The American Regime: The Plight of the Secular Soul

As previously noted, I use “regime” in the two senses developed by Plato in his dialogue of that title (usually translated as “Republic”):  The regime is the way of life in a political community, and it is the constellation of power that forms the ruling structure.  In other words, the regime that organizes the body politic for action (the power structure) is at the same time the regime that forms the way of life in the souls of the members.  We are the American regime, as each of us carriers the American way of life within ourselves.   On political power in the American regime I have written a few brief essays recently.  Presently I concentrate on the regime as it shows up in the souls of the members of society.  Rather than attempt a comprehensive account of diverse types, in this essay I briefly examine what seems to be the common characteristics in the American character, at least of those typical in the ruling elites.  Granted, millions of Americans still live in the twilight of their religious traditions; these are the poor benighted souls that Obama said bitterly “cling to their guns and religion.”  These folks are seen as subjects, as “the masses” to be dominated by the ruling elite, its political power, and especially by the mainstream of secular intellectuals.  Those who “cling to their guns and religion” are seen as politically irrelevant by the ruling elites in this country.   What needs study, and draws our attention presently, is the phenomenon of the secular soul in America, and especially of the self-styled “intellectual.”  These persons make up the bulk of the ruling elite. They dominate in the news media, in entertainment, in education, in the political Parties. They control most of the levers of political power, and they control the thought-formation of the masses of Americans.  In other words, America is politically and intellectually dominated by secular souls who are, in the main, closed to ultimate reality, but bent on creating their own new reality through political action and mind control.   As represented by central government politicians, by media elites, by educationists, by many church leaders, America is dominated and being reformed by secular souls who have closed themselves off to the divine. Their loves are for power, wealth, knowledge as information, fame, public approval.  What they most hate and resist is whatever would confront them with their own divorce from ultimate reality. These secular souls, while generally not knowingly bent on murder, are fellow-travelers with the elites that have dominated Europe now since the Enlightenment--whether Fascist, Nazi, Socialist, Welfare Statist, or so on, the core element is the substitution of human fiat for the divine. These secular souls may be humanistic, but their humanism is always human-centered or even earth-centered, but never God-centered.  That would be utterly anathema to them.  These are the souls who ignore God, and end up destroying human beings in the process. It is a process now documented by millions upon millions of murders. The secular soul in America has done much to destroy the country’s future.  They have tolerated and encouraged the killing of millions of children in the name of “a woman’s right to choose,” a mindless ideological cliche intended to hide the truth of the program: the dominance of “undesirables” by the self-appointed intellectual elite. A few years ago, a highly ranked pro-abortion woman in a southern state declared a conservative political candidate, Sara Palin, to be not “a real feminist” because she had not aborted her own child. This public statement unmasked the will to dominate, to control, to seek to destroy God or man’s place in God’s world by killing off the most innocent, the human beings most unable to protect themselves. If the Nazi extermination camps were, as Hannah Arendt wrote, the models for the new Nazi society of total domination, in America and in the cultures penetrated by the disease of modernity, of secular intellectualism and scientism, abortion clinics are the hidden models of the new emerging secular State. At the will of the leader, of the dominant person, a human life can be utterly destroyed, with no consequences for the killer.   Under the leadership and inspiration of secular, anti-God souls in America, this country has in effect destroyed its future. Where are the children?  If  some 1.5 million infants per year have been aborted since Row v Wade became “the law of the land” (and it is not really law in truth, for “an unjust law is not law”), that means that roughly 60 million human beings have been destroyed by the will of the secular elite, who “legalized,” permit, and promote abortion.  I leave for others to consider the economic ramifications of the destruction of our young.  What I point out is the sheer horror of a regime that is in many ways as destructive as any in history.  And why?  In the name of a false freedom, of “choice,” of the libido dominandi, the desire to dominate.  Because the secular soul cannot truly attack or murder God (Nietzsche’s games to the contrary), it turns on what reminds of God:  the source of life, and human life in its most innocent and helpless form. Abortion is the triumph of the will, the victory of human decision and “freedom” over creatures of God. As a self-professed atheist, Nietzsche encouraged and embraced abortion, euthanasia, killing of inferior beings; his intellectual offspring show up by the millions in our secular, anti-God souls. The secular soul refuses to admit or acknowledge its evil, and the way it has been sharing in totalitarian domination of the helpless. American secularists, especially in the form of left-wing politicians and media elites, would never admit that they are children under the skin with National Socialists who sought to eliminate “undesirables” from their society. For the sake of “Progress,” the Nazis sought to kill off diseased, weak, “less-than-human” beings in their midst.  For the sake of “Progress” in America, secular souls practice, tolerate, and even encourage the killing of helpless unborn children.  Again, “pro-choice” is not just a political alternative for the secular elites; it embodies and typifies their desire to dominate nature, to control whatever is not according to their will.  In short:  abortion manifests the sheer will to power.  And the American secular elite, promoting abortion, shows itself driven by the will to power, to dominate.  The secular soul is ruled by the desire to remake reality in its own image.  It cannot do otherwise. Having cut itself off from the divine Ground, the secular soul is awash in self, and seeks to impose its whims, beliefs, “values,” desires on everyone and everything. Some secular souls are mild-mannered, quiet-voiced, kind, generous:  but expose their underlying will to dominate, as typified in abortion, and they will unleash furor upon the one who exposes them.                                                                                 *** Recently, a secularist asked me to give evidence that the American regime has much of tyranny within it.  Leaving aside the obvious and overwhelming fact of the concentration of political power--which is the essence of tyranny--consider the American character as a portrait of the democratic soul becoming tyrannical. In Plato’s Regime (Republic), there is a brilliant analysis of the evolution of the human soul, of types of regime, from the well-ordered to the utterly disordered. Towards the end of the process, the democratic soul emerges, that is “all liberty and equality,” and who follows the whims of its own desires wheresoever they would lead.  The democratic man is governed by its loves of pleasure, of money, of ease, of fame, of success, of power, but all in a disordered and disorderly way. But out of the democratic soul emerges the tyrannical soul: the man who lives, not for passing democratic pleasures, but to impose its will on others, on the world around it. The tyrant overwhelmingly seeks power and domination. And in light of contemporary scientific developments unknown to Plato, we can add that the tyrannical soul seeks to attempt to remake nature itself--including human nature--in its own image. As noted above, abortion is not just another policy of secular souls becoming tyrannical:  it is the model of the new way of total domination by one’s will.   Abortion now, euthanasia, infanticide, killing off of the elderly later.  And not so much later.  Euthanasia has quickly spread as “a right” in America, just as abortion spread, strongly promoted by the secularist. Soon will follow infanticide and shall we say, geriacide--killing off the elderly who are deemed “socially useless.”  America is becoming a society more and more similar to the killing fields of Nazi Germany: With Science as our god, we can remake nature to our own liking.   When a human being has severed his bond to God, sooner or later, man becomes tyrant. Without acknowledging the Creator of all to whom all are responsible, Cain kills Abel, and American secularists kill or promote the killing of the weakest among us.   Secular souls are in principle, then, totalitarian, and the society they dominate becomes another totalitarian regime. But with the advancements in technology and science, domination becomes all the more potentially complete, more total. The regime emerging in America has the potential of being far more destructive than what was pre-figured in Nazi Germany.   And yet, the secular soul seems utterly oblivious to what it is doing. “Where is the tyranny?” these intellectuals ask. “I see a democracy. People are free. There are not elements of tyranny here.” And if one points out the foremost example of tyranny, noted above--abortion--one is condemned, hated, or at least ignored. The secular soul is blind to God, and therefore essentially blind to itself and what it is doing. America has become increasingly a regime led by blind guides who deceive the masses for their power position. Obama embodies the blindness and the deception. When asked if the child in the womb deserves protection, his highly sophistical, clever, and immediate response was: “That is above my pay grade.”  Tolerating killing is “above the pay grade” of the  President, of the leader of the blind. Such is a portrait of the emerging American character in the twenty-first century.  It is not a pretty picture at all, and under such blind and destructive leaders, America is destroying itself. Fr. Wm. Paul McKane