Progressivism vs Conservatism

Rarely in the history of humanity has the progressive assault been as preponderant as it is today. During the worst hours of Marxism, the gulags and intellectual terrorism were limited to certain countries or empires, without being able to subjugate the rest of the West. The Soviet empire could only forbid Christian faith, freedom of thought, and cultural heritage in the territories it directly controlled or through interposed vassals. Today, progressive delusion ignites souls in what Leo Strauss would define as a devastating nihilism.

It is a plethora of pseudo-intellectuals who seek to deconstruct the human by cleverly questioning all the values that distinguish it. The aim is to transform the human person into an individual stripped of everything that socially and culturally constitutes them. This new man, divested of his bearings, is placed alone before the law, which itself is devoid of any sense of discernment.

The progressive lexicon

Identity is demonized, heritage is standardized, history is handed over to gravedigger historicism, and truth is relativized. Generalized uncertainty thus inexorably leads to nihilism. The modus operandi of this leftist intellectualism consists of systematic intimidation designed to anticipate and prevent discourses that do not conform to globalist ideology. Its weapon is a specially sharpened lexicon to abort any attempt at debate on subjects elevated to globalism's dogma.

The identitarian is then equated with the fascist, rejecting otherness and devoid of humanity. They are constantly adorned with tirelessly repeated attributes that mechanically loop back. It is necessary to denounce this pernicious lexicon in order to unmask it. The expressions that recur most often are those of identitarian withdrawal, tribal behavior, racial fetishism, religious identitarianism, and ethnic identitarianism. The terms confession, clan, tribe, and even nation are always used in a pejorative and humiliating sense. These are contrasted with appealing notions, but emptied of their meaning, as they are detached from reality. These also recur repeatedly: living together, coexistence, inclusivity, and otherness.

The nation, assimilated to evil, is to be dissolved, along with its notions of borders, history, and identity. The Christian religion, which founded otherness par excellence, is perceived as an enemy and an obstacle to this otherness. Man is desacralized and daily life is despiritualized. The sacred person is replaced by the consumer and taxpayer individual. The new man, the ideal of woke and liberal progressivism, no longer has a transcendental dimension; he is only evaluated in relation to his performance and his material and caloric needs.

Eugenics

Wokism is merely the extreme manifestation of this ideology. After denying family, community, country, faith, tradition, and heritage, it pushes to the negation of sexual evidence. It is the rejection of divine creation and even of nature as a manifestation of the divine. It is the contestation of creation, according to Fyodor Dostoevsky. Thus, after killing God, as Martin Heidegger tells us, the nihilist seeks the "death of man".

The lexicon of progressive "bien-pensance" continues to grow. Recently, on the social networks of a pseudo-historian, conservatives, identitarians, and federalists were accused of eugenics. Here again, the intellectual short-circuit stems more from ideological discourse than scientific. For eugenics is, above all, a product of progressivism. It rejects creation with its flaws; it wants to perfect it. The new man must be selected down to his genes.

Nothing is more opposed to this practice than Christian conservatism. It protects life, prohibits abortion and artificial selection. Christianity sees in the sick person the very face of Christ and His presence manifested by absolute otherness.

The Isolationists

It is not the first time that progressives project their vices onto conservatives. Haven't they, since 1975, labeled Christian conservatives as isolationists? They fought them militarily and ideologically. And yet, the Lebanon of these so-called isolationists was open to the whole world and to all cultures; that of the progressives was ostracized by the international community, and isolated from both the West and the Arab Gulf countries.

Finally, progressives want to be rooted in what they call the Arab East. They claim to be Arabists and open to their natural environment. They accuse conservatives of being utopians artificially oriented towards the West. Here again, discernment would be appropriate. For in reality, conservatives are attached to their Lebanese land, their Levantine belonging, and their Eastern Christian, Antiochian, and Syriac heritage.

It is, on the other hand, the progressives who are the most deeply Westernized, as revealed by their integral adoption of the Western ideology par excellence, which is wokism or radical liberalism. This rejection of heritage, as well as self-hatred, are characteristics not found anywhere other than in current Western civilization. Neither the Muslim world nor the Far East experiences such a form of civilizational suicide. This ideology therefore constitutes empirical proof of the Lebanese left's (which claims to be Arab) belonging to the West with its qualities and its vices.

Here, in the West, there prevails Benedict XVI tells us, "a form of self-hatred...

And one can only describe it as pathological…

And this pathology rages throughout the West, carrying away the Levantine coast with it.

Faced with this distressing lack of discernment, His Holiness reminds us that "the unification of humanity is not a political task but an eschatological hope, and that to ignore the identity of peoples to merge them into a global mix is a sin of pride, similar to the biblical sin of the Tower of Babel.