The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought

321 Pages·2016·1.36 MB·English

by  Daniel Schwindt

The Case Against the Modern World

A crash course in Traditionalist thought

By Daniel Schwindt

Available at
www.TheMadPapist.com
The Case Against the Modern World:
A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought

Copyright © 2016 Daniel Schwindt
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
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To request permission to make copies of any part of this work, please contact:
Daniel Schwindt (Author/Editor)
[email protected]
“The modern world shall not be punished:
It is the punishment.”

~ Nicolas Gomez-Davila
Contents

Section 1: LIBERALISM
Introductory
The discovery of the self
Secularism
Liberalism and myth
Liberalism and ideology
Lost correlation between right and duty
Undermining the concept of right
Egoism and the loss of political purpose
Liberalism promises rights but delivers heavier duties
Three faces and three forms of Liberalism
Reformation: or, religious Liberalism
Enlightenment: or, political Liberalism
Capitalism: or, economic Liberalism
Liberalism and cowardice
Reductionism
Univocity fetish and the common good
Strife as the basis of civilization
The Liberal and the Reactionary
Part 2: DEMOCRACY
Introductory
A historical fallacy
The patricidal offspring of Liberalism
Democracy as the most primitive form of government
Democracy implies the use of force
Democracy as the depersonalization of power
The depersonalization of the statesman himself
The rise of the politician
Honorable men are averse to democracy
The democratic tendency toward materialism
Quantity over quality
Equality, not liberty, is the ruling passion of democracy
Preference for equality leads to the Cult of Incompetence
Monarchy as a counterpoint for the American mind
Monarchy as the emergence from savagery
Three arguments for monarchy from St. Thomas Aquinas
Security of station and dispassionate judgment
“Self-government” is by definition an impossibility
Self-government as experienced by the individual
Only the patriarch can identify with the general interest of the people
Patriarchy or the police state
Monarchy is more conducive to subsidiarity than democracy
Power corrupts?—absolutely not
Power as a necessary condition for humane governance
Democracy necessitates propaganda
The rising costs of democracy
Honor where honor is due—and nowhere else
It remains for democracy to prove itself in things that truly matter
Part 3: KNOWLEDGE
Introductory
Individualism + egalitarianism = ignorance
Rationalism as individualism in the intellectual sphere
Unrealism and abstraction
General ideas and ideology
Retroactive effects of ideology
The illusion of “common sense”
Anti-intellectualism
The tyranny of public opinion
Is man mostly evil or mostly ignorant?
Irrationality and majority rule
Democratization of law
Democratization of truth itself
Authority, ignorance, and the common good
Universal Education: or, Denying Human Nature
Against literacy
The myth of universal suffrage
Childhood suffrage?
Universal suffrage as the institutionalization individualism
The problem of voter dependency
The twofold ignorance of the voter
Scita and scienda
The cult of incompetence
Popular instincts prefer the inferior candidate
In the absence of knowledge, emotion rules supreme
Part 4: CHURCH AND STATE
Introductory
Knowledge and action
The caste system
Spiritual authority and temporal power
The Separation of church and state
Protestantism and secularism
Religion and economics
Liberalism and the privatization of truth
The weakness of secular government
The true end of human society
Symbols of the relationship
Revolt of the aristocracy
Regression of the castes
Faith and reason placed in opposition
Knowledge vs. belief
What is barbarism?
Rationalism and the invention of religion
Eternal law
Divine sovereignty
Religion and egalitarianism cannot co-exist
Egalitarianism and caste
Orthodoxy and heterodoxy
Slouching toward mediocrity
Orthodoxy and heresy die together
Tolerance and the heretic
Persecution Myth and Persecution Mania
Law: Subjective and Objective
Ambulatory Law
Legalism and Social Decay
Marx’s Opium and American Christianity
Utilitarian Religion
Toward an Organic Expression of Religious Life
Section 5: PROPAGANDA
Introductory
A dangerous situation
Democracy and the need for opinions
Propaganda is self-inflicted based on a need
Individual need
State need
Corporate need
Parties as the collusion between State and Individual
Propaganda manufactures products for all
The myth of the general will
The Age of Propaganda
Anonymity
Propaganda as technique
Man as a means
Efficiency
Reduction to simplicity
Keywords
Semantic breakdown
Statistics: Fact or Truth?
Unconsciousness of propaganda
No more demagogues
The verbal universe
Propaganda does not require unity
Exploitation of hate
Dependence
The moral paintbrush
Collective transference
Absolutism
Causes and conditions
Individualism
Technological depersonalization
Existential insecurity
Fear and angst
Materialism
Atrophy of the critical faculty
Resultant predisposition
The final product
Mass media: apparatus for propaganda
Tools of the trade
Ad hominem
Ad nauseam
Appeal to fear
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Renaming Vices
False Dichotomy
The “lesser of two evils”
Common sense
Cult of Personality
Demonizing the Enemy
The Scapegoat
Divide and Conquer
Flag-waving
Managing the news
Slogans, Catchphrases, Clichés
Virtue Words
Ideology
Section 6: ODDS AND ENDS
About this section
Equality
The bourgeois
Aristocracy
Individualism
War
Political Parties
Liberty
Economy
Miscellanea
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