capitalism is the void

The Left attacks religion, and religion withers.  The Left attacks sexual mores, and they collapse.  The Left attacks capitalism, and it grows ever stronger.  What’s the difference?

What people mean when they say “capitalism” is not trade, production, investment of profits, corporate organization, but the absence of anything else.  What disturbs us about the most inhuman of commodifications, prostitution, is not the presence of sex and money (which are also involved in a marriage), but the absence of anything else.  “Capitalism” is one word that the discontented use to name the void, the encroaching social desert.  Insofar as it is negative, it advances with all of the Left’s other campaigns against constrictive social order.  And insofar as it is negative, the Left’s usual attacks are entirely ineffective against it.

Jewish questions

What to do about anti-semitism?  In another world, I might suggest a campaign of philo-semitic and anti-Christian messages, making criticism of Jews as a group off limits on peril of social ostracism, disemployment, and media defamation, and censorship.  In this world, however, we’ve already pushed far enough down those roads that going farther will likely give minuscule returns.  The people who aren’t convinced already won’t be won over by more of this.

I don’t claim that things would be better for the Jews if society were more relaxed about criticism or animosity toward them.  It could be that, given their prominence in so many fields and their distinct moral light that they feel obliged to shine unto us, what they have now is the best the diaspora can hope for.  At least, this should always be kept in mind when the impulse emerges to “do something”.

What is the proper Christian attitude toward our Elder Brothers?  Neither hatred nor pity, but admiration and a determination to emulate those who have proven to be our superiors.  For in our competition and cultural clashes with them, they have proven overwhelmingly our superiors in determination, courage, intelligence, and initiative.  How else could they have triumphed so thoroughly?  What’s more, while we Christians talk about the Benedict Option, the Orthodox Jews have made it work.  If our goal is to become the Jews of the modern world (both in the biblical sense of an exile people with a mission from God and–especially!–in the anti-semitic conspiracy sense of a lethally-intelligent force of subversion against the dominant culture), then we must study them and perhaps copy aspects of their organization and psychological profile.  I suspect that, when we set aside the “passive victims” and “soulless usurers” stereotypes, we will find that we can learn a great deal from this remarkable people.

I was watching Chariots of Fire again the other day.  God, how much better Anglo-Saxon culture was a hundred years ago!  Anyway, it’s striking that the Jew Harold Abrahams is about as assimilated and successful as one could hope for–the best-case scenario, really–and he’s still seething with resentment.  Being a minority just does that to you.  I feel the same way as a Christian in academia, even though I also cannot complain of ever having been concretely wronged.  But this resentment, this urge to prove oneself against the majority, can be extremely useful to a sufficiently talented minority.  I hope there are some Catholics coming through the pipeline, twenty years younger and much more talented than me, who are also filled with anger and insecurity.

We are the subversives now.  Attack!

More culling

I’ve done another round of culling, removing low-interest recent posts.