Answering a Question or Two about the Seldon Plan
"Mr. Wright, my questions were quite real–" I apologize for assuming otherwise, and ask you to forgive me.
"When you disparage people who claim to know the future, and who are True Believers, why does it not occur to you that your own views fall within those characterizations?"
Because I am a Christians as well as logician. The Seldon Plan as outlined in the Book of the Apocalypse, if taken literally, foretells tribulation, war, famine, plague, earthquake, darkness, woe, horror, deception, anguish and near-extermination for the faithful and everything we hold dear. It is only the very end, after time itself halts, that a victory will be known. If not taken literally, or if taken to refer only in elliptical language to the events of First-Century Syria, it offers even less clear a picture of Things to Come.
Perhaps it is God’s will to destroy the West for her sins; perhaps He shall preserve it. Any Christian who thinks he knows the plan of God is a fool.
"I did honestly wonder if you were inciting your readers to embrace internecine slaughter as the necessary rational response to an implacable evil."
That is because you did not read the words I wrote, but preferred to read into them your own meaning, not mine. Ironic, considering that you just now recommended a book, SCIENCE AND SANITY, that emphasizes the correct use and interpretations of words.
"I took your hypothesizing an "intelligent progressive" (ie merely delusional) to fall within a pattern I’ve noticed in several of your posts: of simply knocking down your perceived polar opposite, leaving the implications unstated."
Because you did not read what I actually wrote.
The pattern I notice when I speak to my ‘perceived polar opposites’ is that they invent a fictional apparition of me in their minds, attribute to me whatever might be needed to exaggerate or misconceive my point, and then don’t address the point. They end up talking about me rather than about what I said, or, in your case, talking about a pattern noticed in several posts. You thus do not say that this article was merely knocking my opposition, indeed, you do not talk about the article at all. I find that ironic, and not at all in keeping with the precise and scientific thinking prized by Null-A’s.
I did not keep any implication unstated. My point was that Progressivism as a philosophy suffers a neurotic fixation, what philosophers call a category error, what Null-A’s call a semantic disturbance in the organism, which renders them unable to face and deal with the reality of an enemy that does not negotiate and is not deterred.
Let me state my implications again — The Progressive philosophy is by its nature fixated on the overthrow of oppressive domestic enemies, always associated with a social-political-economic power structure: it is concerned exclusively with revolution, never with national defense. An enemy that is a non-oppressor, or, in other words, a foreign enemy, is a non-category to the Progressive. He does not have words or ideas to deal with such a concept. He can deal with it, if it all, only elliptically. To admit a foreign enemy exists legitimizes the state the Progressive seeks to overthrow. Progressivism innately implies cosmopolitanism and one world government.
This conclusion applies to Progressive people only in the way and to the degree they accept and have internalized on a subverbal level (for it is not a matter of rational conclusion) the philosophy I have outlined.
I call it essential to their philosophy because it occurs in all strains and variations of Progressivism know to me, and does not appear, or does not necessarily appear, in political philosophies like Libertarianism, Republicanism, Monarchism, Imperialism, Caesaropapism, et cetera. It is a philosophy that sprang from the industrial revolution and is a reaction against it, based on the emotional or false-to-facts association between the so called "power" coming from successful free market customer service and coercive political power.
If my arguments seem simplistic, this is partly because the matter is simple, and partly because I trust my readers to fill in the appropriate caveats and qualifications where common sense and common experience says they should go.
"Also, I was under the impression that you did consider yourself a sort of shepherd; in fact you’re only telling people to awaken and take up arms!"
You perform an agile mental backflip here. The comment about shepherds and sheep was an analogy between the silent majority and their political and cultural leaders. The analogy was to show that mere numbers of a non-fanatical multitude has no effect on history, none at all, compared to the effect produced by a well organized and highly motivated ruling minority. It simply does not matter that most Russians were not Communists. It made not difference during and Cold War, and it makes no difference now. It simply does not matter that most Germans were not Nazis. It made no difference during World War Two and it makes no difference now. History would have been the same had they been twice the number or half the number. They changed nothing.
Likewise, while ‘Progressives’ like to point out that not all Muslims are Wahhabists, and not all Wahhabists are Jihadists, this point, albeit often made, is meaningless. The silent majority of non-Jihadi Muslims, unless and until they organize themselves into effective opposition to the Jihadists, will make no difference in history. Their passive support or indifference to the Jihadi among them is all that is required for the Jihadi to flourish.
So when I asks a Progressive "How do you deal with an implacable enemy?" his answer, to the degree he is a Progressive, is to say that enemy is either not the enemy, or not a danger, or is only a temporary danger, due to the fact that History is on our side. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union the True Believers continue to believe history is guided by a scientific law which must and which shall grant victory to their party. It is a non-falsifiable belief: a neurosis.
In other words, and unlike me, they believe in the Seldon Plan. The only problem is that Seldon Plan is make-believe.
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.
