The End of a Mad
Century
January 4, 2000
Well, the
Y2K apocalypse has failed to occur. By now we were supposed to be
devouring our children (or being devoured by them). The Third Millennium
is off to a smooth start.
The Second Millennium ended with a
pretty lousy century. Let’s hope we can put it behind us and move
on. The three men most often named as “Person of the
Century” — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Albert
Einstein — were benefactors, allies, and admirers of one of the
bloodiest men of the millennium, Joseph Stalin. It’s as if the three
most distinguished men of the Middle Ages had all been pals of Genghis
Khan.
Even the phrase “Person of the
Century” is a relic of the archaic feminist thinking of the twentieth
century. Obviously the most influential individual of any century is likely
to be male, but by the late twentieth century it was a breach of etiquette
— an ideological code of manners — to acknowledge such
things. As recently as this week I read an article arguing for homosexual
“marriage” — another example of the outmoded
twentieth-century attitudes some people still can’t let go of.
The twentieth century was marked by its
smug belief in its superiority to all earlier ages. It decided that the
immemorial morals and customs of mankind should be changed — as
if that were even possible. The state would be the instrument of
“building a new society” by means of force, propaganda, and
economic dependence. Tyranny became “liberation,”
degeneracy “progress.”
![[Breaker quote: Time to move
on]](breakers/000104.gif)
The
state’s new mission was to cut all roots in the past
that might enable its subjects to resist assimilation to the New Society.
Those who managed to maintain their roots were accused of treason,
reaction, racism, superstition, and hate. The state claimed to be
“scientific.” It acted in the name of “the
oppressed”: “the people,” “the proletariat,”
“the masses,” “minorities,”
“women,” and even sexual deviants (who were
“victims” of the traditional moral code).
The twentieth-century state denied God
and the existence of any stable human nature, both of which imply
immutable standards of right and wrong that might limit the authority and
power of the state. It claimed the power to eradicate all old laws and
replace them with new ones that suited its purposes. Even written
constitutions could be “reinterpreted” in keeping with the
demands of the New Society. Plain words whose meaning had never been in
doubt became “living documents,” arbitrarily endowed with
wholly new meanings by state officials.
Old sins like fornication, sodomy, and
abortion became new “rights.” Meanwhile, traditional rights
like property ownership were severely curtailed. Through the state, with
its boundless taxing power, some people could live off the productive
energy of others. This was called “social justice.” The
twentieth-century state became obsessed with preserving the natural
environment, even as it demolished the moral, spiritual, and cultural
environment of Christendom.
Artists, scholars, and philosophers
became enthusiasts of the New Society, hostile to the
“bourgeoisie” and “the middle class,” as the
remnants of traditional society were scornfully called. Obscenity and
obscurity, dissonance and ugliness, became hallmarks of
twentieth-century art. Popular art, still bound by the market, found
obscenity more profitable than obscurity, but rarely challenged the
premises of the New Society.
Education, controlled by the state,
became propaganda, called “consciousness-raising,” designed
to make children submissive units of the New Society. The idea of
“evolution” was adapted to teach children that the New
Society was the inevitable development of human history. The
mass-produced “intellectual” (the opposite of the traditional
independent scholar) became a new social type, devoted to the fantasies
of the New Society, which were called “ideals.”
Since the aims of the New Society were
fundamentally impossible, resistance continued and partly succeeded. God
and human nature still existed and asserted themselves through men like
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II, who struck chords in
millions and undermined the legitimacy of the New Society.
By the end of the century, men’s
minds were still entangled in the tattered delusions of the New Society.
But even “progressive” politicians found it advantageous to
pay lip service to Jesus Christ and human freedom. Mankind may yet
recover from the twentieth century.
Joseph Sobran
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