The Iceberg of Democracy
Government and morality.
A marine biologist was selling me on the virtues of seaweed. He told me that it could suck carbon out of the atmosphere, and if 2% of a cow’s diet was made up of seafood, it would reduce the methane emissions of cows by 50%. He was, by normal standards, an extremist. On the one hand, he said he didn’t care about humanity — only the environment. He supported people having less children. He was against cars and economic growth. He wanted de-industrialization.
When I mentioned to him that the third world was the most rapidly industrializing part of the world, his heart strings became taut. He said, “well, it’s not really fair, we got a head start on them.” I told him that carbon was the least worrisome pollutant, because it didn’t change our DNA, or cause long-term, epigenetic damage. He disagreed, because global warming will kill MILLIONS in the third world — DNA be damned. I won’t necessarily bore you with all the details. I’m sure you get it.
The point is that this man’s environmentalism ends where the interests of the third world begin. He, like many young men and women, has been sold an “intersectional” environmentalism. He is willing to kill, rape, and die for the environment — at least, until underprivileged, third word populations are mentioned.
This phenomenon of third worldist moralism can be explained in the following way:
Christianity without Christ is simply worship of the lesser, the defective, the victim, the leper, the prostitute, the poor, the humble, the meek.
Non-Christian elites have actively undermined and attacked Christianity, openly, since the time of Voltaire. They became the “mainstream” with Freud, respected in academia.
The two most common solutions are to reintroduce Christianity (which I find unlikely) or to entirely dispense with this morality at its very root (in the vein of Nietzsche or Rand). The problem with merely removing the morality is that people actively hunger and thirst for a way to signal moral superiority. People will in fact martyr themselves for a cause if they feel it is moral enough.
It is comically easy to blaspheme Jesus. You make him commonplace, put him on a bobble head, use his name as an interjection, ridicule his priests and his church, associate worship with boredom, molestation, creepiness, gerontocracy, hypocrisy, and stupidity. It is much more difficult to blaspheme the moral victimology which emerges out of the death of Christianity.
One of the reasons why moral victimology exists is that it is one of the best techniques for pacifying a population. It assigns guilt and shame to men of strength, and heaps praises on the weak and deformed. This is the ultimate kryptonite for an emergent or competing warrior class. In this way, moral victimology is a key pillar of democracy, which is not rule by popularity, but the exclusion of the warrior class.
For example, if the federal reserve as an unelected body chooses to devalue your life savings and destroy your wealth, effectively taxing you at a rate of 10% per year on top of existing taxes, this form of “taxation without representation” is legal. It need not be popular. However, if five star general in the military marched on Washington to arrest the members of the federal reserve for crimes against the people, this would not be democratic. The meaning of democracy is intentionally etymologically obscure and obtuse. It uses the guise of “popularity,” but when push comes to shove, it always refers to the power of the priest and merchant over the warrior.
It seems more likely then that democracy will fall far before third worldist victimology. Or, at the very least, it is much easier to change the form of government than it is to change the deep moral core underpinning the worldview of a society.
Moralism and Francoism
Whether or not democracy survives the 2024 election, even if a God emperor takes power, there will still be an undercurrent of victimology in academia and the media. Francisco Franco ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975. Upon his death, the 1976 Political Reform Act in Spain was instituted by parliament in order to reintroduce democracy. The act was then put to a referendum, in which 94% of the population voted for democracy. In the 1977 Spanish general election, The Union of the Democratic Center won 34% of the vote, the Socialist Worker's Party won 29%, the Communist Party won 9%, the Francoist party (People's Alliance) won 8%, and region independence and separatist parties won 4.4%.
Why is it that Francoism, after 36 years of uncontested rule, was unable to win more than 9% in the first election after his death? Were the people in love with Franco for 36 years, and then when he died, they had a sudden change of heart? Or is it the case that people will go grudgingly along with a right-wing dictatorship, but as soon as that dictatorship encounters a problem of succession, the people’s hearts return to the moral undercurrent?
Perhaps the Spanish people are economic socialists, but they still, at least, hold conservative social views. We can examine national pride, religiousness, and other markers of conservatism to see if this is true.
Spanish national identity is the lowest in Europe. From a study in 2015, Spaniards aged 15-24 were the least likely of 10 European countries to identify as Spanish, first and foremost, rather than something else like "European." Germans of that age identified 26% as German, the second lowest, compared to the European average of 33% who identified solely with their nation over a broader "European" identity.1
Whereas 55% of Romanians identify as "highly religious," only 21% of Spaniards identify as "highly religious." The lowest percentage in Europe came from Estonia, where only 7% consider themselves to be "highly religious." Spain is less religious than other predominantly Catholic European countries such as Italy (27%), Croatia (44%), and Poland (40%). Out of 34 countries surveyed in 2018, it was 16th out of 34. 23% of Spaniards attend church at least once a month, 23% pray daily, and 25% are certain in the existence of God.2
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what are Spanish attitudes toward immigration? Immigration is perhaps the most important defining issue in the contemporary left-right split within Europe. Even as some right wingers embrace a broader “European identity” (especially in Ukraine), and even as some right wingers embrace a secular or non-religious attitude, the issue of immigration is undeniably right wing.
On the issue of immigration, a 2018 Pew poll found that Spaniards were the most likely to desire more immigration of all countries polled. In fact, Spaniards were almost twice as likely as British, French, or German respondents to favor immigration.
In summary, 48 years after Franco, his legacy failed to preserve, the church, Spanish nationalism, or Spanish racial identity. Ironically, countries which were forced to accept communism, such as Poland and Romania, remained more religious and more xenophobic than Franco. The leftward shift of Spain cannot be explained only in terms of recent developments, since over 42% of the vote in 1977 went to outright communist, socialist, or separatist parties. A significant portion of that 42% must have originated prior to Franco’s death. How were these left wing views being transmitted, preserved, promoted, and spread under Francoism?
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https://web.archive.org/web/20201021073200/http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/eb/eb83/eb83_citizen_en.pdf
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/12/05/how-do-european-countries-differ-in-religious-commitment/