Last Crusade 49: Serving Two Masters
We turn to the question of how to undo the corruption afflicting Wall Street, Big Tech, and the Corporate Culture in general, which is gathered under the general heading of the Marketplace.
Of the several battles in the Last Crusade, this is the least difficult to wage and the most difficult to accomplish, and that for two reasons. It is also, of all battles, the one where we are most likely to betray ourselves, and sabotage ourselves.
The battle for the marketplace is not difficult to wage, because, despite all appearances, those who gain wealth from the free market are the servants, not the masters, of their customers. To be specific, they are servants of the customer’s will, as expressed by their customer’s money.
All we need do to bring them to heel is to express our displeasure by withholding our patronage. They must do as bid, or go broke, when patronage dollars will flow toward merchants less displeasing to the general will of the patrons.
The two reasons why withholding our patronage is difficult are, first, oft we cannot, and second, oft it is futile when we do.
One cannot boycott what one does not patronize. Boycotts require unanimity of the patrons, to forswear the same products across the same market at the same time, and require that the merchant not have some other source of income.
When there is a monopoly or near-monopoly, as in the case of social media platforms, boycotting is fruitless. In this case, conservative alternatives are rare and small, and the option of abandoning the platforms altogether, in effect, cedes the bullhorn and soap box of publicity to the opposition: exactly as they would wish. For the Tech Giants have no need to harass, quell, gag, or expel whoever has left of his own free will.
Of the difficulties of gathering patrons in groups and parties large enough to act in concert, little need be said. The Enemy has discovered how to do it, and how to do so effectively.
And, again, when a lucrative source of alternative income is available, the loss of our patronage means little or nothing. For example, if ball teams display Marxist slogans, or allow athletes to show public disrespect to the Flag during the playing of the national anthem, this involves the loss of some of their American audience; but any public criticism of the Chinese Communist Party results in the loss of an audience much larger and much more lucrative, and, as it happens, and audience under the command of a single touchy despot, who can open or shut the market in his empire with a single word. A despot need not fret about getting all the patrons of Chik-Fil-A food or Disney films to act in concert: one leash leads to the collared necks of countless millions. Such is the free market advantage of the communist system.
Another example is Marvel Comics, who have routinely published politically correct garbage of the most unreadable and foetid sort for half a decade, and who, by rights, should have gone out of business. But the media giant who owns the publishing house expects no income from printed comics. The purchase was merely to ensure continuity and control of valuable intellectual property. The company expects to make money from movies and electronic games based on the characters. The actual printed comic books themselves can lose money hand over fist with the giant company never noticing the loss.
Likewise, with famous franchises such as STAR WARS and STAR TREK. No matter how many millions and billions are frittered away on putrescent politically correct films meant to scold and insult the audience rather than entertain, the company is large enough not to need income from those sales. It can make up the loss on toy sales, for example, or overseas sales.
And, finally, when the main motive of those who run the business is to serve the cause of Critical Social Justice, which, for them, is a jihad of religious dimensions, the mere loss of money is not a sufficient deterrent to halt the behavior.
Please note that all these are cases where, for one reason or another, the sovereignty of the customers has been undermined by law or regulation.
In the case of social media, a special provision of the law (47 U.S.C. § 230, a Provision of the Communication Decency Act) allows the social media editor to act as an editor, that is, to select what speech to allow and to forbid on his privately owned platform, just as a newspaper editor selects which letters to print or not print on his privately owned editorial page. But the same provision renders the social media editor immune from lawsuit, in the same way that, for example, the telephone company bears no legal responsibility for speech sent over the telephone wires, in any category of speech not protected by the First Amendment, such as slander, fraud, false advertising, pornography, or conspiracy.
In the case of Marvel and Disney, it is an anachronism of the Intellectual Property law that makes no provision for the ownership of characters and backgrounds, only the expression itself, which leads to the uneconomical result of running a printing house at a loss to prevent the characters from falling into the public domain.
In the case of the Chinese despots, it is political consideration of international trade that places the bloodthirsty tyrants in a position to have more influence over the American merchants than the Americans.
In the particular case of China, the Reds have and will reveal to the world their intentions, and have been faithfully following their playbook, or so I have been told, to undermine and overcome the West. As in any other form of warfare, the Last Crusade when fighting for the soul of the free market in America must be aware of the enemy motives, tactics, and resources: for they are surely aware of ours.
There are exceptions, but, in general, no merchant grows to the size and influence to render itself immune from the sovereignty of the consumers, unless there is a law or regulation, that is, the coercive power of the state, creating the condition which make this unnatural immunity possible. I call it unnatural, because the only alternative to a mutually voluntary hence mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services is an involuntary hence one-sided one.
Now, my libertarian friends have a logical argument that, in the absence of any such meddlesome regulation by the state, the free market should be allowed to operate according to the sovereign will of the consumer, as each individual man sees fit. To the libertarian, any negative externalities arising from the sale of addictive drugs, or pornography, or other material whose use causes no direct, physical harm to a specific neighbor, are insufficient justify laws to ban them.
Be that as it may: Whatever the merits or demerits of this argument in the abstract, the Last Crusade facing the battle for the marketplace in this particular land and generation cannot bind itself to honor the sanctity of private property above the needs of victory in the culture war.
Child pornography on Netflix, to use a topical example, must be punished both by formal force of law and by the informal but equally influential pressure of public opinion.
To use another example, one of the weapons used by the Enemy is the vulgarization of speech and conduct in the public sphere. Censorship of swearwords is one necessary step to cleanse society of corruption, as well as reformation of manners and temperance and self-control in all fashion of vices. These are a few of the long list of things the Libertarian formulation of radical individualism would render sacrosanct.
In the battle for the marketplace, the Last Crusade faces a significant danger from disloyalty within our own camp: for many an honest conservative, regarding the private property as sovereign and sacrosanct, cannot or will not countenance the use, for example, of antitrust laws, or censorship laws, or tariffs to hinder the owners of private property from engaging in communist conspiracy.
My establishment GOP friends ask: If Nike Shoes or Disney films wants to make a deal with the Red Chinese, or Youtube or Facebook wants to smother conservative voices, engage in dirty political tricks, is it not their right, who may dispose of their own private property as they will?
Such scruples are misguided.
My liberal friends will utter warnings against the excesses of the free market in vain, since they are in the position of the Boy who Cried Wolf. My liberal friends only warn against Big Business, ironically, when it stands in opposition to Big Government. I do not recall even one denouncing the takeover of General Motors by Barack Obama.
Unfortunately, far too many of my establishment GOP friends will utter warnings against Big Government only when Big Business has not captured the regulatory agency sent to oversee it, or when the Military- Industrial Complex is not creating business for itself by involving the nation in overseas wars.
The free market is one of the things that has been corrupted and taken from us. Large corporations routinely hire diversity officers to promote the goals, language, and attitudes demanded of the false religion called political correctness. I cannot recall the last company, except, perhaps, Chik-Fil-A, which took any steps to promote Christianity.
In this generation, the corporate culture receives no applause and wins no consumer goodwill for spreading the spirit and the lessons of the Ten Commandments, chastity, temperance, prudence, peace on earth and good will toward men.
But, on the contrary, any company not burning a pinch of incense to Caesar, and bowing down to Baphomet, in the form of racial set-asides, and public displays of loyalty to sexual perverts, toleration, multiculturalism, environmentalism, anti-racist racism, and all the local icons, idols, godlings and unclean spirits the whoremongers calling opinion leaders demand, they will be sued.
All the scruples from my Libertarian and Establishment GOP friends urging hesitation to use all legal and moral means ready to hand to drive back the swamp of toxic corruption infecting the Corporate Culture are based on idolatry. Namely, by making an idol of the free market, these misguided souls place the free market above the Church, and place Mammon above Christ.
The Christian man knows that freedom of speech is his natural right, for the gift of reason comes from the grace of God. Our Lord spoke the cosmos into being with his word. By His word He blesses and curses.
Our speech is likewise a divine gift, not to be smothered nor muzzled by worldly despots, but divine command restricts the gift to lawful uses: both gossip and false witness, rash oaths, adoration of devils, dishonorable words against father and mother and many other forms of speech, most notably using the Divine Name in vain, are forbidden.
Likewise with the free market. God granted man dominion over the earth, and set him to till the soil and herd the cattle. Private property is a natural rights, which means, the right to exchange property, gift for gift, or deal for deal, is also natural.
But, as with the gift of speech, we are not free to use it and abuse it in any fashion the wicked heart imagines. If we elevated this one good thing above all other good things, and bow the knee to it, as the Libertarians do, it becomes an idol, namely Mammon. And it ceases to be a servant, but becomes a master.
And a cruel and heartless master indeed is Mammon.
It is indifferent, as far as the Last Crusade is concerned, whether a given corporation is actively and enthusiastically promoting the various forms of sexual malfunction, racial hatred, morally relativistic nihilism, grotesque nature-worship, and socialist psychedelic hallucination that form the modern pantheon of political correctness, or whether a given corporation is merely terrified of law suit and bad publicity.
No matter what the case, as long as the Civil Rights Act is not repealed, it will be used by the Enemy to menace corporations into compliance with their vision of the world: a gender-neutral, non-Caucasian, non-Oriental, non-Jewish utopia, where no one has any rights, and no one has any race, any nation, any family, but all loyalty of every kind is gathered into the Glorious Leader, against whom it is both unlawful and blasphemous to speak.
The establishment GOP vision of the world, as best expressed in the pages of the National Review, of a nation with a strong military but open borders, engaged in free trade with all foreign powers, both democratic and communist, run by an informal plutocracy of ever-dwindling number of ever-larger monopolies, is so close to the Leftwing narrative of the evils of capitalism (which allegedly only their dystopia of socialism can solve), as to need no further remark from me. These are not conservatives and never were: this imperial political impulse arises in American history only after World War Two, when the collapse of the British Empire thrust the United States unwillingly into the role of the world’s policeman, a role we hate, and the role of savior and crusader against the inhuman monsters of communism.
The word “conservative” is misleading. In Europe, it means one who upholds the ancient regime of Throne and Altar: the bonds of aristocracy and established religion. In America, it is used, and should be used, to refer to those who uphold the values expressed by the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. We do not cherish these things because they are old, but because they are true. When, as now, the nation has drifted away from these principles, we demand immediate and radical change to return to them. In that sense, we are radicals.
Those principles allow for the free market, since no other form of economy is suited for moral and free men. Only servile and slavish men chase the mirage of free goods produced by a Santa-toysack notion of endless largesse from the public coffers. Only slaves believe in getting something for nothing.
But every principle is bound to and justified by the principles higher than it. Certain laws and restrictions are needed to prevent the abuse of the free market, and these come, not from the counting house of economics, but from the pulpit.
The nation was not founded by Pilgrims just to make money: indeed, the Plymouth Rock colony dabbled with communism for a year or two before rejecting it as unworkable. Virginia was settled by men who came seeking gold but finding tobacco, Maryland by Catholics fleeing oppression, and Georgia by criminals sent here as punishment. What they had in common was love of liberty. The nation was founded to be free, because Christians who know Christ, that is, who know the truth, must and should be free. That is what requires conserving.
In this case, if leftwing warnings about Big Business fall on deaf ears because all such warnings, in times past, were uttered as false alarms. Likewise, for all their absurd alarmism about ecological scares. This does not mean prudent men, seeing possible dangers from air and water pollution, ought not take reasonable and measured steps to mitigate those evils, and by force of law, if need be. Likewise, in a generation when the nation is under economic warfare from China, with the full cooperation and enthusiasm of traitors here at home, prudent men should see the danger and react to it.
Alas, among the very rich, there are very few conservatives. Usually, a hardworking father builds up a great corporation, and it passes into the hands of some empty-headed daughter, whose brain was washed thoroughly by the prestigious ivy league school to which he unwisely sent her, and being trained and subjected to Pavlovian conditioning, now entertains either mild or severe forms of Reality Derangement Syndrome, clinically known as Nihilism, or Leftism, or Wokeness, depending on its source.
Those of us who are among the rich or intending to become so must use their wealth for the Crusade, in much the same way, and for the same reason, that the poets and artists among us must use our talent.
All work that is honest work can be done to glorify God. A dishwasher, ditch-digger, or busdriver, is he does his work well, punctually, diligently, and honestly, reflects the character of the image and likeness of God, or, rather, of His Son, who is the Logos of the cosmos.
As magazines, publishing houses, movie studios go the way of the radio play as technology evolves, internet applications, platforms, and services should and must be funded by that rare honest millionaire willing to bow his head and pass through the eye of a needle. A new marketplace is opening up, and the Last Crusade must accept the opportunity and act on it.
When it works correctly, the old marketplace, as has been said, was controlled by the sovereign consumers. But that it not true now, even if it ever had been. That there is not a single magazine cover carrying a flattering picture of the First Lady, the most photogenic First Lady of all history, is a crime and a crying shame. But there is not a single conservative glossy on the market. The market is a sewer, flooded by garbage.
The millionaire class also controls the commanding heights of political donors, and philanthropic organizations and trust funds who pour endless streams of cash into far-leftwing, sinister, corrupt, and sometimes satanic movements, parties, and initiatives.
The way to fight this money is with money, publicity, and, when breach of law is present, law.
The donor class and fundraising system hitherto constituted incentivizes donors donating to those who will promote their self interests and class interests: Democrats who are idealistic will support the socialist ideals of the donor class, who, ironically, despise the capitalist free market that elevated their fathers to unimaginable wealth. The irony, however, is not so great as it may seem: nothing can unseat the ultrarich of their riches aside from competition in the capitalist system.
Capitalism, when allowed to operate, acts like the wheel turned by the pagan goddess fortune, who brings triumph and tragedy to whom she would. The wheel of fortune turns and turns, elevating some to pride and power, and casting others down. Those at the bottom may indeed yearn for the wheel to turn. Those at the top want it to stop.
To stop it, the rich turn to the powerful. “Regulatory capture” is perhaps the most polite term for the corruption that results.
This is not capitalism; it is cronyism. It is a political and economic syndication which has no obvious name. The closest term would be informal fascism. The rich fund and bribe the powerful and the powerful protect and rob the rich.
So what, in sum, should be the strategy?
We must enact changes to the laws to restore the sovereign buying power to the general public. This cannot be done to the military-industrial complex, whose health is war, because, by nature, the government is the sole customer of military material and ordnance, warships and missiles and fighterjets, and so on.
The other thing needed is an institution to lead boycotts, commanding enough votes and influence over a long enough period of time to express the will of the silent majority. Here we have a nearly insurmountable difficulty: the silent majority are silent for a perfectly good and understandable reason — politics has no immediate influence on their lives, or they do not seek hope and consolation from politics. Politics is not a church to them, as it is to the Left. For a man will only leave the comfort of hearth and home to march in protests, or organize boycotts, or run for office, or write for newspapers, if he is moved by an ideal larger than his own life, over an issue longer than one lifespan. Otherwise, a man will do what grants him reward, either immediate or delayed. There is no immediate reward in any of these things. Even a boycott of one’s pleasures is too much to ask merely for political goals.
The Church must be the standard bearer and permanent institution devoted to this, to organize, as she did since the time of Constantinople, continuous pressure against such abominations as gladiatorial games, slavery, pederasty, sodomy. But that requires the reform of the Church, and of all denominations, which is a long-term and difficult process.
The Marketplace can only be reformed as the culture itself is reformed, and this is a matter, like all battles in this crusade, which cannot and should not be fought with the hope of seeing any visible result in our lifetime: consider the disciple of Saint John, Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, who as a child sat in the lap of Christ. He saw all the apostles, the last living witnesses of Christ, martyred, and John himself assumed into heaven in a cloud of light. He could not have foreseen that one day Constantine would make Christianity legal, or that Theodosius would make it mandatory, or that Columbus would carry it to another world.
So are we. No living men will see the end of this great struggle.
Shall we reform the marketplace? We must begin with ourselves, in prayer and fasting.