselves from the group because we are no longer guaranteed the certainty of shared, common values.
For years, the force of the collective sufficed to create like-minded individuals within our culture. The rare ‘odd ball’ was generally isolated and alienated. The power of culture sufficed to limit the dimensions of human behavior. Churches, schools, communities, organizations and families – all components of culture – exerted influence over individuals that naturally defined the limits of individual behavior. As history has demonstrated, the less influence culture has over the individual the more it becomes necessary for some external force to intervene in such a way that ‘normal’ patterns of behavior do not become ‘abnormal’ and, therefore, destructive. Thus, to our misfortune, the necessity of the state evolved for the purpose of ‘correcting’ destructive cultural maladies.
Propaganda acts as a third-party mechanism, beyond the power of culture, to control and define values. Today, people are influenced by television shows, commercials, advertisements, movies and other forms of media that construct ideological reference points from which values are established. The influence of cultural mechanisms such as churches, families and communities is challenged by the strain of popularist values.
Though many behaviors are harmless to the continuity of a culture, there are behaviors that slowly etch away at cultural continuity; these behaviors can be dangerous and lethal.
Value confusion occurs when members of the collective no longer share common values. Imagine living in a home where each member of the home shares conflicting values. The irritations that would arise from these circumstances could nurture the process of ‘faction’.
Faction is simply the argument that exists between an adverse minority group and a larger group. As history has demonstrated, the constant gnawing of an adverse minority group can and often does cause the erosion of the larger group. This erosion invariably leads to the mutation of long-held cultural values. That mutation can become a lethal process that eventually causes the culture to implode in a whirlwind of value confusion and conflict.
As regards the erosion of Western culture, we have been guilty of many things not the least of which is an incomplete understanding of the power of faction. Many of us believe that the collapse of a nation is preceded by a violent upheaval (revolution). In fact this belief is only partly correct.
The French and Russian revolutions, for instance, were characterized by the continued gnawing of adverse factions. A nation or a culture can be disassembled by persistent, non-lethal calamities, the sum of which eventually exceeds the capacity of the nation or culture to heal. Imagine the cumulative effects of someone who daily disrupts your life. Even though no disruption is, by itself, lethal, the cumulative energy of multiple disruptions is sufficient to become lethal. In addition, the constant gnawing of disruptions distracts from the substance of life.
With enough holes poked in its sides, even the greatest sailing ships are doomed to sink. The nature of propaganda is such that we rarely recognize the ship is sinking until it is too late to save it.
The long-term effect of propaganda was not well understood during the first years it was employed to formulate public opinion. Bernays quickly learned that various propaganda techniques could have profound effects on human behavior – Society became a playground for cultural manipulators. Today, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the food we eat, the values we hold have been largely constructed for us by external forces that have no obligation to our personal well-being or the survival of our culture.
Cloward and Piven and Other Cultural Manipulators:
By the time Cloward and Piven and Saul Alinsky described their methods to control group behavior, and therefore influence the history of culture, propaganda methods were well defined. Cloward and Piven, Alinsky and other cultural manipulators appealed to a number of psychological and emotional characteristics that exploited the worst behaviors in men.
Marx employed the concept of the ‘oppressed-oppressor’ relationship to establish and rationalize the need for conflict within a culture. Marx’ complex reasoning was not available to the masses in meaningful form; Cloward and Piven simplified it to the extent lesser mortals could grasp then act upon its reasoning.
Communism and ‘fairness’ were at the heart of Cloward and Piven’s work. As many of us are aware, the concept of ‘fairness’, just like the concept of ‘evil’, can take many forms. ‘Fairness’, by Cloward and Piven’s definition, was anything that benefited victims and punished ‘oppressors’.
As I described in part one, the dynamics of human behavior are such that we often engage in behaviors that, by their nature, are inexplicable. The person who aids dysfunctional behavior does so believing his actions are reasonable and morally sound – Even as those characteristics enhance and nurture destructive behaviors.
The only solution to destructive behavior is to hold the person responsible for his behavior –
Cloward and Piven’s idealized vision of culture failed in one critical area: Victims are never responsible for their behavior. This flaw is the catalyst for all sorts of havoc; havoc that is now being inflicted on our culture. That so many white people readily accept their role as ‘oppressors’ is a remarkable testament to the power of propaganda and the continued stress created by racial frictions – ‘racialism’. That ‘oppressed victims’ and their sympathizers have readily taken on the roles of ‘helpless victim’ and ‘savior’, respectively, is remarkable.
Cloward and Piven veiled their intentions behind a universal description of ‘victims’ – Those efforts were revealed when appeals were made to blacks to grab and nurture the concept of their unique position within the cultural hierarchy as victims. Race, then, became the primal substance through which the concept of victim gained its energy: Blacks, victims; whites, oppressors.
Long-term cultural erosion is a process – The difference between Cultural Evolution and Cultural Revolution is just a matter of time. As the process of faction takes hold, as victims gain a foothold on the definition of moral rightness, their manipulations, their propaganda, profoundly affects cultural values – Evolution eventually gives way to revolution.
Western culture is in the final stages of its evolution to revolution. The process of faction has disassembled long-held cultural values to the extent value confusion within the majority is now the norm rather than the exception.
Although white culture has been fundamentally fractured by a number of ideological differences, components of the white psyche remain intact. Emotions such as guilt, fear, compassion, pity, anger, resentments and acceptance continue to be part of the domain of the white psyche. I’m not suggesting these characteristics are unique to whites; they are not. In so much as Jews in Nazi concentration camps developed abnormal responses to their captors so, too, have whites, who have wittingly or unwittingly allowed themselves to be pawns in a diseased game of cultural survival.
The depth of disease and how it affects each of us is our lone responsibility to measure. Hate directed exclusively at whites is difficult to tolerate, particularly, as in the case of the Boer population of South Africa – Where hate is manifested by extreme acts of violence.
The fragmentation of our culture is so profound, our divisions so complete, that many of us are simply glad we were not last night’s victims of violence. It seems we have become willing to sacrifice one another for obscure objectives – survival? – Without giving thought to the reality that at some future date we, too, will be consumed by creeping violence. Disunity is a by-product of cultural erosion and cultural erosion is the manifestation of disoriented, confused, negated, mutated value systems.
If we hope to survive the onslaught, we must first decide to re-prioritize our value systems:
- Unity must displace mistrust;
- courage must displace doubt;
- action must displace complacency;
- family must displace societal indoctrination;
- community must displace the national authority;
- aggravation must displace appeasement;
- Dispute must displace compromise and intolerance must displace tolerance – especially tolerance for ‘culture destroying behaviors’.
What we have done, what have been doing, is not working and will not work. Until and when we are determined to change our behavior, our values and our beliefs, the process of cultural erosion will continue:
- Factions will become more powerful, more disruptive, consuming the energy of our lives;
- the loss of our individual and collective sovereignty, what little remains, will make us increasingly vulnerable to our detractor’s designs;
- cultural divisions will manifest lonelier and lonelier lives;
- uncertainty will be the dominant theme of all our plans, hopes and dreams;
- frustration, animosity, surrender, alcoholism, drugs, resentment, hopelessness, depression, infidelity, paranoia, disbelief in God…These destructive elements and more will define the character of our lives;
- petty irritations will cause us to squander joy;
- Conflict will eventually reach the threshold of the certainty of our lives and we, too, will become the victims of violence validated by well-honed though diseased Cloward-Piven rationalizations.
The choice is yet ours to make. But it will come with a price. When we resist the forces of evil that press against our sovereignty they will react in unpredictable ways – most likely with violence. We must accept this consequence as part of the conditions we have set for ourselves and for moving to restore moral sanity to our lives, to our culture.
Each of us needs to take a moral inventory of our value systems. The power of the written word is meaningless if it is not carried into our daily lives by action – “Faith without works is dead.” We must gaze at the enemies of social order and moral decency with angry, determined eyes. Too, we must punish detractors for their deeds and for the corruption they interject into the security of our daily lives. But above all else, we must accept the bitter fact that our character defects – our weaknesses and flaws – have allowed miscreants to enhance their diseased futures without resistance.
I am daily reminded that I do not stand at the pinnacle of judgment of my fellows as I, too, have contributed to the infection of madness that has made me a prisoner in an unfriendly, dangerous world. After years of enduring rationalizations that inform me I am duty bound to tolerate madness, my tolerance has worn thin. Today I make preparations to validate my disdain for the poisons that infect my life and the lives of millions of decent human beings – Whether I like it or not the day soon approaches when I must either forcefully validate my convictions or accept the slow, painful erosion of my culture – The latter condemns my children, and yours, to hell on earth.
No amount of propaganda can displace the gnawing pain that informs me hell has come to my nation and my culture. Cloward and Piven and other cultural manipulators have defined themselves as my enemy because they have repeatedly explained I am their enemy.
The pawns of cultural manipulators truly believe they will advance their madness without meeting resistance from sane, moral, responsible men. Pawns are convinced they are victims; they are convinced sane, moral, responsible men are oppressors. This combination squeezes the breath out of any future hope that sanity rather than madness will re-define Western culture. When the moment of faction explodes, as it certainly will, sane, moral, responsible men will be left one and only one consideration: Fight or die.
When all sacrifices are measured, we must know to absolute moral certainty that we have not condemned our posterity to do that which we ourselves were duty bound to do. If God there be, and I believe there is, when the measure of our lives is taken we must remember that the sins we commit will be forgiven; the sins we leave for others to cleanse will not.