La Muerte de Norteamérica y su Posible Renacimiento 1

La Muerte de Norteamérica y su Posible Renacimiento

Por Lawrence Auster

Parte 1

Tomado de: https://chechar.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/austers-unpublished-chapter/

Traducido del inglés por Roberto Hope

"Cualquier cantidad grande de judíos librepensadores es 'indeseable si se quiere mantener o desarrollar una sociedad en la cual pueda florecer una tradición cristiana', dijo T.S. Eliot en 1934. Estaba en lo correcto" — David A. Hollinger, Science, Jews and Secular Culture, 1996.

"... el gran apoderamiento por parte de escritores judeo-americanos soñando en voz alta acerca de los sueños de todo el pueblo americano" — Leslie Fiedler, Partisan Review, 1967.

Lo que sigue es un capítulo — escrito en 1998 y sin haber sido editado ni alterado desde entonces — del extenso libro inédito sobre la inmigración masiva procedente de países fuera de Occidente, sus consecuencias, y temas relacionados, en que yo trabajé durante la mayor parte de los 1990s. Estaba intitulado tentativamente "The Death of America and its Possible Rebirth" (La Muerte de América y su Posible Renacimiento). Un editor de derechas ha expresado su interés en el manuscrito y estoy en el proceso de organizar los capítulos que terminé desde hace mucho tiempo, para su publicación. Mientras tanto, este capítulo puede leerse como un artículo completo en sí mismo. (Nótese: es muy largo, de más de 11000 palabras.)

Anoche leí el artículo entero por primera vez después de quince años e hice algunas correcciones en puntuación y ortografía. Veo una falta seria en el artículo: que carece de suficientes salvedades serias que muestren que las actitudes objetables que yo atribuyo a los "judíos" — o sea al pueblo judío o la comunidad judía como tal  — no son, por supuesto, de ninguna manera compartidas por todos los judíos. Pero en este momento carezco de la fuerza de voluntad y de la capacidad física para re-escribir el capítulo. Por lo tanto, espero que los lectores habrán de entender que cuando hablo de "judíos" no quiero decir todos los judíos ni quizás tampoco la mayoría de los judíos, sino a un grande e influyente segmento de la población judía.

Podríamos ver el problema de esta manera: La gran mayoría de los judios son extremadamente liberales, pero un gran número de gentiles de raza blanca (quizás la mayoría) son también liberales y así seguirán siendo. Para expresarlo de otra manera, una gran mayoría de los judíos no se identifican con, ni apoyan a, la raza blanca, pero una gran mayoría de gentiles de raza blanca tampoco se identifican con, ni apoyan a, la raza blanca. Un número significativo de judíos son conservadores y tradicionalistas (no estoy hablando aquí de la mayoría de los jasídicos, que simplemente no son parte de nuestra nación y civilización) y creo que aquellos judíos son una parte positiva de nuestro cuerpo político y del crecimiento a futuro de un movimiento tradicional, y a última instancia, quizás generaciones adelante, de una America renacida, que yo llamo la América 3.0, que se habrá separado de la América liberal, la América 2.0, que por ahora ha destruido definitivamente y reemplazado a la América original, la América 1.0.

Así que, para entender mejor de dónde parto, los lectores pudieran querer saltarse a la última sección "Cómo oponerse a la agenda judía sin anti-semitismo", y leerla primero. 

Aquí va el artículo:

Los judíos, multiculturalistas típicos.

Hemos echado una mirada a las culturas de inmigrantes de razas distintas de la blanca, que desde afuera han estado desplazando a la América blanca, así como a la cultura nihilista que ha estado carcomiendo a la sociedad blanca desde adentro. Pero hay un grupo que yace en la intersección de estos fenómenos; un grupo étnica y religiosamente distinto, de origen inmigrante relativamente reciente, pero también parte de la raza blanca — aun cuando diferente en gran medida — y con una importante influencia en la cultura dominante. Hablo, por supuesto, de los judíos. Dado el papel extraordinario que este extraordinario pueblo ha desempeñado en la América moderna, ninguna discusión seria sobre la diversidad étnica en la América moderna puede pasarlos por alto. Sin embargo, debido a su trágica historia de pueblo perseguido, y debido a su propia habilidad para establecer los términos del discurso permisible, alcanzada a través de su rol de vanguardia en la vida intelectual americana, es imposible en la sociedad de hoy en día conducir una discusión honesta sobre el tema del impacto judío en la cultura. No obstante que puede hablarse críticamente de cualquier otro grupo étnico, aun cuando sea sólo hasta un grado limitado, nada que sea crítico, aun implícitamente, es permitido decir o inferir acerca de los judíos. Una encuesta de opinión conducida por la Liga Anti-Difamación que investigaba actitudes antisemitas en América captó perfectamente los supuestos prevalentes de lo que es permisible decir de los judíos. Si la gente que respondió a la encuesta indicó su acuerdo hasta con opiniones verídicas acerca de los judíos, tales como que "las industrias del cine y de la televisión están en gran medida manejadas por judíos", la encuesta consideró eso como evidencia de anti-semitismo. Usando una definición tan amplia de antisemitismo, la Liga, no es de sorprender, siempre encuentra mucho antisemitismo en América. [ADL National Study, May 1992].

Si 'antisemitismo' ha de ser un término que tenga un significado y no sólo sea un arma para amedrentar a la gente al silencio, entonces su uso debe pasar la misma prueba definicional que hemos establecido para la palabra 'racismo'. Así como el comportamiento debe ser moralmente malo para ser con justicia considerado racista, así también debe ser moralmente malo para ser con justicia considerado antisemita. A menos que ser impolítico sea inmoral, no es más antisemíta acometer una disquisición crítica racional acerca del desempeño de los judíos en la sociedad americana, que es racista acometer una disquisición crítica racional acerca del desempeño de los negros, o de los chinos o de los blancos protestantes o de cualquier otra raza.

Aun cuando este tipo de disquisición honesta pueda implicar un desafío a las agendas políticas y culturales promovidas por las organizaciones judías, no constituye una amenaza para los judíos, ni como individuos ni como comunidad. A pesar de los exagerados temores de los judíos sobre este asunto, el anti-semitismo ha decaído de manera constante desde la segunda guerra mundial. Los judíos no enfrentan intolerancia seria alguna excepto por parte de algunos nacionalistas negros (que de todos modos están fuera del alcance del coloquio racional de Occidente), y de un minúsculo, aunque creciente, número de blancos marginados, algunos de los cuales son serios antisemitas. De hecho, podría argumentarse que el actual aumento de antisemitismo en los márgenes de la sociedad blanca ha sido impulsado en grado significativo por el hecho de que jamás se permite expresar opiniones críticas de la influencia judía, aun cuando el desempeño de esta pequeña minoría en la política americana siga creciendo espectacularments ante los ojos de todos. Prohibirle a la gente comentar sobre un fenómeno tan notable no conduce a una salud mental o social. No deja salida a las energías normales de la crítica — ni de la simple queja — excepto a un resentimiento obscuro e inarticulado, a mensajes de odio cifrados, a teorías conspiratoriales, a teorías diabólicas, etc.

Delicado como lo es, el tema del impacto judío en la cultura es ineludible en un libro que pretende tratar acerca de la inmigración y la diversidad: Los judíos son y siempre han sido la minoría arquetípica. Durante toda su historia desde la expulsión de las elites judías de Babilonia a principios del siglo quinto antes de Cristo (época en que los israelitass comenzaron a ser llamados 'judíos'), los judíos han vivido como una minoría conspicua y perseguida intermitentemente entre mayorías no judías. Por esta razón, muchos judíos contemporáneos consideran la esencia del ser judío como su identificación con el Forastero (quienquiera que el Forastero pudiera ser) combinado con una hostilidad, o por lo menos con una actitud profundamente cuestionante ante la cultura mayoritaria.

Los judíos, de Europa oriental llegaron a América como inmigrantes cuya religión, tradiciones populares, y características eran extrañas a las de la población americana histórica. Aun cuando han hecho aportaciones fenomenales a la vida americana en muchos campos y se han asimilado a un grado mucho mayor que lo que pensaban algunos conservadores de hace cien años, los judíos también cambiaron a los Estados Unidos (como poca gente lo reconoce porque el tema es tabú) de muchas y no siempre positivas maneras. En términos de identidad nacional, los judíos fueron un instrumento en la reformulación de América como una sociedad universalista basada estrictamente en ideología más que en la noción de pueblo, cambio que erigió el escenario para una inmigración masiva de gente del Tercer Mundo, y la mucho más profunda redefinición de America como una sociedad multicultural. En términos de moral, muchos intelectuales, escritores y comediantes judíos deliberadamente minaron el antiguo ethos Victoriano Anglo Americano; programa de subversión moral/cultural que llegó a su climax en la contracultura de los años 1960s y la cultura nihilista dominante de los 1980s y 1990s. En términos de política, los judíos fueron instrumento para reemplazar el orden constitucional americano de auto-control, con las políticas estatistas de compasión irrestricta.

Así, conforme los judíos, más o menos exitosamente. se adaptaron a los Estados Unidos, los Estados Unidos — al redefinirse como un país universal, al renunciar a su cultura anglo-sajona cristiana, y al adoptar políticas de compasión, se adaptó a los judíos. El patrón de la interacción de los judíos con la cultura mayoritaria es un caso de libro de texto, del efecto de la diversificación étnica en una sociedad anfitriona.

Los judíos rehicieron a los Estados Unidos.

La creencia tradicional es que todos los inmigrantes, independientemente de sus antecedentes culturales y de su número, pueden asimilarse igualmente bien. Pero hasta los mismos judíos, ahora que han alcanzado una posición de poder incontestable en la vida americana, admiten que esta noción es falsa. Como escribe el conocido abogado y profesor de derecho Alan Dershowitz en su exitoso libro Chutzpah (Desfachatez) de 1991:

"Los judíos han sido extraordinariamente prósperos en América. No nos hemos fusionado en ningún crisol ajeno. En lugar de ello, hemos remoldeado el crisol para acomodar nuestras inusuales dimensiones. En el proceso, también nosotros nos hemos remoldeado en cierto modo para encajar en nuestro contorno" (Págs 6 y 7) 

En otras palabras, los judíos no se asimilaron a América (o como Dershowitz concede a regañadientes, sólo se asimilaron "en cierto modo"); más bien remoldearon a América para "acomodar nuestras inusuales dimensiones."

Dershowitz afirma un derecho semejante de redefinir el judaísmo:

"Yo hago, consecuentemente, lo que las religiones ortodoxas dicen que no debe hacerse: Yo elijo y selecciono — sobre una base de principios, espero — de entre las prácticas religiosas, y selecciono aquéllas con las que deseo cumplir. Es mi religión, después de todo, y no veo por qué yo no pueda ser el árbitro final cuando se trate de su contenido" (p 12)

Nótese el arbrumador narcisismo. El judaísmo es su religión, por lo tanto, puede definirlo según su capricho — una filosofía de lo más conveniente para un hombre que abandonó la ortodoxia de su familia pero, no obstante, insiste en su total judaísmo. Del mismo modo, América es su país, por lo tanto, América es cualquier cosa que a él le plazca decir que es — una filosofía de lo más conveniente para un hombre abiertamente hostil a la civilización histórica americana."No tenemos que comprometer ni nuestro americanismo ni nuestro judaísmo," declara Dershowitz "ni puede nadie más definir nuestro americanismo ni nuestro judaísmo por nosotros" (pp 4-5). Esto, en resumen, es una desfachatez, que Dershowitz define como auto-asertividad y audacia ante la autoridad, pero que la mayor parte de la gente considera una inmitigada y desvergonzada arrogancia. Como sea que fuera definida, Dershowitz la celebra en sus correligionarios judíos, y los alienta a cultivarla.

Así, escribe con admiración acerca de David Bazelon, ex juez presidente de la Corte Federal de Apelaciones del Distrito de Columbia, para quien Dershowitz trabajó como asistente legal.

"El Juez Bazelon raramente iba a la sinagoga, pero era un juez judío en toda la extensión de la palabra. Veía al mundo a través de sus antecedentes judíos. Su humor era frecuentemente expresado en yiddish. Sus discursos hacían referencia a la literatura rabínica. Se describía a sí mismo como un americano secular con un 'alma judía'. Si un acusado merecía compasíon — o alguna otra forma de remedio legal — pero el recurso de Habeas Corpus no era técnicamente aplicable a la situación, Bazelon me hacía un guiño y me ordenaba que encontrara algún fundamento para un 'recurso de rachmones'. Rachmones es la palabra hebrea-yiddish que significa 'compasión'."

"Bazelon fue siempre un forastero, un cuestionador, aun siendo uno de los juristas más influyentes de su época." [pp 58-59]

En un retrato inadvertidamente devastador, vemos al juez que presidió la segunda corte más importante de los Estados Unidos ocupado afanosamente en reformular la ley constitucional anglo-americana de acuerdo con su sentido de compasión de forastero judío, mientras le guiñaba el ojo a su joven asistente legal. Igualmente revelador es el tributo que Dershowitz da a Bazelon y a otro mentor suyo, el juez de la Suprema Corte Arthur Goldberg. "El judaísmo de ellos — su rachmones — resonaba en mí de manera más potente que su judaísmo de ritual." (p. 60). Es claro que estos judíos seculares, principales arquitectos del moderno estado omnicompetente, consideran su agenda liberal como un sustituto emocionalmente gratificante de la tradición religiosa que han abandonado.

Desafortunadamente, el culto de Chutzpah, que apenas comenzamos a explorar aquí, no puede descontarse como una postura extrema entre los judíos americanos. Más bien al contrario, la extraordinaria popularidad de este libro y las laudatorias reseñas recibidas de muchos sectores de la opinión pública judía, sugieren que sus opiniones — en particular su afirmación narcisista de un derecho de los judíos de rehacer a América — son representativos: Hasta Ruth Wisse, una dura crítica de Chutzpah, observa que "lamentablemente la perspectiva de Dershowitz parece resonar profundamente entre la judería americana." [Ruth Wisse, reseña, Commentary, Septiembre de 1991]

No obstante la estructura crítica de la presente disquisición, debemos siempre recordar que hay una diferencia fundamental entre los judíos y otros inmigrantes europeos por un lado, y los inmigrantes no europeos por el otro. En tanto que los inmigrantes de la Europa meridional y oriental cambiaron la cultura americana en algunas formas dramáticas, América siguió en el fondo síendo una nación. En contraste, la inmigración no europea desde 1965 ha cambiado a América, de ser una nación, a convertirse en un imperio multiétnico. Al mismo tiempo, debemos entender que los cambios culturales traídos por los inmigrantes de la vuelta del siglo y sus descendientes, prepararon el terreno para que ocurrieran los cambios más radicales que vinieron después.

(Continuará)

Pasar a la Parte 2

Classical Patriotism in the Current Times

Classical Patriotism in the Current Times

by José Miguel Gambra

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

Separatisms have put patriotism in vogue, a recent fashion with its ups and downs according to the comings and goings of news about secessionism, a fashion which at any rate contrasts clearly with previous years', during which patriotic sentiments were spurned by the ones and by the others. This revival has resulted in varied and surprising phenomena. Among those who have nothing to do with traditional Catholicism, all kinds of patriotism have emerged, cultural and aesthetic some, costumbrist and purist others, constitutional patriotism, even soccer patriotism, which have nothing to do with the virtue lauded by pagan and Christian classics alike. Oddly enough, among traditionalists and Carlists, those who have put love of country aside are not lacking, for the simple reason that their object seems to have ceased to exist. To such effect, some have fixated on Europeanization and, even further, on globalization, which to their mind, will ineluctably swallow, if they have not already done so, the nations which seem to be the natural objects of patriotism. Others, in contrast, are fixated on the dissolution of the State, which they identify with nationalities, which proceed from what traditionalism prefers to call the fatherland.

This last fact — the dismantling of the state — has not been pointed out by the communications media, and merits some brief words. It is well known how modern thinking, attempting to rationalize society, ended up by destroying its natural and historical constitution, reducing it to the binomial State-individual, where the State monopolizes the totality of power and the individual is undifferentiated as to his rights. The totality of the ins and outs of social relations are, supposedly, determined by legislation which, emanated from the State's governing organs, has equal validity for all citizens. But, in fact, such simple rationalist scheme, in which many still believe, does not work that way in ever more patent ways. The authentic decision centers have moved gradually over to a series of groups, or societies, different from those recognized in the traditional constitution of the community. Not only do financial institutions, banks and multinational enterprises, which extend far away from its frontiers, escape the reach of the State, before the which the State finds itself powerless; in addition, internal cysts have grown, less powerful but much more numerous, which, being frequently outside positive law, it is not applied to them. Thus, within developed nations, with powerful States, mafias, lobbies, ghettos, sects, secret societies, and urban tribes exist, which are frequently the actual source of decisions affecting the whole of the social order. Everything not prohibited is obligatory according to the law, but the effective application of that omni-comprehensive law is made in a selective manner, according to the strength and the personal relationships of the true power centers. This evident fact was denounced since the early 70s by, among others, Humberto Eco, who saw in it a return to the middle ages in the bad sense of the word, that is, a return to feudalism and to serfdom relationships entered into in exchange for protection and privileges.[1] In good measure, I believe it would be necessary to agree with this negative view of Eco's, inasmuch as the groups that have been formed this way are not natural intermediary bodies, the vitality of which has been weakened by the rigorous liberal legislation, but are societies contrary to the Christian order when not plainly criminal communities. The teaching centers, the professional corporations, the municipal associations, if they have not been absorbed by the parties or their unions, face so many restrictions in the legislation, that they can hardly exert any influence on social life. In contrast, the societies of economic speculation, the homosexual lobbies, the Islamic ghettos, the criminal organizations, or the simple pressure groups, formed, for instance, in the midst of the university bureaucracies, constitute factual powers against which the State does nothing.

Nevertheless, some have greeted this state of things with elation, seeing in it a manifestation of the human inclination to live in societies of common beliefs and customs, contrary to liberal individualism. Today, in fact, it has been converted, at the hands of a current originating in America called communitarianism, into a doctrine which conceives a society as a community, not of equal individuals within a neutral State, but of communities respectful of each other, which ultimately turns out to be an attempt to accommodate liberalism´s doctrinal neutralism to the new circumstances [2].

This communitarianism has sometimes been well received by some progressive ecclesiastics motivated by the same springs of adaptation to the times which had led them to bless individualist democracy some years back. But what interests us here is the fact that numerous traditionalist Catholics seem to have abandoned patriotism, believing that their sole obligation towards society, beyond the family, consists only in their adhesion to the traditional community closest to their concerns. In other words, what is of interest is that among traditional Catholics, a practical trend is developing towards communitarianism, in a frequently unconscious manner.

In sum, outside of the forms of patriotism officially admitted — cultural, aesthetic, costumbrist, constitutional — there are other attitudes among traditionalists which also have suffered some deviation, as that which considers patriotism dead, whether as a casualty of globalization or in the interest of spontaneous communities: If we add to this the crystallized patriotism of, say, the Falangistas, we find ourselves before a range of possibilities more or less deviated from the traditionalist conception of patriotism and fatherland, which may produce a certain perplexity in us, if not inducing us to error and tempting us with fashionable solutions. Temptations so much more dangerous when separatism and Europeanism pressure us "to do something" but the patriotic sentiments never know where to aim. This is why, with the pretension of shedding some light on the uncertainty which all of us face in this ever more Babel-like world, in which it has been our lot to live, I will attempt to elucidate, from a traditional perspective, what patriotism is and what is its validity. But no matter how paradoxical it may seem, I will not base myself much on traditionalist authors but on western classical thinking, and mainly on certain observations by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Traditionalism and Carlism are not reduced to glossing over what their recognized authorities have said, but they themselves have to be seen and judged from the fullness of knowledge accumulated along the centuries by Christian wisdom. A matter this, which has its importance on what our topic concerns, because, on occasions, the most conspicuous traditionalist authors have let themselves be influenced by terminologies, doctrines, and events of recent history which have smudged classical doctrine.

Patriotism is a virtue, that is, a habit to do good. A man whose actions are not determined by instincts acts voluntarily, which means he chooses among the things he knows by reason. But he does not have to elucidate each time what he has to do in accordance with the order of the universe he is aware of, he instead acquires habits by performing his actions repeatedly. These habits, when they are good are called virtues and when they are bad are called vices. And, when are they good or bad? This depends on whether they have been ordered to the ends of human nature or not, a matter which man can get to know by contemplating his own essence and the place which corresponds to him in the totality of things. If adhesion of the will to an object known rationally conducts man to his end, which is beatitude or his salvation, then the action is good and the corresponding habit is a virtue. If not, it is bad and the habit is a vice.

The diversity of virtues is established in accordance with their object. There are duties to ourselves, to the rest of men and to God. The virtue of piety has as its object those beings to which we are indebted but will never be able to repay. One of the characteristics which differentiate piety from justice is that justice demands equitable repayment of what is owed, whereas piety can only in a very partial way return what is owed, hence what is given back can never equal what is owed [3]. Piety in a super-eminent way must be exercised towards God, to whom we owe everything. But, among created beings, we must have piety towards our parents, to whom we owe our life, our upbringing, and our education. And that same virtue must also be extended to the society of men in which we were born and raised, and from which we received the benefit of order, a cultural legacy, our customs, and services without which our life, our preservation, and our improvement would have been impossible. There are, thus, two classes of piety, filial piety, and piety towards our fatherland, which is, precisely, patriotism.

This virtue, though proximate to justice, has the characteristic of not being it possible to be practiced with other than certain particular men. God has willed that we should be born from concrete parents and not by spontaneous generation, nor from spores, as happens with mushrooms, and He has willed that such be carried out in a wider society, thanks to which the family in which we were born, has been able to sustain itself. Well, only with such society and such people as are our parents, can we exercise the virtue of piety, which in this differs from charity, which has to be exercised with any man whatsoever, and from justice, which has to be made with anyone to whom we owe something. We can be just and also charitable to any man, but only with our parents and with our fatherland can we exercise the natural virtue of piety.

The debt we have contracted with our parents and our fatherland we requite with certain actions which are generally referred to as "cult", term which now has been restricted mostly to acts which manifest the virtue of religion and of love of God, but which must be understood in an ampler sense when it refers to parents and to the fatherland. To these things, we must not give cult of adoration or latria, which is only proper of God [4]. Cult to parents consists essentially of respecting them, obeying them, serving them, and, occasionally when circumstances require it, attending to their needs, as can happen when they become ill or lack the means to sustain themselves [5]. And the same happens with the fatherland; we owe cult to its members and rulers, that is, respect and obedience and, when necessary, we have to offer special assistance; for instance, in the case of war. In other words, towards the fatherland, aside from the respect and reverence we owe her, and of our contribution to the common good which everyone has to make from his respective position, we have to aid her when extraordinary situations present themselves such as when it is being pestered by external or internal enemies.

The common good is not what the community or what the most extended opinion in this society known as the fatherland considers good, but what is ordered to man´s proper end, which is his salvation. Saint Thomas explicitly says that filial piety does not obligate us to respect the wishes of parents who attempt, for instance, to move us away from religion, as this is a virtue higher than piety, having God Himself as its object [6]. On the contrary, we must loath (odire) parents who such pretend 'to the extent that they do this' (it is quite important to make this distinction because that does not exempt us from fulfilling other duties we owe them). It is not virtuous to respect a disorder we might find in our parents, and the same happens proportionally with the fatherland; we should not love rulers who command the contrary to the order willed by God, nor respect nor give cult to fellow citizens, insofar as they display disordered desires, but should instead loath them in that aspect. Patriotism, as any other virtue, is a disposition of the will to do good, which presupposes the knowledge of what is good or, said in other words, of the ordering of actions towards the ultimate end of man, which, in the current situation of the redeemed man, lies only in God as He has revealed Himself.

To conclude with this brief description of the patriotic virtue, it is necessary to stress its importance and its excellency declared both by pagan philosophers and by Christian thinkers. It suffices to think that the duty to love our parents, which analogously extends to the fatherland, is the first of those ten commandments which refer to fellow men, ahead of the obligation not to kill or not to commit impure acts. Suffices likewise, to bring to mind that piety towards the fatherland is even superior to the one we owe to our own parents because what is common is of greater excellency than what is particular.

In summary: Patriotism is a virtue the object of which is such society and such government which have enabled us to live and to improve ourselves, the foundation of which lies in the debt of gratitude which we have only before that society, and which obligates us to give it cult in the sense indicated above, and to procure the good proper of such society; that is, the common good, which is such only when it is directed to man´s ultimate end, present in Revelation and kept in custody by the Catholic Church. The latter is what's most important and what determines all the rest: The end of man and of the Universe is in God, and voluntary actions of man should all be directed towards attaining his own salvation and that of the others. This being understood, all of the preceding can be comprehended, and the countless errors currently committed regarding patriotism can be identified. Let us address the most noticeable ones.

1) Patriotic sentiment: Patriotism is not, properly speaking, a sentiment, but a virtue. It is true that the word patriotism is a new one and can be applied to the emotion accompanying the virtue of piety. About names, one should not dispute. Sentiments constitute a class of mental entities which had no place in classical thinking: The notion of sentiment appears for the first time in the eighteenth century and has its precedents in Pascal, with the famous phrase, according to which the heart has reasons which reason does not understand. It got thoroughly accepted in the eighteenth century thanks to Hume and Rousseau and has become a keystone of a good part of modern philosophy, from Kant's moral and religious theory to the philosophy of values. Sentiments are nothing but what classic philosophy used to call passions or affections of the soul, which in themselves are not rational, though they can be subjected to reason. There is, for instance, an evident natural tendency to love and defend the fatherland and the parents. But that in itself is not a virtue if it is not subjected to rational knowledge about the order of the universe and directed to man's ultimate end. As also, he who lacks such sentiments does not cease to be virtuous; for instance, when he has been far away from his homeland but, knowing the natural order and the commandments of the Church fulfills his patriotic duties. Philosophical sentimentalism has given those spontaneous passions a category that does not fit them, in converting them into the original guide for our life, and into the principle of all morality. To my understanding, the ultimate cause for this error lies in in the fact that such passions seem to proceed directly from the self, from human individuality shut in its own conscience, and, in converting them into guidance for its own existence, it transfers the source of morals from the natural order and the Divine law to man himself. Thanks to sentiments, thus elevated, man has been made the creator of his own destiny in accordance with the demands of modern humanism.

The fact that patriotic sentiment, just as filial sentiment, is not a virtue in itself but can be vice-ridden, can be seen in a very clear way when we think that Protestants or Muslims, liberals or democrats and defenders of the constitution can have very vivid sentiments of love of country without for this reason having also the virtue of patriotism. Precisely because the end of patriotism is found in the common good of the society we belong to, and because this good is only such if it is directed towards man´s ultimate end, it turns out that the patriotism of heretics, unbelievers, socialists or democrats have nothing of a virtue, because they pursue the perdition of man insofar as they pretend to direct the nation towards ends foreign to human nature and to God's will, as it can be the establishment of a popular democracy or an Islamic regime [7] That a Christian should praise such patriotism, as is frequent, is like being benevolent with a man who is in love with one´s wife, or with the young man who wishes to cohabitate with one's daughter, because of the deepness of the love they feel. I once saw a repulsive TV program in which a sixty-ish woman, affectedly dressed as a villager, boasted of the marvelous children she had; the camera which at the beginning focused only on her, then turned towards said children, which turned out to be two homosexuals wearing excessive makeup. It is better to have nothing than to have such kind of motherly love. Likewise, it is better to mind one´s own business than having a constitutional patriotism.

Even traditionalist thinkers have all too frequently let themselves be misled by this confusion of sentiment and virtue. I don't wish to quote anyone, but everybody is familiar with the idea that patriotism is a highly elevated and laudable sentiment. It would have been better to speak of a virtue, though, doubtless, those thinkers were referring to a patriotic sentiment previously directed by virtue and not to any disordered patriotic sentiment.

2) Folkloric patriotism. Another frequent confusion regarding patriotism concerns its object. Some believe that respecting the name, the flag and Spain's coat of arms would suffice to be a good patriot. Others believe that lauding the culture, the history, the customs or the folklore makes them good patriots. Too much pedantry and too little contents. But by this, I don't mean to say that all this should not be respected, but that it is not essential. The direct object of a virtue may be, as in this case, men and the society formed by them, but not the customs, the history, or the symbols. If such things should be respected and venerated it is only in a secondary way: whether out of consideration of the people in the society in which we live, and reverence to their parents and ancestors, or because customs and traditions facilitate the necessary unity for the society to attain its ends or, finally, because its symbols represent the society itself. All this merits respect, but only in a delegated or participated manner. and such respect is subjected to a criterion of order with respect to the end, exactly equal to the one that society itself merits. That is, not all history should be respected nor all symbols nor all customs just because they belong to our fatherland, but only because they are good.

Nowadays, those who exalt patriotism from positions contrary to or alien to Catholicism, invariably transfer its object from the men and the society with which we have contracted the debt on which patriotism is founded, to its cultural, symbolic, artistic or folkloric epiphenomenons. Thus, Sánchez Dragó showed off a supposedly patriotic virtue when he said: "be it on record that, philosophically, I remain stateless (...) but I cannot remain indifferent to the tentative to dismantle all that a country [such as Spain] has been over many centuries. I would also be enraged if that were to be done to India, to Japan, or to other nations."[8]. And the same thing happens with Pérez Reverte who, not for uttering many a vulgarity and swearword ceases to defend an aesthetic and pedantic patriotism, incoherent and selfish.

What's wrong is that such tendency has frequently impacted traditionalist writers, who sometimes place the immediate and direct object of the patriotic virtue in the traditional customs, the history or the land. When Saint Thomas speaks of the virtue of piety towards the fatherland, he mentions nothing of that sort, so scarce is the role he attributes to them. He only mentions society, its men and its government.

Let´s venerate all those things, which our nation makes it easy for us to do. Because liberals and socialists, when they wish to express pride in their fatherland can only resort to such futile motives as soccer victories, of which we Catholics could vaunt no less. But we do not need them, as we can pride ourselves of the most glorious feats which any nation has accomplished toward the reign of Christ and His Church, while progressives of all sorts have no glory to pride themselves in our history, lest it be the myriads of foreign-favoring vileness or the hunting of defenseless priests and nuns which they have committed in the last few centuries. But let us do it with the consciousness that all that is consequent to the love we owe to the current men in our society, and with the consciousness that the culture, the customs and the traditions that are in accordance with the ultimate end of man and society.

3) Substantivization of the fatherland. A third way of diverting patriotism arises from how the fatherland is conceived. I am not going to talk about the formation of modern nationalities or of the State, a matter regarding which there is an abundance of quite good writings by notable traditionalist thinkers. The fact is, that the political community, by virtue of complex historic changes has come to be identified with what is called nation nowadays. That is, fatherland and nation (terms which can be separated or identified as done, albeit with some distinctions, Mella himself) are, according to this, Spain, France, and England, Such neatness and rigidity in the conception of the object of piety cannot be found in Saint Thomas. Such virtue is exercised, according to him, with respect to parents, blood relatives, compatriots and Government, enumeration which remains open to the diverse successive community forms which culminate in kingdoms, empires, or Christendom.

The transient and accidental circumstance of the formation of what we call nations in the last centuries, which are political formations crystallized, centralized and closed to themselves, has influenced in a pernicious manner in patriotism conceptions more or less proximate to traditionalism. I refer specifically to the thinking of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who substantivizes the fatherland, conferring to it an immutable essence and a kind of separate and eternal existence [9], which through the State turns it into a principle and a focus of any political and social action. If cultural and folkloric patriotism pulls the radish from the leaves, Falangista patriotism puts the horse before the carriage. It suffices to consult the 'Norma Programática de la Falange' (Programmatic Norm of the Falange), the first point of which calls Spain a "supreme reality" [10], and which only in the next to last point remembers religion to concede that "our movement incorporates the Catholic sense — of glorious tradition and predominating in Spain — into the reconstruction of the nation" [11]. True, other possible readings can be made of José Antonio´s writing, and his position can be understood to be a reaction in face of the danger of separatism. No less a danger poses constructing doctrines to resolve concrete problems, without adopting the necessary distance and making the unavoidable abstraction. It is better to follow the example of Vázquez de Mella, whose patriotism does not fall behind that of José Antonio but does not lose sight of the place the fatherland has in the universal order, which is not described as a supreme reality from which the rest of the political principles follow, but as a reality where all elements of the Carlist trilemma converge. [12]

The reality of modern nationalities also seems to have influenced the identification of the State with the notion of the perfect society, which has been used so much in discussions about powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Neither the State nor the Nation is the only, nor the ultimate, society to which the patriotic duty is directed, understood outside of the historical conditions of modernity which have applied to them the notion of finalization or perfection. That idea of the perfect society, which includes that of its unity and of its independence, should be understood in the light of its end, not as an end in itself. The idea of perfection applied to society can be found already in Aristotle, but it was not the unity of a substance which cannot form a single substance with another, but it was the unity determined by the end of life in a community, which is to "live well" [13]. It is true that he conceived that end in a purely natural way and that in consonance with his historical circumstances he understood such perfection was present in the quite limited societies of various peoples which constituted Ancient Greece's city-states. Such a notion has been applied later to much wider societies, to the medieval kingdoms, and to the modern nations. But the essential is not unity or independence, but the attainment of the ends of the society, which is not reduced to the sustenance and natural perfection of men, but has been super-naturalized and universalized by Christianity by including it in the plan for the establishment of Christ´s kingdom on earth. This is why Carlism has insisted on the open character of the fatherland, which can be federated, can be included in empires or can tend to a superior unity, which was present in the idea of Christendom.

Here again, the ultimate criterion should be the order of the universe: the objects of piety are the societies to which we are indebted, beginning with the most proximate ones and extending toward even wider societies, without any a priori predetermined confine. Its boundaries are not prefigured in any unequivocal or definitive way but they depend on historical circumstances, they can be widened to form empires, but it is not impossible that, to fulfill their function and attain the common good, they may have to reduce themselves to more limited units. Separatism is a sedition when it seeks a particular good but destroys that good which is unity, for the sake of partisan interests or interested confrontations. But in themselves, they could be necessary to attain the common good. When Menéndez Pelayo said that, if Spain were to cease being a people of God, "it would go back to the kingdoms of the taifas", we tend to stress the loss of unity — which is bad — but much worse is that such kingdoms be of the taifas. that is, of Muslims or unbelievers. In the same way, the formation of superior units will undoubtedly be convenient when it is intended to achieve, in a better and more universal way, the end of society, which is in God; on the contrary, they should be rejected when ends are contrary to religion: Christendom would be desirable, not the European Union.

In short, patriotic piety proceeds from an extension, by an analogy of proportionality, from filial piety; and such extension comprises the diverse tiered societies, up to that whose rule encompasses our life, and has no other governments above it. Where our patriotic obligation extends to, is a matter of fact; now, as patriotic virtue includes the obligation to collaborate with the common good, and especially that of defending the unity of the fatherland, conflicts can arise between attaining the common good, rightly understood, and the unity in fact of the fatherland. In such conflict, the solution of which would be a matter of prudence in each case, the criterion that should prevail, as in all others, is the ultimate end of man and not the unity of the substantivized nation, as occurs in the fascist conception. The unity and the independence are good if they are directed toward the true common good, but it is not an absolute good. This is why from the traditional point of view, that expression of Calvo Sotelo "Spain, better red than split" is inadmissible; taken out of context it could not be more unfortunate.

Understand me properly. I believe that Spain, despite having lost commonality in its conception of a good, and despite its unity appears to be maintained by a state of degeneration, should be defended in its unity and independence. But we have to keep in mind that, in the unpredictable political Babel in which we live, that is not the ultimate good, to which the common good, understood in a Christian way, ought to be sacrificed.

4) The stateless traditionalism. The last error which I wish to point out arises from what could be described as the dissolution of the patriotic duty among Catholics. According to my interpretation, that duty is extended to all societies to which we belong, and culminates in the highest of those societies, the government of which has real power over us, legitimate or not. We have with respect to those societies the ordinary obligation to contribute to the common good and the accidental duty to attend to its extraordinary needs. In our case, this actualizes, in my view, in the extraordinary duty to confront with the means we may have at our disposal and with due prudence, those illegitimate regional, national or supranational that are above us. We have to oppose them with no less enthusiasm as against an external enemy which attempted to harass us or conquer our fatherland from abroad.

However, we see that this patriotic duty not only is not fulfilled by Catholics but they deny having it. Two distinct errors have contributed, as I understand it, to the large majority of Catholics' failure to perceive the extraordinary patriotic obligation to confront these internal enemies which deviate our society from the end toward which it should be directed. The first proceeds from the modernist contagion suffered by the ecclesiastical authorities, and of the consequent doctrine of independence of the temporal order with respect to the spiritual. The slanted Maritainian interpretation of the separation of powers, admitted by many ecclesiastical hierarchs, the decisive theoretical support of the latter to democracy; their subsequent negation to make amends after the disastrous results of such teaching; the recourse of masking the same posture with the empty rhetoric of positive secularity, all this has emptied of armies all organizations which intend to fulfill such patriotic duty. And thus, when, among Catholics spreads the alarm for the future of our fatherland, the only reaction which has commonly taken place is to vote for the PP, with great satisfaction on the part of the best bishops.

But there is yet another posture, erroneous to my understanding and scarcely condemned, which does not appear among the followers of progressivism, but among traditionalists. This error arises from believing that the fatherland extends itself only to the point where the commonality of ends conforming to Christian doctrine reach. Let me explain myself: to some, we belong only to the community of those who accept the traditionalist doctrines, and for this reason try to live in the bosom of those small traditionalist societies, with the healthy intention of preserving themselves from and their relatives from contagion by the world hostile to Christianity in which we live. They are ready to emigrate if things get bad in Spain, and only intend for the rest of their neighbors, in their view definitively lost, to respect their community, but without feeling obligated to defend the society in which we have been born, In other words, there are numerous traditionalists which get to maintain in practice and without knowing it, the doctrine of communitarianism, which at the end is a quite comfortable form of liberalism. They should not forget, however, that he who wants to save his soul may end up losing it.

It marvels seeing how so many punctilious Catholics, incapable of killing a fly or stealing a penny, faithful fulfillers of their duties of state and of their religious duties, move not one finger, give not one euro, or take the most minimum pains for the fatherland, in these dark hours it is going through, with which they commit, in my judgment, a sin of omission similar to that of abandoning the parents in their moments of need. Worse even, according to many, because, as Aristotle said, "the city is by nature anterior to the family and to each of us" [14]

Source: Comunión Tradicionalista

Notes:

[1] ECO H., “La Edad Media ha comenzado ya”, in Eco H., COLOMBO F., ALBERONI F. y SACCO G., La Nueva Edad Media, C. Manzano trad., Alianza, Madrid 1973.

[2] Cf. the monographical issue of Catholica review, titled “Personnalistes et communatariens” (nº 97, 2007) and AYUSO, M., “La metamorfosis de la política contemporánea, ¿disolución o reconstitución?”, Verbo 465-466, mayo-junio-julio 2008, pp. 521 ss.

[3] SAINT THOMAS, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 80, a. 1, co.

[4] SAINT AUGUSTINE, City of God, l. X, chap.1

[5] SAINT THOMAS, , S. T., II-II, q.101, a 2 co.

[6] S. T, II-II, q. 101, a. 4, ad 1

[7] “Those who foment, approve or make possible the rupture of the Catholic unity of the Spains are destructors of my fatherland”, says Elías de Tejada (“La pietas en Santo Tomás de Aquino”, in Santo Tomás de Aquino; hoy, Speiro, Madrid 1974, p. 103).

[8] El Manifiesto.com, 11 de abril de 2007

[9] “Spain is Irrevocable. Spaniards may decide about secondary things; but about the essence itself of Spain, they have nothing to decide (…) Nations (…) are foundations with self substantiviization” (PRIMO DE RIVERA J. A., Textos de doctrina Política, Delegación Nacional de la Sección Femenina de F.E.T. y de las J.O.N.S., Madrid 1966, p 286).

[10] Ibid., p. 339

[11] Ibid., p. 344

[12] VÁZQUEZ DE MELLA J., Obras completas, Junta de Homenaje a Mella, Madrid 1832, t. XV, p. 239

[13] Pol. I, 3, 1252b 28; cf. II, 2, 1261a 18 ss.

[14] Pol. I, 2, 1253a18. Cf. ELÍAS DE TEJADA F., op. cit., pp. 102-3.

The Christian Constitution of the States

The Christian Constitution of the States

A review of Miguel Ayuso's 'Constitución Cristiana de los Estados'

by JuanFernando Segovia

Taken from: http://almenablog.com.ar/libro2.html

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

What sense is there in wondering about the Christian constitution of the States when the pontifical magisterium seems to have abandoned the doctrine for half a century already; when Catholic philosophers and jurists consider it antiquated vis-a-vis the incontrovertible benefits of liberal democracy? Is this doctrine a relic of the past, a museum piece, outdated, sterile, inoperative? To the apparent «yes» that a hurried reader would readily blurt out, we respond with a firm «no.» Not because we may be collectors of antiques, or have a taste for the exotic, but because the problem has unquestionable validity and actuality: the Catholic religion is now seen by many as a threat to democratic pluralism and to the secular State, and this is why a «healthy laicism», the separation of Church and State, religious pluralism and the fundamentalist base of religions are debated unendingly. A case in point is the Habermas-Ratzinger dialogue, the echoes of which still rumble.

Miguel Ayuso's book is welcome for reviving the question and for presenting it in the proper terms for current discussion. Because what is at play is the eternal link between «Religion and society» (chapter 1) and the anti-Christian intentions of the revolution, with the systematic de-Christianization of societies, just as the magisterium had denounced it all throughout the nineteenth century and later up to Pius XII. But these convictions — the mandate to build a Christian society and the historical coming about of the anti-Christian revolution — have been called into question by the post-conciliar teaching, so that it is necessary to ask ourselves again. «Does a Catholic political doctrine exist?» (chapter 2), that is, shall we go back to the foundations of the social and political doctrine of the Church and observe their evolution, to re-found the doctrine, re-establish it on its bases, which are no other than those of the Christian political order. Which is tantamount to recalling the jurisdictional rights of the Church on political matters, the natural and Catholic rights (pages 48-49), sustained on the general principles of the natural order which affirm the necessary cooperation between the Church and the State (pages 51-53) and the Catholic impossibility of grounding societies on vanities or heresies.

On reviewing the traditionally maintained foundations which support a Catholic doctrine of the State, and contrasting them with the post-conciliar teaching of the Church, another question strikes us: «Has the Catholic political doctrine changed?» (chapter 3). Penetrating inquisitively in a disturbing terrain, full of unease for the tradition and its faithful, because of that firmness and obligatoriness which Pius XII had preached (page 55) little has been left. Ayuso reconstructs the history, concurrently with the appearance of the so-called «sociological Christianity» and the militant advance of laicism which, in order to save its faith in the society of masses — if you wish to put it that way — reneges of Christian civilization, detaching the moral solution from the political solution (page 62). How can there be a Christian society without a Christian State? how can the separation of the Church and the State on the one hand, from Christianity and society on the other be avoided? Such are the inconveniences which Ayuso finds in the doctrine of the Church after Vatican Council II, with its primacy of the pastoral (the prudential), the tactics and strategies, over the principles; which produces a confusion of the thesis with the hypothesis of the Catholic State, of the doctrine with the practice; all that dressed up in a new demo-liberal language which lets Maritain's influence shine through, and is confirmed by the loss or renunciation of the pontifical power to correct and penalize the error.

This is how «The problem of the Catholic State, today» (chapter 4) would seem not to be a real problem, rather, it is presented to us as a political and intellectual anachronism; Catholic unity has been liquidated, as modernists had intended to do, as Maritain proposed; and instead of a Christian society we ended up with a «counter- Christendom», term coined by Marcel Clement (page 86). To rescue the foundations of the Catholic political doctrine is the task undertaken next by Ayuso: theologically, founded on the tendency to unity, which is the hope of the Church, and is contained in the theology of Christ the King; philosophically, as the liberal (and democratic) interpretation of religious liberty is in contradiction with the need of a public orthodoxy to affirm the pillars of any society; and sociologically, as it is necessary to establish the social conditions that allow men to live the faith; that is, without a Christian society a Christian nation is impossible: From any of these arguments, the moral and religious pluralism contradicts the traditional Catholic teaching, which affirms an «invariable morality of the political order», that is, the moral law and its religious dimension as «internal constituent of civil society» (pages 100-101).

Particularly painful is the breakdown of the Catholic State tradition in Spain (chapter 5); that Christianitas minor  which gave America the Faith as a unique distinction of evangelization, and the constitution of a political community. The struggles of the nineteenth century and the civil war of the twentieth failed to deprive Spain of its unique Catholic profession, until the 1978 constitution, as Ayuso demonstrates, liquidated this heritage, introduced religious pluralism, and with it democratic immanentism and consensualism. The case of Spain now shows what Europe exemplified since 1789, that religious breakdown leads to moral disarming and, after this, to the dissolution of the common good and the dismantling of any kind of communal living (page 115).

To conclude the book, Ayuso adds a chapter to analyze the passage «from laicism to secularism»; that is, the image, the sensation, the ideological impression that the era of aggressiveness against the Church has passed, and that we, in post-modern times, have entered a benign, respectful, ecumenical, tolerant, picturesquely agnostic laicism: what we call secularism. The problem provides the occasion to recall that, beyond the swerves and massaging of the modern State, popular sovereignty and democracy are nothing other than «casting the original sin into the plural» as per Jean Madiran's brilliant expression (page 121), and then ratify that the social doctrine of the Church, above a merely worldly doctrine, is a response to the modern world, which reacts or replies as it affirms «the Kingdom of Christ over human societies as the single condition for its just ordering and its progressing and pacific life», as Ayuso affirms (page 122). If the Church seems not to recognize this truth of the magisterium, it is because it is part of the problem, not of the solution; that is, secularism has taken a hold in the Church itself, as is demonstrated in the 2005 letter from John Paul II to the French bishops, which completely subverts the doctrine expressed in the Encyclical Vehemente nos of Saint Pius X, very near the centenary of its issuance.

After this quick reading, passing from chapter to chapter, the opening question returns at each moment, almost confirmed in one answer: the doctrine of the Catholic state is pretended to be antiquated and irremediably moth-eaten. Its sociological necessity and its philosophical truth have yielded to the demands of the present time, to the point that the Church no longer sustains it, and John Paul II erased it from his Compendium. Why, then, insist upon it? Well, for the same reason. Because it has been forgotten, and, on erasing it from memory, societies and the Church itself have gone astray. And ultimately, which is no small matter, because it has been mandated by Our Lord; because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Old and the New Testament affirm the kingship of Christ, it is a truth of faith to which we cannot renounce.

El Nacimiento del Marxismo Cultural

El Nacimiento del Marxismo Cultural

 Cómo la Escuela de Frankfort Cambió a los Estados Unidos 

Por Tyler Durden

Tomado de:http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-12/birth-cultural-marxism-how-frankfurt-school-changed-america

Traducido del inglés por Roberto Hope

Los años 1950's fueron un época simple, romántica y dorada en los Estados Unidos.

Las playas de California, los suburbios y el estilo. Se publicó La Rebelión del Atlas, se formó la NASA y Elvis zarandeaba a la nación. Cada año, de 1950 a 1959 vio nacer 4 millones de bebés. La nación estaba en la cima del mundo en todos los campos.

Fue una era de gran posperidad económica en la Tierra de los Hombres Libres.

Entonces, pues ¿que pasó con los rasgos americanos de confianza, orgullo y responsabilidad?

Las raíces de la decadencia de la cultura occidental son muy profundas, habiendo germinado por primera vez hace un siglo. Comenzó con un clan abigarrado de ideólogos dentro del movimiento comunista de Europa. Ahora se le conoce como la Escuela de Frankfort, y sus ideas han prevertido a la sociedad norteamericana.

Cuando los Resultados Fracasan, Sólo Cambia la Teoría

Antes de la Primera Guerra Mundial, la teoría marxista sostenía que si la guerra se desencadenaba en Europa, las clases trabajadoras se levantarían nuevamente contra la burguesía y crearían una revolución comunista.

Bueno, como es el caso con mucho de la teoría marxista, las cosas no salieron tan bien. Cuando la guerra se desató en 1914, en vez de iniciar una revolución, el proletariado se puso sus uniformes y se marchó a la guerra.

Luego de la guerra, los teóricos marxistas comenzaron a preguntarse "¿Qué fue lo que falló?

Dos muy prominentes pensadores marxistas de la época eran Antonio Gramsci y Georg Lukács. Cada uno de los dos, por su parte, concluyeron que las clases trabajadoras de Europa se habían cegado por el éxito de la democracia y el capitalismo de Occidente. Razonaron que hasta que ambos fueran destruídos, una revolución comunista no sería posible.

Ambos, Gramsci y Lukács estaban activos en el partido comunista, pero sus vidas siguieron caminos muy distintos.

Gramsci fue encarcelado en Italia por Mussolini, y murió en la cárcel por su mala salud.

En 1918, Lukács fue nombrado ministro de cultura de la Hungía bolchevique. En esa época, Lukács se percató de que si la unidad familiar y la moral sexual se erosionaran, la sociedad podría ser fragmentada.

Lukács puso en marcha una política que intituló "terrotismo cultural," que se enfocó a estos dos objetivos. Una parte principal de la política era enfilarse hacia las mentes de los niños mediante lecciones que los animara a ridiculizar y rechazar la ética cristiana.

En esas lecciones se presentaba a los niños material sexual gráfico y se les enseñaba una conducta sexual libertina.

Aquí, nuevamente, la teoría marxista no pudo afianzarse en el mundo real. El pueblo se enfureció con el programa de Lukács, y él tuvo que huir de Hungría cuando Rumania la invadió en 1919.

El Nacimiento del Marxismo Cultural

Todo permaneció quieto en el frente marxista hasta 1923, en que el terrorista cultural se presentó a una "Semana de Estudio Marxista" en Frankfort, Alemania, Allí Lukács conoció a un rico marxista llamado Felix Weil.

Hasta que Lukács se presentó, la teoría marxista clásica estaba basada únicamente en los cambios económicos necesarios para derrocar el conflicto de clases. Weil se entusiasmó con el ángulo cultural de Lukács sobre el marxismo.

El interés de Weil lo llevó a financiar un nuevo centro de estudios marxista — el Instituto de Investigación Social. Posteriormente habría de ser conocido simplemente como la Escuela de Frankfort.

En 1930, la Escuela viró el curso bajo su nuevo director, Max Horkheimer. El equipo comenzó a mezclar las ideas de Sigmund Freud con las de Marx, con lo que nació el marxismo cultural.

En el marxismo clásico, los trabajadores del mundo estaban oprimidos por las clases gobernantes. La nueva teoría era que todo mundo en la sociedad estaba oprimido psicológicamente por las instituciones de la cultura occidental. La escuela concluyó que este nuevo enfoque necesitaría de nuevas vanguardias para provocar un cambio. Los trabajadores no eran capaces de levantarse por ellos mismos.

Como lo habría de querer el destino, los Nacional-socialistas llegaron al poder en Alemania en 1933. Era un mal momento y lugar para ser judío y marxista, como lo era la mayor parte del profesorado de la Escuela. Entonces, la Escuela se mudó a la Ciudad de Nueva York, bastión de la cultura occidental en esa época.

Viniendo a América

En 1934, la escuela resucitó en la Universidad de Columbia. Sus miembros comenzaron a ejercitar sus ideas en la cultura norteamericana.

Fue en la Universidad de Columbia donde la Escuela afiló la herramienta que habría de utilizar para destruir la cultura occidental: la palabra impresa.

La escuela publicó mucho material popular. El primero de éstos fue Teoría Crítica.

La Teoría Crítica es un juego de semántica. La teoría era simple: criticar cada pilar de la cultura occidental — familia, democracia, derecho natural, libertad de expresión y otros. La esperanza era que cada uno de estos pilares se desmoronara bajo presión

Después siguió un libro del que Theodor Adorno fue co-autor, La Personalidad Autoritaria. Re-definía las perspectivas tradicionales americanas sobre el papel de los sexos y la moral social como "prejuicio." Adorno las comparó con las tradiciones que llevaron a que el fascismo surgiera en Europa.

¿Será sólo una coincidencia que el insulto al que recurren los políticamente correctos en nuestros días es "fascista"?

La escuela promovió su viraje fuera de la economía y hacia Freud, publicando obras sobre la represión psicológica.

Sus obras desgajaron a la sociedad en dos grupos principales: los opresores y las víctimas. Argumentaban que la historia y la realidad eran moldeadas por aquellos grupos que controlaban las instituciones tradicionales. En esa época eso en cifra significaba varones de ascendencia europea.

De ahí, arguyeron que los roles sociales de los hombres y las mujeres eran debidos a diferencias de género definidas por los "opresores." En otras palabras, el género no existe en la realidad sino es meramente una "construcción social"

Una Coalición de Víctimas

Adorno y Horkheimer regresaron a Alemania cuando acabó la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Herbert Marcuse, otro miembro de la Escuela, permaneció en América. En 1955 publicó Eros y Civilización

En su libro, Marcuse argumentaba que la cultura occidental era inherentemente represiva, porque renunciaba a la felicidad por alcanzar el progreso social.

El libro proponía la "perversidad polimorfa," concepto elaborado por Freud. Planteaba la idea del placer sexual fuera de las normas tradicionales. Eros y Civilización se tornaría muy influyente en dar forma a la revolución sexual de los 1960's.

Marcuse habría de ser quien contestaría la pregunta de Horkheimer de los años 1930s: ¿Quién sustituiría a la clase trabajadora como la nueva vanguardia de la revolución marxista?

Marcuse pensaba que habría de ser una coalición de minorías — negros, mujeres y homosexuales.

Los movimientos sociales de los 1960s — 'black power,' feminismo, derechos de los homosexuales, liberación sexual — le dieron a Marcuse un vehículo singular para diseminar las ideas del marxismo cultural entre el público general.

Marcuse publicó posteriormente Tolerancia Represiva en 1965, cuando los movimientos sociales en América estaban en su apogeo. En él argumentaba que la tolerancia de todos los valores e ideas implicaba la represión de las ideas "correctas."

Fue aquí que Marcuse acuñó la frase "tolerancia liberadora." Llamaba a la tolerancia de todas las ideas que provinieran de la izquierda pero intolerancia con aquéllas de la derecha. Uno de los temas dominantes de la Escuela de Frankfurt era la intolerancia total de todo punto de vista que no fuera el suyo. Ese es el razgo básico de todos los creyentes en la corrección política hoy en día.

Para citar a Max Horkheimer, "La lógica no es independiente del contenido"

Recordando las palabras de Winston (No ése)

La Escuela de Frankfort ha tenido un impacto profundo en la cultura americana, Ha remoldeado a la homogénea Norteamérica de los 1950s en la actual nación dividida, plagada de resentimientos.

Esto, a su vez, ha contribuido a la innegable descomposición de la unidad familiar así como a la política de identidad, feminismo radical y polarización racial en los Estados Unidos.

Es difícil decidir si la cultura actual es más como la del 1984 de Orwell o la del Mundo feliz de Huxley.

Jamás uno que detenga una tendencia populista, el 'establishment' político de los Estados Unidos ha abrazado por completo las ideas de la Escuela de Frankfort y las ha impuesto sobre la sociedad norteamericana a través de la des-educación pública.

Barack Obama y Hillary Clinton, los baluartes del progresismo, son ambos discípulos de Saul Alinsky, un marxista cultural dedicado.

Y es así como vivimos ahora en una sociedad hipersensitiva en la cual los memes sociales y los sentimientos han rebasado a la realidad objetiva y biológica como determinantes principales del bien y del mal.

La corrección política es una guerra contra la lógica y la razón.

Para citar a Winston, el protagonista de la distopia de Orwell, "Libertad es la libertad de decir que 2+2 = 4"

Hoy en día, Norteamérica ya no es libre.

Song of Fatherland Love

Song of Fatherland Love

by Paul Verlaine

Translated by Roberto Hope from a Spanish version made 
from the French original by Father Leonardo Castellani.

To love the homeland is the first of loves,
and it is the last one after God;
if it is crucified and unfeigned,
becomes a single love, not two anymore.

To love the fatherland, even to risk one's life
in the pursuit of the homeland´s common good,
withstanding the upwellings and the furious winds:
Such is inscribed to the credit of God.

God who cannot be seen, the inscrutable God;
of everything that's good, obscure abyss,
perceptible through Faith alone 
blind as blind may be.

Cannot love, despite how much of Him he speaks,
he who from the bottom of his icy self
is unable to love what he can´t see.

Systematic Principles of Humanist Theology

Systematic Principles of Humanist Theology

by Cándido Pozo

Taken from InfoCaótica

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

The systematic framework of humanist theology can be reduced to three principles. Perhaps its exposition may, at first sight, result too abstract, We will look, however, at the extensive range of its vital consequences.

1. The starting point is formulated by stating that «God is not an object». Naturally, the phrase would be acceptable if what was intended to convey is that God is not a thing, but a personal being. But in the humanist theology milieu, «God is not an object» means that God cannot be the direct object of our acts because God is «the wholly other». It is interesting to note that the German translation of Robinson's «Honest to God» was titled «Gott is anders» (God is something different). This implies that, when we conceive God and think of Him, we actually construct an idol. Our intent to address God directly, upon presupposing the previous structuring of this «idol», entirely different from God, would lead us to a kind of idolatry. The topic of idolatry in this sense has been promoted extensively by humanist theologians. In this manner, however, they ignore the distinction between imperfect knowledge and false knowledge. Saint Paul has insisted on the possibility of knowing God from its creatures (Rom. 1, 20). Undoubtedly, this knowledge is imperfect, but not false. Let us not forget the doctrine of analogy: because my knowledge of God is analogical, God is always greater than my representation of Him. but such representation affirms something which is true. When I attain the face to face vision, my previous knowledge will be enhanced, but not in a manner radically discontinuous, but as a step which was necessary for my ascension.«Deus semper maior» is the title of a well-known work by Przywara; yes, God is always greater than what my knowledge tells me of Him, But let us not talk of God as the wholly other, since, if this assertion were to be taken seriously, it would lead us to relegate God to the realm of the unknown.

2. But, going back to the principles of Humanist theology, it is clear that, if human capacity's horizon is limited by what is human, and God lies beyond that horizon; only the incarnation gives us the possibility of loving God. The direct intent of loving Him had led us to love an idol. But in the incarnation, the first possibility is given us of loving God by loving a man, man Jesus, with human love — the only kind of love man is capable of giving — then we can start loving God, who has identified Himself to be in personal union with Him.

3. Since then, this human attitude before Christ — human love at bottom — is turned into the fundamental Christian act. Humanist love, human love of neighbor, would be the central attitude of Christianity.

Consequences of these principles

In these fundamental principles the essence of humanist theology can be synthesized, The consequences of the system are grave. We shall limit ourselves to enumerate them briefly.

1st. Logically, the specifically religious act, to the extent it is directed to God Himself, loses its primacy. Actually, its very possibility is blurred regarding a God which always lies beyond our categories and our efforts. Maybe this disappearance of the value of the specifically religious act has some relationship with the current tendency to replace formal prayer with a virtual one: to abandon prayer directed to God and substitute it with service of neighbor.

2nd. This first step having been taken, demystification becomes a program. Why continue cultivating a world of the sacred, when our intents will turn into something of an idolatry, that is, the cult of the idol which our categories construct? God would be wholly other and wholly different from that idol. One may wonder if there is not some relationship between this mentality and a certain anti-sacramentalism which has begun to invade us. The demystification postulate has become programmatically so radical, that it reaches liturgy itself, in which man starts to be of greater interest than the worship of God [...]

3rd, Upon God's disappearance from our horizon, a temporalist translation is made of Christianity. It is clear that the Christian who takes his faith seriously is conscious of a series of obligations in the social and political realms. But one thing is this, and quite another is to present these sociopolitical activities as if they held in Christianity the first plane or were specific to it. However, it is evident that, once the plane referring to God is placed in parenthesis and substituted by a humanist love of man and by procuring its human welfare, the sociopolitical comes first because it is so among merely human concerns. It can be understood in this perspective that a theologian of secularization such as Harvey Cox can get to utter the opinion that «theology is, before anything, political». Without getting to emulate Cox, among Catholic humanist theology theoreticians, it is an unswerving conviction to attribute the effort of building the earthly city a value of direct influence in the preparation of the kingdom of God, in spite of the New Testament´s insistence upon the idea of the rupture between the present and the future world. and the description in Apoc. 21, 1 ss. of the New Jerusalem as a gift of God which comes from above, and not as a reality prepared directly by the earthly accomplishments in a more humanized world.

4th, On becoming primary in Christianity the concern for the edification of the earthly city. the idea of priesthood enters in crisis. Why receive the holy orders if the fundamental mission of Christianity can be equally accomplished becoming ordained or not? I would say that it can be accomplished better without becoming ordained. The cleric who insists on working in the sociopolitical field can easily come in conflict with the hierarchical structures; without doubt, much more easily than the layman [...]

5th. On the other hand, the «God wholly other» would never be expressed by our categories. Our dogmatic formulas would thus become terribly relative. This relativity of the dogmatic formulas assumed and, being moreover human love the essence of Christianity according to humanist theology, to it the ecumenical problem is set forth in entirely novel terms. What sense would the inter-confessional differences of doctrine have? Its solution would be simple, let's unite in love and dispense with doctrine [...]

6th. But the logic of the System goes further. If the essence of Christianity is the authentic human love, wherever that love takes place, true Christianity is there. The theory of the anonymous Christians then arises. That theory does not deal with what is the common doctrine of the Catholic Church only. Certainly, no Catholic theologian questions that God may save the infidels of good will by ways unknown to us, leading them to that minimum of faith which is required to be saved. The way the matter is set up by humanist theology is different, it consists in assuming that any pagan who loves his neighbors in a humanistic way is for that fact an anonymous Christian. Pagans, massively considered, which means in their immense generality, would already be Christians without knowing it. It is not possible to convert them but from anonymous Christians into reflecting Christians. One may wonder whether, conceiving missions such a manner, it is worth making the effort of doing missionary work, with all the sacrifices it entails of abandoning family and homeland. Or is it intended to go on mission not to take there anything specifically Christian, but to work in the development of the peoples? Will then be there a hope that our mission should interest as such, and not for what it has in common with all of the humanitarian movements? That pagans of good will can be saved is one thing, but quite another is the fact that the fullness of the salvation means can only be found in the Catholic Church; both propositions need to be maintained for a right understanding of the concept of mission [...]

7th. If the good act does not touch God, neither will the evil act. The humanist theology will have to revise the concept of sin that way, which it can no longer conceive as an offense to God.

8th. But revising the concept of sin induces a reduction of the field of morals. Only what causes damage to someone else may be considered a sin. The amputation by this means of great sections of the field of morals can easily be perceived. It is interesting to recall in this context that the prophetic preaching in the Old Testament is directed very primarily to a sin which causes no damage to our neighbor: idolatry. even in the case where no scandal is caused on someone else.

I believe it is difficult to deny that most of these criteria are present in the current atmosphere and, by the way, widely disseminated. They are found frequently in persons who are entirely ignorant of the theoretical principles from which they derive. But this should not surprise us. The phenomenon is quite normal. How many Germans, even those who vibrated with the Nazi ideals, had read Nietzsche, whose works, however, were the philosophical support of National Socialism? How many Communists have read so voluminous a work as Karl Marx's Capital? In all of these cases, what in the theoretical works are abstract principles is disseminated by means of slogans. Likewise, many of the enumerated criteria, which are a consequence of the principles of a humanist theology, bear the structure and form of slogans. And the slogans have by themselves an efficacy much beyond the principles from which they proceed and in which they may be grounded; even on separating themselves from those principles, the criteria lose their nuance and become more rigid and radical.

Taken from

Teología humanista y crisis actual en la Iglesia (Humanist theology and the current crisis in the Church). In: Daniélou-Pozo, Iglesia y secularización (Church and secularization), 2ª ed., BAC, Madrid, 1973, pp. 61 y ss.