{"id":59,"date":"2005-12-25T22:23:27","date_gmt":"2005-12-26T02:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/12\/25\/christmas-have-a-merry\/"},"modified":"2005-12-25T22:23:27","modified_gmt":"2005-12-26T02:23:27","slug":"christmas-have-a-merry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/12\/25\/christmas-have-a-merry\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRISTMAS, HAVE A MERRY"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Any one who doubts we are on the cusp of fascism in America should try reading the Washington Times<\/A> (the print edition and not<\/EM> the comic book version we see on the cable talk shows after 5 pm Eastern).   Mr Paul Craig Robert’s Christmas column<\/A> is a good place to start.   It encapsulates the thinking of the “modern” western fascist on the relationship of religion to capitalism.   Too, he has some telling things to say about Christmas rituals, like gift-giving.  Or, rather, the long road travelled from the self-abnegating early Christians to those of today who find in American materialism just what the Holy Spirit Ordered.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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Mr Roberts begins like a true disciple of the Modern Christ, lamenting the “decline” of religious values in America, and especially on our college campuses, while excoriating a noxious and uncritical “multiculturalism” threatening our core capitalist values.   These as all good American fascists know are derived directly from God especially through the agency of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  For people like Mr Roberts, the decline of Christianity in America is coextensive with the decline of capitalism.  For the foundation of American liberty and prosperity can be found in the teachings of none other than Christ Himself.  <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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Does Mr Roberts really believe this, or is he speaking merely to amuse the constituencies upholding a failing capitalism?<\/FONT><\/P>
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I wonder if Mr Roberts has seen Adam Curtis’ new film<\/A>, The Power of Nightmares<\/U><\/EM>?  It contains a convincing argument that the western democracies have lost the ability to inspire their people with hope and so have decided to control them by means of fear.   Christ and the electric chair, rather than divinely-inspired “values”, have held capitalism together for the past century or so.  Now, even they are proving of little use.<\/FONT><\/P>
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Most American fascists are in or around the Republican party, but the atittudes underpinning the Fascist Ideal<\/A> which informs our modern culture is prevalent in both major parties.   Mr Roberts’ column and indeed the columns found in most national newspapers like the Washington Times could be credibly written by either sober Republicans or drunk Democrats, caught with their candor showing.   This is why the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon (short of us finally giving up and simply buying off the natives), why Americans will continue without health care or tenable jobs or a decent education, why our cities will continue to fester into uninhabitable hell-holes, and so on.   There is no tenable alternative; history, instead, will create one.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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The Christian ethos, and the dispensation on which it has rested for nearly two millenia, is now passing into history.   Its successors are taking many forms.  Each is descending into its own compost of greed, corruption, and murder.  And each is increasingly dependent upon the state to fulfill the role for which it lacks the moral authority to realize; that as an agent of class control.   The rants of the Paul Craig Roberts of western Christendom will increasingly ring hollow as their fate becomes clear.  The old world has become untenable; the new world is yet to be born.   “Christ” as a moral absolute is finished.  He cannot save a capitalism riven by the various insects that now feed off of it.  Capitalism itself is guilty of the most “original” Sin of all.  It has outlived its usefulness.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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My advice to Mr Roberts; drop your lap-top and take up Chinese.  They at least know how to make the system work.  Perhaps they will put our tattered model out of its agony.   And free us from the excrescence that is now hissing and spitting everywhere among us.   From 5 pm on.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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Merry Christmas<\/FONT><\/P>
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Any one who doubts we are on the cusp of fascism in America should try reading the Washington Times (the print edition and not the comic book version we see on the cable talk shows after 5 pm Eastern).   Mr Paul Craig Robert’s Christmas column is a good place to start.   It encapsulates the thinking of the “modern” western fascist on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marxisminternationstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}