We are all these days looking for dialogue beyond the clap-trap of the talking heads who continue to re-direct the national rhetoric towards a post-modern hyper-focus upon that which they dare to call "practical" matters. Life in the now is the sumtotal of their reality. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow does not yet exist (at least not for them). Any discussion of eternity is as irrelevant to them as it is to cows. When men no longer acknowledge their own souls, or those of others, their conversation turns hopelessly banal and predicated upon an endless string of disjointed and incoherent minutia which they mistake for "real life."
American rhetoric, as distinct from the rest of the world's, traditionally focuses on "life more abundantly," and that depends upon a belief in timelessness, the great beyond, and the resident landlord of that realm who is the source of this universe. Indeed, it depends upon the conviction and resolution that this source has expressed itself in the person of Christ, His sacrifice, resurrection, and imminent return. Anything less will not philosophically hold the American dream together, let alone perpetuate it. Darrell Scott gets this, but does Congress? Did anybody back in the 1950's when ex-communist Whittaker Chambers wrote his book, and made a letter to his children the introduction of that book? He put the Cold War into a much larger context, outside the current decade, century, even millenium. It goes back to Eden and man's insistence on being his own god.
Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die -to bear witness-for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith that inspires men to live or die for it. . .
It is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God. It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in His image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God. In Chambers' explanation, the struggle of communism escapes the gravitational pull of minutia: It is not simply a vicious plot hatched by wicked men in a sub-cellar. It is not just the writings of Marx and Lenin, dialectical materialism, the Politburo, the labor theory of value, the theory of the general strike, the Red Army, secret police, labor camps, underground conspiracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the technique of the coup d'etat. It is not even those chanting, bannered millions that stream periodically, like disorganized armies, through the heart of the world's capitals: Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Rome. These are expressions of Communism, but they are not what Communism is about. Communism is one more expression of man's spittle on the face of his Savior and Creator. The message is, "We will punish you for making us free beings. We will rebel. That will teach you not to bring into being creatures who feel pain at their wrong choices. Let it stand as a command, from the creation to the Creator, to only make entities that are mindlessly happy and blissful, but never again free to choose." This is the lecture the secularists refuse to deliver for it would reveal the heart of the matter and open a real dialogue in which the People would be emboldened to snatch back control of the powers of the state, for themselves and their posterity. Can't have that. "Shut up about the metaphysical stuff! Keep the conversation 'on topic.' Stay 'practical.' That stuff is to be kept in church. Bring it out into the open, into the public square, and you are asking for the charge of 'shoving your beliefs down the throats of others.'" So far, the Gospel has been placed into a position of social disapproval. The next step is equating "I am the Way" with yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. And the church has mostly acquiesced. Go Darrell Scott! He speaks for the Truth, for the Way, for Life more abundantly, over "real life."
Edited by Roundhead 2009-04-08 11:00 AM
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