corrente

Following up on Riggsveda's posts below - see You Don't Know Julius Streicher, and ..."Just Us" Sunday - I thought I'd venture back into the Corrente archives (All Things Forgotten) and drag this post back into the daylight for a little exercise. Given the topical subject matter and all. So here goes again:

Faith in Action: repeating themes (Previously posted November 07, 2004)




The campaign has ended, and the United States of America goes forward with confidence and faith. - George W. Bush, acceptance speech, Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 2004

Power and ideology wrapped in signs and wonders. Once upon a time in faithless decadent cultural elitist liberal America: moral decay! relativism! pluralism! cultural Marxism! cultural elites! chaos! the collapse of Western "traditional values"!...blah blah blah blah blah. Suppose your heard the following (below) coming from your car radio or emanating from the well oiled flapping maw of some cableTV "news" mortal glaring back at you from your blinking television set. And suppose this professional mountebank made noise like this:

You know who:

...had fallen into worldview chaos, from which followed political, economic, cultural and moral decay, since a standard of measurement failed that would have enabled a valid judgment about the value or lack of value of a particular phenomenon. Every viewpoint had its proponents, but none was taken to heart, none was taken seriously. Each group, each opinion had its own standards, which destroyed the binding power and moral strength of anygenuine worldview. The dying liberal-democratic system had opinions that were changeable, relative and not binding, but it did not have an absolute worldview in which people could put their faith. It had a panopticum, but no picture of the world. It collected every possible opinion, standpoint and value from every time and people, rather like exhibits in a museum, but had no dominant standpoint, no real values. The result was chaos, sterility and relativism. The most wretched viewpoint could take center stage because sure faith was lacking, from which alone comes strength of judgment. The era had lost a central worldview, and thus the measure of character, of style. The chaos of worldviews resulted in chaos in science, education, and all other areas of life. People staggered before the abyss, unsteady, irresolute.

[...]

Former values and principles had collapsed, having lost all their strength. The meaning of the universe no longer mattered, questions of the content and tasks of life went unanswered. In the chaos of world views, every conceivable opinion found its proponents, but none had greater weight or force than any other.

RENEWAL! MARCH TO FREEDOM!:

A new idea joined the historic march to self-realization, forming people's attitudes and characters, as well as the style of their lives. A central worldview once more permitted internal unity and thereby the creative strength of a new era.

[...]

As long as a people has the strength for a revolution, for a change in worldview and a reordering of its life, it remains capable of making history. If it loses the will and the strength for national renewal, it sinks into the mists of history and perishes.

A UNIFIED UNILATERAL FAITH:

Historic and worldview battles always are about the victory of an idea that seeks to become absolute, that takes upon itself the transformation of the world. If a victorious revolution has won freedom of action, it cannot be distracted or stopped by complaints about intolerance. They come either from adherents of past structures, structures against which the revolution fought and displaced, or from those who as Nihilists oppose any order because they want chaos and anarchy. Against such people, the rule of an idea must be hard and unforgiving. He who wants to build must push aside and fight everything that stands in the way. The greatness of an era depends on bringing all thoughts and all forms of life under a unified worldview, a unified faith.

Any worldview seeks to rule alone, and must seek that. It must believe in its sole right, which is the foundation of its effectiveness. In battling other worldviews, it must maintain its good conscience. If it loses that, it loses its self-confidence, the feeling of superiority, and thereby its power over people. Where each can do what he wants, there is no whole. Eras without unity lack compelling power. Only where a will to life dominates, only where all strengths are moving in the same direction, does greatness follow.

I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." [...] "Tha's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ("Without a Doubt", Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, Oct 17, 2004)

THE ALTAR OF IMMORTALITY - RUTHLESS and FANATIC PERCEIVED REALITY:

The result of any fruitful worldview is a firm, self-confident life order that is perceived as necessary, as a reality, about which there is nothing uncertain or disputable. A revolutionary worldview must therefore be ruthless and fanatic in representing its exclusive principles until they have become taken for granted, dominating the life of a people as a tradition does. Any era, any worldview, needs firm foundations. When these are open to discussion, the idea is already questionable and has lost its finding force and strength. An age that discusses its foundations is sawing off the branch on which it sits. It loses its good conscience, its self-confidence — and perishes. The cathedrals of the Middle Age would never have been built if Christianity had asked itself why it had the right to claim exclusive truth for its faith by eternalizing it in stone. The idea justifies itself through its fruitfulness. It rules the consciousness of those people who set the direction of their age. It is seen as foundational, formative, the bringer of the future. And throughout history it leaves creative ideas and deeds on the altar of immortality.

ABSOLUTE LIVING FAITH:

This demonstrates the deepest roots from which a worldview draws its strengths: from faith. Great times rest on a great, absolute faith. Only those with faith, with mountain-moving strength and joy in action can fulfill an historic mission. Values that are truly believed, not merely recognized and discussed, are the foundation of creative strength. In era of decline, however, everything is open to discussion and therefore to denial. When God is a question, one no longer builds cathedrals. Where people have no living faith, they do nothing great, nothing that lasts.

Sound familiar? How many times have you heard those exact themes repeated over recent months and years. Cast down from Christian evangelical fundamentalist pulpits and scrawled over miles of Right Wing think tank scroll or snarled into a Right Wing radio microphone. What would you make of it? Where does something like that come from?

Faith's Codpieced Sword of the Lord:

It's not a dictatorship in Washington, but I tried to make it one in that instance. -- George W. Bush, describing his executive order making faith-based groups eligible for federal subsidies, New Orleans, Louisiana, Jan. 15, 2004 (via link)

Faith's Gestapo:
What you read above are excerpts from a tract which appears in a monthly publication called Der Schulungsbrief and dated January 1939. Der Schulungsbrief, in case you've never heard of this particular publication, translates in this case to "The Party Directive". A kind of "how to" manual for the German faithful and Nazi Party true believers. The magazine was the NSDAP (Nazi Party) monthly accompanyment to Reichsorganisationsleiter Robert Ley's organizational book Organisationsbuch der NSDAP. DS had a large circulation and was often handed out by neighborhood NSDAP representatives throughout Germany. Most copies of DS were destroyed by the Allies following WW2 due to the dangerous nature of much of its content. Especially its vicious anti-semetic rantings which rivaled Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer for sheer unhinged homicidal lunacy. But copies still exist, and, as a side note, DS (its modern day equivalent) is still in publication and available via German far right networks and Neo-Nazi publications.

David Neiwert, as almost everyone who reads here knows, is the go to author/blogger on the topic of retooled psuedo-fascist rhetoric from the right and infestations of it in our mainstream media and body politic. So if you're unfamiliar with Neiwert's material go there and read.

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Theologians are well aware, deep down in their hearts, that faith alone is not sufficient to make even half-wits believe in their mumbo jumbo; they sense a need to sweeten the dose with such testimony as would convince a judge and jury. The result of their labours in that direction, continued through many centuries, has been only to reduce human reason to the quaking and malarious thing that it is today ...gradually broken down all the natural barriers between fact and fiction, sense and nonsense, and converted logic into a weapon that mauls the truth far more than it defends it. - H.L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods, 1930

Welcome back to the quaking and malarious thing.

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Original post dated 11.07.2004 archived here: Faith in Action: repeating themes

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