By PAUL KRAUSE
Since the Bolshevik Revolution swept through Russia in 1917, the intellectual class in the Western world has slowly drifted into a despotic conformity united under the banner of hatred for the West. That hatred is principally targeted at “capitalism,” a catch-all term for a non-government planned economy, the middle class (or the “bourgeoisie”) created from the capitalist economy, and a lingering loathing of Christianity.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, a battle raged inside the Western world’s pre-eminent universities and media publications between so-called conservatives, who can loosely be described as having a positive view of capitalism, the middle class, and Christianity regardless of personal political or even religious sentiment, against those who hated these pillars of Western culture (western culture, here, is defined by capitalism, the middleclass, and the Christian religion).
Now, with the conservative vanguard all but swept aside, hatred of the West is the prevailing ideology of the intellectual class which possesses a hegemony over the mainstream media and mainstream cultural institutions.
Love and hate are the two dispositions of the heart that guide people. Love, as St. Thomas Aquinas writes, is the “unitive force” which binds all things together. Hate, however, is the passion that divides and separates, eventually leading to death and destruction.
It comes, therefore, as no surprise that the hate that moves the empty hearts and souls of our current elite masquerades itself with the veil of love, ironically inherited by the very religion they despise. “Love trumps hate” and “hate has no home here” are now ubiquitous and bland rhetorical catchphrases by the hateful elite and their indoctrinated stormtroopers.
Following the Russian Revolution, Western intellectuals organized a comprehensive outline for justifying their hate. Capitalism was blamed for all forms of oppression. Oppression of women. Oppression of minorities (the “sexual division of labor” found in the family being the origin of all oppression according to Karl Marx). Oppression of the world. Whatever oppression there was it can be traced to the mythical evil bogeyman labeled capitalism.
The middle class, too, was loathed by the far left for its kitsch sentiments, commodity fetishism, and being the byproduct of the class conflict of capitalism. The middle class, derided as the “petite bourgeoisie” comes to support tyrannical institutions and laws on the misplaced hope that they will ascend this pyramid of power while walling themselves off from the oppressed and marginalized.
This hatred of the middle class now goes by other names of soft derogatory pejoratives like “metropolitan” or “Boomer” (an epithet implying an antique middle class and softly patriotic and culturally Christian outlook rather than the generational description it originally meant) since explicit acknowledgment of hating the middle class would spoil the game. The middle class and their religiosity and patriotism are also detested by the intellectuals who separate themselves into an entirely different class altogether to keep themselves pure of middle-class contamination.
The intellectual class’s hatred of Christianity goes back to the French Revolution which has carried forward in all major revolutions since, most especially in the twentieth century in Russia, Spain, and China. Marx considered Christianity the seed from which capitalism and middleclass values sprang. So too did Nietzsche. Today, many intellectuals bemoan Christianity as a force for oppression, tyranny, and backward thinking.
The hardened heart of the hate of the anti-Western intellectual class ultimately rests on hatred of Christianity. If Christianity, as Karl Marx and others said, was the spirit from which capitalism and bourgeoise “family values” sprung, then Christianity is the root of all problems. The blaming of Christianity for everything bad is now commonplace and the mockery and scorn of Christianity (though never Judaism or Islam) is an encouraged practice. Worse, it is even honored and showered with lavish praise!
Part of the appeal of the hateful anti-Western ideology of the intellectuals is in its simplicity. We can all sense problems in the world we live in. Yet the fact that we sense and see these problems, as Reinhold Niebuhr said, was the best empirical evidence for the fallen state of humanity and the Christian doctrine of original sin. Niebuhr was one of the last great public intellectuals in America with a Christian outlook, living and writing during the same time as Bishop Fulton Sheen and concerning himself with many of the same problems as World War II ended and the Cold War began.
Since it is easy to seduce people into simplistic answers for the problems that we see and sense, the hate of the intellectuals spread. The intellectual’s answer to these problems was equally simplistic: the causes of the problems need to be destroyed. This allowed a festering hate to grow in the hearts and souls of those captured by the hateful simplicity offered by the intellectuals (a hateful simplicity that mirrors the simple seduction of the Serpent it might be noted). The hate that unites the intellectual class necessitates destruction. Hate can only do exactly that.
Love, by contrast, which unites all in virtuous compassion is the only real alternative to the hate of the intellectuals. Christianity, of course, is the religion and revelation of love: the revelation of love through a person who was also divine. To the life of Christ, we must look for the beauty, compassion, and love that heal the world. The intellectuals, however, have never been able to accept any savior other than themselves.
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