44th & 45th The Tenures of US-Presidents Barack H. Obama and Donald J. Trump E-Book

Edwin R. Micewski

• Herausgeber: EdwinsEditorial
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 411

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The United States, the powerful leading nation of the Western world, is in trouble. Her society is deeply divided, and moral and intellectual confusion sweeps the country and permeates politics, media, science, and the arts. The author confirms this premise in his persuasive analysis of the terms of the 44th and 45th US presidents – two political leaders opposed in character, ideology, and statesmanship – as well as the transition to the 46th and his first year in office. He directs his critique equally at social and cultural issues, as well as at foreign policy and national security challenges that have emerged in contemporary American history during this decade and a half. Living in the United States during this period and having previously worked as a guest lecturer in the United States, the author was able to directly observe, analyze, and compare political, social, and cultural processes and decisions with media coverage and public discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. This made it possible, in addition to the steadily increasing ideological division of politics and society and the anarchic agitation of radical forces, to point out and correct the propaganda performance of the media and their construction of illusory realities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Particular attention and deep emphasis are placed on developments in national security and international relations. Thus, the reader is familiarized with the genesis of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the events in Libya and Syria, their geostrategic backgrounds, and security policy contexts. The entire analysis – embedded in the author's socio-philosophical hermeneutic on questions of truth, justice, and morality – leads to the inescapable conclusion that the fundamental challenge to Western civilization and its societies is primarily spiritual and not material. Accordingly, the author argues for a reconfiguration of reason in the sense of critical political thought and the need to revive philosophical and metaphysical traditions of thought to ensure or restore all-encompassing literacy in all segments of society and the state. From the fundamental level of political and moral philosophy, he challenges the dictates of scientific rationality as the exclusive model of dealing with social and political challenges. He calls for the revival of a comprehensive framework of meaning that reinforces the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of human consciousness. In analyzing the impact of the decisions and policies of political administration on the nation and global affairs, he explains why human coexistence at all levels requires the recognition of a minimal moral disposition, a nominal common ethical denominator, and human recognition. This thought-provoking memorandum reveals the tragic consequences of the lack of philosophical wisdom in the community. His critical review offers solutions and ideas for an overdue course correction and explains why the rebirth of proper conservatism is essential to the survival of this nation and Western civilization. For an objective assessment and informed criticism of the upcoming presidential election in the USA in November 2024, this book provides important insights into the United States political system and the current dispositions of the political parties and the major media conglomerates.

Leseprobe

44th & 45th

The Tenures of US-Presidents

Barack H. Obama and Donald J. Trump

A Social-Philosophical Treatise

Edwin R. Micewski

Impressum:

44th & 45th

The Tenures of US-Presidents Barack H. Obama und Donald J. Trump

A Social-Philosophical Treatise

Edwin R. Micewski

© 2024 by Edwin R. Micewski. All rights reserved.

Initially published as:

“Non-Truth, Moral Nihilism, and Jacobin Cynicism”

(Liberty Hill Publishing 2022)

Author:

Edwin R. Micewski

1080 Wien ([email protected])

ISBN:

9783989954786

Motto: All that Matters in Existence is Timeless!

“To be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of his contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a philautos, not a philosophos [a lover of self, not a lover of wisdom].”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Parerga and Paralipomena (transl. E. Payne [1974]) Vol. 1, 21–22

PREAMBLE

Western civilization—and within it, its powerful lead nation, the United States of America—is disintegrating or, as cultural pessimists would argue, even decaying. It is not in danger from the outside world. It will not be brought down militarily or economically. Internal subversion and moral and intellectual degeneration are causing it to crumble.

The threat is primarily spiritual, not material, as this work will reveal in critiquing the policies during the tenures of the 44th and 45th presidents of the United States, and the transition to the administration of its 46th. It will argue that the world of ideas is more powerful than the world of experience; the cerebral and intellectual are more potent than the physical. Consciousness and ideational concepts create being rather than the other way around, as Karl Marx and many of his followers—so influential in our day—were arguing. The immaterial is superior to the material, the intuitive takes precedence over the factual, and the sacred is above the secular and profane. It is the power or weakness of the spirit that creates actuality rather than vice versa. In the end, the philosophical and spiritual overpowers the scientific.

Nevertheless, for the most part, the occidental man (and woman) of our time thinks otherwise—decades of educational shortcomings instilled in them the hubris of modern science. As the enlightenment project unfolded more radically, our civilization produced a cultism of one-sided reasoning characterized by technical rationality and commerciality.

The decreasing relevance of value-generating and culturally uniting classical disciplines, such as philosophy, metaphysics, and theology, flattened our culture’s profile. It significantly reduced the vertical-transcendent depth dimension of our civilization. Science’s great advancements shifted our attention to the worldly and temporal. As a result, the horizontal, leveled, and plane began to rule the modernism project. In our day, it has reached a new apex.

In his »Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins,«1 some fifty years ago, in 1972, the biologist and Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz wrote and spoke of overpopulation, nuclear weapons, and the devastation of the earth’s habitat. In his views on indoctrination and tradition, Lorenz alluded to philosophical challenges confronting Western civilization.

This book will focus exclusively on the latter. It will expose fallacies of Western thought that are the source, not the effect, of the crises that concern us—from climate change and ecological disaster to culture war and global terrorism. The measurable is not the area in which the dangers lurk for humanity. The misconceptions in cognition and reasoning are the real—and hence existential—threat to our civilization’s survival.

The discussion of the political, social, and cultural history of the past twelve-plus years, which were heavily influenced by the decisions and policies of two US presidents, its 44th and 45th—one a progressive-Marxist, the other a Christian-conservative—and the nation’s return to Marxist ways under the administration of the 46th will depict what good and bad, beneficial, and damaging, either the presence or the lack of philosophical depth and holistic thinking in political decision-making can cause to people, nations, and humanity in its entirety. At the same time, the account will emphasize the benefits of all-inclusive literacy that comprises instruction in classical liberal arts and philosophy for the polity.

The present volume promotes a realism that encompasses more than the visible and measurable, resulting in an inclusive idealism that recognizes that thoughts and ideational concepts have actual existence. It is thus primarily aimed at all those who have not yet or not wholly succumbed to the seductions of the experiential sciences or who want to escape them. It contends that philosophy may and should serve as the connecting bridge between science and religion, revitalizing the beautiful totality of all the possibilities of knowledge given to man.

It will illustrate how rejecting and excluding mankind’s centuries-long history of ideas and thinking endangers humanity and, within it, Western civilization.

PROLOGUE

When John McCain and Barack Obama ran for president of the United States back in 2008, it happened to be the same year that I retired and moved to the US. Despite my lack of computer knowledge beyond utilizing my laptop as a sophisticated typewriter, I decided to start my own blog page. The goal was to keep pursuing my intellectual interest in writing on social, political, and cultural issues from a political and moral philosophical perspective. And I wanted to publish my work without constantly having to go through the lengthy and time-consuming process of drafting essays and articles for publication in journals or books.

The aim was to deliver real-time judgment on topics and developments that I thought were worth commenting on or felt obligated to do so. Aware that political commentators are always smart in hindsight but rarely get things right when they happen, I intended to look back and see if the verdict I had rendered at the time was correct or incorrect, whether it was confirmed or not by how events and policies played out in real life. Unlike politicians and journalists, I didn’t want to give myself the luxury of cheating my way out of previous judgments.

For decades, I’ve noticed that many governments in the United States and other countries lack the ability to think comprehensively and critically. Defective political concepts, backed up by a slew of bad judgments in a variety of fields, have harmed citizens and peoples all over the world and jeopardized international stability. I’ve seen the damage inflicted and perpetuated by politicians, CEOs, economists, and governmental advisers’ inept and uneducated attitudes throughout the years, both close and distant. What are their otherwise brilliant minds missing? It made me ask the perennial question once again: Why do people— beyond human fallibility—err so much? Why are they, why are we—beyond our imperfections—on all levels of life, so unjust? The reason can only be ignorance and unawareness about the moral implications of human responsibility.

Numerous individuals in the groups of people mentioned above looked to be lacking all-encompassing literacy for the most part. They are ignorant of the qualitative differences between science and philosophy and the necessity of combining the two for sustainable knowledge of our world. While science is concerned with objectively observable and quantifiable things and processes in the universe, philosophy (and religion) is concerned with ultimate causes and explanations. Those people in charge of organizing our coexistence, in considerable measure, yearned for what I thought to be needed for critical thinking, effective leadership, and authority in all aspects of human life: classical liberal arts and history of philosophy instruction.

As an initially self-taught and subsequently academically recognized scholar of social and political philosophy, I noticed relevant educational deficiencies in both my professional and private environments. With increasing frequency, I saw and criticized what I perceived to be widespread cultural illiteracy. I attributed it to a dearth of classical arts education, which I saw as the fundamental source of the polity’s complete lack of philosophical depth and understanding. After realizing this, I resolved to change that tendency in both my professional and personal endeavors.

Both intellectually and academically, I rely on a background in classical philosophy, ethics, and natural law. As a result of nearly a lifetime of passion for philosophy, I recognize the special significance of philosophical wisdom, which I found necessary for meaningful decisions in social and political matters. Consequentially, I embarked on a journey into metaphysics and the fascinating realm of true philosophical thought. I urged others to join me in this work throughout the course of perhaps a half-century of teaching and publishing on philosophical topics. My and others’ development was guided by the vision of the well-formed mind.

Devoted to this objective, I quickly realized that my belief and method was diametrically opposed to the intellectual and scientific trends of the moment. True philosophy, metaphysics, was suppressed and, at best, tolerated as a mocked relic in the curricula of higher education. I found myself in a never-ending struggle with purely technical brains that believe in evolution and permanent change and refuse to accept a predefined natural order. Instead, they think that the human condition, in all of its forms, is viable and capable of continuous progress.

Western society has, without a doubt, largely gone scientific and empiristic. We live in the era of positivism and believe we have conquered nature via scientific rationality and have overcome and left behind the myths of faith and metaphysics.

Modern science’s arrogance and the scientific mind’s apparent uncontested entitlement undoubtedly have far-reaching repercussions for our social and political lives, not to mention the often-dreadful consequences for mankind. Aside from the positives that the scientific mind generates—and nobody doubts the immense progress we’ve made, specifically in technical-scientific regard—it may turn destructive when it feeds policies with misunderstandings about the human condition, is led by ideological illusions, and is mainly motivated by hedonism and materialistic greed. Even more so, on a macrocosmic level of globalized economy, international politics, and national security, it frequently subjects humans and peoples to armed conflicts, displacement, famine, illness, and death.

To me, the primarily scientific, unphilosophical, empiristic, constructivist, utilitarian, and politically progressive worldview became the epitome of a defective and ill-informed mindset. This faulty mentality, which is committed to empirical science’s usual trial-and-error approach with its frequently unpleasant experiences, requires critical thought and modification by the timeless horizon of philosophical knowledge. The latter viewed as a conceptual critique and set of guidelines for rational and sensible human behavior.

With the inauguration of Mr. Obama’s presidency, I expected progressivism and the stated mentality to come to the fore with a fury. I knew I’d face intellectual and moral challenges ahead of me, and I understood I’d need somewhere to vent my thoughts and critiques. I needed a place to air my grievances, express myself clearly, create and publish my opinion pieces, and, most importantly, blow off some mental steam. Hence, I created www. edwinseditorial.com, my personal blog.

It’s not the trendiest blogsite in the world, but it’s good enough for me to use as a philosophical platform. Content takes precedence over appearance! Style isn’t as important as substance! It was committed to the principle of “providing intellectual and ethical insight into social and political issues.”

Edwin Ruediger Micewski

Maryland, USA, Spring/Summer 2022

Table of Contents

PREAMBLE

PROLOGUE

Personal Hermeneutic

Leftism

Rightism

Modern-Day Jacobinism

Transcendental Idealism vs. Science

The Memorandum’s Intent and Structure

PART ONE: ORIENTATIONS – ONTOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL

Religion and Science

Ethics and Moral Philosophy

The Crisis of Morality

»The End Justifies All Means« – Consequentialism in Politics

Truth and Truthfulness

Truthfulness in Life and Politics

The Moral Aspect of Truth – Fact vs. Fiction

Free Speech

Charlie Hebdo and a Decapitated Teacher

PART TWO: THE PRESIDENCY OF BARACK H. OBAMA (2009–2017)

US Healthcare – A Political Debate Gone Astray

Gays in the Military – Do Not End the Ban

Shameful Decision by Federal Judge in California

Ideological Misuse of Federalism Leads to Bad Governance

Right Becomes Wrong – Arizona Immigration Law Turned Down

Immigration: US and Europe Governed by Lunacy

Guns in Private Hands–What to do With the Second Amendment?

National Security and Foreign Affairs

Libya – Another Unjust War

The Blunder of Liberal Interventionism Continues

Lessons from Muammar Gadhafi’s Demise and the Destruction of Libya

Syria – Another Regime-Change Failure

USA Causes Disastrous Foreign Policy Fiasco in Syria

Ukraine – A Color-Coded Calamity

Ukraine – Obama Regime Once Again on Wrong Side of History

Astonishing Media Double Standard on Ukraine

Observations on US Imperialism

Failes US Foreign Policy Results in New Forms of Radicalized Warfare

Though this be Madness, there is Method in it!

Is the US Turning into an »Evil Empire«?

Islam and Western Civilization

»Draw Muhammad« – Freedom and the First Amendment Misunderstood

Can a Muslim be President? Islam, Western Society, and the US’ First Constitutional Amendment

PART THREE: THE PRESIDENCY OF DONALD J. TRUMP (2017–2021)

US Presidential Election and the Future of the West

2016 US Presidential Election – Political Intuition Trumps Propaganda

Social and Cultural Issues

New Despotism – The Tyranny of the Mob

A Sick Republic – Characteristics, Determinants, and Remedies

Sexual Harassment – A Call for a Statute of Limitations

Amend the Second Amendment!

El Paso and Dayton Mass Shootings –The Foolish Blame Game Continues

The Decline Accelerates

The Moral and Intellectual Bankruptcy of the Left Destroys this Nation!

The United States of America – a Doomed Republic?

National Security and International Relations

Russophobia – Achilles’ Heel of US-Russia Relations

What is Wrong with President Trump and his Foreign Policy?

How to Resolve the North Korea Crisis

Could my North Korea Resolve have made President Trump »famous« at the UN?

Is a Hegemon Devouring Itself?

Left’s War of Attrition Bears Fruit: Trump Stumbling – Three Topical Mistakes

Syria – President Trump One-Ups Security Experts Again

Impeachment and Pandemic – Blunder and Scourge

An Earnest Façade of Lunacy: The Tragicomedy that is US Domestic Politics

When the Breakdown of Rationality Becomes a Habit

Covid-19 Crisis Lays Bare Wicked Character of the Left

A Brief Metaphysics of a Pandemic

PART FOUR: TWILIGHT OF A NATION

A Nation Threatened by Ignorance

Colossal Election Fraud – When the Righteous and Virtuous are Absent, the Evil Triumphs!

Politics of Hatred Brings Success for Democrats and Biden – The Swamp Prevails

Conclusion and the Way Ahead

Renunciation of Truth–How Long can we Survive a Reality based on Falsehoods?

EPILOGUE

NOTES AND ANNOTATIONS

Personal Hermeneutic

My generation, known as the baby boomers, was born in the decade following WWII, into a period when the »will to life« (Arthur Schopenhauer)—as is customary in the aftermath of major disasters—was exceptionally strong. It became a time of hope and optimism, economic recovery, and enormous technical, social, and cultural advancement. The speedy development was accelerated by the Cold War’s violent ideological battle, which we grew up in and which would last for another almost forty years, threatening us with an ever-increasing risk of nuclear war. After entering high school and from a safe distance, we observed the Culture Revolution in China and discovered how everything we held dear in our traditions and western-capitalist worldview was purged from a society developing its own path of collectivist authoritarianism in a presumed socialist paradise.

The cultural revolution that took place in our own Western world was considerably less conspicuous, but nonetheless left permanent imprints in people’s minds throughout the course of our lives and as our generation rose to power in society and government. In Europe, the so-called 1968s-generation revived the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and preached anti-authoritarianism that called into question traditional governing patterns, social customs, and old-fashioned norms. In the United States, the anti-establishment efforts manifested in the civil rights movement and anti-war agitation, fueled by the American war in Southeast Asia and the disillusionments of a Cold War that seemed to heat up in the face of nuclear tests, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), and the military crushing of civil uprisings, such as in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) by the Soviet Union. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, students pushed for new modalities of student involvement, free expression, sexual cohabitation, and fresh content for curricula and learning on university campuses. University and education turned left-wing, social justice-oriented, anarchistic and pacifist, and critical of law enforcement and military institutions.

The technological upswing of electronic media yielded new forms of creativity in the fine arts, information, and entertainment and promoted ever-rising affluence and interest in different lifestyles. In terms of spirituality, the emphasis shifted away from organized religion and toward more secular methods of pursuing human happiness and meaning in life. Widespread consumerism and an emphasis on material wealth resulted in ever-increasing and ongoing secularization, ushering Western civilization into a nihilistic phase, at the height of which we find ourselves in this day and age.

Nihilism is characterized by egotism and radical tolerance, leading to undifferentiated relativism. Anything goes and everything is permitted. It casts suspicion on everything that isn’t based on science and, if necessary, bends science to its will. It dismisses anything that isn’t tangible and measurable. The scientific method adopts a fragmented and incomplete approach to the study of natural phenomena and its endeavor to objectivize experience is doomed to fail. Hence, nihilism leaves no refuge for a holistic framework of meaning, and life’s inherent irrationality strikes with all its might. The consequences are manifold, often dire, and certainly ubiquitous.

The contemporary taste for reducing life to the gospel of science and empiricism leaves out the ontological essence of nature and human existence, which remain hidden and largely ineffective. The focus on material well-being and sensual enjoyment removes the metaphysical and transcendent or, at least, relegates it to irrelevance. Constructivism reigns; timeless teleological patterns inherent in nature are either no longer recognized or consigned to oblivion.

Deprived of its wholeness and depth, the West slid into superficiality. A political business dominated by a mere scientific worldview and the hubris of lawyers and economists often generated calamitous results on both national and international levels.

It leads to the tragedy of morality in our time as it places responsibility in institutions and communes of shared identities rather than individuals. Concepts such as justice, morality, gender, marriage, sexuality, and so on have ceased to be identified in their ontological givenness but are rather humanly created. For the most part, they are reconstructed and designed according to individual and group notions of pleasure-preference and bliss. The social sciences and other disciplines of soft and non-exact sciences surrender to the technical spirit of our time. They conform and give precedence to desired outcomes over critical investigation and study.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw this development when he considered it a generic law that one must enclose himself in a »bounded horizon« and withstand the temptations of science because “science lives in a profound antagonism towards the eternalizing powers of art and religion” and “seeks to abolish all limitations of horizon and launch mankind upon an infinite and unbounded sea of light whose light is knowledge of all becoming.”2 Thus, Nietzsche forewarned us about the cost of removing, or even destroying, the foundation of faith and belief. His famous saying, »God is dead« captured the devastating loss of meaning and heralded two pathologies that will inevitably arise in a post-religious age, to which we are living witnesses—authoritarianism and nihilism.

In the name of the human individual’s worst instincts, egotism and relativism are unleashed. And the political community becomes corrupt and pathological to the degree that individual members of society become self-centered, dishonest, and irresponsible. The common good fades and is corrupted when collective prudence and virtue, which give the polis its character and constitute the link that binds the society together, recedes and erodes.

In our unphilosophical time, people become ever more incapable of contemplating life’s phenomena in their natural state. Western man believes that he can create the whole world in his mind and mold reality according to his desires. Overstated anthropocentrism challenges a given »Order of Things«3 and attempts to confer demiurgic powers upon humanity.

Contemporary man is dedicated to an evolutionary conception of nature and life and considers all existential realities, almost without exception, to be changeable and shapeable. In this way of thinking, human nature has no predetermined structure and can therefore be transformed at will. Since natural inclinations are rejected or not recognized, humans can be virtually redesigned as far as parameters, such as biological gender, and physical and mental determinants are concerned.

This gives us a first sense of what genuinely constitutes the often superficially and therefore insufficiently defined political categories »Left« and »Right,« as these terms can only be grasped concerning either the recognition or rejection of a transcendent core of our existence—the acknowledgment of a natural order of things, or its denial. Any model of world explanation that propagates permanent change—from Heraclitus and Hegel to the dialectic materialism of Karl Marx—rejects a normative-timeless natural order. Nature, and with it, man, become malleable, and any conception of an immutable essence of nature and first principles— and with it, naturally, of course, the idea of God and creationism—is excluded.

Christianity, the most effective cure to nihilism and the only conceivable victor over postmodern meaninglessness and value relativism, is losing its unifying and inspiring qualities.

Leftism

Thus, leftism4 is born and configured, and the tragedy of our time finds its sad embodiment. The leftist human being believes that he can take over the Divine’s powers and shape existence himself entirely. This is exactly what passes for progressivism these days, and it comes in all shapes and sizes.

Leftism strives to establish a universe in which man is his own god, or at least seeks to do so. Deep down, the leftist is entirely secular and godless. He does not understand that the basic tenets of our existence have always existed and always will and can only be discovered and recognized but never created or redesigned. He hasn’t understood that we are the executives and administrators of our life but not its authors. For him, there is neither a natural order of things nor a natural right preceding the temporary earthly life. In other words, the leftist view of the world does not comprehend that progress and human development take place only on the periphery of being, on the surface but not in the essence, the fundamental and moral core of existence. Nature can be played with but can’t be changed. Consequentially, and almost self-explanatorily, the Left man is the one who misunderstands, misinterprets, or even rejects the first principles of our being. The nihilistic Left wants to eliminate the transcendent. They consider every timeless concept of beauty, justice, or truth a revolt against their idea of what should constitute our modern world.

Left-wing man has abandoned the attitude of moderate restraint, as recommended by Thomas Aquinas, for dealing with human’s ephemeral existence. He is propelled onward by a concept of redemption for this and in this world, asserting and pursuing a universal fiction for humanity’s happiness. He is always striving to build a new and different world, particularly at the expense of an old one, destroying a historically grown order. He has left behind the worlds of faith, fathoming, intuition, and everything on the other side of intellect and reason.5

For the Left, the future is always guaranteed, but the past is not. The past must be obliterated and sent to the dustbin of history as it would serve as a constant reminder of the Left’s failures and political gaffes. By ignoring history, the Left feels justified in doubling down on and pursuing its unnatural and inhumane policies that have failed so frequently before.

Since life itself is aristocratic, discerning, judicious, discriminatory, vertical rather than horizontal in its basic foundations, and its ontological design cannot be modified, leftism despises nature and is constantly resistant to biological explanations. The reason for this is easily explained. Since the nature of the human intellect—its unconditional inclination—lies in the ability to search for truth, which consists in the conformity of our knowledge with reality, it is our judgments about the things of life that connect us to its actuality. This is why the Left believes—while not necessarily cognitively aware of it—that if reality doesn’t meet desired outcomes, an envisioned transformation can only be achieved via mental sophistication and cerebral deception. This explains their constant attempts at linguistic de(con)struction, absurd dogmatism, intolerance, cancel culture, and their policies of reverse discrimination and racism along with anarchic attempts to subvert nation-state sovereignty. Enlightened false consciousness, reasoning that is a priori rebuffing falsification and disempowering critique, is cynicism at its peak.

The Left indulges and preaches a scientific cult, yet their grasp of science is limited to science’s role in assisting in the ideological reconstruction of society. They advocate a primitive teleology that is fueled by political casuistic and profane anthropocentric utility-purpose contexts. Meanwhile, even the ageless truths of the exact sciences like mathematics are under assault by the sophistries of white supremacy and other inventions of left-wing extremism.

Socially and politically, the boredom of prosperity, material abundance, and the exuberance of democratic freedom is unleashed against the state and its guardians of order, on its history, traditions, values, and power. According to leftism, the underlying structural fascism that subsists inside the existing conventional order of political organization must be destroyed.

Hatred is the uniting mobilizer of political left-wing extremism, both then and now. Then, there was animosity directed against individuals from a wealthy economic class or against people of a certain race, ethnicity, or heritage, or against persons of a certain worldview and value orientation. In addition, now, it hates the present, authority and natural hierarchies, masculinity, history, the passed down, the intellectual legacy, the great traditions of art, culture, and education. This book will talk a lot about contemporary left-wing fascism and militant (in-) humanism6 and its manifestations in society.

While there are many people on the left who are good people, decent individuals, great fathers and mothers, employers, and employees, leftism, at its core, is pure evil, albeit hiding behind pseudo-humanistic concepts. The values it espouses, for whatever reason and educational shortcoming, the direction of its ideals, and morals, its apperception of what life and living is all about, is imprudent. This truth also explains why the leftist is almost always wrong. His social and political arrangements come to naught because everything based on his »false consciousness« must be misguided and harmful. Unsurprisingly, the more erroneous the judgment, the higher the damage.

These distorted perceptions, influenced by intellectual, moral, and emotional weaknesses, can lead to completely abstruse and obscure aberrations of reality that have nothing to do with reality at all. Admittedly, the more complex, widely ramified, and invisible the influencing parameters for a particular judgment are, the more difficult the task will be to advance to a well-founded view. Regardless, judgmental flaws frequently lead to the opposite of reality being perceived and considered to be correct. In this way of thinking, human nature has no predetermined essential structure of any kind and can therefore be changed at will. This condition of circumstances, which can only be defined as a collective form of insanity, defines our current era in particular.7

Metaphysically speaking, the world view of the Left man overlooks or consciously denies that with the change of accidental properties, no essence can be created, and neither can an existing one be transformed. In classical philosophy, according to Aristotle, accidentals are qualities, such as color, spatial and temporal determination, suffering, relation, possession, and so on that are not essential to the true identity of a thing. However, bringing about this impossibility—creating essence out of accidentals—is exactly what the progressive world view proclaims. It is a miserable presumptuousness because only God (or, for the non-believer, nature) can produce essence or be substance. The Left erroneously takes the physical as essence and substance, while exactly the opposite is the case: the soul, the intelligible individual unique character, is substance, that is, what constitutes the essence of the individual; the body, at the mercy of variability in time and space and always transient, is accidental; it is something »belonging to a being« (Thomas Aquinas), which itself cannot be essence. The feeling or desire to be a woman, while a male by nature, doesn’t make you a female. Even gender reassignment measures cannot change the essence of what one is at his or her core.

The »Left« man builds the whole edifice of his life and acting on erroneous premises. Hence, everything leftism touches, it ruins. Everything radical leftism touches, it wrecks ferociously.

Rightism

The antithesis, rightism, confers the political term »Right« a value that guarantees that not everything in existence is subject to human control and the power of change. It wants to preserve and is committed to a grown traditional order. Liberty without order is chaos for the man on the right. Limited freedom, which recognizes the insight into the necessity of its limitation for the benefit of the other, one’s fellow human and the entire community, is inherent in his attitude.

The political Right judges progress in all areas of life against a timeless canon of values and, in so doing, ensures protection from undifferentiated progressivism. It favors progress, yet critically and without an inclination to bring it about at any price. It views development and evolution as a dynamic that unfolds inside an eschatological ascension of humankind, as opposed to linear progress toward a utopian end goal of one final utterly happy and harmonious generation. The man on the »right« recognizes that human existence has a history and that there is immense significance and value in the past and her traditions. The usual templates claiming the Left is progressive and cosmopolitan, the Right is anti-progress and backward-looking, are not only inadequate but fundamentally wrong. Of course, they are used specifically for the purpose of maintaining political power and defaming the opponent, but this does not change the unsustainability of this position. The conservative promotes development and cosmopolitan brotherhood; he might even be found at the forefront of innovation, but critically and without a desire to achieve it at any cost.

The »Right« man recognizes timeless and consistent reference points in the political universe. He defends these unshakeable cosmic pillars at all costs against relativism and indifferent notions of equality. As far as humans as moral subjects and their personal dignity are concerned, he considers all as totally equal—man and woman, infants and the elderly, the disabled and the poor and needy, all people regardless of skin color, race, or sexual orientation. Despite this fundamental equality of all people, he recognizes that inequality is the norm. It is the nature of humanity, the nature of things. All persons are diverse in terms of their mental and physical abilities, in character, talents, and skills, and therefore are varied with regard to the possibilities that existence holds for them. This is why he opposes using the constitutional concept of equality indifferently, such as, treating equally what is unequal and replacing equal chances and opportunities for everyone with equality of outcome, as is the terminology employed in the recent public debate to address this issue.

Recognizing distinctions, whether genetic, cultural, social, or historical, and the consequent individual and communal identities is not discriminatory in and of itself, and none of these components imply racism or (white) supremacy per se. Neither is the fact biased or demeaning that the white race, historically, produced the greatest achievements in arts, science, and culture. It is not brought about to denounce the existence and achievements of other races or cultures. It simply symbolizes a certainty in humanity’s consciousness as a result of a complex combination of biological, social, cultural, and historical factors and conditions.

The rightist knows that the idea of egalitarianism cannot be found, let alone justified, in classical theories of thought nor in Christianity. Rather, the false sense of equality that pervades today’s seductive illusion of cultural Marxism is the product of misguided secular and revolutionary intellectual endeavors.

Practically speaking, for example, the rightist supports equal pay for equal labor for men and women in the workplace, while he believes that ignoring biological distinctions between the sexes and among people in terms of skills and capacities is not only foolish and untrue but also impoverishes life and human existence. To the rightist, talking about »birthing people« to cast doubt on the female body’s inherent biological purpose is the height of contemporary folly. Rightism espouses a political realism that acknowledges limits to human design and progress. And while he recognizes the potential dangers of his own conservative stance to congeal, solidify, and stand in the way of growth, he doesn’t want to waste energy and political efforts on unnatural notions.

The man on the »right«—both as an individual and in his social and political forms of organization—recognizes a core area in our existence that lies beyond man’s control and is only transcendentally accessible to us. Transcendental refers to the notion that components that are independent of experience have a role or are at work in human cognition.8

Hence, a core group of our understanding is located in the immaterial, merely intelligible, in the noumenal world as opposed to the present, material, the phenomenal world. But only the noumenal sphere contains the ultimate principles and immutable designs for us as the »metaphysical animals« that we are. In its classical meaning, the term noumenon refers to what is known or can be known without the use of the senses, meaning forms or ideas that exist in a realm beyond space and time. In his dialogue, Timaeus, Plato describes how the never-changing world of ideas (the intelligible world, in Immanuel Kant’s terminology the noumenal) and the empirical (the phenomenal) world of time, space, and constant change meet. As Timaeus says to Socrates:

“We must then, in my judgment, first make this distinction: what is that which is always real and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and is never real? That which is apprehensible by thought with a rational account is the thing that is always unchangeably real; whereas that which is the object of belief together with unreasoning sensation is the thing that comes and passes away, but never has real being.”9

This core area of timeless verities includes the ontological conditions for our being, both in existential and procedural terms. The former comprises timeless and universal criteria of being human (in contrast to animals or non-human beings); the latter contains all the comprehensible specifications that are inscribed in human nature as the everlasting design of a rational being to act and coexist with others, mainly the instructions of natural law.

Modern-Day Jacobinism

This brings the issue to a head and highlights the significant divide between the Left and Right as only in this sense can we make a meaningful distinction between these opposing political forces in life and politics. Only in this light can we comprehend what political fanaticism on both sides may imply. While it is natural for leftism to become intolerant, aggressive, and violent as there is not necessarily a transcendent boundary to restrain their ambitions, right-wing extremism, on the other hand, is incompatible with the substance of the principles and goals of rightism. The right-wing extremist is an abomination, oblivious to what it means to be on the political Right, a betrayer of its genuine goal, in short, a disguised leftist. The proper man of the “Right” resorts to violence in self-defense, either in response to being assaulted or to avert an imminent attack. He employs violence as a last resort to protect and preserve, or to maintain or restore justice, but never to impose beliefs, or bring about the realization of a utopian future by attempting to violently implement a supposedly perfect otherworldly paradise already here on earth.

When political agitation on the left and right becomes extreme, driven by a will to violence, destruction, and ferocious change in social conditions, they both meet and melt into the same. They become something for which a term like »modern-day Jacobins«10 should be devised, expressing scorn for their acts and emphasizing their common misguidedness.

History has familiarized us intimately with the Jacobinization of thought and conduct since the French Revolution and the totalitarianism of the twentieth century, the left-wing of Russian and Chinese communism and Stalinism, the right-wing doppelgängers of Mussolini’s fascism, and Hitler’s national socialism.

In our day, the Jacobins11 are returning with a vengeance. The new fanaticism shares the perennial characteristics of leftism—the non-recognition of present social conditions and the irrepressible will to change. Everything has to be different, and since the natural pillars of life can’t be corrected, only the human consciousness is left and must be radically changed.

The conservative »rightist« recognizes that the Left and Right antagonism has always been and will always be a permanent dialectic history-shaping force in the political universe. He urges the leftist to embrace this as well, instead of constantly attempting to silence, demonize, if not eliminate rightist opposition. This rivalry between Left and Right, he believes, is inevitable and unavoidable. And while the choice of becoming extreme and extremist necessarily involves forces on both sides, those on the left, however, are more prone to it because their worldview of change and relentless progress makes it easier to slip into violent fanaticism.

While the Left is merely incorrect in the eyes of the Right, the Right is consistently evil in the eyes of the Left. This is why lefties are prone to becoming Jacobins, always ready to cut off opponents’ heads, at least symbolically.

This rigorous binary representation of the forces perennially opposing each other also allows to classify all the hybrid forms of the Right and the Left that people embrace on both sides of the political spectrum for the sake of a comfortable life. For it is unmistakable that various individuals, state decision-making entities, educational institutions, religious communities, and, of course, political parties and interest groups have succumbed to the constant, sheer uncontrollable, and relentless pressure from the social and political Left and thrown their conservative and traditional convictions overboard. They allowed progressive ideology to permeate their minds, which is why leftism comes in all guises and can be found in all forms and levels of society and government.12

But it must be acknowledged in the same breath that there are a huge number of individuals who are not at home on the left in the sense indicated above. They are only there because of habit, convenience, and a lack of civil courage in the face of radical leftism’s constant pressure and threats. Encouraging these fellow humans to turn to the »Right« side of history must and will be the task of education and public relations. More on this will be explored in this book, with the goal of restoring the political Right and conservatism in the described meaning as a broadly recognized and morally righteous political force.

In fact, the only force seemingly capable of reversing the continually steady downfall the United States and Western civilization have been on for quite some time. Fortunately, a rising number of concerned and like-minded individuals see the arrogance of the leftist approach to life—shared by so many on the alleged conservative Right—as an existential threat. We consider it as a vocation to expose the dangers of leftist scientism and progressivism’s insidiousness.

Transcendental Idealism vs. Science

Perceiving the danger of leftism relatively early on in my life, I soon became convinced of my moral duty in intellectual terms— to promote education, make significant contributions to cultural horizon development, and pass on the knowledge of classical thought, orally and in writing, to present and future generations.

Sensing the cognitive reductivity in my societal surroundings, I ventured out into the metaphysical realm of genuine philosophical thinking from the early years of my intellectual formation. Even long before studying it academically, it dawned on me that transcendental philosophy (alone) may offer the foundations and principles for the proper management of human affairs—without recourse to religious authority yet validating the basic tenets and fundamental foundations of serious Christian theology through the portal of rational insight and understanding, antecedent to and independent of historical and scientific experiences ever made.

The quintessence of transcendental philosophy I take in the meaning of its founder, the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant uses the term transcendental to describe our cognitive capacity to comprehend objects and living processes a priori, how constitutive these mental categories are for the mind to even have experience, and how we may know something before and without experiencing it. Moreover, the transcendental approach provides a rational foundation and epistemological perspective for metaphysics—which is about understanding, not evidence—as the fundamental and universal discipline of studying the nature and essence of being.

Already in early systematic philosophical speculation, Aristotle realized that metaphysics is the science of being. In this vein, since metaphysics does not provide knowledge about the objects and material things of everyday life, the ancient Greeks distinguished between the »techne,« the practical knowledge of the workplace, and the »episteme,« the universally valid theoretical orientation knowledge. It is easy to see that a fallacy of the enlightenment and (post-)modernity was and is the attempt to reduce being to the techne; an effort that was doomed to fail from the outset and whose negative consequences we are feeling more and more.

Transcendental and metaphysical thought aids in the discovery of an order of being that is necessary for placing experience and science into an all-encompassing context of existence. It takes us back to the realization that the world as a whole cannot be deciphered by the scientifically verifiable alone. We must move beyond proof, empirical evidence, and factual data to turn to the final questions of life and grasp for ourselves the meaning of the whole.

Science is unable to provide a hermeneutics for the entirety of existence, and neither can wisdom be achieved through or limited to science alone. Only with the help of self-reflection and speculative thought can we address the last questions regarding what man is, the substance of his existence, his relations to God, and what discerns him from the animal, humanoid robots, and other artificial intelligence creations. Metaphysics happens in cognition alone, which makes instantly apparent what is so distressing about this access to knowledge for contemporary minds, who usually seek external validation from scientific authority. It is metaphysic’s subjectivity, the severity of constant and inexhaustible self-reflection, and the inescapability of taking responsibility for one’s thoughts and conscience. But as inescapable as this risk is, we must always endeavor it.

These observations are not meant to minimize the relevance of science or cast doubt on the importance of precise sciences, particularly for the technical mastery of everyday instrumental activities. However, particularly for the inexact, soft humanities and social sciences, we must emphasize the importance of trans-scientific approaches to knowledge and their regulatory function for confronting existential challenges.13 Likewise, calling for post-fact scientific evidence must not replace prudence and self-thinking.

But these assertions are certainly meant to demonstrate how ludicrous the arrogation of the soft sciences is. Not only are they in a constant flow of change regarding their results, but they are increasingly exposed to the influence of ideological appropriation. Ever more, they dodge critical debate, refusing falsification and passing off opposing research results as conspiracies. Hence, there are various reasons why philosophy should subject both science and scientists to constant critical evaluation. I will explore this topic in greater depth in the context of this book.

Consequently, as is crucial to note, transcendental reasoning and metaphysics do not create or speak of a fantasy world. Rather, metaphysics departs from the actual world and talks about the same world that scientific disciplines also deal with. Metaphysics, however, deals with the world holistically, in its totality, and goes beyond the limits of experience and empirical observation.14 This, of course, brings philosophy in its most basic sense as metaphysics closer to religion and allows for rapprochement with the transcendent.

Let’s take a concept from Kant’s moral philosophy as an example of how strong transcendental reasoning can be. When the philosopher presented his Categorical Imperative as the moral law that should guide human activity, he introduced the idea that universalization ought to be the ultimate criterion for ethical behavior. He encouraged us to act according to a maxim that could serve at the same time as a universal law for all humanity. While this rational abstraction makes it difficult for the philosophically untrained mind to comprehend what Kant was saying, the Categorical Imperative’s end-in-itself formula, often known as the Formula of Humanity, is more practical and understandable:

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always the same time as an end and never simply as a means.”15

According to Kant, thus, all humans are inherently worthy of respect and dignity. And when this universal notion is articulated, anybody with a sound mind and fundamental morality immediately recognizes what a beautiful guiding image this is for all of humanity, valid at all times and places, independent of experience and historical verification. Once grasped, we don’t need the historical experience of slavery, the holocaust, or any other crimes against humanity to know that they are immoral, inhumane, sinful, unjustifiable. Instead, the empirical instance only confirms and boosts the awareness of what has always been and will always be known.

Quite naturally, my method, which blends Platonic idealism with transcendental and metaphysical philosophical inquiry, is linked to Christian social ethics’ everlasting wisdom. And, quite logically, this philosophical approach to life always results in a conservative outlook.16 It does not, however, come from political or personal life experience—though it is validated by it—or from religious doctrine or ideological aspiration. Instead, it is founded on universally relevant insights into human nature obtained via intuitive thought and intellectual analysis.

Transcendental philosophy likewise demonstrates that progressivism’s arrogance is not only unjustified but also hazardous if unchecked and uncontrolled by the timeless knowledge created by human endeavors in philosophy, religion, and the fine arts. She teaches us that, aside from driving vehicles, using cellphones, and flying from continent to continent, the state of the human person has remained constant. We have the same abilities and are faced with the same bodily and emotional demands as previous generations. Aside from a larger body of historical experience and scientific knowledge, the faculties for human thinking and moral judgment have remained unchanged.

The sharp wit of transcendental idealism confirms that the basic aspects of our civilization’s social and political structures can only be properly comprehended against the backdrop of a centuries-old, if not a millennia-old, history of ideas. This verity alone would prove classic education’s importance, but it should not be underestimated for another reason. Classical education grants insights into human nature and global events that are free of the distractions of today’s issues, which frequently confuse and emotionalize people’s judgment. This claim holds true despite and especially in the face of rapid technological evolution and the globalized connectedness of nations and peoples.

Therefore, transcendental philosophy as an indispensable part of classical learning provides orientation knowledge for how to lead life—whether it offers insight into the first principles of our faculty of understanding or the never-changing order of morality and justice. Dealing with transcendental philosophy and taking her insights to heart does not guarantee success, but, as I would argue, makes life easier, while its disregard makes failure more likely. She does not give any concrete instructions for action and certainly does not protect against failure and the randomness of life. Yet, the negation of the principles and insights she offers leads, as this volume will demonstrate, to harmful practices and actions in human interrelations.

Transcendental philosophy encourages and enables people to think independently of experience, utilize critical reasoning, and employ timeless wisdom to gauge empirical data, judgments, decisions, and actions. She urges people to be bold and adventurous rather than waiting for historical or scientific evidence or justifying failures and inaction by citing a lack of »empirical« data.

The Memorandum’s Intent and Structure

Instances from the sphere of foreign affairs, national security, and cultural and social issues, will demonstrate the veracity of this assertion and highlight the shortcomings of a mere scientific approach.17

The cases dealt with in this volume elucidate the weakness of the constant empirical »after the fact« approach politics takes, leading to scientism as the ever-deepening submission to scientific dictate and dependency on empirical data, engaging in trial and error and, at best and if at all, learning from it. The methods for transcendental reasoning and grasping social and political realities described here demonstrate how failure and harm could be avoided in many, if not most, cases, and which types of experiences the world, nations, peoples, and humans do not need to have for political leaders to make dignified judgments and appropriate policy decisions.

As I offer my thoughts on social, political, and cultural concerns and challenges that occurred for the United States and the rest of the globe under the administrations of Presidents Obama and Trump, and the transition to Biden, the strength of this approach to find meaningful answers will expectantly become even more apparent. Their term in office lasted a total of twelve years, and ended in early 2021, thus beginning a new chapter in US political history. This moment also represented the end of an approximately three-decade era that had transpired since the conclusion of the Cold War in the early 1990s.