The Fruit without the Root
Tradition, of itself, is inadequate to justify itself. A tradition can only be justified, or, if unsound, criticized, from its own roots.
Of late, more and more of our agnostic or atheist conservative brethren, seeing the confused if not diabolical current state of the world, and foreseeing it fate if current trends continue, confess that the secular philosophy of the classical liberalism of the Age of Reason seems woefully inadequate to mount as robust defense against the Seven-Headed Beast nihilist philosophers, dogmatic subjectivists, cultural vandals, puritanical sex-deviants, socialist plutocrats, totalitarian anarchists, and pro-jihad atheists, variously referred to as Progressives, Postmoderns, Pervertarians, Wokesters, Critical Race-Hustlers, Cultural Marxists, and Morlocks.
Public men of letters including such figures as psychiatrist Jordan Peterson, mathematician James Lindsay, and ancient Akkadian emperor Carl Benjamin, with a degree of reluctance more or less, have admitted with a degree of candor more or less that only the Christian tradition embedded into our laws and customs stand a chance of fighting the foe.
These men admit that Christian tradition alone is robust enough to fight the Antichrist. But they are secular men, and godless. They see the fruit but doubt the root. Such is their conundrum.
These men, and many others, have observed that the opposition is not a political movement, but a cult, motivated by religious zeal, and cannot be opposed effectively by any opposing political movement.
One of them, James Lindsay, has a very detailed and insightful analysis of the origin, means, and motives, of the Seven-Headed Beast, and can explain why no political policy can oppose a jihad.
He explains that the mind virus of Wokeness is a variant of Gnosticism, which always promises to solve the seen imperfections of any way of life, not by opposing that way, but by accepting it, granting it axioms, affirming its maxims, and then merely changing what the maxims mean. Wokeness is philosophical ju-jitsu, using the opponent’s own strength against him.
Marxists and Cultural Marxists merely adopt this Gnostic strategy for their program of economic and cultural demolition.
Gnostics always promise to improve and evolve the target religion, institution, or way of life, not by abolishing its foundations, but by expanding them until they encompass the direct opposite of whatever was their original meaning, or original purpose. Hypocrisy is not a lapse or misgiving of this approach, it is the goal. Counterproductive action is not an error, it is the means to allure the unwary to acting directly against their stated aims. The goal is not to murder a man, but to lure him to suicide, first spiritual, then mental, and finally physical.
So, for example, in the name of evolving the religious toleration of the free exercise of religion, the ju-jitsu asks that all religions be treated with equal courtesy and respect, including barbaric religions which, as a matter of doctrine, preach and teach that the free exercise of religion is a sin.
Both civilized and barbaric religions are asked, then required, in the name of civility to cease all proselytizing public signs of worship, but, of course, only the civilized religion is civil enough to do so. Bibles are removed from schools, public monuments, public discourse.
Hence religious tolerance destroys religion.
So, for example, in the name of academic freedom, the ju-jitsu asks that all skeptical thoughts be treated fairly and examined rationally, including the thought that thoughts are irrational epiphenomena. This is the thought that stops thought. Hence academic freedom destroys the academy.
Again, in political matters, it is asserted to be a natural right to assert that no natural rights exist, and protests are assembled to agitate and riot against the right to assembly. The right to petition the government to redress grievances is used to petition for the abolition of such rights. The Misinformation Board defines all criticism of the Misinformation Board as Misinformation.
In economics, the ju-jitsu is to assert that the science of economics proves that capitalism deters rather than produces prosperity. Economists preach that true prosperity can be found only in the nationalization of all means of production and the rationing of all goods and services, wages and prices, by an arbiter, which, in effect, abolishes all economic activity.
In morals, the assertion that morality must be voluntary allows the arbiters to claim that it imposes on the volition of others to preach or teach morals, or to condemn immorality. All moral codes, of the Christian or of the savage cannibal, are decreed to be equal. Relativity is the absolute demand. Lack of toleration is intolerable. Thus it the only permitted morality is the morality that promotes immorality. True morality, so it is claimed, demands anarchy, antinomianism, and sexual perversion of ever more freaking degree, including the genital mutilation of the young.
In art, the assertion that beauty is arbitrary allows the arbiters to reward scatological ugliness and jarring distortions to be beauty, and, in an aesthetic version of Gresham’s Law, the ugly in art museums drives out the beautiful.
So in all cases, the Gnostic ju-jitsu merely says it is upholding religious freedom, civil rights, economic prosperity, freedom of the academy and of art, and, in fact, it is demeaning and destroying all these things.
So one must justify freedoms, rights, prosperity, the good, the true and the beautiful, by means of something more fundamental than these things.
One must justify political reasoning by moral reasoning, which is justified by epistemology, which is justified by metaphysics.
But the sole metaphysical reasoning that can justify morality and law is theological reasoning. Absent God, morality is manmade fiction, and rights are matters of human convenience and prudent, subject to change or abolition by human connivance.
To rest on tradition in the West, that is, to rely on Christian revelation in the matter of laws and morals, while dismissing revelation as valid, is illogical. Such as stance for a time will allow one to support a Christian crusade opposing the powers and principalities of Hell, but one cannot fight a foe one cannot name. How do you fight the devil if you dismiss the devil as superstition?
Nor can one direct nor aid such a fight wholeheartedly: let those secular conservatives who oppose transgender genital mutilation of children answer whether they oppose sodomy, and why. Let those secular conservatives who support the free exercise of religion say on what grounds Satanism, human sacrifice, or jihad shall be abolished, much less no-fault divorce, sodomy, contraception.
The drawback of resting on tradition for the basis of morality, is that it offers no justification for overthrowing the evils of nations engaged in evils of longstanding tradition. Should early Christians have opposed the institution of exposing unwanted children in ancient Rome, or opposed gladiatorial games?
They could not claim tradition was on their side: the abolitionists were the innovators. Should we or should we not have opposed suttee in India, footbinding in China, polygamy in Arabia, human sacrifice in Mexico, sodomy in modern America? If so, on what grounds?
And if you say that English tradition opposes slavery, but you would like the sodomy to be legal, then you are not basing your morality on tradition, or, at least, not on the mainstream of tradition.
Consider: The Buggery Act introduced by Henry VIII was in 1533, affirming traditions based on Mosaic law as old as Alfred the Great, Lord Mansfield’s Decision outlawing the slave trade was in 1772. The tradition against sodomy goes back to the Bronze Age, whereas the tradition against slavery goes only back to the Enlightenment.
In sum, while it is prudent to assume any ancient practice or belief likely to be sound and true, it is, in fact, an informal logical error to assume all are. To reason thus is, in fact, the informal logical error of argumentum ad verecundiam.
It is an error seen embraced even by men otherwise prudent, for the only other options are first, to treat all traditions with skepticism, as the progressive does, or second, to accept the root of our traditions.
Not just in law or morality, but in any school of endeavor, the current generation accepts the traditions of their forefathers even when changed circumstances require the traditions to change. There are two type of change: organic and inorganic, authentic or inauthentic, creative or destructive.
Organic, authentic and creative change happens within the tradition and according to the mainstream direction of the tradition. By and large, this is a matter of pruning corruptions and returning to first things. It was, most obviously, the example seen when the Messiah criticized and corrected the Pharisees. His innovations, while startling, were in keeping with the original, and were indeed the flowering of it.
In organic, inauthentic, and destructive change is the program of the Gnostic, the Cultural Marxist, the radical. The Radical, regardless of what he says, seeks destruction, not progress. He seeks to fell the tree root and branch, altogether, burning down the house and paving the rubble flat to erect a new edifice on an utterly different plan.
The ju-jitsu here operates by taking some one branch or limited case of the general tradition, elevating that branch to supreme priority, and using it as a cudgel to jar and mar the crown and the other branches into nonbeing.
All heresy is inorganic, elevating one side-principle above the main principle, in order to destroy the whole, as when Reformers use the Bible written by Church Authority to destroy Church Authority, or Muslims use the God of the Abraham, the God of the Bible to denounce the Bible as corrupt, and condemn the People of Abraham to death.
As if a judge, allegedly relying on precedent of English and American Common Law, were to rule that the US Constitution were Unconstitutional because it violated the Commerce Clause.
So, here. Relying on tradition while rejecting the root of tradition is heresy: it is taking one branch or part of an organic whole out of context to use it as a tool for one’s own ends.
One cannot argue that the Ten Commandments should be obeyed in Christian lands, while arguing that the Ten Commandments are a forgery perpetuated by Moses. Likewise, one cannot rely on the authority of revelation while denouncing the epistemological theory that revealed truths are reliable.
To uphold the fruit of tradition, moral and mental integrity demands one uphold the root of tradition.
The root of the West is the Church, and only Church teaches serves as a prudent and coherent basis for challenging traditions, western or eastern.
The first way leads to madness. The second requires humility and baptism, which men otherwise prudent are often too proud to embrace.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
