I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. William F. Buckley, Jr.[i]
One only has to look at the current elites of society, both political and cultural, to see people who have gained their position for perhaps no other reason than that they are rich, famous, and/or beautiful,[ii] rather than intelligent, hardworking, and morally upright.[iii] Dishearteningly, it appears that these fleeting characteristics are precisely why so many follow them.
One only needs to listen to the Hollywood crowd on a podcast or in a Netflix autobiographical exposé such as Taylor Swift’s. Although unbelievably talented she holds a cultural sway far beyond her intellectual ability to logically think through her ideas or speak without the expletives.[iv] Or listen to Ariana Grande’s suggestive songs about sex.[v]
It is these so-called “elites” that begin to mimic the lower classes in their dress, lives, and words. This trend has been noted by historians such as Toynbee and modern social commentators[vi] such as Taki Theodoracopulos put it so insightfully in his article “A Matter of Speaking”:
F—ing this and f—ing that have become the lingua franca of today’s celebrities. Needless to say, all this f—ing does is show how limited in brain power these freaks really are. Masters of the devastating retort these inarticulate vulgarians are not.[vii]
Yet, in the ever-grasping quest for “likes” the elites of modern society seek to both identify with and influence the hoi polloi of ordinary Americans. As the same as the court Romans began to mimic the dress and mannerisms of the barbarians from the wild north, so likewise do our culture “elites” in their words, dress and lifestyles mimic our own barbarians, as Schlossberg notes below:
In the fourth century, when the barbarians in the Roman armies began keeping their own name instead of adopting those of the Romans, the Romans, including the imperial court, began aping barbarian manners, customs, and dress. Thus, Toynbee endorsed Christopher Dawson’s observation that the mark of a culture’s last stage is not decay but syncretism. [viii]
If the telos of the modern cultural avatars is endless, unfettered expression by anyone with a website, one is left wondering about the value of that which is being expressed. What is being communicated but abstract ideas of the “good,” because those in power say they are good?
Again Taki is on point:
It all has to do with elitism, the kind practiced by ghastly lefties who write lies for The New York Times and spread nonsense when reporting the news on television. This warped and degenerate elitism wants the scope of teaching to be narrowed, for high standards of word use, elocution, and presentation to be done away with and replaced by “ordinary” speech—in other words, dumbed down to the level of the uneducated.[ix]
Yet the average citizens send their kids to public school where they are taught to mock the history and traditions of our country with the “lingua franca” of the day. Meanwhile, Bible studies are not allowed due to a misunderstanding of the First Amendment and its application to both speech and religion.[x]
Culture and Communication
Culture and communication; you cannot have one without the other because they are one and the same. Consider that words are merely an expression, a “communication” of culture “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or a population.”[xi] Equally, words are a communication of the internal values and norms that people live by and express externally in their daily lives.
Depending upon what is said or done, one can build up or tear down a society, through truth or deceit; either way it is the ideas that drive human action, as Mises notes below:
Any existing state of social affairs is the product of ideologies previously thought out. Within society new ideologies may emerge and may supersede older ideologies and thus transform the social system. However, society is always the creation of ideologies temporarily and logically anterior. Action is always directed by ideas; it realizes what previous thinking has designed.[xii]
In modern America, ours is a time of moral decay and confusion, and (assuming you are a “conservative” in general, or a Christian in specific) the culture war “threat” is a fait accompli, as they say. The “confusion” exists in a multitude of areas to be sure, but nowhere more clearly than in the realm of the communication of culture. In other words: language!
Useful Idiots?...
Today’s “elites” are those of recent creation through methods unfortunately employed in both the political and business realm. A willingness to be a figurehead accountable to the power behind the throne[xiii] that placed them there and to be nothing more than “doormen” that look nice, act nice, and say nice things to the public via the media[xiv] are the common stock of today’s leadership.[xv] The entertainment industry is little better, as they are called upon to speak “truth” to the hoi polloi that hang on their every word because, as sadly noted above, “they are rich, famous, and/or beautiful,[xvi] rather than intelligent, hardworking, and morally upright.” Never mind the lack of proper grammar, spelling, and sentence structure–plus the ubiquitous expletives.
Due to our modern technological abilities, there exists among people an ignorant bliss as to the effect on American society of unlimited access to all ideas (“expression and self-definition”), without the necessary discernment or understanding to determine whether said “ideas” be good or evil. Indeed, the ability to recognize “fool’s gold” from the “real thing” is not an issue of concern among the populace, not to mention Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook (now Meta). Zuckerberg incidentally, admitted caving to government wishes to silence people on his platform that they (“the gatekeepers” in government) didn’t like about the Hunter Biden laptop story.[xvii]
When it is all said and done, when words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom. When journalism and entertainment are guided behind the scenes to maneuver the unknowing citizens toward a certain social state of acceptance of decisions made ahead of time for them, the future cannot be good for that society.
Hopefully Tomorrow
Tomorrow is another day, as the saying goes, and we at Christian Liberty Homeschools are here to help you raise your children in the truth that will set them free from the anomalies of the day. May we live as the late William F. Buckley, Jr., once wrote: “I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.” Find us here: www.homeschools.org
Books on My Shelf:
Idols for Destruction:
Citations:
[i] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.
[ii] https://mises.org/wire/why-do-western-celebrities-usually-support-collectivism
[iii] “As we move toward the next century, a high proportion of people in the growing cognitive elite have been given little religious or moral education in the family. The commonest religion of the elite is an agnostic humanism. Many such families are themselves split by divorce, remarriage, and subsequent third marriages. The marriage pattern in Hollywood [who produce our “culture” via videos and movies – ERS] is not universal in the United States, but the cognitive elite in Euro-America has a high divorce rate, probably averaging a third or more. The children of these divorced parents seldom have a basic religious education and are aware of the variations of moral attitude between parents, stepparents, and step-siblings. If one compares the initial moral education of this group with that of an Irish or Polish village, the peasant education obviously provides much the stronger religious training of the two. A godless, rootless, and rich elite is unlikely to be happy, or to be loved. This inadequacy in the initial moral education of what will be the dominant economic group of the next century is likely to be reinforced by their life experience. These people will have the discipline of an advanced technical education, of one sort or another, to fit themselves for their new role as the leaders of the new electronic universe. But they will learn from that only some of the moral lessons that have historically been the framework for human social conduct. By the standards of Confucius, Buddha, or Plato (500 B.C.), St. Paul (A.D. 50), or Mahomet (A.D. 600), they may be morally illiterates. They will have been taught the lessons of economic efficiency, the use of resources, the pursuit of money, but not the virtues of humility or self-sacrifice, let alone chastity. Essentially most of them will have been brought up as pagans with a set of values closer to those of the late Roman Republic than to Christianity. Even these values will be highly individualistic, rather than shared. Societies, as we have argued, can only be strong if real moral values are widely shared. The advanced nations are already moving into the situation where many people will hold weak or limited moral values, others will compensate with fierce adherence to irrational values, and few values will be held in common across the whole of society.” James Dale Davidson & Lord Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997),p. 367.
[iv] https://www.netflix.com/watch/81028336
[v] Grande confirmed it herself during an interview at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, August 28, 2016: It's about having so much sex that you start feeling sore—and lose the ability to walk properly.
[vi] “The return of Western culture to its pagan past bears striking correspondence to the pattern of Toynbee’s typology of mimesis. He was impressed by the universal tendency to pattern cultural and economic institutions after those of other peoples. The direction of the mimesis is crucial. In primitive societies it is directed uncritically toward elders and ancestors. When a civilization is being formed, the mimetic focus shifts to creative people who command a following by reason of their pioneering activities and their accomplishments. One way to evaluate the future of a society is to determine the direction of mimesis. Who admires whom and on what grounds? Who seeks to be more like whom?... At the same time the formerly-dominant civilization begins imitating the various proletariats, the latter cease to emulate those people they formerly regarded as their betters, and return to their own once-despised traditions. In the fourth century, when the barbarians in the Roman armies began keeping their own name instead of adopting those of the Romans, the Romans, including the imperial court, began aping barbarian manners, customs, and dress. Thus, Toynbee endorsed Christopher Dawson’s observation that the mark of a culture’s last stage is not decay but syncretism.” Herbert Schlossberg, Idols For Destruction (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1983), p.268-9.
[vii] https://www.takimag.com/article/a-matter-of-speaking/
[viii] Herbert Schlossberg, Idols For Destruction, (Nashville, TN:Thomas Nelson, 1983), p. 268-9.
[ix] https://www.takimag.com/article/a-matter-of-speaking/
[x] Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
[xi] American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, (Houghton Mifflin Co.: Boston, 1982,85), p.348.
[xii] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, (Fox & Wilkes: San Francisco, CA; 1996, 4th edition), p. 188.
[xiii] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-rules-world-ed-straka/?trackingId=tuZW6QPRAmCuEKzvRhIyxA%3D%3D
[xiv] https://mises.org/wire/modern-information-control-state-intervention-and-mistakes-avoid
[xv] https://internationalman.com/articles/the-all-important-doorman/
[xvi] https://mises.org/wire/why-do-western-celebrities-usually-support-collectivism
See also: