The Dominant Religion of Nothing

The Democrats do: they have Nothing. To believe in Nothing in the present-day manner is to turn the denial of goods that transcend will and desire into a philosophy of life, and even into what amounts to a religion. At bottom there’s no good or bad, that nihilistic view tells us—there is just people doing stuff they feel like doing and trying to get stuff they want. That’s what life is about, so the point of law and morality is to help people do and get those things, as much and as equally as possible.

It is that view, the religion of Nothing, that is now established among us. All views to the contrary are considered hateful and divisive (that is, blasphemous and heretical), so if you have doubts you have to keep quiet about big issues, like what makes life good, and confine your comments to subordinate matters, like success considered purely as such.

The authority of that view entitles judges to rewrite the laws, and requires every Democratic politician to assert the supremacy of Will and Technology (a.k.a. Choice and Change) over natural law and human life. The latter principles tell us that some things have value whether we like it or not, and such principles have to be kept out of public life. They’re at odds with the Supreme Court’s insistence in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that concepts “of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” must be strictly individual and self-defined.

As in the case of the Republicans, individual Democrats have their own beliefs, which are whatever they may be, and their private lives are normally better than their public commitments. There are sincere Christians and devoted family members in both parties. Nonetheless, there is a difference: by and large, the statements and actions of leading Democrats show that they genuinely believe in their cause. They have a public religion, they’re forthright about what it is, they’ll take risks and make sacrifices to advance it (as Obamacare shows), and they don’t like, don’t respect, don’t understand, and won’t compromise with those who reject it. Resistance is bigotry, in their view, so it has no legitimate place in public life.

Leading Democrats are of course not alone in their faith commitments and their aversion to those who reject them. An established religion has to be accepted by social leaders generally, and the religion of Nothing is actively promoted by the academics and media figures who define what is considered rational and respectable among us. They have good reason to favor it, since it denies the authority of principles higher than the value-free technical expertise and manipulative skill such people stand for. It says that they are truly our intellectual leaders—the clergy and preachers of our New Jerusalem—and there is no one who could outrank them even in principle.

The bureaucrats and businessmen who form the operational branch of our governing class go along with the religion of Nothing as well. They lack the imagination to conceive an alternative, and the religion helps get rid of family, cultural, and religious considerations that complicate economic and organizational decisions. Selling products and dealing with human resources become easier if family and community ties are suppressed so we all become interchangeable consumers and careerists.

Social conservatism still has a following, but it’s weak because it’s almost purely populist. Nobody who runs things at the upper levels has much sympathy for family, community, cultural or religious institutions or the habits, attitudes, and beliefs that support them. Why should the higher-ups favor authorities and ways of doing things that compete with them and the institutions they control? The Republicans might give traditional values lip service, but they don’t make much of a case for them and drop their support long before push comes to shove. The result is that social conservatism is reactive, it can’t make its case, and it can’t defend itself against propaganda and the deconstruction of the American people through the disintegration of family and cultural ties. - James Kalb

-Wikimedia.

I dag er den dominerende hersketeknikken for de som tjener Ingenting, å utpeke enhver som tror på Noenting, til hatist. Enhver som har empati for familie, landskap, husmannstro, fedrealteret, kulturarv, lokal autonomi og teknologi, er en hatist. Som den siste husmannstroende på Toten har jeg i sannhet fått erfare dette! Derfor kan jeg ikke bli her, da jeg ikke makter å leve med den teknologien, ideologien og troen, som har blitt tredd nedover hodet på meg av våre herskere.

For tiden bor vi i himmelengene i hva som var bedehusgrenda på Toten, hvor Totenåsens apostel holdt til. De herskende ynder å fremstille husmannstroen som hatets tro, roten til alt ond, nasjonalisme, fascisme etc. Husmannstroens barn har vendt ryggen til sin tro, sine enger og sin kulturbærer. De har nå blitt nyttige marionetter for de herskende, hvor de slår ihjel og støter ut enhver som kjenner på sorg over engene, over stabburet, brønnhuset og kulturelva vår fra Tjuvåsen.

Sannheten er imidlertid at husmannstroen var en delereligion, en av vårt lands vakreste allmenninger! Det er de herskende, liberalismens tyranner, som er de nye fascistene.

- The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb

The more the present order destroys coherent raditions of life the more it destroys its own future. If current understandings of reason are too narrow for our needs then others will develop. The best hope is that evident inadequacies and antistatist trends will limit reliance on the advanced liberalism that now dominates public life and that they will allow it to weaken as its deficiencies become more obvious, so that liberal society can transform itself into something fundamentally different. Suppressed traditions may find their voice and reassert themselves, sustaining principles may sprout and take root. A comparatively smooth transition to something better is possible, and we should do what we can to promote it. (287)

Recent moral progress is an illusion. What has happened, in effect, is that fairness and decency have been turned into nationalized industries. Instead of people having to treat each other decently, each does what he wishes and society at large is expected to supply the decency. (119)

Educated and well-placed men today see rejection of a technological approach to human life as ignorant or disingenuous, and in any case dangerous. For them, assertion of limits on man’s power in favor of principles transcending desire can only be obfuscation…Traditional morality, which makes some desires superior to others, is thus understood as a devious effort to control others and becomes a stock example of immorality. (26)

For de herskende er ethvert fotografi av engene, av stabburet til min oldefar, av brønnhuset i Holmstadengen, enhver strofe av poesi om husmannstroen, hver eneste tone fra Pris Herren, korset som lyser mot en fra Solhøy bedehus i Hurdal, alt et uttrykk for et vilt og rabiat hat mot Ingenting. Ingenting, som er deres gud. Derfor kan de heller ikke godta at våre liv skal være Noenting. Våre enger, grender og urbane landsbyer skal være Ingenting. Og de har nådd sitt mål, alt har blitt til Ingenting. Og selv protesten og savnet ønsker de å ta fra oss, ved å kalle dette for hat, hat mot deres herre, Ingenting!

Liberalism is the philosophy of those who think they can create effects directly as causes, as if ordering a butler to make the following changes to their experience of the world. This and Kalb hints at a darker underlying truth: liberalism may be a large support group for those who are unaware of anything in the world but themselves. - Brett Stevens

Amen! Slik er det selvsagt. Som empat ble jeg kastet ut av min sosioøkonomiske posisjon og angrepet av de herskende, fordi jeg er var at det finnes noe mer enn meg selv. Jeg er var husmannstroen, mine forfedres ånd i de grønne enger, jeg fortviler av smerte over sæterstien mellom Holmstadsveen og Hongsætra, som brutalt ble høvlet vekk. Slikt noe kan ikke de som har Ingenting til gud akseptere, fordi de er ikke var annet enn seg selv.

Med andre ord, de har forlatt husmannstroen og omfavnet hovdetroen, hvor Hovdetoppen er tempelhøyden for vår nye verdensreligion. Hvor vi alle tilber oss selv som gud. INGENTING!

The dichotomy thus established proves itself right time and again: the individuals who are selfish and therefore want no limits on themselves, thus demand an anarchistic order with a powerful Nanny State to keep it together, opposed to those who want a cooperative organic order like culture, religion or values. The demi-anarchistic impulse at the core of liberalism has never been shown in such revealing detail. - Brett Stevens

En annen hatist, Charles Eisenstein, en fryktelig allmenninger lik meg selv og apostelen i Holmstadengen.