The wisdom of the next social order, as I imagine it, would not reside in right doctrine, administered by right men, who must be found, but rather in doctrines amounting to permission for each man to live an experiemental life. [Emphasis mine -- RD] Thus, once again, culture will give back what it has taken away. All governments will be just, so long as they secure that consoling plenitude of option in which modern satisfaction really consists. In this way the emergent culture could drive the value problem clean out of the social system and, limiting it to a form of philosophical entertainment in lieu of edifying preachment, could successfully conclude the exercise for which politics is the name. Problems of democracy need no longer to prove so difficult as they have been. Psychological man is likely to be indifferent to the ancient question of legitimate authority, of sharing in government, so long as the powers that be preserve social order and manage and economy of abundance. ...Psychological man, in his independence from all gods, can feel free to use all god-terms; I imagine he will be a hedger against his own bets, a user of any faith that lends itself to therapeutic use.
-- Philip Rieff, "The Triumph of the Therapeutic," 1966
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This was initially written by Strom Thurmond, who - like many Americans at the time - saw desegregation as judicial tyranny and a dire threat to Southern culture and traditions. Sound familiar?
The Southern Manifesto
Congressional Record, 84th Congress, March 12, 1956
The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established law . . . We regard the decisions of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of JUDICIAL POWER. It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people.
In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 the Supreme Court expressly declared that under the 14th Amendment no person was denied any of his rights if the States provided separate but equal facilities . . . This interpretation, restated time and again, became a part of the life of the people of many of the States and confirmed their habits, TRADITIONS, and way of life. It is founded on elemental humanity and commonsense, for parents should not be deprived by Government of the right to direct the lives and education of their own children. . .
This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.
http://www.strom.clemson.edu/strom/manifesto.html
"It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races."
It's hard to believe he could write that with a straight face. Maybe no one ever let him know about the lynchings or any of the myriad other ways that Blacks were treated as second class citizens. Maybe he was just thinking of his own daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and what good relations led to her birth and how well he got along with her for his entire life.
It seems to me that we can't get away from the "therapeutic" in this discussion. In the pluralistic milieu into which we were all born, the individual soul (by whatever term you call it) is where the rubber meets the road in all matters religious. Salvation is the ultimate therapy for the terror and anxiety that accompanies any extension, it seems to me that traditional cons like Rod ultimately hunger for a commonly-shared religious authority as therapy for an (admittedly) sick civilization.
Judging from what I've read, Rod converted to Catholicism -- and later Orthodoxy --under the direction of his powerful individual conscience. He has never really been the kind of mindlessly trusting sheep that the church formerly relied upon for centuries of cultural hegemony. History shows that only way such a long-lived hegemony arises is when the fervent few cram it down the uneasy throats of the many.
So what will it be, folks? A model of toleration? Or domination? Choose your allies well!
Boy, do I hate these Captchas. Here is what I meant to post, minus the unintentionally missing text:
It seems to me that we can't get away from the "therapeutic" in this discussion. In the pluralistic milieu into which we were all born, the individual soul (by whatever term you call it) is where the rubber meets the road in all matters religious. Salvation is the ultimate therapy for the terror and anxiety that accompanies any acute awareness of the sheer precariousness of human existence. By extension, it seems to me that traditional cons like Rod ultimately hunger for a commonly-shared religious authority as therapy for an (admittedly) sick civilization.
Judging from what I've read, Rod converted to Catholicism -- and later Orthodoxy --under the direction of his powerful individual conscience. He has never really been the kind of mindlessly trusting sheep that the church formerly relied upon for centuries of cultural hegemony. But history shows that only way such a long-lived hegemony arises is when the fervent few cram it down the uneasy throats of the many.
So what will it be, folks? A model of toleration? Or domination? Choose your allies well!
The above meant "plus the unintentionally missing text," Nest'ce pas?
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