Posted on 10/31/2023 8:25:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In his seminal 1984 essay, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” Czech author Milan Kundera describes Central Europeans as cultural descendants of ancient Rome and the Catholic Church who were “kidnapped and displaced” by the USSR after World War II. The hostages longed to break free from the talons of communism, shedding blood and tears for forty years. However, when the Iron Curtain finally fell, they were shocked to find that the West had lost interest in preserving all that had made its civilization exceptional.
Post-communist countries like Hungary and Poland adopted liberalism as the state organizing logic only to discover that they had replaced the old totalitarian system with a new (albeit less murderous) one.
Liberal universalism, proselytized by left-wing Western governments with totalitarian zeal, evokes the USSR’s mission to engineer the New Soviet Man as the archetype of a uniform citizenry across its constituent socialist republics and satellite states by erasing ethnic, cultural, and sociological diversity. Indeed, globalization and supranational governing institutions strive to render nationalism obsolete by negating the unique identities of nation-states.
As Western nations have become increasingly de-Christianized and morally relativist, virtue-making institutions that foster family, community, and tradition have waned. A March 2023 Wall Street Journal/NORC survey quantified the shocking extent to which U.S. societal attitudes have deteriorated. Since 1998, there have been drastic declines in importance of patriotism (70 percent to 38 percent), religion (62 percent to 39 percent), childbearing (59 percent to 30 percent), and community involvement (47 percent to 27 percent). The importance of money, however, grew from 31 percent to 43 percent.
By apotheosizing individual rights and personal autonomy — bereft of self-sacrifice, mutual duty, and civic virtue — unbounded liberalism is bent on vanquishing all remaining forms of collective identity.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Sadly, I think the Poles just voted out the government that was protecting them from foreign “refugee” INVADERS! Just in time for a potential GAZA wave.
They want people to be able to be hyper individualistic with regards to pronouns or sexual kinks but completely conformed in any thing that matters.
Where you live, what you drive, support for the current thing, religion (the lack thereof), or political beliefs and nothing but absolute allegiance to the ruling caste is acceptable.
That’s right.
.
Nobody wants ‘individualism - either “conservative” or “liberal”. They only want conformity with their beliefs and for the government to punish anyone doing things they think are wrong. ‘D’ or ‘R’, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight. The test of someone actually supporting “individualism”, as with ‘free speech’ is how they react to other people doing that which they think should be illegal or taboo. There are an equal percentage of hypocrites on either side of the ideological spectrum (and it’s a bloody high percentage).
A person only believes in ‘freedom’ to the degree they STFU about people doing things they don’t like (obvious exception of people being deprived of life, liberty, or property by force or fraud).
The opposite of diversity is unity.
“bereft of self-sacrifice, mutual duty, and civic virtue — unbounded liberalism is bent on vanquishing all remaining forms of collective identity.”
Uh??
It’s just the opposite. Collective (group) identity is what they push most.
They don’t want individualism or personal responsibility.
What they are bereft of is common sense values - practical “rules for living” that have been learned through the school of hard knocks over the centuries and have proven successful. What we call traditions. They want to jettison them and replace them with insipid, half baked wishful thinking - bumper sticker slogans.
This statement is only true taking into account the "American" point of view where progressives wear the label of liberalism like Silence of the Lambs.
Most everybody claiming to be a liberal in the U.S. is in reality a progressive who hates liberalism.
For a while. But Poland voted out that government.
It was sort of like over here. All kinds of people, especially the young, came together to vote out the government they were told were the “bad guys,” without a clear agreement on what they wanted or understanding of what they would get instead.
Poland's strict abortion laws, galvanized the women vote over there. Polish women have become "Americanized".
It's complicated.
Nobody wants ‘individualism - either “conservative” or “liberal”. They only want conformity with their beliefs and for the government to punish anyone doing things they think are wrong. ‘D’ or ‘R’, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight.
Individualism can mean self-reliance, or freedom of opinion, or lifestyle autonomy.
Liberals or progressives aren't keen on economic self-reliance or true freedom of opinion, but they do support lifestyle autonomy -- having abortions, divorcing more easily, choosing a gender, changing sexes -- because it weakens older traditions and authorities.
In weakening those traditions and authorities and independent institutions, lifestyle autonomy also has the effect of promoting greater dependence on government. So it's a win-win for those on the left.
What they don't understand is they are being used by real Communists, so they can tear down the society, so the Communists can "Build Back Better". The Communists understand those things undermine society, and therefore will banish them once they gain power.
No matter how hard the media and the Dems want to make this the top election issue here, the GOP needs to resist.
I don’t think the new government is going to suddenly start letting in Muslims. They know the vast majority of Poles are dead-set against it.
You bet.
She and I do agree on that. She has been here long enough to have seen my point on that policy.
“moral squalor”
Well put.
Good
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