MY CRITICISM OF MODERNISM, by which I certainly mean the "modernism" of the 20th century but in which I include the earlier modernism of the 18th century and, really, according to context, sometimes include the 16th century, DOESN'T LEAD TO THE CONCLUSION THAT I WANT TO RECAPITULATE WHAT MODERNISM WAS A REACTION AGAINST.
I know that for non-Catholics and, also, for many Catholics it won't be appreciated that in my rejection of Catholic integralism, both the 19th century kind that was a reaction against "liberalism" of the 18th century and it's even more insane billionaire financed Ivy Leaguer wackjob neo-version , would certainly signal that I reject any idea of going back to any past.
I can't find the video in which he said it but David Bentley Hart did a two minute or so take-down of the current Catho-fascist version of integralism, including the criminally insane assertion that the ancien regime, from the French Revolution back was some golden age, literally what such integralists have based their clams on. In rejecting the products of the 18th century revolutions, including the slave-holder-financier framed U.S. Constitution I HAVE NEVER ARGUED FOR RETURNING TO ANY PAST, I HAVE ARGUED THAT WE HAVE TO MOVE ON FROM THOSE. Here's a rule to go by, Catholic neo-integralists are, to a person, total nut jobs and decidedly are not interested in the Gospel of Jesus.
The typical either-or style of "which side are you on" forced choice is generally wielded by nostalgic fascists or would-be lefty ideologues WHICH TOO MANY PEOPLE FALL FOR. It is a classic straw-man, false alternative style of assertion and argument in which too many People fall for defending one of those false alternatives by condemning the one they take as worse wastes generations of time. The old and ubiquitous practice of defending some pretty awful Stalinists who worshiped one of the 20th centuries worst mass murderers and oppressors BECAUSE OF THE AWFUL AMERICAN FASCISTS WHO MOUNTED THE RED SCARE has been one of the biggest wastes of time for the American would-be left. The Stalinists may have had some of their rights violated by the FBI, the House Unamerican Activities Committee and been slandered by Red Channels and other organs of the media, elite as well as gutter level, but they were certainly not heroes of equality and democracy and the left that held them up as that were lying as much as any anti-commies did.
It may have been when I read that asshole, Lester Cole's alleged memoir, Hollywood Red that I realized I'd been played for a fool, that I didn't have to choose his side or the side of those who testified to HUAC about the Communist Party, that I was free to hold all of them in contempt. I certainly realized I'd been played for a fool when the Soviet recordswere released proving that Julius Rosenberg had, in fact, been a spy for Stalin while he worked on the atomic bomb, that he was guilty on that account AND THAT DIDN'T MEAN I HAD TO BE ON THE SIDE OF HIS PROSECUTION AND HIS AND ETHEL'S EXECUTION. I didn't have to choose one side OR the other, I could reject them both. Since then I have found that instead of drifting right, I have actually become far more radically egalitarian and democratic. Instead of becoming a right-winger, like so many Trotsyites did or becoming a neo-liberal as several members of the "new left" did or someone who fell into the trap of the Democratic Leadership Council, I found that The Gospel, The Epistles, The Law and The Prophets are a far more radical and dependable left than the secular left is. That certainly doesn't mean that I look to any past from the Christian period or before that in the history of the Kingdoms of Israel or Judea as something to be recreated, if I'd been tempted in that direction the scandals of the history of "Most Christian Monarchs" or those recorded in the Jewish Scriptures would have warned me off of it.
So, to answer your question, No, I don't want to return to any past, I want to return to nothing but to go to a better future which, at least we can say this much for, it hasn't already failed. One which, unlike our Constitutional system, learns from the evils of the past in order to prevent them from happening again.
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