The West is Desperately in Need of a New Elite: A Review-Essay of Maurice Muret’s “The Greatness of Elites,” Part 1 of 2
A request for me to review Maurice Muret’s The Greatness of Elites could not have come at a more opportune time. I have been thinking a lot about the treacherous character of our ruling class and the possibility of envisioning a new elite capable of leading us out of our ethnocidal trajectory. The masses on their own can’t reverse it, and neither can isolated and powerless dissidents who are educated but have no financial power and no political network within the upper classes.
In Russia a small group of Marxists managed to persuade a wide proportion of the Russian-Jewish educated classes to join them, with considerable influence inside the universities and across the middle and educated classes and professions. This is not the case today in the West. The most we have are some mainstream conservatives who agree with the fundamentals of the left. Dissidents have very little intellectual capital. Educated Whites, school teachers, university professors, doctors, scientists, lawyers, the middle classes, are almost invariably liberal. There are strong chances for populist political movements, but as crucially important as populists are in challenging the worst excesses of liberalism, populism wants a return to an earlier version of liberalism, say, the 1990s version, and even if they take power, all the institutions and the deep state, will remain controlled by the left and the globalist capitalist rulers. Every peasant revolt in history has been suppressed without support from above. Peasants and Parisian shopkeepers and artisans played an important role in the French Revolution of 1789, but it was the “Third Estate” nurtured by the Enlightenment, combined with the power of the bourgeoisie, with its growing wealth, that made the revolution in law and political structures possible. The Trucker Convoy was defeated in Canada without even the support of the Conservative Party, little or untrustworthy support from the mainstream media and the educated professional groups.
These questions have made me think about the nature of the ruling classes at other periods in Western history. There is a strong inclination against elites even among dissidents, rooted in the democratic impulse of Whites, their inclination for equality, despite their statements to the contrary. Nevertheless, in comparison to today’s elites, we can point to various points in American history when the elites were worthy of great admiration. It has been argued by Tom Cutterham in Gentlemen Revolutionaries: Power and Justice in the New American Republic (2017) that the American Revolution was led by men who set themselves above the ordinary, common man—by the merchants, lawyers, planters, and landowners who comprised the independent republic’s elite. Status, “not ideology or equal rights,” motivated these men who emphasized hierarchy and obedience in the 1780s. It can’t be denied, however, that the ideology these men proposed, natural rights liberalism, was about equality, and that their ideal was about the pursuit of private comfort, happiness, pleasure, and riches.
Maurice Muret’s The Greatness of Elites, originally published in 1939, and now published by Arktos, offers only five examples of elites deserving the highest admiration, and Americans are not included. Alexander Jacob, who translated this book with an introduction, deserves much praise for bringing Muret’s book to our attention. I had never heard of Muret. That’s how efficient liberalism has been suppressing the most educated men proposing ideas that question liberal democratic politics. Jacob is the translator of a number of similarly neglected authors and books, including The Future of the Intelligentsia & For a French Awakening by Charles Maurras, The Significance of the German Revolution by Edgar Julius Jung, and several of his translation have appeared in The Occidental Observer and The Occidental Quarterly. He has also written a number of important books about Richard Wagner, Indo-European mythology, Henry More, and, indeed, an essay-book entitled, Nobilitas: A Study of European Aristocratic Philosophy from Ancient Greece to the Early Twentieth Century (2001). This study praises in particular the aristocratic philosophy and “racialistic elitism” of Germany in the nineteenth to early twentieth century.
Muret’s greatest elites in history, however, exclude the Germans. His choice of the best five elites may surprise you:
- The “handsome and good” Athenian citizen of the age of Pericles, fifth century BC.
- The “realistic, practical and virile” Roman citizen during the long Republican period.
- The Renaissance “humanist” courtier with his pride and “liberated personality”.
- The cordial, pleasant, conversationalist French “gentilhomme” during the age of Louis XIV.
- The “snobbish” British gentleman of the Victorian age with his fine house, honest occupations, respect for the laws, piety, and love of manly sports.
These elites were capable of moulding society in their own image. Muret believes that without elites there can’t be great periods in history. Democracy and equality of rights are bound to destroy the capacity of elites to mould their nations in their own image, for they imply liberation of the “naturally perverse instincts” of the masses and the creation of tyrannies based on appeals to these instincts by populist demagogues.
The Limbic Capitalist Western Elite
So what exactly are the attributes that Muret found in these elites? Let’s start by saying that the current Western ruling classes are devoid of all the attributes the above elites had. They are simultaneously agents of the imperatives of capitalist global accumulation and ideological advocates of immigration replacement and transexualism. The other day Conrad Black, a wealthy businessman, penned an article allaying fears about the rise of China claiming that the US is the greatest nation in history and that it will resume its advance in the next administration, without displaying any worries about the decomposition of American education, the systematic looting and killings by Blacks, the widespread drug addiction, the spread of uninhabitable cities, and the migrant invasion into the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Vdare has just presented evidence showing “that some 145,695 white people—including 35,000 women—have been killed by blacks in the last 53 years”! Conrad Black, a member of the Western elite, is most likely benefitting from this state of affairs. The Pew Research Center reported in 2020 that “income growth was the most rapid for the top 5%” of Americans between 1971 and 2019, which coincided, I might add, with the intensification of mass immigration. On the other hand, the share of American adults who live in middle-income households decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019.
Condemning the “capitalist ruling elite” is not popular in conservative and even dissident circles, which prefer blaming leftist professors, journalists, and antifa. Samuel Francis, James Burham, and Paul Gottfried have written about the “therapeutic managerial” elite of the US with its concern with government intervention in favor of welfare, regulation of citizens’ private lives, and enforced political correctness. Lately the term “anarcho-tyranny” introduced by Francis in the 1990s has been the subject of discussion after Tucker Carlson used it. The observation is that Western governments don’t mind allowing criminals to break the law, even if this creates a climate of fear, for what the elite really cares about is regulating the thoughts and lives of law-abiding citizens, imposing stricter limits on gun ownership, enacting hate speech laws, and forcing diversity and rainbow flags.
My disagreement with this view is that it is still caught up with the notion that we have a socialistic/welfare state and a ruling class that is “therapeutic” while ignoring the reality of capitalist ownership and globalism. The elites in charge not only control governments; they are extremely wealthy individuals controlling vast amounts of resources in finance, media, drugs and AI robotics. These individuals welcome welfare therapy, political correctness, and diversity hiring in the lower managerial positions as long as the imperatives of capitalist accumulation are obeyed. This is no longer, as Francis observed, a capitalist class rooted in towns and nations, family oriented, and church-going, but a rootless internationalist class. Perhaps we can call Western elites “limbic capitalists” dedicated to making citizens addicted to consumption by producing “health-demoting products that stimulate habitual consumption and pleasure for maximum profit”. This elite accesses consumers “routinely through everyday digital devices and social media platforms…designed to generate, analyse and apply vast amounts of personalised data in an effort to tune flows of online content to capture users’ time and attention, and influence their moods, emotions and desires in order to increase profits”.
This limbic capitalist elite knows that social media is “central to young people’s socialising, identities, leisure practices and engagement in civic life.” During Covid lockdowns the elite saw large increases in users and traffic, realizing more than ever how it can control totally the minds of consumers by intensifying marketing online and driving online purchases and deliveries of products with limbic appeal that can turn consumers into gambling addicts, sex addicts, internet addicts, and food addicts, completely trapped within the logic of capitalist accumulation. Of course, there is more to the economy than limbic products, but limbic capitalists are the most capable of moulding the minds of Westerners, and thus the ones with “ruling class” power.
Individualism of Western Elites
I believe the only way to escape from the controls of this limbic capitalist elite is through the creation of a new traditionalist elite that makes the collective freedom of European citizens, their heritage, culture, and customs, a priority over the individual rights of private citizens. The difficulty is that the elites of the West have not been commonly traditionalist in the manner of elites in non-Western nations. This becomes apparent in the way Muret defines his five best elites. First, it should be said that for Muret the biggest threat, at the time he was writing, was the rise to political influence of the masses. He believes the Great War, and the formation of powerful socialist states, was a “great victory of the masses over the elites” across the West, with the Soviet Revolution constituting the highest expression of the hegemony of the masses. He feared that Bolshevism would bring down “the Western fortress founded on the rights of the individual … whose essential merit consists in the production, through the centuries, of certain types of eminent individuals”.
Muret, who is a Frenchman by ethnicity, does not like the Fascist elites of Italy and the Third Reich, accusing them of “collectivism, statism, socialism”. The Third Reich was “deprived of personality and regimented”. Is Muret a liberal individualist? No, he is an aristocratic individualist who rejects equal individual rights. What’s the difference between aristocratic individualism and democratic individualism? One of the great difficulties in understanding the West is that this civilization always had room for the expression of personality even when, as was the case in Rome and Athens, individuals were persons only as members of a civic collective. For ancient Athenians, “freedom” was understood to mean the right of the free citizen to participate in the political deliberations of city affairs. And while the Athenians did contrast their ability to engage in critical discussions with the “despotism of Asia”, they lacked the modern idea of freedom as the right of the individual to be left alone to choose his own goals.
It is true that Aristotle valued a contemplative philosophical life, but he did not think that individuals could be worthy of admiration in their private pursuits. There is more, however, to Muret’s conception of an aristocratic personality beyond political membership, and this is why he praises as one of the best elites in history the Athenian over the Spartan aristocracy. In the latter, members of the elite lacked a “free personality” in their complete subsumption under a militaristic collectivist state. There is something else to the “free personality” of the Athenians. We will see that it has to do with their overall “humanist ideal”, which is about striving to express the highest abilities in art, philosophy, literary creations, not just in military and political affairs.
Muret recognizes that, at the beginning of the 1900s, the German nation “was still one of the most cultivated and civilised of Europe.” “It counted in all fields scholars of a remarkable competence and a scrupulous conscience”. But he objects to the “mass regime” that was soon installed in Germany before 1914, and during the Third Reich, which was “deprived of personality and regimented”. The rest of Europe had been falling as well to the “rising tide of the masses” since the Great War of 1914. Bolshevism sanctified the “divine right of the masses”, and the spread of socialism in the West threatens to do the same. But while collectivism and statism are reaching a peak under socialist nations, regimes without aristocratic personalities, without devotion to humanism, have been the norm throughout the nonwestern world. What is new about Western post-Enlightenment times, which led to the eventual rise of socialistic states, with the exception of England, is that the masses had started to become an actual reality with industrialization and, what is worse, a reality that was juridically “gloried” in the French Revolution of 1789 with its proclamation of the Rights of Man.
Didn’t the French Rights of Man sanctify the right of individuals to be free, the right to choose their own governments, freedom of religious and political expression against an oppressive state? Here’s the cardinal difference between aristocratic and democratic individualism. The masses are simply not capable of having a free personality, of making their own decisions. In societies with universal suffrage, the opinions of the masses are taken to be true and forced upon the rest of the population. But are the masses really in control in a democratic society? While Muret’s prose is very literary and pleasant, as translated by Jacob, his arguments are not analytically presented, as I am arguing in this review; but he has a quotation from the Soviet paper Pravda which is very revealing: “The new man is not formed of himself. It is the Party that directs the entire process of social remoulding and of the re-education of the masses”.
Hasn’t this happened in the liberal West today with the relentless advertisement of companies in combination with a therapeutic and multicultural state deciding for everyone what the accepted values are? The mass man can’t mould himself, so a state dedicated to the masses is in charge of moulding everyone alike in their “free choices”, abolishing the possibility for free aristocratic personalities.
Of course, it is more complicated than this, since in a liberal society each individual lifestyle (as long as it does not infringe on the same right of others) is accorded equal moral dignity. There is no elite to mould the society according to humanist ideals; instead, the administrators of contemporary Western states shape individuals into pursuing their own lifestyle without setting up standards—except the standard that anyone who questions progressive free choice will not be tolerated, which means that traditional aristocratic values will not be tolerated as common values for the society. The aristocracy Muret has in mind co-existed for centuries during the modern era with the bourgeoisie, and for a long time with a Christian religion that cherished ancient humanism, in “respect for tradition, the cult of the family, the spirit of order, prudence and economy”. These values are not tolerated in a mass demos controlled by progressive administrators and businesses seeking to encourage everyone to pursue their own lifestyle.
“[I]n the liberal West today … the relentless advertisement of companies in combination with a therapeutic and multicultural state decid[es] for everyone what the accepted values are… The mass man can’t mould himself, so a state dedicated to the masses is in charge of moulding everyone alike in their ‘free choices'”
True. As we should have learned from Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, if PR and advertising are effective, then any kind of authentic mass democracy based on universal suffrage is impossible. From getting women to smoke by planting models in suffragette rallies holding “torches of freedom” (then calling the press–trained monkeys even then–to cover them) to promoting U.S. entry into WWI to “make the world safe for democracy,” to flagrant hoaxes and mass deceptions too numerous to count since, the picture is pretty dismal.
I hope for constructive suggestions in Part 2 but, not really expecting any, I look forward to reading it anyway!
The Germans never invaded England. The invasion of England started after WWII. Lol!
Under WASP Anglo Aryan Christian Liberal democracies there are red lines that the elites were careful not to cross. Fair transparent elections, fundamental individual/collective/Citizenship FREEDOMS as in the Bill of Rights. Under a new Zio JEWISH elite those freedoms for the goyim are expendable. The new Talmudic elites are prosecuting an ex/president, demanding the censoring/firing independent Journalists (TuckerCarlson/Abibbi/etc.), eliminating electoral rules, ending open debates, more ballot harvesting etc. The jews had always claim to be the chosen people the best and brightest race on Earth. Under that supremacists, racists, fictional biblical belief they feel entitled to eliminate any INTELLIGENT/smarter/brighter GENTILE White aryan competition. Once JEWS overwhelmed numerically a locality/Instiution/ they moved rapidly to CLOSE acces to the best/brightest WHITE Anglo aryan nonjews. NOW even the political/ideological/electoral system will be CLOSE/UNaccesible to Whites non jews in their OWN country…IT does NOT matter that Whites are a state/local majority, or that they offer a much better leadership for their OWN country. This is a Historical pivot for America, ONE Man/Woman citizen ONE vote is finished..NOW the Jewish/Zio/israeli/synagogue will run America. As TC said it is a Spiritual battel for our Nation…GOOD/GOD vrs DEM LEFT WOKE EVIL.
Re Tucker Carlson. I see him as unpredictable, a mixed bag, all over the lot. And just how sincere he is is anyone’s guess. He has reinvented himself once or twice over the years, ever since he went to Nicaragua when a young man to lend his support to the Contras.
Boasts about not being a “man of the people”, indeed an “elitist”: “I’m an out-of-the-closet-elitist… I don’t run around pretending to be a man of the people; I’m absolutely not a man of the people, at all.” he said in a radio interview.
Then takes over from O’Reilly on Fox News and tries to look like a populist. What’s next, I wonder.
These people are actors, for God’s sake.
Presumably we are still operating with totally inadequate vocabulary for a world that is not the same as when the vocabulary was invented. Why these hostile elites consider racial thinking tolerable at best by non-white populations shows that hatred of whites, and thus of the West, must be part of their ideological origins. Hatred of oneself, however, is something unnatural, therefore this kind of deeply illiberal “liberalism” can hereby be unmasked as a brainchild created and operated by Jews.
Self-hating guilt: not “created” by any Jews, but Christ(ians).
QV – Nietzsche, Ludovici, Pascal Bruckner….
Bu exploited by some, with the Longest Hatred and the Worst Genocide, as criticism-deterrent, geopolitical asset, and endless income.
QV – Norman Finkelstein, Jacob Cohen, Muna Hawwa….
Superb observations .
Even the term “individualism” is a lie if an indeology that purports to define the interest of the individual as the highest value tramples on the racial future of white individuals.
Individualism personal interest has priority over the interests of others ; otherwise individuals become ineluctably enslaved to contrary interests of another person or leader of a collective or group .
Maintaining personal interest as the primary individualist consideration does not and should not necessarily preclude giving consideration to the interests of others when and where your interests negatively impinges on the interests of others and vice versa .
Legitimate free choice investments in a lawful stock market are an ipso facto positive consideration for the interests of others . Collectivist/socialist/communist attacks on legitimate free market investments are salient examples of human folly from start to finish .
How are these elites to be constructed? That’s perhaps to be explained in the next part. I’m sceptical because I still adhere to a base-superstructure model, as “mechanical” and unfashionable as it might be. This requires a class response to the abuses/subversions of the “elites” and their new economic system (‘Ultra-Imperialism’…IF EVER THERE WAS) and the construction of a new elite out of this struggle, not by some ideological WISH that floats in the air above material reality.
Fifteen years’ ago I ‘saw’ the possibility of a patriotic wing of the military (“patriotic junior military officers”) intervening on behalf of our people and their cultural gains/uniqueness and the nationality and nation they created out of this. This would be a ready made “caste” arising organically from our traditions. We know today that that is most unlikely.
So today I think we are only left with the creating of something like the elite that led to the success of Bolshevism. That means a class reaction to this modern capitalist outrage producing, in the fire of struggle, such a leadership that could stand before the whole nation as leaders, rather like the Communists in Greece (KKE) did so in their fight against the abuses of the German occupation. They had no prior (upper) class credentials, but carved out their authority in the furnace of struggle, establishing a new settlement (like I am sure powerful landowners who became kings or lesser rulers did in Feudal times) from which they gain their authority. The deepening social marginalisation of the (native) professional and tradesman classes might well be the critical force that triggers such analogous modern rebellions.
Today, as pointed out in this excellent, thought provoking essay/review, the ruling class (“bourgeoisie”) are cosmopolitan (never “internationalist” which implies support for a base of a viable nation state) and have the world as their oyster with the strong nation state as a definite barrier to their new vast scope of enrichment. BTW, within this, “the Jews”, organically a part of this cosmopolitan elite because of their peculiar history within capitalism, are deputised to do a job that their historical cosmopolitanism (“Usury”…then…”Finance Capital”) makes them most fitted/capable).
More later.
The profundity of individual insight:
Harry and Paul – BBC Question Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3tUqRBiMVo&t=99s
This is a true reflection of present reality.
If you have trouble negotiating these sexy Polak chics, how do you think you’d go in a workplace saturated with Hindoos? Rest assured it’s on the way and the settings are already well established.
Cafe Polski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3tUqRBiMVo&t=99s
As I said: ‘it’s on the way’, imminent…
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/04/mad-albo-inundates-jobs-market-with-worthless-indian-degrees/
The positive is that it with flush out the last ‘Anglo’ refuges in the Trades as well as the Professions, both of which are already – relatively – ethnically inundated.
This has the makings of rebellion at least where I come from. Maybe or maybe not.
Dear Kevin, please follow t.me/Vjmpublishing, working class nationalist fans of yours in New Zealand.
01 Why would you dilute your essay with a ne’er-do-well, school-expelled Conrad Black !
02 While attending Canada’s elite Upper Canada College [ then grade 8 to 13] he often played poker during lunch recess, in the back of his father’s limousine, parked at its northern entrance; two hundred feet from my UCC friend’s house, who also participated.
03 His first self-earned fortune came from stealing the earnings of his Dominion Stores [groceries] employees’ pension fund.
04 He then proceeded to grander theft in which he was treated by his Ontario judges in most considerate fashion. Unlike in pre-fiasco Chicago where he was convicted and jailed.
05 His later OTTAWA CITIZEN published an article ” describing ” the political restructuring of Canada and the US into a single country, divided into seven regions. I still have the phone number of its late editor, whom I asked about the originator of this article; its intention.
06 Conrad had no difficulty in surrendering his Canadian citizenship in order to be appointed Baron Black of Crossharbour, in the UK.
07 A contemporaneous video showed him, dressed in full British Army uniform, striding towards President Bush Jr,. exiting a conference, with arm stretched out to shake hands but ignored by Bush.
08 Always the ne’er-do-well wannabee he returned to Toronto, where he found a befitting niche with Moses Znaimer, founder of the purportedly non-profit Canadian Association of Retired Persons. He got a spot on Znaimer’s VISION TV, where he espoused, as an eminent historian and author, nothing but political inanities.
09 Idiocies, such as his mentioned total misjudgment on present China, are his forte. An uncle, fluent in Mandarin and seven more languages, as Director of the German Officers Corps Interpreters Institute, was second in command of a German Mission to China [ dating back to Bismarck ] during which he became mentor to Chiang Kai-sheck’s younger son, subsequently Head of Taiwan.
10 My uncle returned in 1926 and explained in detail to my father, who later told me, ” that one day they will bury us ! ”
11 Indeed, that day has already come and gone with Covid and far worse is on the horizon.
12 In conclusion, let me ask whether the formerly mentioned manufacturers’ NAMEPLATES IN ENGLISH, of components of that famous balloon, GIVEN TO THE FBI FOR ANALYSIS, [ RATHER THAN WALLMART OR TARGET ], HAVE EVER BEEN DISCLOSED ?
Or are these manufacturers also enjoying the proven blinken protectionist racketeering ?
So “Tubby” Black was a small time thief (before he became an honest to goodness big one). Where did you find all those juicy details about his early life and looting?
01 A then best friend, R.D., also attended UCC and played poker with him in his dad’s limo, within shouting distance of his own home on Kilbary Road in Forest Hill.
02 Tubby founded the conservative NATIONAL POST in Toronto, edited by his Jewish wife Barbara Amiel.
03 The competing liberal TORONTO STAR, dubbed THE RED STAR during and after WW II, naturally picked over his famous bones when he pulled this crap.
04 John and David Eaton, scions of the famed department store empire throughout Canada, also fell victim to vulture capitalists. They also attended UCC, one of whose annual military parades was attended by then Prince Phillip.
05 Znaimer’s venue was skuzzy; a sad place to end up. All empty bombast.
Thanks for replying. Re your item #2. I looked her up on wikipedia. I don’t think Lady Black was ever editor of the National Post. I believe it was the Sun that she edited. But I did find this quote from her:
“My life was wiped out in Chicago— at least all that mattered in it,” she wrote. “What does it matter if one well-off elderly white woman with too many pairs of expensive shoes now finds her social life largely limited to visiting her dearly missed husband in a U.S. federal correctional institution.”
What is wrong with the above statement? Anybody? It just never stops.
“What’s the difference between aristocratic individualism and democratic individualism? ”
‘Aristocratic individualists’ are productive men of culture, freedom guided by law is his principle (without law, freedom is chaos and even slavery). The democratic individualist is Plato’s anarchic individual, a destroyer, a worker of chaos, and paradoxically he is also a mob individual, and a slave of himself.
“High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.” Oscar Wilde
“Muret’s greatest elites in history, however, exclude the Germans.”
That’s a real shame. Wow! If only he and others knew of the incredible work of Count Ludwig Von Zinzendorf. He was a hero for the ages, a true hero and that no one knows practically nothing about him is a shame, a real terrible shame!!! This is the man who was able to bring unity to the Christian Church and was the leader of a revival of religion that shook the very foundations of Europe. He was the one who fired the heart and zeal of John and Charles Wesley and the entire Moravian and Methodist Movements. They were the ones to take the work of the great martyr Jan Huss and brought it to fruition in ways miraculous which included guess what? Climate Change. They learned the truth of the words:
“Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6:3)
“Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord,
until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.” (Hosea 10:12)
and lived the literal reality of it with their own Pentecost which occurred at Herrnhut on 13th of August:
was a day of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We saw the hand of God and His wonders, and we were all under the cloud of our fathers baptized with their Spirit. The Holy Ghost came upon us and in those days great signs and wonders took place in our midst. From that time, scarcely a day passed but what we beheld His almighty workings among us. A great hunger after the Word of God took possession of us so that we had to have three services every day, viz., 5:00 and 7:30 A.M. and 9 P.M. Everyone desired above everything else that the Holy Spirit might have full control. Self-love and self-will as well as all disobedience disappeared and an overwhelming flood of grace swept us all out into the great ocean of Divine Love…
Exactly what happened at Wednesday forenoon, August 13th, 1727 in the specially called Communion service at Berthelsdorf, none of the participants could fully describe. They left the house of God that noon “hardly knowing whether they belonged to earth or had already gone to heaven.”…
Zinzendorf, who gives us the deepest and most vivid account of this wonderful occurrence, says it was a sense of the nearness of Christ bestowed in a single moment, upon all the members that were present; and it was so unanimous that two members, at work 20 miles away, unaware that the meeting was being held, became at the same time deeply conscious of the same blessing.1
The great Moravian Pentecost was not a shower of blessing out of a cloudless sky. It did come suddenly, as suddenly as the blessing of its greater predecessor in Jerusalem, when the Christian Church was born. Yet, for long, there had been signs of an abundance of rain, though many recognized them not. In short, the blessing of the thirteenth of August 1727 was diligently and earnestly prayed for. We know of no annals of Church history which evidence greater desire for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and more patient and persistent effort in that direction than those of our own church between the years 1725 and 1727. Two distinct lines of preparation and spiritual effort for the blessing are evident. One was prayer; the other was individual work with individuals. We are told that men and woman met for prayer and praise at one another’s homes and the Church of Berthelsdorf was crowded out. Then the entire company experienced the blessing at one and the same time.”2
which later was reflected in the life and work of John Wesley:
“Monday, 17. As we were walking toward Wapping, the rain poured down with such violence that we were obliged to take shelter till it abated. We then held on to Gravel Lane, in many parts of which the waters were like a river. However, we got on pretty well till the rain put out the candle in our lantern. We then were obliged to wade through all, till we came to the chapel yard. Just as we entered, a little streak of lightning appeared in the southwest. There was likewise a small clap of thunder and a vehement burst of rain, which rushed so plentifully through our shattered tiles that the vestry was all in a float. Soon after I began reading prayers, the lightning flamed all around it, and the thunder rolled over our heads. When it grew louder and louder, perceiving many of the strangers to be much affrighted, I broke off the prayers after the collect, “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord,” and began applying, “The Lord sitteth above the water flood; the Lord remaineth a king forever” (Ps. 29:10) Presently the lightning, thunder, and rain ceased, and we had a remarkably calm evening. It was observed that exactly at this hour they were acting Mac Beth in Drury Lane, and just as the mock thunder began, the Lord began to thunder out of heaven. For a while it put them to a stand; but they soon took courage and went on. Otherwise it might have been suspected that the fear of God had crept into the very theater!”
Now how this for power and climate change but yeah, content yourself with those “hero’s.” Really?
See J. B. Shurk, “Liberty is worth the fight,” Gatestone Institute, November 23, 2022, and the Race Replacement comment, online.
Oh, but wasn’t that Contro(((ed O)))osition?
We do have our knickers in a twist.
This is an interesting essay on the vital subject of acquiring new political rulers/elites/leaders .
However , I am having difficulties in ascertaining your intended meanings of numerous assertions .
For example ___
” These elites were capable of moulding society in their own image.”
What does that mean exactly ?
How does an elite person mould a group
of sexually mixed individuals
into “their own image” ?
What is the problem or the difficulty with ‘sexually mixed’? The male/female model can be seen as complementary, and they were not ‘mixed’ like in our times.
“These elites were capable of moulding society in their own image. Muret believes that without elites there can’t be great periods in history. Democracy and equality of rights are bound to destroy the capacity of elites to mould their nations in their own image, for they imply liberation of the “naturally perverse instincts” of the masses and the creation of tyrannies based on appeals to these instincts by populist demagogues.”
Brilliant insight, one can trace throughout the whole democracy and its popular culture the gradual liberation of perverse instincts (including the unleashing of violence), up to the climax of today, multiculturalism, LGBTI. We are subjected to a grand demagogic apparatus, by now a pyramid of highly professionalized methods of unleashing of violent and depraved democratic anarchism. One could say that this is a ‘moulding’ too, in an opposite regressive direction. This is why there never was a real democracy (rule by the people), and there never will be, the people are always to a considerable extent moulded from above, and even in a democracy, they are even much more subject to moulding from above, in the wrong way though. This is why democracy also kills all folk culture, to replace it with dehumanized mass culture.
The egregious misunderstanding that a majority can adequately govern itself is blatantly contrary to the historical record on democracies and contrary to valid scientific erudite analysis of how majorities actually function . This Westernworld misunderstanding about democracy is in dire need of a thorough debunking .
Majorities need congenial leaders and that is all .
Their votes are for political leaders whom are presumed to have superior knowledge and skill at governing and leading their constituent majority of individuals most of whom know little to nothing about what rules should be employed in order to govern the public majority nor where to lead that majority .
A referendum vote is the closest thing to ascertaining the will of a majority on just one specific political issue and it is accomplished by a leader wielding political power from within government or from within the public majority .
Politicians have no business trying to mould their constituents into “their own image” ; this is not about OJT since the paymasters in this case are the constituents whom ultimately fund the politicians . The only salient qualification of politicians is a presumed expertise in knowing how to efficiently govern their economicly productive constituent majority and where to lead it .