By Walt Garlington for the Saker blog
A lot of people in the United States, millions of MAGA folks we would imagine, consider the US not just a good and pleasant place to live but something much more than this – as the pinnacle of human society, in fact: past, present, AND future. Nothing will ever surpass it, they believe.
But is there a shred of evidence to support such a belief?
Not really. The evidence actually points us in the opposite direction, that the beliefs at the heart of the ‘American experiment’ are extremely detrimental to a healthy society.
At the heart of this belief system is the dogma of the power of the individual to shape life as he wishes it to be (which is very much akin to black magick). It appeared early, as shown here in Federalist No. 49, which was written in 1788 (bolding added):
‘As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived; it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory, to recur to the same original authority, not only whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish, or new-model the powers of government; but also whenever any one of the departments may commit encroachments on the chartered authorities of the others. The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers; and how are the encroachments of the stronger to be prevented, or the wrongs of the weaker to be redressed, without an appeal to the people themselves; who, as the grantors of the commission, can alone declare its true meaning and enforce its observance?’
The individual here described is a ‘fountain of power’ who has the ability to shape government into whatever form he wishes, since he is sovereign. Thus, he is also the final authority in determining the meaning of laws for himself and whether or not they should be obeyed.
This line of thought would continue to develop, culminating in 1992’s federal Supreme Court majority opinion in Casey v Planned Parenthood, which declared, ‘At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.’
The federal high court’s reasoning in that case spawned other execrable and immoral decisions, such as Obergefell v Hodges (legalizing same-sex ‘marriage’) and Lawrence v Texas (legalizing sodomy).
All of this is the regression of human development, not its advancement. It is consonant with the spirit of Antichrist, as described in the Book of the Holy Prophet Daniel (7:23-25, bolding added):
‘”Thus he said: `As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, two times, and half a time.’
St. Jerome provides a commentary on the bolded portion:
‘The Antichrist will wage war against the saints and will overcome them; and he shall exalt himself to such a height of arrogance as to attempt changing the very laws of God and the sacred rites as well. He will also lift himself up against all that is called God, subjecting all religion to his own authority.’
The modern American project of god-like, autonomous individuals is Promethean/Luciferian at its core, attempting to ‘change the times and the law’ given by the All-Holy Trinity in ever more disturbing ways – by pursuing genetically modified crops and animals; synthetic biology; transgenderism; transhumanism; etc.
Is it any wonder that many tradition-respecting countries are becoming reluctant to ally with Washington City and its friends in the wider apostate West?
Within the US itself there is, nevertheless, resistance; there are dissenting voices and views. The people of New England and their descendants in Utah and in the cities along the Pacific Coast have always been at the forefront of pushing new, subversive ideologies – feminism, communism, polygamy/Mormonism, homosexual rights, man-boy love, polyamory.
But outside of Yankeedom we meet with more reasonable, more traditional voices. The South, for instance, the South shorn of Yankee-imposed ideologies, that is true to her history and character and inherited customs – Southerners of this kind insist on the ‘given-ness’ of creation, on its immutability, that man must respect certain boundaries regarding it or risk experiencing great cataclysms and tragedies. Wendell Berry, a typical Southern agrarian of this sort, writes in his essay ‘The Gift of Good Land,’
‘It [the land—W.G.] is a gift because the people who are to possess it did not create it. It is accompanied by careful warnings and demonstrations of the folly of saying that “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17). Thus, deeply implicated in the very definition of this gift is a specific warning against hubris, which is the great ecological sin, just as it is the great sin of politics. People are not gods. They must not act like gods or assume godly authority. If they do, terrible retributions are in store. In this warning we have the root of the idea of propriety, of proper human purposes and ends. We must not use the world as though we created it ourselves.
‘The Promised Land is not a permanent gift. It is “given,” but only for a time, and only for so long as it is properly used. . . .
‘In token of His landlordship, God required a sabbath for the land, which was to be fallow every seventh year; and a sabbath of sabbaths every fiftieth year, a “year of jubilee,” during which not only would the fields lie fallow, but the land would be returned to its original owners, as if to free it of the taint of trade and the conceit of human ownership. But beyond their agricultural and social intent, these sabbaths ritualize an observance of the limits of “my power and the might of mine hand”—the limits of human control. Looking at their fallowed fields, the people are to be reminded that the land is theirs only by gift; it exists in its own right, and does not begin or end with any human purpose’ (The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, Norman Wirzba edr., Counterpoint, Berkeley, Cal., 2002, pgs. 295-6).
A Dixieland that has undergone a thorough detox from the Yankee/American liquor (to borrow a phrase from Mr. Lavrov) would no doubt feel quite at home with other nations/ethnoi of the Global South, BRICS, 2nd/3rd world, or whatever name one wishes to give them – with countries like Brazil, Iran, Russia, India, etc. – as would other regional/cultural groups that are currently ideological and/or economic thralls of the regime in Washington City: the States, or large swaths of counties, of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Desert Southwest. The Native tribes of North America and Hawai’i probably need no such correctives for them to feel affection for the Global South countries at this present time.
Many folks in the States (those influenced by the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, Fox News, and so on) think that by embracing the revolutionary heritage of 1776, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and all the rest of it, that they are helping themselves, and mankind in general, progress to higher levels of being. This is a fantastic delusion. The best way they could help the peoples of the world is by rejecting all of this nonsense and rejoining the larger part of humanity in living with humility and restraint within the divinely established order, pattern, and laws of the creation.
