By Mister FoxWe must understand the difference between a patriotic way of thinking and that of “Progressives” and “Internationalists.” Their ideological view is often based on a book and people are expected to refer to it and divergence from orthodoxy leads to being denounced or given correctional training. This happened in the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Cambodia under Pol Pot and in the West now under Political Correctness. This is a Marxist strain but it came in with the New Left under the guise of a new Liberalism. Even now well-meaning liberals promote PC without understanding its totalitarian nature.
This debate is contemporary Metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality. It includes the relationship between mind and matter, essence and attribute and fact and value. Metaphysics is the philosophical study of being and knowing. What is real, what is illusion; what is actually happening and what are political myths.
Progressivism encompasses Liberalism through to Marxism. They believe in abstract universals, we believe in concrete “particulars.” These type of Universals are abstract terms like humanity whereas a specific people is a particular. Abstract universalist thinking leads to intervention in the internal policies of other sovereign states. We concrete particularists are concerned with our own nation. We do believe in substantial universals which I will come to later.
Progressives erect a set of idealisations – what we are becoming, what we should think and how we should behave. Our human nature is fixed in the sense that we inherit genes, which give us our essence, but how we act it out or think is given form by our cultures and communities which themselves grew out of our collective psyches. We can not step outside what we are and where we belong. We are part of it and it is what makes us social beings .
The great Daily Telegraph satirist Michael Wharton aka Peter Simple used fictional figures to satirise this trait in his column. Dr. Heinz Kiosk embodied guilt: ”We are all guilty; Dr Spacely-Trellis “go-ahead” Bishop of Bevindon in the Stretchford Conurbation, progressive’s; Dorothy Dutt-Pauker “the Hampstead thinker,” who lived at Marxmount, embodied Bourgoise Socialism.
Wharton used to enjoy going for a drink in an ordinary pub which is “being” as opposed to “becoming.” It is contentment in one's culture and community not a constant striving to adopt a role created for us by progressives. We are social beings and it is the everyday pleasures in our communities in which we belong, that give us happiness. This respect for our everyday life leads to our duty to our families and responsibility for them, not to outsiders like the elites.
The word Progressive encapsulates the intellectual movement from the Enlightenment that led to the orthodoxy of the current elite. It has some common dogmas – like change being better than conservation and the belief that we are progressing to a Utopian future – The Brotherhood of Man, a classless society etc It originated with the Enlightenment idea of Progress which is related to the classical liberal belief in the “perfectibility of man” and a supposed God-like ability to transcend nature including their own human nature.
This debate is contemporary Metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality. It includes the relationship between mind and matter, essence and attribute and fact and value. Metaphysics is the philosophical study of being and knowing. What is real, what is illusion; what is actually happening and what are political myths.
Progressivism encompasses Liberalism through to Marxism. They believe in abstract universals, we believe in concrete “particulars.” These type of Universals are abstract terms like humanity whereas a specific people is a particular. Abstract universalist thinking leads to intervention in the internal policies of other sovereign states. We concrete particularists are concerned with our own nation. We do believe in substantial universals which I will come to later.
Progressives erect a set of idealisations – what we are becoming, what we should think and how we should behave. Our human nature is fixed in the sense that we inherit genes, which give us our essence, but how we act it out or think is given form by our cultures and communities which themselves grew out of our collective psyches. We can not step outside what we are and where we belong. We are part of it and it is what makes us social beings .
The great Daily Telegraph satirist Michael Wharton aka Peter Simple used fictional figures to satirise this trait in his column. Dr. Heinz Kiosk embodied guilt: ”We are all guilty; Dr Spacely-Trellis “go-ahead” Bishop of Bevindon in the Stretchford Conurbation, progressive’s; Dorothy Dutt-Pauker “the Hampstead thinker,” who lived at Marxmount, embodied Bourgoise Socialism.
Wharton used to enjoy going for a drink in an ordinary pub which is “being” as opposed to “becoming.” It is contentment in one's culture and community not a constant striving to adopt a role created for us by progressives. We are social beings and it is the everyday pleasures in our communities in which we belong, that give us happiness. This respect for our everyday life leads to our duty to our families and responsibility for them, not to outsiders like the elites.
The word Progressive encapsulates the intellectual movement from the Enlightenment that led to the orthodoxy of the current elite. It has some common dogmas – like change being better than conservation and the belief that we are progressing to a Utopian future – The Brotherhood of Man, a classless society etc It originated with the Enlightenment idea of Progress which is related to the classical liberal belief in the “perfectibility of man” and a supposed God-like ability to transcend nature including their own human nature.
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