OUROBOROS

by Brett Stevens

Dogs, despite being nature’s kindest and most enthusiastic animals, have the baffling habit of chasing their tails. They notice the attraction and lunge for it, as if this discovery of themselves could give their lives meaning.

Reputedly, humans are more intelligent and not prone to such behaviors. After some years of experience in the world, I can no longer agree. We are the ultimate tail-chasers but, being social animals, we’ve found a way to pretend that we are not chasing our own tails if we project the image of a tail onto others.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., HERO OF THE SUBURBS

by Brett Stevens

Why would anyone ever say, especially in a pained voice, “Can’t we all just get along?”

All of us getting along means acceptance of whatever. It means that there is no evolution, no searching for a better answer. In practice, it means that we all retreat to our homes and ignore each other as well as ignoring what happens to our society. If it gets worse, that is not our fault.

People who ask why we cannot all get along are seeking this kind of bourgeois individualism. They want the freedom to ignore the consequences of their actions and their inaction, so that if they contribute to mass destruction of society, they can look back and say “But I was fair to everyone, and I guaranteed that we all had rights.” Yes, rights to ignore that our fate is bound together and that what determines this is not the freedom of individuals, but the health of societies.

LIBERAL HEGEMONY

by Michael Parish

When an ideology gains control of the institutions that shape opinion, it is said to have gained hegemony. At this point, something happens to public discourse. As the tenets of the ideology are considered objective and not subjective, all contenders must embrace them to keep their corner of the ring. Its ends cannot be contested, only their means. One cannot propose an altogether different value system, but only critique ways of realizing it.

Rather than clashing ideologies, we have clashing methods. The result is the assimilation of all competition into the dominant ideology and their reduction to a shadow of it. There are thus no options beyond minor variations in the same type of thought. In Western democracies, this is the current condition in regards to Liberalism.