The Witch Hunters

 

I continue to appreciate The Nathan Jacobs Podcast (also on YouTube here).  In a recent episode, The Ideology of Hell – Nominalism & the Liberation of the Individual, he ended with a very insightful point, which I will review here (and timestamped here).

The overall message of this episode is a continuation of his primary theme – the most important question: realism or nominalism?  And, as you can see from his title, in his view nominalism is a road that both liberates the individual and leads to hell.  And, over the course of my writing at this blog, it is a point I came long ago to embrace.

Again, what I identify as quotes are not always word-for-word transcriptions.  Take that for what it’s worth.

In the ending section, the last few minutes of this two-hour episode, he summarizes the woke ideology that is merely one more step in this nominalist path:

We are gods.  We can remake reality how we see fit.  Whether through cultural change, surgical means, virtual reality, whatever.  Reality is subject to us, not the other way around.

We certainly live in this world today.

So, what comes next?  When people abandon religion, they initially move to the occult.  When they grow disillusioned with the occult, they move into political activism.  They are search of something to give their lives meaning.

Yes, we live in this world.

So it isn’t about trans, or homosexuality, or abortion, the real thing driving them is this pursuit of meaning, for purpose.  It is the ability to advocate for justice.

They are in search for meaning, a cause, a way to change the world.

And this gets to why there will not be a national divorce.

This is why I am very cynical when people talk about a national divorce.  On the one hand, I really do think it is a good idea. 

I think beyond a good idea – it is the only peaceful possibility.  The thing is, what I just wrote is an impossibility, like a square circle.  It isn’t peacefully possible, so it cannot be a peaceful possibility.

This cultural divide I am describing is irreconcilable.  The founding principles of America only function if there is a common worldview underneath them regarding rights, morality, and so on.

This comes back to my long-running theme: without a common culture, there can be neither peace nor liberty.

Once you have this divide I am describing, you don’t have this anymore.  That’s why it would be lovely to have a national divorce.  But this is why I am cynical: the woke ideology is the modern form of witch hunting.  What I mean by that is that it gains purpose by smelling out where are the witches. 

The curtain begins to be drawn open on just why a national divorce isn’t possible.

Who isn’t woke enough, who has said something offensive, who is this phobic or that phobic, whatever. 

Witch hunters gain meaning by hunting witches.  By they way, they also enjoy the modern version of burning books – cancel culture. 

So a national divorce would be something like: “Hey, witch hunters, do you mind if the witches go over there and have their own place, and you go over there and have your own place?”

“What???  No more witches???? Lose my purpose in life, the thing that gives me meaning?”

The fact of the matter is, true witch hunters derive purpose by hunting witches.  So, there is no way they would let those witches go.

Jonathan Pageau has described the desired system as a totalizing system.  Everyone and everything must be incorporated.  With these handful of words, Nathan Jacobs has described why it must be a totalizing system.

So, a national divorce is not possible, because the witch hunters will not let the witches go.  The liberation warriors will never come to a point where they set down their weapons and say, we’ve won. 

I have written before about this idea of progressivism (and in the same post, raised the issue that conservatives also aren’t clear about what they wish to conserve – but can only be objective truth and natural law). 

Progressing to what?  What is the purpose at which progressivism aims?  There is no telos or ends.  Better said, the means are the ends – ever loosening that natural boundaries with which we were created.

Witch hunting gives them meaning.  How do they let this go?

They will not.  And least not voluntarily.  We see many ways, however, through which it will be inevitable.

Conclusion

And this is where the road leads to where it always leads when it comes to such revolutions:

And this is why you will see, in leftist ideology, a contracting circle.  There were people on the inside who will next be on the outside.  It’s because we start running out of witches, we have burned them all.

The left cannot help but consume itself.  It always does.  First, they came for the feminists, then they came for the homosexuals, then they came for those who were against only a third-trimester abortion, etc.