Be all that as it may, Western culture, everything which binds us together, which unites us in actually good ideas like political Liberalism, free markets, tolerance, the rule of law as an absolute principle, and the use of reason to negotiate and reconcile difference, is under attack, or perhaps more accurately, being subjected to targeted sapping by determined opponents.
I was dreaming last night of hordes attacking a museum of Western culture. I was guarding and protecting it, and succeeded for the moment, but the feeling was that of a Horde, such as that of Genghiz Khan, or Timur. Within our society, within our gates, within the halls of our best universities, people with hive-minds like those of any gang which has ever preyed upon any society with the simple goals of rape and pillage, proliferate.
Communism is really just the spirit of Timur, run through a rationalizing machine, a lie machine, and then generalized. It is antithetical to life, to human flourishing in all but the In-Group, and horrifically abusive.
I’ve been interacting off and on on Facebook with some undergrads at some elite schools, and even they literally assume that anyone who did not love Obama is an ignorant troll. They have no words for it, no category for someone who is both erudite and dissident.
It is hard to be optimistic about the future, when so many minds have fallen into darkness.
Still, we did elect Trump, as a last gap measure, and it does seem that people are waking up. That Jordan Peterson, to take one obvious example, is attracting so much positive attention among the young is encouraging.
And they NEED something like what he is teaching to thrive. This is the thing: this whole mob mentality, this herd instinct, IS antithetical to flourishing. It promotes continuous agitation, likely some social phobias–such as interacting with people who disagree with you–and a thirst for violence which even many of them recognize as unhealthy.