Seven

Note: I am NOT going to be very specific in this post. Folks who are able to do their own homework can easily fill in specific examples and many, many more issues than I list below. This is, as I say below, an opportunity to engage in a very simplified, but potentially useful, thought experiment.

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Each of the critical issues facing us as a society today are… moral issues. It’s just that the idea of virtue and sin have been denigrated (and pejorated) so long and folks who ought to know better have allowed the enemies of virtue to redefine the topic so narrowly (and wrongly) that we rarely think in those terms.

As a starting point, try this lil thought experiment: take the classic “Cardinal Virtues”—Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Faith, Hope, Love—and “Deadly Sins”—Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust; although older lists include despair or “accedie”—and try matching up the “Deadly Sins” with difficulties facing Western Civ… and the “Cardinal Virtues” with the solutions to those difficulties…

You can easily page through backposts here at twc for critical issues to apply these to, but I’ll go ahead and list just a few for starters:

Democratic rule is arguably greatest achievemant of Western Civilization, and democratic government “of the people, by the people” is under assault both by those who claim greatest alliegiance to it and by those alien invaders to whom it is a… foreign concept. Think: the Eurabianization of France, Italy, et al; the anti-democratic urm, “Democratic Party,” and the political elite as a whole, to mention just a few obvious examples.

What deadly sins appear to be the favorites of the politcal elites, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Mass Media Podpeople and their ilk who commit open acts of treason, encourage invasion and weaken the very fabric of a democratic society by their open acts of defiance of that society’s fundamental principles of governance and responsible citizenship? What virtues do these folk demonstrate that they lack?

Apply that line of thought to

Education…

The Arts…

Taxes…

Religion…

You get the idea? A growing number of the “products” of so-called public education end up graduating from college unable to read and understand a newspaper editorial or the instructions on a prescription med bottle—apparently only about 31% of recent college grads can manage those great intellectual feats. Are sad facts like this the result of a virtuous approach to educating our future citizens or an example of how greed, sloth, pride and envy lead educrats, a growing (sadly) number of teachers and pubschool administrators *spit* to join with slothful parents in lobotomizing future citizens?

The arts… *sigh* Dominated by two extremes with trash on both ends. “High art” dominated by crucifixes suspended in jars of urine. Pop art dominated by misogynistic rap “music” and worse. What virtue is there in,

“You say you a dime, you a measly penny. She say she’s a dime, she’s a measly penny. She say she’s a dime, she’s a measly penny. Stop trying to get with me. You say you a dime, you’s a measly penny.”

And that’s some of the cleanest of rap lyrics, far better than the norm, both in “lyric” quality and in moral tone. I won’t reprint the crap that falls within the norm. Take a few minutes and rate ANY pop music today with the Principles of Classicism, then ask yourself, “How would society improve if more music today employed those musical principles?”

Of course, most folks today, after lobotomization via pubschool and mass media, won’t even notice the religious, social and philosophical underpinnings of those principles, because Western Civilization itself has been under such prolonged assault by both mass media and academia.

*sigh*

Dare I mention the huge evil that our current tax structure IS (let alone the greed that is its essential underpinning)? What virtue can answer this evil?

And religion… *sigh* Christianity and Judaism both devolving (in this country) to the social clubs they have long since even ceased being in other Western nations? I wonder what virtues are lacking there?

I just mention these general areas of concern, because this sort of approach to understanding many, many issues could quite likely be useful in doing something that is the anathema of anti-democratic, anti-western civ folk: making clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil.

Sometimes the issues really are clearcut black and white.

Obviously, the traditional “Cardinal Virtues” listed above aren’t the only virtues needed to combat the further erosion of Western Civilization. And there are other traditional lists of “Cardinal Virtues”. And the “Seven Deadly Sins” are joined by a host of others in the camps of both those who seek the end of democratic and other Western Civilization values and those who defend them.

But those two lists of seven do provide a useful toolset for approaching issues.