OPINION:
Eric Voegelin was born in 1901. In 1919, he enrolled in the University of Vienna. He studied Karl Marx, read “Das Kapital” and embraced Marxism. However, as he watched the Bolshevik Revolution’s bloodlust play itself out in the streets of Russia, Voegelin concluded he was wrong. Therefore, he abandoned socialism and its assumptions of race and class conflict and became a member of the Austrian economics clan.
In addition to having a first-hand account of the ways of Vladimir Lenin, Voegelin also had a front-row seat to the rise of Adolf Hitler. He understood the ideology of National Socialism inside and out. In fact, the year Hitler rose to full power, Voegelin published two books refuting the key premise of the Nazi Party: its race theory.
Voegelin argued that because der Fuhrer, and the millions of mindless lemmings following him, had the definition of man wrong, all else in their political system was ontologically and morally fraudulent. German socialism’s premise that man was divisible by race, genetics and various shades of melanin was literally nothing more than propaganda.
Voegelin argued for a “new science of politics” grounded in the admission that all human beings are the imago Dei — made in God’s image — and not merely evolved swamp ooze to be manipulated by the social and economic schemes of politicians and professors. Political life, said Voegelin, must represent the truth of humanity and not fall prey to the modern propensity of “intellectual assassination” fueled by whatever theory happens to be popular and in vogue on a given day.
Voegelin stood with Aristotle and Edmund Burke, who both recognized that the only good political system is one grounded in revelation and not social constructions. For the Jews, this revelation was given in the Law and the Prophets. For Christians, this revelation literally became a man in body, intellect, soul and spirit, and was extended to the entire world. Voegelin knew that a nation closing its mind to such revelation was akin to a man closing his soul to disprove God or a choir closing its ears to disprove music.
Voegelin also understood that progressives, with their claims to superior knowledge, are little more than political Gnostics. Like the discredited religion of old, they degrade the human being by elevating emotions over the rational. In their narcissistic self-worship, they become gods unto themselves. They are sure that nothing is sure, and they know nothing can be known other than what they know. Their dismissal of sin leads them to believe that anything they do can’t be a sin, and that includes defaming and hating all who stand in the way of their sin.
Voegelin knew that one of the most characteristic things about Gnostics is that they are always right. They have all the “right” ideas. Furthermore, they are right to condemn you for thinking you’re right. In their denial of morality, they have risen above the moral order with their superior morality. Logic, proof and reality don’t matter to them. It’s all about their feelings.
White privilege is real because they feel it is. Systematics racism is real because they say so. Critical race theory, unproven though it is, is proven. The science of climate change is unchallengeable regardless of the science. Sexual fluidity is a fact because you’re born that way, and that’s a fact and not fluid. Damn all evidence to the contrary. Everything is as they say and feel, and anyone who doesn’t see this doesn’t have Gnosis — doesn’t have knowledge. Disagreeing just proves their premise. You are inferior. You are the wrong race. You are the wrong gender. You are the wrong color. You are just wrong.
As W.E.B Du Bois said, you’re not among the talented 10th.
As Margaret Sanger said, you are of the inferior class.
As Mao said, you are of the wrong age.
As Hitler said, you have the wrong genes.
And don’t forget that Du Bois, Sanger, Mao and Hitler all had a solution for you. It was called the gulag. It was called eugenics. It was called the Cultural Revolution. It was called the furnace.
King Solomon once told us in Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun. None of this foolishness is new. Aristotle confronted it. Burke confronted it. And Voegelin confronted it. This nonsense is as old as time, and so is the solution.
This November, you have never had a more important decision to make. You can vote for a “new science of politics,” grounded in the laws of nature and nature’s God, or you can vote for the “science of intellectual assassination” grounded in Gnosis and the worship of men who think they are God. Revelation or Revolution. You decide. Your liberty and maybe even your life may depend on it.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).
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