Lux Lucet

Summary: There is abundant evidence, at least in the eyes of some observers, that Western civilization is undergoing a collapse. In fact, it already may have collapsed. That war, brutality, coercion, and immorality are on the rise is not in dispute. But what are we to make of this? Some view these as signs of civilizational collapse; others take them as evidence of progress. Who is right? The answer must be found in the more foundational philosophical discipline of ethics.

What is it that makes for a great writer or thinker? One could spend a great deal of time arguing this question. Many would hold the test of time to be an important criterion. Does an author’s work remain relevant ten, twenty or a hundred years after publication, or does time, like an ever rolling stream, bear all its import away? By this standard alone, the work of Gordon Clark achieves greatness. Reading through this section of chapter 2, the relevance of Clark’s work to our current day situation in the West is obvious. In his 2005 forward to the Trinity Foundation edition of A Christian View of Men and Things (CVMT), John Robbins observed, “Although it is now more than fifty years old, A Christian View of Men and Things is as timely as it was in 1952 [the year CVMT was first published], perhaps even more timely, for the crisis of our age has deepened, and the solution to that crisis has not changed.”

In Chapter 2 of CVMT under the heading “An Appraisal”, Clark walks the reader through contemporary evidence for the collapse of civilization. Working in ascending order from the most specific to the most general, Clark discusses the increase in war, brutality, coercion and immorality evident in the US and throughout the West. The timing of his remarks is worth noting, for Clark wrote CVMT in the early 1950s. a period many Americans fondly recall as a sort of Father-Knows-Best golden age of American civilization. A time when you could leave your house unlocked and not worry. A time when abortion was illegal. A time before anyone had ever heard of school shootings, LSD or the sexual revolution. In other words, the good old days.

But while by today’s standards the 1950s may seem quaint to many, Clark’s appraisal shows that our current social ills are really an extension of trends that were well underway even while Truman was in the White House. Take war for instance. Clark, citing The Crisis of our Age by Pitirm A. Sorokin, tells us that the first half of the 20^th century alone was more violent than any in recorded history. Every age has had it wars, but the number and severity of the wars during the first half of the 20^th century were extraordinary by historical standards. In my own life, I’ve seen the Vietnam War, Gulf War I, Gulf War II and Afghanistan, not to mention the Cold War, as well as various and sundry skirmishes, sanctions, no-fly-zones and Kinetic Military Actions. A war in Syria was narrowly avoided in the summer of 2013.

War, Clark tell us, is an example of a more general condition, brutality. The Rape of Nanking and the atrocities of the Nazi regime are two examples he gives. But this is hardly an exhaustive list. In his 1994 book Death by Government, R. J. Rummel provides the grisly details of various 20^th century genocides. Pol Pot, it seems, has slain his millions, and Stalin his ten millions. The front flap of the book’s jacket makes the following observation, “His [Rummel’s] results clearly and decisively show that democracies commit less democide than other regimes. The underlying principle is that the less freedom people have, the greater the violence; the more freedom, the less violence. Thus, as Rummel says, ‘The problem is power. The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom,'” which quote nicely leads us to Clark’s next point, the general increase of coercion in the West.

Brutality, Clark tells us, is species of the wider genus of coercion. There are many who covet their neighbors’ goods but lack the conviction to actually carry out an act of larceny on their own. So rather than use a crowbar to break and enter themselves, they use the ballot box to vote for politicians who will do the dirty work for them. Writes Clark,

Socialistic coercion and the destruction of freedom in the United States are following the more advanced programs of the European nations. In the nineteenth-century the memory of autocracy was vivid, and after several nations had rid themselves of tyranny, the acknowledged aim of government was to maintain order so that free individuals could arrange their personal, social, business and religious affairs as they saw fit. Today, however, the disadvantages of absolute government have been forgotten, and so-called liberals, who are truly reactionaries, aim to establish a so-called democracy on the principles of Louis XIV. To this end taxation is imposed, not so much to pay for legitimate government expenses, not on the basis of services rendered and received, but with the avowed aim of impoverishing one class of people and of enriching another class. One might say that taxation is becoming legalized theft. These apostles of absolutism propose the reconstruction of society according to their own superior ideals. And one by one the liberties that were gained a century or two ago are being lost to government coercion.” (55)

Where once Americans enjoyed economic liberty, we now have the individual (health insurance) mandate. Where once a man’s house was his castle, we now have the NSA snooping into every nook and cranny of our lives. Where once there was due process, extrajudicial drone killings are the order of the day. Though it may sound strange to the ears of those hoodwinked by the ACLU and other so-called liberal groups, Christianity, far from being the enemy of civil rights, limited government and freedom, is in fact their foundation and guarantor As Christianity has disappeared from the West, so too has liberty.

Clark ends his appraisal of the state of the West with a discussion of immorality. Coercion, Clark tells us, has its roots in immorality, which is the widest genus of evidence for the collapse of the West. He first addresses the issue of sexual immorality, noting how the increase in divorce and promiscuity has undermined the family. Viewed from the perspective of 2014 when an entire civilization is confused about the proper definition of marriage, a mere run up in the divorce rate may sound like no big deal. But citing Sorokin, Clark makes the point that, “the family exercises a powerful social function, and…the destruction of the family by divorce is an equally powerful factor of opposite tendency.”

Clark’s brief mention of the increase in promiscuity is worth noting. The birth control pill first became available in the US in 1960. Abortion was legalized in 1973. Since these events occurred well after CVMT’s 1952 publication date, the growing tide of promiscuity evident in the early 1950s cannot be blamed on them. In fact, the advent of both should be seen as the product of a previous decline in American sexual mores rather than as the cause of them. This has no small point to make with those sincere, hardworking, yet misguided Evangelical culture warriors who believe that ecumenical outreach and the political process are proper means of overturning Roe V. Wade. To anticipate Clark a bit, abortion was legalized in the US, because Christian ethics were forgotten. And Christian ethics were forgotten, because Americans ceased to believe the Bible. If the abortion holocaust is ever to be ended, Christians must pray and work for a new reformation. Christians must fight abortion by standing on the Word or God, not by holding hands with Roman Catholics or other unbelievers in the vain hope that God will bless double-mindedness.

Immorality, Clark notes, is not limited to sexual matters. Citing a 1948 FBI report, Clark focuses on the problem of suicide. Unlike some pagan societies, Christianity considers suicide a moral problem. To commit suicide is to murder one’s own self. And given the state of society at the present time, it should come as no surprise that the suicide problem persists to this day.

Moving from the personal to the societal level, Clark makes the point, “When the citizens of a nation are immoral, it is not surprising that the government becomes immoral.” Indeed it is not. And Clark provides a timely quote from Sorokin that makes this very point,

There exists scarcely a single government in any of the Western countries which has not broken most of its solemn pledges to the citizens – which has not changed the fundamental laws (whether constitutions or statues) or repudiated it obligations respecting the gold currency, gold certificates, and bonds, the inviolability of the courts, and countless other matters. (57)

As with individuals, governments have a moral obligation to keep their financial promises. But the Christian notion of swearing to one’s hurt long ago went by the wayside in matters both the public and private. FDR’s 1933 executive order confiscating Americans’ gold and subsequent dollar devaluation are but two examples of what Sorokin war talking about when he wrote the above. It bears mentioning that the US federal government then used the stolen proceeds from the gold confiscation and dollar devaluation to establish the Exchange Stabilization Fund, an unconstitutional and apparently unaccountable bureaucracy within the Treasury Department. And if governments made a regular habit of repudiating their financial promises in the first half of the 20^th century, it should come as no surprise that in the ensuing decades they have developed new tools the better to cheat their citizens. The grossly immoral too-big-to-fail bailout, financial repression and Quantitative Easing programs of recent years testify to this.

The statistics provided by Clark and Sorokin are not generally in dispute. Their interpretation, however, is another matter. The wars, brutality, loss of freedom, suicide and fraud so characteristic of the 20^th and 21^st century have their defenders in high places. Of course, they would not call these afore mentioned activities by the same names. What is financial fraud to one man is called by another saving capitalism from itself. Where a Christian sees an increasing divorce rate as a threat to civilization, a feminist sees liberation from the patriarchy. So which is it? On what basis can we judge these trends? Clark’s discussion, and for that matter this author’s comments, are not neutral. Some judgment has already been rendered. But on what basis? Clark tells us,

“A decision…cannot be settled by an appeal to the facts. There is involved a moral and normative judgment; and before a philosophy of history can be satisfactorily established, it will be necessary to erect some system of morality as its foundation. No theory of history rests on an empirical basis; no theory of history can dispense with the underlying phases of philosophy. And the phase to which attention has now been directed is that of ethics and morality.” (58)

Since Clark prefers to hold off the discussion of ethics and morality until a later point in CVMT, and since this summary threatens to become overly long, this author will follow Clark and bring his comments to a close.