CultureStack
By Gary Arnell
CultureStackJul 05, 2022
Our Apostasy from the Constitution
I was asked to speak in my church on Constitution Day. In my faith, we believe this document was inspired by God, but that we have deviated from many of its important ideas.
One of our former leaders, Ezra Taft Benson, taught that the United States had "apostatized in various degrees from different Constitutional principles as proclaimed by the inspired founders."
I chose to briefly explore what principles President Benson was referring to, or at least a few of them:
- Human Nature and Human Rights
- The Proper Role of Government
- God’s Law is Higher than Man’s Law
- Subsidiarity
- Separation of Powers and Federalism
- Morality
- Knowledge and Wisdom
The implications of our departure from these principles are significant and are responsible, I think, for our society moving closer and closer to becoming what Hamilton lamented as "wretched nurseries of unceasing discord". Yet it seems to me we rarely talk about them. We hack at leaves instead of roots.
Available in written format at https://www.culturestack.online/post/constitution-apostasy
Jesus, Pride, and the Trojan Herd
Is Pride Month compatible with Christianity? Many believers believe so.
Pride Month is appealing to Christians and other people of good faith because they see it as a way of showing charity, compassion, and Christ-like love. It can appear to be a way of fulfilling the Second Great Commandment that everyone can rally around, transcending religious and ideological divides. But with Pride, these well-meaning actions are done under a false flag. Pride has parents and is not an only child. Pride, Wokeism, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Black Lives Matter, Anti-Racism, Post-Modernism, Socialism, Communism, etc. are all descendants of a worldview that originated with Hegel and Marx; species belonging to the same genus, if you will. These movements are Anti-Christ, in the very real sense of standing in direct opposition to everything Christ means for us to be and do. Christ seeks to change the individual, who is then free to change the state. Marx seeks to change the state, using individuals as coal for the inevitable fires necessary to reforge society. As such, these movements are also Anti-West because Western Civilization was born of a marriage between Jerusalem and Athens - a history-pivoting combination of Judeo-Christian theology on the origin, nature, and worth of human beings and the brilliance of minds like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Cicero - that has resulted in the most free and prosperous epoch that planet Earth has ever seen. The Historical Materialism of Marx and Nietzsche gave birth to Nazism, Stalinism, Leninism, and Maoism resulting in some 100 million deaths in the 20th century, but they couldn't overcome the West. Frustrated, their heirs took a longer, more gradual approach, one that activist Rudi Dutscheke called "the long march through the institutions." That is, the institutions that had inoculated the West against Marxism; namely family, religion, academia, law, and capitalism - with the goal of either destroying them or commandeering them for utopian purposes. The universities were first, led by the fall of the humanities and social sciences with the STEM fields now giving way. Capitalism is being infiltrated via ESG and CEI scores or similar initiatives enforced by operatives within the companies themselves or at the levers of power in the 401ks and pension funds that own substantial shares in those companies. This is the reason behind the behavior of companies like Disney, Target, and Anheuser-Busch and their brand and market value self-destruction. Corporations, academia, and government are being overtaken by Orwellian policies like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - all Motte-and-Bailey doublespeak terms that sound compassionate to the Western ear but have entirely different meanings within the Woke worldview. Religion and the family are in precipitous decline for several reasons, but one of them is the hypersexualization of our culture. Under these philosophies, license and promiscuity are means, not ends. When sexual identity and pursuit become paramount religious and familial ties disintegrate. On their heals came Pride, the origin of which included activists like Martha Shelley who proclaimed they were "in revolt against the sex-role structure and nuclear family structure". Each of these Marxist cousins seeks, at their base, the same objective - the repudiation and dismantling of Judeo-Christian and Western societal norms in order to bring about the "end of history", a utopian vision Marx believed would be realized if we could just remove the oppressive societal and institutional chains that bind and obscure it. Thus the push to ruthlessly criticize all aspects of Western society (i.e. Critical Theory). Pride, Woke, and their cousins are wolves in sheep's clothing. Not just one Trojan Horse, but an entire herd bent not on greater compassion and understanding, but on the literal overthrow of the West.
Human Happiness & Flourishing with Benjamin Fincher
Benjamin Fincher, the host of the How to Rewrite Your Stars podcast, invited me on his show where we discussed the Culture Stack concept, particularly as it applies to the transition of the United States from republicanism (classic liberalism) to progressivism to Wokeism - particularly as they relate to human happiness and flourishing.
Aristotle, Dr. Strange, and Human Flourishing
It was my pleasure to be a guest on Greg Denning's Be The Man podcast, where we explored the concept of a "culture stack", the idea that every society is built on moral, political, economic, and cultural layers that interplay and change over time - and are changing as we speak.
We discussed Aristotle's formula for happiness outlined in his great classic, Ethics, and how western civilization in general, and the United States in particular, incorporated those ideas in their founding. The "pursuit of happiness" made famous in the Declaration of Independence isn't some subjective, ethereal concept, but is actually a specific recipe for individual and societal happiness.
Check out Greg at www.gregdenning.com and Be The Man wherever you get your podcasts.
Other content referenced in this episode:
"Where Are We Heading? Bret [Weinstein] Speaks with Peter Boghossian"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIigprRbKcs&t=0s
"I Regret Being a Slut", by Bridget Phetasy
https://bridgetphetasy.substack.com/p/slut-regret
"The Great Conversation", Robert M. Hutchins & Mortimer Adler
https://ia801600.us.archive.org/11/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.150395/2015.150395.Great-Books-Of-The-Western-World-The-Great-Conversation.pdf
#religion #culture #morality #politics #economics #society #founding #unitedstates #liberal #liberalism #conservatism #aristotle #johnlocke #marvel #drstrange
The Lost Meaning of "The Pursuit of Happiness"
The United States Declaration of Independence mentions three inalienable rights. "Life" and "liberty" seem fairly intuitive, but “the pursuit of happiness” seems a bit more vague and subjective.
In reality, it refers to a specific way of being described by Aristotle around 350 BC and painstakingly developed by many others over the 2,000 years that followed. It gives rise to a particular meaning of “life” and “liberty” and is the end goal behind both the Declaration and the Constitution. It insists on a particular view of morality, government, economics, and society unfamiliar to many Americans. Our departure from that view explains much of the turmoil facing our nation today. Increasingly we are a people with a morality (software) incompatible with the structures (hardware) our nation was founded on.
In this essay, I explore the lost meaning of “the pursuit of happiness.”
Text version available at https://www.culturestack.online/post/pursuit-of-happiness
Originalism v A Living Constitution: How Corruption Makes Confirmations Contentious
Only in recent years have Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings become contentious. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, O'Connor, and Stevens all received 100% votes in favor of confirmation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg? 97%
More recently, however, nominations have become much more contentious and partisan. Neil Gosuch (2017) received 55% and Brett Kavanaugh (2018) received just 51%. In 2020, Amy Coney Barrett received zero votes from Senate Democrats. In this episode, I discuss how corruption of the court, the move from Originalism to Living Constitutionalism, has made confirmations and our politics in general much more volatile and contentious.
A text version of this podcast is available here.
The Elephant in the Classroom
Seventy years ago, the faculty of the University of Chicago published a 54 volume series entitled "The Great Books of the Western World" - an attempt to identify and make readily available the most important ideas that made our civilization possible. In the introduction to that series, the editor wrote:
"It is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations."
Western Civilization was built on dialog and the exchange of ideas. Cancel culture and book banning are anathema to the liberal tradition. Both sides of the political aisle point fingers at one another. The removal of those books from a place of primacy in our classrooms and conversations endanger what is most important to us. The removal of one book is particularly egregious. The Judeo-Christian Bible is foundational to classical liberalism and representative democracy - the keystone of our civilization. From it, we derive human dignity and human rights, equality theory, justice, even science. For all the clamor in recent years about content missing from our history lessons one "banned" book remains the elephant in the room.
Election 2020: Is Trump a Scarlet Pimpernel?
In spite of his absurd and often offensive outward behavior, Trump has governed like an actual conservative. I believe Trump will win the election and if he doesn't, it will be his own fault. His record makes a reasonable case for reelection, even though his personality and conduct do not.
In this episode, I explore what Trump has done well, what he has done poorly and the impact this election will have (or won't) on the real issues dividing our country.
A text version of this podcast, including links to citations is available here: https://www.culturestack.online/post/election2020
Your God is not the Highest Law of the Land
A friend of mine, a lesbian and eloquent, resolute defender of LGBT+, asked me, "how are abortion and gay marriage not a question for the judiciary?"
The highest law of the land that a judge recognizes in her official capacity is not your God or mine, who may very well recognize a right to abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, or the death penalty. It's the Constitution, which requires that the people recognize those rights and enshrine them into law.
Original essay available at https://www.culturestack.online/post/highestlaw.
This podcast is an add-on to the Originalism vs. Living Constitution episode. The original essay with citations is available at https://www.culturestack.online/post/originalism.
Originalism v. the Living Constitution: The Case for Confirming Amy Coney Barrett
Widely misunderstood, Constitutional Originalism is not a desire to return to slavery and the days before women could vote. It's simply the belief that a judge's job is to determine and rule on the meaning of the law - the will of the people - as most recently enshrined into law. It makes no moral judgments like "abortion is good/bad" or "the death penalty is good/bad." Value judgments are left to the legislature - one of the important separation of power mechanisms built into the Constitution.
Living Constitutionalism, on the other hand, is the belief that judges themselves can reinterpret the law if they believe social values have changed since the law was last updated - they can act in the place of the legislature.
It's not that Living Constitutionalism makes bad decisions, per se, or even that Originalism makes ones we agree with. It's a question of jurisdiction, of "who decides?" By breaching the wall of separation between the legislature and the judiciary we introduce volatility, instability, insecurity, and illegitimacy into the political arena. We increase division and contention. We end up concentrating power into the hands of the few by removing it from the hands of the many. We encourage coercion rather than conversation.
Confirming originalist judges like Amy Coney Barrett is a critical step in restoring the proper role of the judiciary and healing the bitter divisiveness in our nation.
This podcast is available in written form at https://www.culturestack.online/post/originalism.