Jenny, I agree with your excellent analysis. Unfortunately, the problem (rot) is a bit deeper. What we are witnessing today is the end result of the abandonment of Enlightenment rationality for Nihilism, both moral and epistemological.
During the 20th century, the horrors of WWI and WWII shook the confidence of Western intellectuals/elites in Enlightenment rationality. Keep in mind that in the early 20th century, Eugenics was a widely accepted view among many academics in the West, especially in the US and UK.
While the horrors of the Holocaust exposed how evil and wrong Eugenics was, the process of decolonization (playing out on the new medium of TV) devastated the confidence of Western elites about the entirety of their own culture. This all came to a head in the Western world during the 1960s, when the post WWII baby boom generation entered the universities. It is absolutely amazing that during that CRUCIAL decade in modern history, no one in a position of power was willing to push back against the forces of destruction/nihilism that attacked everything that came before.
From Griswold and Brewster (Presidents) at Yale, to Pusey at Harvard, to Goheen at Princeton. None of these feckless men had the spine to stand up for Enlightenment rationality in the face of a countercultural revolution which at its core was a rejection of morality and truth in exchange for moral relativism and a culture based on the debauchery of the New Left.
Instead of denouncing the Holocaust as an aberration of the Western quest for justice and equality, the guardians of Western culture chose to throw the baby out with the bath water and started giving in to the irrational demands of the nihilists. Once the counterculture revolutionaries captured the likes of Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and the University of Paris, the rest of Western culture was theirs for the taking.
The reason why nothing seems to make sense today in the Western world is due to the fact that since the late 60s and early 70s Enlightenment rationality and the quest for truth are no longer the governing principles of these cultures. The West is now governed by the reigning paradigm of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and post-modernist Deconstruction. Western elites are by definition mostly "White Liberals" (including Republicans in the US and Tories in the UK) because they are steeped in the ideas that captured the elite universities they've attended since the 60s and 70s.
It's hard to imagine this situation not leading to further decay until the Enlightenment quest for truth and reason are once again restored to their rightful place in Western academia/culture. Most educated elites are so steeped in nihilism they take it for granted, just like fish breathing water instead of air. They have no reason to question it. That is the problem, and the solution may only be possible through a cataclysmic upheaval that brings the guardians of Western culture back to their senses.
Our elites, contrary to the warning of Scripture, are calling evil good and good evil. This moral denseness is not a good sign. While our betters are puffing themselves up, the world is getting worse by the hour. While we need to do what we can for our messed up world, ultimately our hope is in Jesus Christ and we have nothing ultimately to fear if we are truly following him.
It’s perhaps worth reading what happened to the Roman Empire when it came apart from the same things that the US has done. Mass famine, a plague like the Black Death and other things, it seems like punishment from the gods….. Maybe “spreading democracy” is just window dressing for imperialism?
Excellent piece. I left the USA in 2015 for the Philippines, to retire, not to be a dogooder. I don't ever want to live in what used to be America again.
Great article… I watched the West Wing recently and was commenting on how neoliberalist they are about everything. America still maintains the same ideologies as the show… even though the show was made in 1999 and the approach has clearly not worked.
Jenny, I agree with your excellent analysis. Unfortunately, the problem (rot) is a bit deeper. What we are witnessing today is the end result of the abandonment of Enlightenment rationality for Nihilism, both moral and epistemological.
During the 20th century, the horrors of WWI and WWII shook the confidence of Western intellectuals/elites in Enlightenment rationality. Keep in mind that in the early 20th century, Eugenics was a widely accepted view among many academics in the West, especially in the US and UK.
While the horrors of the Holocaust exposed how evil and wrong Eugenics was, the process of decolonization (playing out on the new medium of TV) devastated the confidence of Western elites about the entirety of their own culture. This all came to a head in the Western world during the 1960s, when the post WWII baby boom generation entered the universities. It is absolutely amazing that during that CRUCIAL decade in modern history, no one in a position of power was willing to push back against the forces of destruction/nihilism that attacked everything that came before.
From Griswold and Brewster (Presidents) at Yale, to Pusey at Harvard, to Goheen at Princeton. None of these feckless men had the spine to stand up for Enlightenment rationality in the face of a countercultural revolution which at its core was a rejection of morality and truth in exchange for moral relativism and a culture based on the debauchery of the New Left.
Instead of denouncing the Holocaust as an aberration of the Western quest for justice and equality, the guardians of Western culture chose to throw the baby out with the bath water and started giving in to the irrational demands of the nihilists. Once the counterculture revolutionaries captured the likes of Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and the University of Paris, the rest of Western culture was theirs for the taking.
The reason why nothing seems to make sense today in the Western world is due to the fact that since the late 60s and early 70s Enlightenment rationality and the quest for truth are no longer the governing principles of these cultures. The West is now governed by the reigning paradigm of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and post-modernist Deconstruction. Western elites are by definition mostly "White Liberals" (including Republicans in the US and Tories in the UK) because they are steeped in the ideas that captured the elite universities they've attended since the 60s and 70s.
It's hard to imagine this situation not leading to further decay until the Enlightenment quest for truth and reason are once again restored to their rightful place in Western academia/culture. Most educated elites are so steeped in nihilism they take it for granted, just like fish breathing water instead of air. They have no reason to question it. That is the problem, and the solution may only be possible through a cataclysmic upheaval that brings the guardians of Western culture back to their senses.
Our elites, contrary to the warning of Scripture, are calling evil good and good evil. This moral denseness is not a good sign. While our betters are puffing themselves up, the world is getting worse by the hour. While we need to do what we can for our messed up world, ultimately our hope is in Jesus Christ and we have nothing ultimately to fear if we are truly following him.
It’s perhaps worth reading what happened to the Roman Empire when it came apart from the same things that the US has done. Mass famine, a plague like the Black Death and other things, it seems like punishment from the gods….. Maybe “spreading democracy” is just window dressing for imperialism?
Excellent piece. I left the USA in 2015 for the Philippines, to retire, not to be a dogooder. I don't ever want to live in what used to be America again.
Great article… I watched the West Wing recently and was commenting on how neoliberalist they are about everything. America still maintains the same ideologies as the show… even though the show was made in 1999 and the approach has clearly not worked.
Very enlightening.