Progress and Reaction

Tower of the Winds, Athems. Image source

There are times in the course of history when prosperity grows, peace reigns over much of the earth, class conflicts decline and the arts and sciences flourish. Such periods occurred during the long rise of ancient Egypt. Classical Greece and Rome each had their heyday. England prospered mightily in the aftermath of the constitutional settlement of 1688, and during the second half of 19th Century, Russia and the other European states experienced a long period of liberalization and economic expansion.

Votes for women.

These were times of optimism when liberals and progressives tended to assume that continued moral and material progress was inevitable. Such was the message — what came to be known as the "Whig view of history" — of Lord Thomas Macaulay's History of England Since the Accession of James II. Likewise, as Russia boomed following the emancipation of the serfs,  Leo Tolstoy believed that moral progress was leading inevitably to the undermining of the state and the creation of a world functioning in accordance with the precepts laid down by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

As we now know, both England and Russia were to suffer catastrophic setbacks. England, to lose her empire and role as the world's preeminent financial and military power, Russia to suffer the horrors of the Communist Revolution and a Soviet tyranny more murderous than that of any Tzar.

Terror war drone. Image source

In the second half of the Twentieth Century, the West enjoyed the greatest economic boom and progressive social transformation in its history. To almost every "public intellectual," university professor and cabinet minister, this progress was held to be desirable, inevitable, and perpetual. Yet today, any rational appraisal of the world must lead to the conclusion that we are in a period of stark reaction and decline, and that insofar as the liberals and progressives are still in power, they serve as agents not of genuine reform and social improvement but of  reaction and imperialism.

Muscular liberalism. Image source

Two items on the Web help focus attention on this reality. One is the speech to the Belgian Parliament by Laurent Louis, stating plainly what those in power know, that al Qaeda works for the US and NATO, which seek to impose a global empire by any means. The other is Paul Shreyer's article: The 9/11 Plan: Cheney, Rumsfeld and the “Continuity of Government”, which reveals the Machiavellian mentality of the globalist ruling elite.