RSS
TOP NAV
BOOK
ROAD TO THE
MIDDLE CLASS
Chapter 14:
The Problem of Power
| | <<prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | (4) | |  print view |
The conservative movement has always been a simple thing at heart. It seeks to restore the dignity of lower-middle-class respectability to modern society. This stolid middle-class culture was marginalized by the left-wing elites when they constructed the welfare state. With their visionary plans for the elevation of the working class from penury to decency, they knew there would be no need for the cramped respectability of the skilled working class and their dogged Methodism. The working class would soon surpass all that and join their benefactors, the intellectual elite, in a more educated and, of course, secular culture. There was a flaw in this plan, a flaw that conservatives never quite managed to articulate, but which is brightly illuminated in the AQAL matrix. The red impulsive proletariat cannot jump straight into a universal society of green compassion dreamed of by the socialists. They must toil through the blue purposive consciousness and orange creativity before they can lose their creative ego in contemplation and sainthood. This is the truth that Robert William Fogel recognizes in The Fourth Great Awakening. The poor need not just the material improvement that the enlightened elite so proudly poured on them. They need to acquire a “sense of purpose,” a “sense of the mainstream of work and life,” a “strong family ethic,” and all the other values of purposive blue consciousness.
Fogel understands that the poor need to be allowed to get on with it, take control of their lives from the nanny state and build the competence and character that will equip them for success in the city. But he cannot quite bring himself to let go of the reins of power. Its temptations are too great. The poor will find purpose and a strong family ethic, he writes, but we liberals are still going to be needed to help them and instruct them.
It is the world-historical role of the conservative movement to help liberals take the step they cannot quite bear to make, to take the first step away from the intoxicating seat of power and let people live their own lives and learn their own lessons. Our destiny is to take the liberal ring of power back to the mountain and toss it back into the primeval flood of molten lava.
And after the conservative movement has smashed anti-religious bigotry, moved the working class from infantile dependency of the government monopoly welfare state to proud competence, and curbed the radical social agenda of the imperial judiciary, and become master of all it surveys, it will also be corrupted by the temptations of power, wander into decadence, and eventually decline and fall.
| | <<prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | (4) | | print view |
Click for Chapter 15: The Worldwide Explosion of Pentecostalism
Your comments are welcome. Please e-mail to Christopher Chantrill at mailto:chrischantrill@gmail.com, and take the RMC test here.
©2005 Christopher Chantrill
Faith & Purpose
“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
Mutual Aid
In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society
Education
“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State
Living Under Law
Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures
German Philosophy
The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since
1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and
philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be
inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West
Knowledge
Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its
characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then,
once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities
Chappies
“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie
that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”
—Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
Democratic Capitalism
I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all.
In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
Action
The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness...
But to make a man act [he must have]
the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove
or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
Churches
[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
