On Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols

Father Edward Coyle once said:

"Normal people never accomplish anything."

This may be the one statement from a priest Nietzsche would agree with. Throughout his works, Nietzsche points out the power of nihilism throughout civilization. Throughout the Greeks, the Romans, and the German people, Nietzsche points out that society's hopelessness and decay drove excess. The truth of the matter is that, as a nation continues to survive, a divide begins to develop between political and cultural circles. Instead of asserting higher standards in education, Nietzsche was cautious of the qualifications of professors. Nietzsche insisted on the need to rationalize before proceeding on impulse, the ability to think critically, and the ability to debate rational thought. Instead, the insistence on Socratic dialogue allows weaker arguments more power than Nietzsche believes they are worth. Like a family that pretends the father never drank too much and the mother never had a nervous breakdown, Nietzsche sees the German people moving on as if their issues are all a bad dream they do not remember, even as they carry around the baggage of that dysfunction to this day. From Nietzsche's point of view, "immoralists" are the only ones who see the fragility of German nationalism and the sickness of western civilization. Such insights lead the reader to an interesting question: isn't it overt to go mad when everyone around is persistently trying to ensure that you fit into their idea of normal?

Nietzsche criticizes the German culture as unsophisticated, decadent and nihilistic, and shoots some disapproving arrows at critical French, British, and Italian cultural figures representing similar tendencies. In contrast to all these alleged cultural "decadence" alleged representatives, Nietzsche applauds Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides, and the Sophists as healthier and more active types. The book states the transmutation of all values as Nietzsche's final and most important project, giving a view of antiquity where the Romans for once take precedence over the ancient Greeks, albeit only in the field of literature.

Nietzsche asserts that the most intelligent seem to have shared a collective conviction that life is worthless throughout history. Nietzsche argues that this concept was not a symptom of a healthy society but one in decay. Nietzsche explains that philosophers such as Socrates and Plato shared a common physiological disposition to feel negative about life, which reflected the decay of the superior Greek culture that preceded them.

Nietzsche holds Socrates in particular condescension. Socrates, he believes, was subject to all manner of wickedness and lustful impulses and was a product of society's "lower orders." Nietzsche singles out two specific ideas of Socrates to prove his claim. The first is the interrelation of reason, virtue, and happiness. The second is Socrates's induction of the dialectic method to philosophy. Nietzsche thought that the dialectic allowed frailer philosophical positions and less sophisticated thinkers to gain too large a foothold in society. Nietzsche's program valued intuition over reason, but because of Socrates and the dialectic, Greek culture now became "absurdly rational."[i] A crucial part of Nietzsche's thesis is that "happiness and instinct are one," but reason stands in direct opposition to instinct. Ultimately, Nietzsche insisted that life's value cannot be estimated, and any judgment concerning it only reveals the person's life-denying or life-affirming tendencies.[ii]

In examining his day's German society, Nietzsche attributes any advantage Germans hold over other European countries to essential principled virtues and not to any cultural sophistication. Nietzsche accredits the decline he sees in the sophistication in German thought to prioritizing politics over acumen. The state and nation are in tension because one of the pair thrives at the other's expense.[iii]

Nietzsche also attributes the decline in German intellect to nuisances he saw in higher education in his day. First, Nietzsche calls into question the prerequisites of college instructors, insisting on the need for adequately educated educators. Educators, he argues, are vital to teaching three critical proficiencies: seeing (the ability to rationalize before proceeding on impulse), thinking ("Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned."), Moreover, rhetoric ("One has to be able to dance with the pen."). Second, he is critical of opening colleges and universities to all social classes because when stripped of its "privilege," higher education's eminence deteriorates. "All higher education belongs to the exceptions alone: one must be privileged to have a right to so high a privilege. Great and fine things can never be common property."[iv]

Nietzsche denies many of Plato's ideas, precisely that of Being and Becoming, the forms' world, and the senses' fallibility. Specifically, he does not believe that one should rebut the senses, as Plato did.[v] This concept goes against Nietzsche's ideals of human excellence in that it is a symptom of personal decadence.[vi] By decadence, Nietzsche refers to a fading of life, vitality, and an embrace of feebleness. In Nietzsche's view, if one has accepted a non-corporal, static world as superior and our sensory world as inferior, one has adopted an abhorrence of nature and a hatred of the physical world. Nietzsche suggests that only one who is insubstantial, ignoble, or weak would advocate for such a belief.

Nietzsche goes on to link this obsession with the non-physical field to Christianity and the concept of Heaven. Nietzsche suggests that the belief in the Christian God is a similar dissolution and hatred of life.[vii] Since Christians believe in Heaven, which is in concept comparable to Plato's ideas of the world of forms and that Christians divide the world into the "real" and the apparent world, they too hate nature.

Nietzsche is not a pleasure seeker, arguing that any passions in excess can "drag their victim down with the weight of their folly." However, he maintains that the passions can become "spiritualized ultimately." Christianity, he criticizes, instead deals with excessive passions by attempting to obliterate the passion. Nietzsche claims in an analogy that the Christian approach to morality is not much different than how an unskilled dentist might treat tooth pain by removing the tooth entirely rather than pursue other less aggressive and equally effective treatments. Christianity does not attempt to "spiritualize, beautify, deify a desire," which leads Nietzsche to conclude that the Christian Church is "hostile to life." Taking an emotional turn, Nietzsche writes that people who want to eliminate specific passions outright do so because they are "too weak-willed, too degenerate to impose moderation" upon their selves.[viii]

Nietzsche fosters his idea of spiritualizing the passions through studying the concepts of tenderness and enmity. Love, he claims, is the "spiritualization of sensuality." On the other hand, enmity spiritualizes the state of having enemies since having opponents helps us define and strengthen our positions. Even with the anti-Christian sentiment that saturates his thinking, Nietzsche clarifies that he has no interest in eliminating the Christian Church. Instead, he recognizes that his philosophical program would be neither as useful nor vital without it. If the Church denies the "instincts of life," this helps him develop a position that affirms them. Using dogmatic language, Nietzsche insists that the real "blasphemy" is the Christian "rebellion against life." Christian ethics is ultimately indicative of a "declining, debilitated, weary, condemned life."

Nietzsche concludes by asserting people must be one way, and not another leads to a form of bigotry, devaluing the goodness of human diversity. Also, the belief that people can genuinely change their nature disregards that anyone is a portion of fate. A person cannot dissociate themselves from past actions or current settings, allowing them to be who they are. Nietzsche closes by stating it is "immoralists" such as himself who have the highest respect for individuals' inherent worth because they do not value one person's approach to life over any others.[ix]

[i] Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, (New York: Random House, 2003), 43.

[ii] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 40, 55.

[iii] Ibid, 74

[iv] Ibid, 75

[v] Ibid, 45

[vi] Ibid, 49.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid, 52

[ix] Ibid, 56-67

Fireside Chat: Is Censorship Wise?

            Winston Churchill once said that:

“A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.”

When we speak of censorship, we are talking about millions of people censoring themselves for the sake of the few but vocal who claim a protected class. When this vocal minority hears what they disagree with, they immediately assume that someone is attacking their race, nationality, sexual preference, or a combination of all three. When we witness these accusations, peer pressure tells the majority to believe the accusers. Instead of waiting for the evidence to support the claim, the media immediately cast blame on Bret Kavanaugh, who was vindicated due to the lack of evidence; there are Americans to this day who believe a serial rapist resides in the Supreme Court. Despite the entire press conference being on YouTube for all the world to see, Donald Trump is misquoted by CNN, MSNBC, and ABC, saying “there were very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. By building cases based on conjecture, the rule of law does not stand a chance. In the kingdom of the vision impaired, the partially sighted person is fully empowered. If the mainstream news refuses to report, it is up to the people to acquire sources for themselves. It is doubtful that any of this will occur because censorship divides us by race, wealth, and nationality, all hoping to enrich the protected class itself.

A Primer on Reconstruction Voting Rights

Many southern governments passed legislation that reinstated the status quo of the Antebellum era. Two of the most prominent were South Carolina and Mississippi, who passed laws known as Black Codes to regulate black behavior. While they granted African Americans rights according to the 14th and 15th Amendments, they also denied other fundamental rights. Mississippi's vagrant law required all freed African American men to carry papers proving they had means of employment. Section 1 of the 14th states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.[1]

However, the Mississippi 1865 Black code Vagrancy law states in the second section:

Be it further enacted, that all freedmen, free Negroes, and mulattoes in this state over the age of eighteen years found on the second Monday in January 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together either in the day or nighttime, and all white persons so assembling with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes, or usually associating with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freedwoman, free Negro, or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants; and, on conviction thereof, shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free Negro, or mulatto, 150, and a white man, $200, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the free Negro not exceeding ten days, and the white man not exceeding six months….[2]

The Mississippi state government acknowledged the first part of the 14th but ignored the second entirely.

            The 15th Amendment states that:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.[3]

In theory, African-Americans were allowed to vote – but in practice, a considerable number of totally unfair obstacles were placed in their way. One of the most significant obstacles to people being able to vote was the voter registration test. After taking the test, it was clear that I would not have been qualified to vote in an election. I scored a consistent zero on the test, not due to a lack of competence, but due to the instruction's confusion. This is an unfair way of measuring college-educated people's competence to vote, much less underprivileged peoples who have not had educational opportunities. The reason that these laws lasted for so long is a simple one: the Dixie Democrats who made these laws wanted to stay in power. If African Americans could vote freely, their power would be in jeopardy. 

[1] “14th Ammendment,“Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv#

[2]  “Mississippi Black Code, 1865,” American Yawp,   https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/reconstruction/mississippi-black-code-1865/

[3] “15th Ammendment,” Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxv

Fascism: Its Left-Wing Origin and Neutral Utility

James Allen once said that "circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself." No statement could be more accurate in regards to Fascism. A tired buzzword in this day and age, Fascism is rarely defined. The first step is taken from Machiavelli, who proclaims that a "mixed principality" will always conflict, and the only way to alleviate this is to assume total control over one's subjects. The second step focuses on Hobbes's belief that the sovereign authority cannot be wronged, cannot be ridiculed, and must strive to assert its authority wherever possible. The third step is to inject a collective approach towards economic policy, where the State controls the economy of its citizens and may grant or remove rights as they see fit. Finally, there must be laws on record that allow for the persecution of one's citizens, should they break away from the State's dogma. While the French Revolutionaries, led by Maximillian Robespierre, already had control over the economy and the Government in 1792, it would not be until the following year that Fascism would begin. Fascism began on 17 September 1793, when the French Revolutionary leader Robespierre's Law of Suspects passed during the French National Convention; this zero-tolerance doctrine on the State's supposed enemies affected classical liberalism by influencing every authoritarian political movement brought forth after its declaration to adopt a similar law.

Throughout the centuries, the strong made it their mission to control the weak. In the Italian peninsula, city-states warred with one another, and the Pope himself warred against his papal states; this was a peculiar fight, considering that the Pope had the power of Ediction, the right to remove one's baptismal rights and damn the subjects of an entire State to Hell.1 The city- states of Italy had to deal with this tumultuous time for centuries, but no one quite had the power or the influence necessary to bring the peninsula into a group understanding. That is until Lorenzo de Medici of Florence employed the philosopher who gave him the handbook to do it.2 Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince stripped away all morals and ethics of rule and focused solely on the task at hand: how to obtain power and keep it. Machiavelli proclaims that the purpose of the State is stability for he who rules over it and that new Princes must disarm rebels and arm the previous regime's enemies to maintain his strength.3 Machiavelli further proclaimed that "Mixed Principalities"4 disrupt the State's sovereignty and ultimately lead to the ruin of the Prince.5 In a time where the Pope and the Catholic church were revered in nearly every text available, Machiavelli only mentions Pope Julius II as a tyrannical dictator and mentions God once, in a blasphemous way for the time, stating:

This will not be difficult if you will recall to yourself the actions and lives of the men I have named and although they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He was yours…God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.6

In this passage, Machiavelli casts doubt on Predestination, proclaiming that God is on the side of no one, and that the choice of being a conquering hero or a failure is ours to make. Ultimately, Machiavelli argues that the State's will should be secondary to the will of the Prince, and only when another dethrones him can his power be taken away.

After one hundred and thirty-eight years had passed, and the Civil War raged in England, Thomas Hobbes expanded upon the thought of "Mixed Principalities" leading to the death of a nation when he penned Leviathan in 1651 during the conflict. Hobbes's book explores the components that erect the political landscape and suggested that a political ideology created around a Summum Bonum (greatest good) will ultimately lead to a civil war.7 Hobbes goes further than Machiavelli when he rejects the separation of powers, advocating for Sovereign's rights to censor the press and restrict free speech rights should they be considered desirable by the Sovereign to promote order. Also, Hobbes proclaims that the Sovereign should have the power to be incapable of being put to death, be the judge in all cases, reward or punish in any way they deem fit and that the Sovereign is the voice of the political system.8 Hobbes believed that, without power like this being held in the Government, there would be Bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all), a never-ending war that would result in the country's disintegration. This work was written during the Civil War, but the author would argue that it was the teachings of Machiavelli that inspired this notion of governance more than anything else. Consider where Machiavelli states that mankind is “ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, (and) covetous.”9 In Hobbes’s writing, he declared that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes virtually quotes Machiavelli when he speaks of the Sovereign of the State, when he maintains that:

“The greatest of human powers is that which is compounded of the powers of most men, united by consent, in one person, natural or civil, that has the use of all their powers depending on his will; such as is the power of a Commonwealth: or depending on the wills of each particular; such as is the power of a faction, or of diverse. factions leagued.

Therefore, to have servants is power; to have friends is power: for they are strengths united.”10

It is here that Hobbes concurs with Machiavelli that the will of the ruler should and must be the will of the people. With this power in place, the final portion of society necessary for the Sovereign to control, according to Hobbes, is the religious authority. Hobbes goes back to his ultimate point: Authority on Earth is conveyed by people in their self-interest, not conferred via divine right. His anti-Catholic leanings show through as he condemns religious figures who claim the authority of the temporal world for themselves. Hobbes favored a Protestant state religion that was subservient to the Government.11 Hobbes ends his critique of the church by stating that the only benefactors of the church were the clergymen, and they needed to be controlled to maintain cultural order.12

With Machiavelli granting insight into a single sovereign, and Hobbes proclaiming that the Sovereign should never be held in contempt, Jean Jacques Rousseau penned his magnum opus, The Social Contract in 1762. In it, Rosseau argued against the divine empowerment of monarchs to legislate, asserting that the will of the people alone should be the Sovereign voice within a nation. The beginning sentence of the book sets the tone, stating “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”13 Rousseau continues by dismissing the theory that there is any other natural authority in nature than that found of a father and child’s dynamic, and this dynamic is only erected to protect the child. Rosseau continues this line of thinking by agreeing with Hobbes in his idea that a ruler’s role is a paternal one; just as a son shows reverence and obedience to his father, so too must a subject show reverence to his ruler.14 However, Rousseau believed that an ideal society would be one that would be filled by those who would give themselves to no one person, but instead give themselves to a group ideology where no one person would have any more power over anyone else. As Rosseau himself described it:

Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.15

Rosseau further claims that, since Hobbes was incorrect about people being generally selfish and evil, and that the will of the people is always for their good, that dissenting opinions come only from those outside the will of the people, and that censorship and the death penalty was acceptable for those unfortunate few who did not agree with the Sovereign majority, the only morally right people who exist come from within the group.16 Of course, the form of mob rule which Rosseau is advocating would be similar to two wolves and a sheep asking what is for dinner. If one is in the minority, and the will of fellow citizens is to kill dissenters, then the will of the people is to have Sovereign rule by any means necessary.

Just twenty-nine years after Rosseau, an American icon would advocate for the Revolution. Thomas Payne finished his second most well-known work, The Rights of Man, in 1792. Written as a rebuttal to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Payne defended the rights of the people of any nation to revolt against their Government vehemently when their leaders do not protect and defend their rights. Payne corrects Burke by informing him that "It was not against Louis XVI but the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted,"17 and he continued to point out that Burke did not understand the relationship  between the practice of despotism and the principles of autocracy carried out in France under Monarchial rule. The act of assisting the then Revolutionaries against the British was in direct conflict with advocating for one’s people first. The increase of taxation on French citizens to assist the American Revolutionaries further sparked dissent. Payne would use these examples to claim further that this despotism would be erased by eliminating aristocratic titles, because democracy is incompatible with dynastic hierarchy, which leads to the despotism of the family. He advocates for a national budget without military and war expenses so that the King could not force his will on his citizens. With lower taxes for the poor, subsidized education, and a progressive income tax weighted against wealthy estates to discourage the re-emergence of a hereditary aristocracy, Payne claims that the despotism would be erased from France and any society which would enact these changes.18 Principally, Rights of Man opposes the belief that dictatorial Government is necessary because of man's corrupt, essential nature. Paine further argues that Government is a contrivance of man, and it follows that hereditary succession and hereditary rights to govern cannot compose a Government because the wisdom to govern cannot be inherited.19 If The Social Contract of Rosseau was the barrel, and Robespierre was the bullet, The Rights of Man was the trigger. Fueled with the concept of Sovereignty from Machiavelli, the inability of the Sovereign to be wrong by Hobbes, the will of the majority being advocated for defining the Sovereign from Rosseau, Payne's advocation for the Revolution to continue only gave support to what would become the "Reign of Terror" only a year later.

When the Revolution began, many French citizens were unemployed, food prices began to rise due to short harvests, and the rising taxes pushed the French National Assembly to rethink the leadership of the country. In June of 1789, the Assembly's leaders passed radical measures to eliminate Feudalism, expel state control from the Catholic church, and allow all French citizens the right to vote. In 1791, the French National Assembly solidified their ideas by passing a new French Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote and the eventual dissolvement of Feudalism.20 Such radical proposals led to the French Revolutionary Wars of 1792, which ended with establishing the First French Republic in August of the same year.21 King Louis XVI would be executed the following year in January, and Robespierre’s Law of Suspects would be enacted seven months later in August.22 An astute reader of Rosseau, Robespierre understood that dissenting opinions within the Revolution would only fragment support of the movement, and there was only one way to ensure that those voices would never be heard. By the time the “Reign of Terror” ended in July of 1794, an estimated 16,600 people were put to death by guillotine.23 Fixed prices, death for 'hoarders' or 'profiteers', and confiscation of grain stocks by groups of armed workers meant that Paris was suffering food shortages by early September. However, France's biggest challenge was servicing the vast public debt inherited from the former regime, which continued to expand due to the war. Initially, the debt was financed by sales of confiscated property, but this was hugely inefficient; since few would buy assets that might be repossessed, fiscal stability could only be achieved by continuing the war until French counter- revolutionaries had been defeated.24 Instead, on 28 July 1794, Robespierre would be found guilty of conspiracy and treason, and he would be sentenced to death by his law.25 The French Directory would take control of France in 1795, only to be taken over by Napoleon Bonaparte. This seizure of power would bring the end of the French Revolution, but not its teachings. Bonaparte continued to use his own Law of Suspects throughout his reign as Emperor,26 as would Kaiser Wilhelm, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin.27

Historians have debated the meaning of the French Revolution for centuries.28 Interestingly enough, their debate mirrors the fundamental difference that sparked the Revolution in the first place and grants the modern distinction between "right-wing", meaning one is conservative, and "left-wing" meaning liberal: this was the seating arrangement in the Revolutionary Assembly. Whatever else it may have been, one thing is clear: the French Revolution was the first totalitarian Revolution, and served as the blueprint for others that followed. Begun initially as a nationalist-populist uprising for the rights of the people, it morphed into a mechanism whose sole goal was to force the enemies of the common good to bend to the general will of the Revolutionaries. It was no wonder that their leader, Maximillian Robespierre, believed he was righteous; his teacher, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, wrote that individuals who live per the general will are "free" and "virtuous", and state-sanctioned coercion is the act of "forcing men to be free." Fascism began on 17 September 1793, when the French Revolutionary leader Maximillian Robespierre's Law of Suspects passed during the French National Convention, erecting a doctrine of zero-tolerance on the State's supposed enemies. This ruling affected classical liberalism by influencing the political movements brought forth after its declaration to adopt a similar law. Such a shift in political motivation and control was not random but two hundred and eighty years in the making.

Sources:

1 Erica Benner, Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017), 23-38.

2 Benner, Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World, 315-318.

3 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Trans. Ninan Hill (New York: Fall River Press, 2016), 8-11. 4 This is the first known time this term is mentioned but is certainly not the last. During the Weimar Republic, Carl Schmitt wrote a book titled Political Theology. In it, Schmitt quotes this exact portion of The Prince to create another term, Pluralism. Schmitt uses this theory to proclaim that Pluralism weakens the Sovereign by dividing political power through stretching power among multiple players. He further proclaims that a political system with multiple heads promotes disunity, dividing society into multiple subgroups, and encourages tribalism. If there is one Sovereign, there is one political identity. Carl Schmitt was also a respected attorney who won a case for the Nazi party called Prussia v. Reich, which allowed Goring to be appointed Chancellor of East Prussia. He would later establish the Soldau concentration camp, which would be responsible for executing political enemies. See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985), 5-9, 21, 24; Gopal Balakrishnan, The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 2000), 226-246; Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt: A Biography (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), 349-358.

5 Machiavelli, The Prince, 39-41.

6 Ibid, 111-112.

7 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), 43.

8 Hobbes, Leviathan, 298.

9 Machiavelli, The Prince, 69-72.

10 Hobbes, Leviathan, 50.

11 Ibid, 439-443

12 Ibid, 437-438.

13 Rousseau, The Social Contract, 181.

14 Ibid, 182-189.

15 Ibid, 191.

16 Ibid, 258-261, 293-294.

17 Thomas Payne, The Writings of Thomas Paine, including Age of Reason, Common Sense, Rights of Man (New York: Carlton House, 1978), 122.

18 Thomas Payne, The Rights of Man, 125-127.

19 Ibid, 134-136.

20 Constitution of 1791. Institute for World History. Miami Gardens: St. Thomas University. Last updated 17 August, 2015. https://wp.stu.ca/worldhistory/wpcontent/uploads/sites/4/2015/07/French-Constitution-of- 1791.pdf

21 Israel, Jonathan. Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 98-110.

22 "The Law of Suspects," Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Visille: Musée de la Révolutiôn Française (Museum of the French Revolution). Accessed 30

March, 2021. https://revolution.chnm.org/d/417.

23 Williams, Helen Maria. Letters Written in France. London: John Crosley, 1612. Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership, 2011. http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A04486.0001.001.

24 Hale, Matthew Rainbow. "On Their Tiptoes: Political Time and Newspapers during the Advent of the Radicalized French Revolution, circa 1792-1793." Journal of the Early Republic 29 (2009): 191–218.

25 Sternhell, Zeev and David Maisel, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 234-256.

26 Ibid, 257-258.

27 Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 21-62, 81-117, 253-267, 452-470.

28 Fallace, Thomas. "American Educators' Confrontation with Fascism." Educational Researcher 47, 1 (2018): 46–52.

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=eric&AN= EJ1167464&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Fireside Chat: What Makes A Man Who He Is?

It’s an age old question, one which has been offered so many answers by so many people over the years that it has been difficult to determine what an appropriate answer could be. I believe that the current social philosophy that race is the fiber of one’s being and that is what makes someone who they are is filled to the brim with low cunning, and with such falsehood that it astounds me. For me, I take a quote from Fight Club when I explain my philosophy for what makes someone who they are:

“We want you, not your money.
As long as you're at fight club, you're not how much money you've got in the bank. You're not your job. You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself.
You're not your name.
You're not your problems.
You're not your age.
You are not your hopes.
You will not be saved.
We are all going to die, someday.”

Some may think I’m crazy, but I take this quote as a roadmap for determining how I live my own life and how to determine whether or not others around me are living in a prison of their own creation. It’s a tough thing for others to grasp, but everything above is nothing more than something which the world places on you, a benefit or a burden which you yourself do not control. Some may be asking, “Well, if you have no direct control over your money, your job, your family, what you tell yourself, your name, your problems, your age, your hopes and you cannot be saved, then what DO you have control over?” You have control over what you think. What you think, you begin to believe, and what you begin to believe, you start to become.

Rebuttal: Shaun King on Cancelling White Jesus

These Rebuttals are my responses to current events which i disagree with. They will come with at least twice the sources which the opposing side has utilized.

Since everyone has been what I’ve been referring to as “Statue Happy” lately, working strenuously to remove every piece of marble which they deem offensive, BLM advocate Shaun King tweeted quite the interesting comment on the 22nd of June:

This comment has sparked quite an interesting response throughout social media, and I was rather interested to hear what all Shaun had to say to defend his claim that a white Jesus is a symbol of white supremacy. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a single comment or elaboration on this message from Shaun King. However, in the spirit of following my own rules, I will make the attempt to refute this tweet, point-by-point, and pay no attention to the fact that if i only provided two sources, i would have doubled Mr. King here!

Yes, I think the statues of the White European they claim is Jesus should also come down.

I do find it interesting that only the white ones were mentioned here, but the Korean Mary and Infant Jesus, the Black Jesus of Ethiopia, and the Japanese Mary and Infant Jesus is perfectly okay. When Christianity moved across Europe, missionaries were self-aware enough to understand that Germans wouldn’t pay attention to a Jewish man coming back to save their souls. The same goes for the examples below, and that’s not racism, it’s just good marketing. The fact of the matter is, it’s hard for some people to believe that a savior who looks nothing like them will come back and save them. It just seems to me that every color of the rainbow is perfectly fine for Jesus to Shaun except for White. That’s not good marketing, that’s racism.

They are a form of White Supremacy. Always have been.

So, what you are saying here is that the pretty much agreed upon image of the savior of 31% of the world’s population is a symbol of hate? Does this mean that anyone who calls upon the name of Jesus is secretly wishing for the death of all brown people, even the brown people who call on the name of Jesus? And according to you, these symbols have always been a symbol of white supremacy, even when Jesus was depicted in the Catacombs of Rome from the third-century Catacomb of Callixtus:

I don’t know if Shaun was being serious when he said this, or he was just trying to win brownie woke points. Whatever the reason, I believe that Shaun is a self-loathing racist. For those who don’t know who he is all that well, he was caught up in some drama when it was found out that his father is white, making him a fully white man culturally appropriating black culture. I’ll give him more leeway than most people and believe him when he threw his mother under the bus and said that she was unfaithful with another man, who he vehemently claims is his father and points out every chance he gets is black, but I will still openly mock him for culturally appropriating and identifying with a culture he is not LEGALLY part of. Canceling White Jesus is just another insane way for Shaun to attempt to stay relevant, and as usual, he has nothing to back it up. White Jesus isn’t racist; people change the look of their savior to look more like themselves to better relate.

Tear them down.

I recommend you begin your attempt in Alabama. Good Luck!

Fireside Chat: Starting Rebuttals

I feel that I have been lacking in my Polemic writing as of late, mostly due to both the topic at hand and want to get as much information on the issue before I officially publish the essay on the matter. Until then, I was planning on having a couple of Polemics on smaller topics, like Shaun King wanting to remove statues of Jesus and pedophiles wanting to rename themselves “minor-attracted persons”. It was here that I ran into a little bit of a snag however, seeing that these smaller topics didn’t quite match to the research load necessary to my standards for my version of a Polemic. When I initially made the attempt of arguing the three biggest points for removing Jesus from the public squares, or the renaming of pedophiles, I couldn’t find anything which advocates were using for their sides of the argument, other than the constant touting of discrimination and racism. This makes it quite difficult for me to accurately write about both sides of the issue and come up with my conclusion in an objective fashion, thus forcing me to make a snap judgment if the opposing side does not attempt to offer anything during the debate. Therefore, I had to make a new format for a new essay system, one which I loathe, but one which will be necessary to tackle these one-sided, non-sourced arguments: The Rebuttal.

There are three reasons why I can’t stand this type of essay. One, I’ve always considered it the “lazy man’s” Polemic. There are many different styles, flares, and formats involved, but the overall layout of a Rebuttal is pretty much the same:

-Standard Open

-Discredit their points, one at a time

-Standard Conclusion

Since the layout is simple, most people just assume that this would imply that a proper Rebuttal would be simple to write. However, this is quite a popular fallacy, and is the second reason I don’t like them because YouTube is filled with critique videos that are cups running over with cringe! A proper Rebuttal should stick only to the topic at hand, offering solutions as it goes, not simply bashing another’s claims or making unsubstantiated claims, as doing so wouldn’t be a rebuttal so much as it would be simply a mirror of the very source material you were attempting to rebut in the first place. Finally, I abhor rebuttals which are not at least twice as well-sourced as the content being rebutted. This may just be more of a personal thing, but I cannot respect a Rebuttal if I don’t have confidence in the writer’s capability of researching the topic to the point where they could offer a substantial retort.

Moving forward, I plan on writing these Rebuttals when I am not ready to publish Polemics on Wednesdays, keeping to the above rules, with the hopes to shed some light on topics that do not deserve to be given the time and effort to be turned into a Polemic.

Process: When Uncomfortable is ACTUALLY Offensive

The Processes are opinion pieces where the author explains how they used information to reach their conclusion.

There are a lot of buzzwords that are popular in the modern lexicon, but probably the most commonplace is the term “offense”. Whenever someone exclaims it, they are usually saying it in an incorrect manner and what they are actually trying to say is “what you are saying is making me uncomfortable, and I lack the words to properly explain why I am uncomfortable with it”. According to Merriam – Webster, the definition of the word Offense is “an annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one's standards or principles”. This would be brought on by calling someone a slur, making a Klansman rally in the middle of a black neighborhood or urinating on a sacred object revered by a population. These may be extreme examples, but they are drastic to demonstrate that they are understandably offensive. In the same dictionary, the term Uncomfortable is defined as “causing or feeling unease or awkwardness”. These feelings may be caused by the drastic toning down of the previous examples in the following: referring to a woman as black as opposed to a woman of color, stating that the Klan has the right to freedom of speech as much as any other peaceful demonstration, and someone not liking a Mosque being built in their town. All three of these can understandably make someone uncomfortable, but at least definitionally, they do not cross the line into offense.

The next question is when do such acts cross this line and become offensive in nature. I would argue that an uncomfortable opinion can never become an offensive opinion, unless it’s a call to violence against another person. An example of this would be if someone calls for the death of a minority; calling for this is harmful and is therefore disregarding for them and their lives. Therefore, an uncomfortable action can only become an offensive action when it violates the rights of others. An example for this would be if someone burned a cross in another’s front yard, something which was a trademark for the KKK. This is an offensive action not only due to the menacing nature of the action, but also due to the trespassing act required to do so and the property damage involved with the fire. The problem seems to occur in the gray areas where offense and discomfort overlap, and the average person cannot tell the difference between the two. Thankfully, we have a lovely Constitution in this country that is capable of aiding us with this distinction and can help us tell if we should feel offense or if we are simply uncomfortable. We should look at this distinction like this: if it is an opinion, and it is not a call to violence, we are uncomfortable. If it is an action, and it violates our Constitutional rights, then it is an offense.

Fireside Chat: Trying out Via Negativa

There was a book written in the early 20th century called Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. in it, he spoke about a concept which revolved around gaining from life by taking away meaningless tasks. In the novel, this was acts such as drinking at taverns and spending money at brothels as opposed to spending time and money with your family, but i began to wonder if the same method could also apply to the modern world. How much more of our life could be gained by taking away from our social media habits, streaming habits, and other tasks we deem necessary in the 21st century?

As an experiment, i downloaded a couple of apps on my phone to track such things like how often i opened my phone, how long i used certain apps, and what parts of the day i used it. In addition, i installed a time tracking app that would also track whatever other activity i was doing at the time. I was hoping to have a good baseline for my regular activity, so i didn’t change anything that i did in regards to my phone usage. For the first week, my top three usages were:

1 - YouTube - 52h 24m

2 - Netflix - 26h 12m

3 - YouTube Music - 12h 7m

Now, most of the time, i would listen to things as background noise for whatever else i was doing, but i was absolutely shocked by how much i was using my phone as a crutch to do other activities. This may just be my perspective, but if i was doing one activity while listening to something else, i could at MOST give half of my attention to both of these things at the same time. This would mean that, when i was writing, reading, studying, etc., I was not being fair to myself by placing such limits on the power of my attention. The next week, i deleted Netflix off of my phone and planned on only using YouTube at certain times of the day. The next week became:

1 - YouTube 20h 34m

2 - YouTube Music 3h 3m

3 - Chrome - 2h 28m

In the same week, my time spent reading and with my family more than doubled, my grades improved, i wrote more, and i had more time to myself since i completed tasks a bit faster because i was focused more on them. I was GAINING more life by taking away from it. Trying to make the most out of it, i continued the cycle, and this past week’s top three for my phone were:

1 - YouTube Music - 1h

2 - TimeLogger - 10m

3 - Clock - 5m

This week, I had forty hours clocked with my family, four hours in writing, read four books, finished multiple projects around the house, and haven’t missed my phone at all. I gained all of this by simply taking away time that i was giving passively to my phone. It makes me wonder what i could gain if i could find other ways to take away from meaningless tasks from my life.

Of course, this is just an example. However, i give it because it is probably the most relevant to readers. If you want to try it for yourself but don’t want to dive into it quite as deep as i did, just start off by placing your phone on the charger half an hour before bed. When you wake up, don’t touch your phone until after you’ve gotten your cup of coffee or something. Taking away habits/addictions like phone usages is hard, but doing so can be done if it’s trained like a muscle. If you can, i promise you that you won’t regret it!

Process: How We Forgot the 11th Commandment

As a child, I remember hearing this wise saying. For me, it was the single wisest thing which could ever have
been said to anyone and had the power to transform the world for the better. This was the 11th Commandment, a message which those in power have attempted to wash away from the world and keep hidden. It is a secret phrase which, if allowed to exist in the world of men, would restructure the world and
restructure our society as we know it. It has the ability to trump every theory concerning black holes, all of the research concerning the Human Genome Project, and will allow the poorest person on the planet to become the richest and most powerful person the world has ever known.

This is not a polite suggestion, as God does not deal in such matters. No, this is a code of conduct which we
are all to follow. For centuries, entire societies were built around this commandment, and entire empires were forged. However, as the years went on, fewer and fewer were allowed to know this final Commandment, and an aristocracy was developed. It wasn’t until public education was formed that society as a whole made the attempt to right this wrong, reminding students at an extremely early age if they weren’t living up to the 11th commandment through failing grades. Nowadays, most public education systems have eliminated the moral building which comes with teaching the 11th to students, and our society has neglected to imbue the 11th into society at large. Are you ready to know what the 11th Commandment is? Here it goes:

Thou Shalt Not be Stupid.

The only thing that we still have in society that keeps the 11th alive in culture are organizations like colleges, blue collar work, some white collar and various levels of the military. Even still, most of these areas have been
under attack in previous decades, as calling someone out for stupidity is seen as offensive. In most situations, blue collar trades and the military are safe on the lower ends, as one is expected to have thicker skin to be involved in that line of work anyhow. White collar jobs like doctors and lawyers are paramount in following the 11th, as people will either die or lose a lot of money if someone does not know what they are doing. Engineers who are clueless will immediately be pointed out if their building falls down. However, the biggest problem comes from colleges, who either are seen as the bad guys for not following the pauper standards of public education or are babying grown men and women by resuming the process at a higher price tag. This builds the entitlement culture which we see plaguing younger generations today, all built around a society which has done it’s hardest to avoid the 11th at all costs.

How can we fix this? Well, we can start by acknowledging that offensiveness isn’t a bad thing. All offending
someone does is make them uncomfortable. When you are uncomfortable, you learn something new. Even if that is when someone tells you “you’re an idiot,” you’ve uncomfortably learned that someone thought that you’re dumb, and can now adjust accordingly. If enough people make you feel bad about being stupid, that may be God trying to tell you to adjust yourself, that you’re not obeying his commandment in your life. It’ll be impossible to adhere to this commandment, however, if we continue to try to ignore the most powerful law in mankind’s history.