So writes Anthony Esolen in an article here at American Greatness. Good article, and a lot of quotes from ol' Herman Melville. But of course the doom for the U.S. was written on the wall at the beginning. "Liberty" was a false god, a sort of pied piper leading its adherents along the famous "primrose path" until boom, disaster befell them. Esolen writes eloquently (when does he not?) :
"We need not confine ourselves to the legal. There is also the customary. Free men honor the good and wise, the benefactors of their nation. Slaves toady to the famous. Free men make their own entertainment. Servile men are content to consume it ready-made. Free men seek out the dangerous space, as Melville sought out the sea. Servile men demand the safe space, where they may suck their thumbs. Free men fight in the open. Servile men sneak about, bear tales, attack the weak like a pack of jackals, and couch their enmity in soft and seductive slogans. Free men raise their own children. Servile men submit their children to be raised by others. Free men take their pedigrees from almighty God. Servile men seek out means of establishing a factitious superiority over their peers or their betters: a diploma, a bank account, a big house, a title, a special status as favored victim."
Reads like a description Cicero could have written. So we are replaying the drama the Romans lived through. What recreated Rome in the East, in Byzantium, and in the West, ultimately as the High Middle Ages, was Christianity, and not imputed-grace Protestantism but rather the Theosis-Faith of the True Church, that God became Man not merely to save us from our sins, but to elevate us as new creations in Christ (as St. Paul wrote so often and in so many ways, as did St. John). For a fascinating discussion on Theosis, the forgotten teaching of the Church, see this podcast at (rather absurdly named) "Pints with Aquinas". The theologian being interviewed is Fr. James Brent, O.P.
But America, the United States,
never had that, a secure foundation on the profound teachings of Historical Christianity. Instead, the country was founded by Puritan fanatics in New England and Capitalists in
Virginia, and then given a national government by the godless (James Madison,
Alexander Hamilton) via a Constitutional Convention they themselves created in
Philadelphia (after a failed attempt a year before – 1786 – in Annapolis).
The new U. S. Constitution intentinoally left God totally out of the picture and if God is
out of the picture, no "rights" of any sort can be guaranteed, and
even the nature of man and the point and bounds of his life are all "up
for grabs". Which, need I point out, are precisely what plague the poor
country today, what with its Gay marriage imposed from above, and Tranny rights, and
absolutely shocking political malfeasance.
"Liberty" is the false god, "freedom" the true one – if one understands by "freedom" the freedom to be what God intended you to be. As I have written many times, and as have others before me, we're like gasoline engines, we humans; i.e. we're like engines meant to run on gasoline, and gasoline only. Not kerosene, not diesel, not propane, not natural gas or whiskey or aviation fuel. "Liberty," that pied piper, would have one believe one can run on anything one wants. The more choices the more "liberty". Simple enough, except that it doesn't work. And when you of course, necessarily break down, when you "crash and burn", well, too bad.
With most everyone in the U.S. now wanting to run on everything from unicorn urine to sea water, it's no wonder the country exhibits the morals that even the pagan Cicero would lament.
An P
Tragically, most Catholics in the U.S. will defend the "freedoms", the "liberty" of the Puritan/Masonic principles upon which this country was founded. But the leaders of the Catholic Church in the U.S. have never been ones to teach them what true freedom and liberty is as they have always wanted to "go along to get along" (you know, the practice of "prudence" and the Truth be damned) and thus became what many have said, simply an arm of the Democratic (sic) Party and have no real, Catholic faith.
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