Friday, March 29, AD 2024 7:47am

Evil on the March

My favorite living historian Victor Davis Hanson wonders if we are living in a world today where the orcs are winning.

Tolkien’s literary purpose with orcs was not to explore the many shades of evil or the struggle within oneself to avoid the dark side; he did that well enough in dozens of once good but weak characters who went bad such as the turncoat Saruman the wizard, his sidekick Wormtongue, a few of the hobbits who had ruined the Shire, and, best of all, the multifaceted Gollum. Orcs, on the other hand, are unredeemable. Orcs, goblins, and trolls exist as the tools of the even more sinister in proud towers to destroy civilization, and know nothing other than killing and destruction. Their reward is to feed on the crumbs of what they have ruined.

In the 21st century we are often lectured that such simplistic, one-dimensional evil is long gone. An ubiquitous civilization has so permeated the globe that even the worst sorts must absorb some mitigating popular culture from the Internet, Twitter, and Facebook, as if the sheer speed of transmitting thoughts ensures their moral improvement.

Even where democracy is absent, the “world community” and a “global consciousness” are such that billions supposedly won’t let Attila, Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan reappear in our postmodern lives. To deal with a Major Hasan, Americans cannot cite his environment as the cause, at least not poverty, racism, religious bigotry, nativism, xenophobia, or any of the more popular –isms and-ologies in our politically correct tool box that we customarily use to excuse and contextualize evil behavior. So exasperated, we shrug and call his murdering “workplace violence” — an apparent understandable psychological condition attributable to the boredom and monotony of the bleak, postmodern office.

 

******************************************

 

Evil is ancient, unchanging, and with us always. The more postmodern the West becomes — affluent, leisured, nursed on moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, and multicultural relativism — the more premodern the evil among us seems to arise in nihilistic response, whether it is from the primordial Tsarnaev brothers or Jihadi John.  We have invented dozens of new ways to explain away our indifference, our enemies hundreds of new ways of reminding us of our impotence. I suppose we who enjoy the good life don’t want to lose any of it for anything — and will understandably do any amount of appeasing, explaining, and contextualizing to avoid an existential war against the beheaders and mutilators, a fact well-known to our enemies.

The Europeans are shrugging that Ukraine is lost and will soon sigh that the Baltic states are a far-off place not worth risking the coffee shops of Amsterdam to defend. Westerners lament beheadings but then privately mutter that journalists know just what they are getting into when they visit the Middle East. Murdering and abusing a U.S. ambassador on video is not such a big deal anymore and is worth only a second or so mention on Google News.

So we wait behind our suburban Maginot Lines, arguing over our quarter- and half-measure responses, refighting Iraq and Afghanistan as if they were the Somme and Verdun, assured that we can distract ourselves from the horrors abroad with psychodramas about Ferguson, the president’s golfing, his lectures on fairness, and which naked celebrity photo was hacked on the Internet.

Meanwhile the orcs are busy and growing and nearing the ramparts…

Go here to read the rest.  We live in a fallen world, and unless there are in each generation brave men, mostly, who stand up and pay the price to confront evil, the innocent are drowned in blood.  The West since World War II has been taught that there is not really good and evil but merely shades of grey.  We are about to have a costly lesson in what foolishness that truly is.

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Mary De Voe
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 9:03am

Our Lady foretold a third World War of unimaginable proportions. For a people who have abandoned their creative powers of imagination in pursuit of the seven deadly sins, for a people who make war on God, truth and Justice, for truly the innocent among us are entitled to truth and Justice, the evil is upon us.

Philip
Philip
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 11:27am

Mr. McClarey.

Excellent post sir. So true. So sad.

In the end, a new heaven and a new earth. Minus the orcs!

Botolph
Botolph
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 12:16pm

Oh there are Orcs on the world and yes, they are on the march!

VictorNL
VictorNL
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 2:58pm

“Even where democracy is absent, the “world community” and a “global consciousness” are such that billions supposedly won’t let Attila, Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan reappear in our postmodern lives.”

I don’t get what this means.
Postmodern folk won’t allow Attila, Tamerlane, and Khan into our lives?
Do you mean by force of war? That, postmodern times would have people fighting back an Attila?

I’m confused.

Because later in the quoted piece Hanson is saying that people won’t fight against that which is unjust.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 3:20pm

‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Tertullian, Apologeticus, Chapter 50
.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Thomas Jefferson
.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.

Steve Phoenix
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 4:12pm

“Our Lady foretold a third World War of unimaginable proportions…For a people … in pursuit of the seven deadly sins, for a people who make war on God, truth and Justice,..” Mary De Voe.

I stay awake some nights thinking about this exact same thing, more frequently the last year, esp. here in this jaded bacchanal-lovers’ paradise called California. How long can this go on, and God, who Our Lady has already said was so greatly offended by sinful human actions (1917 revelation at Fatima), who the Psalms say will not stay His hand forever but will arise and punish (Ps. 94), how long can He stay His hand in response to her remonstrations? I do not know…

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 5:04pm

Don’t forget, Orcs can’t make themselves; they have to be carefully corrupted from good, and don’t survive long on their own.

More use to keep an eye on what force is guiding them, and counter specific attacks. (In my always own view.)

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 5:08pm

From the story-
Apparently he did not think that anything from his contemporary experience might allow him to imagine reforming or rehabilitating such fictive folk.?

Really wish he’d done a bit of research… Tolkien DID think about it. That there weren’t any reformed bugged him.

Oddly, it doesn’t bug me– at least in one version, they’re corrupted elves (and possibly others)– shattered ones, destroyed people to be used as footmen.
You may as well look at a collection of “shattered eggs” and complain that not a one isn’t broken beyond repair.
Alternatively, any that might not be totally evil– being made by a bleeping superpower of darkness— are destroyed before they’re finished.

Arminius
Monday, September 8, AD 2014 5:19pm

Reblogged at http://wearethenewbarbarians.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for the very thought provoking reading.

trackback
Tuesday, September 9, AD 2014 12:01am

[…] Evil Is On The March – Donald R. McClarey JD, The Amrcn Catholic The Matter of the Crux: John Allen – Joan Frawley Desmond, NCReg Fruitfulness: The Measure of a Human Life  – Mitchell Kalpakgian PhD St. Paul and ISIS – Shaun McAfee, Catholic Exchange Why Would Any Woman Choose Religious Life? – Fr. Robert McTeigue Lebanese Christians Re-Arm, AP Writes Powerful Account – Jim Davis Our Anger, Fragility & The Remedy: The Crd. Dolan Scandal – R. Royal The Runt Of The Liturgy – Patrick Archbold, NCRegister.com St. Clare and The Morning Offering – Julianne McCullagh, Cthlc Stnd 12 Bible Verses that Demolish the Osteens’ Prosperity Gospel – ChPOP Say The Truth: With Islam It Is a War of Religion – Il Foglio Fasting on Fridays & Spiritual Warfare – Fr. Dwight Longenecker Seven Vices of Sporting Events – Deacon Edward Looney, Igntm Tdy The Strange Story of the Scottish Cardinal – Beverly De Soto, Regina Why I Proudly Display a Pro-Life Car Sticker – Francis Phillips, The CH Cardinal Dolan’s St. Patrick’s Day Scandal – BigPulpit.com Christianity, Islam, and The Middle East – BigPulpit.com For the MONDAY EVENING EDITION click here. […]

Tim Quinlan
Tim Quinlan
Tuesday, September 9, AD 2014 6:46am

A culture that is blind to evil and ignores it will not survive,the more immediate problem is not Islam but our leaders,the media,and our schools

Philip
Philip
Tuesday, September 9, AD 2014 8:12am

“We are about to have a costly lesson on what foolishness that truly is.” -D.McClarey

Giving witness to others on behalf of Our Father Our Brother Jesus and The Holy Spirit is your bow arrow and never failing shield. The Holy Martyrs faced the orcs of their day in Holy confidence.

On Eagles Wings…On Eagles Wings!

Steve Phoenix
Tuesday, September 9, AD 2014 3:16pm

“We fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary.”
—Lenin, Socialism and War (1915)

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, September 9, AD 2014 4:15pm

Steve Phoenix: “We fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary.”
—Lenin, Socialism and War (1915)”
.
If there is no oppressed class, Lenin will create one.

Augustine Thomas
Augustine Thomas
Wednesday, September 10, AD 2014 12:53am

Hanson is a Good German in relation to the Unborn Holocaust. He is on the side of the orcs.

God save his soul from hell and all of our souls because we don’t fight a war against the people who are responsible for the murder of millions, now billions of unborn children.

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