A Call to Arms
From First Things Post Modern Conservative blog, a clarion call to defend human nobility from the vast dehumanizing impact of secular humanism:
"And to re-enthrone an “alternative” understanding that for our Founders was so firm that it could remain largely implicit, namely, that a good human existence, a truly humane existence, requires acknowledgement of “sacred limits” (Strauss) to individual self-expression, and therefore some shared horizon that is essentially religious, however general, that is, to re-enthrone “virtue,” this is a philosophical-political project, a kind of regime re-founding that cannot be defended or pursued by the via negativa of resisting federal incursions and praising family farms (which I think I like). We cannot break the compulsive grip of individualization/centralization except by confronting the understanding of the good from which it springs. (This of course does not mean constructing an alternative Pure Theory of the Good.) Lincoln was right about this at least: public opinion is everything, and I see no hope for our country short of a sea change in public opinion. I don’t know just how or even whether such a change is possible, but I am convinced that “all who remain enamored of the genuine greatness of man should unite and do combat” against this compulsive grip of extreme secular liberalism."
We must convince the present generation, and most definitely the future, of what "greatness" is. Otherwise, we will continue a slide into mediocrity and future historians will definitively place America in the same pantheon with other fallen great powers.
"And to re-enthrone an “alternative” understanding that for our Founders was so firm that it could remain largely implicit, namely, that a good human existence, a truly humane existence, requires acknowledgement of “sacred limits” (Strauss) to individual self-expression, and therefore some shared horizon that is essentially religious, however general, that is, to re-enthrone “virtue,” this is a philosophical-political project, a kind of regime re-founding that cannot be defended or pursued by the via negativa of resisting federal incursions and praising family farms (which I think I like). We cannot break the compulsive grip of individualization/centralization except by confronting the understanding of the good from which it springs. (This of course does not mean constructing an alternative Pure Theory of the Good.) Lincoln was right about this at least: public opinion is everything, and I see no hope for our country short of a sea change in public opinion. I don’t know just how or even whether such a change is possible, but I am convinced that “all who remain enamored of the genuine greatness of man should unite and do combat” against this compulsive grip of extreme secular liberalism."
We must convince the present generation, and most definitely the future, of what "greatness" is. Otherwise, we will continue a slide into mediocrity and future historians will definitively place America in the same pantheon with other fallen great powers.
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