The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large

V THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY

“A nation is not what it considers itself to be in time but what God thinks about it in eternity.” — Vladimir Soloviev, cited by E. Tavernier in the preface to Trois Entretiens, Paris, 1916.

IN NECESSARY things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity (in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas), is a wonderful program, which should characterize all Christian cultures at all times. The Middle Ages were largely imbued with this spirit. The necessary element of unity was the Church and her dogmas. If a medieval prince gave a feast, he would have been extremely shocked to find that one of his guests did not believe in God or considered the crucifixion a myth. As regards the dress of his guests he would permit a far-reaching latitude and he would indeed be highly astonished if all his male friends would wear identical garments. Today we consider it quite natural that our left-hand neighbor at a banquet is an atheist, our host a heretic, and our right-hand neighbor an agnostic. Emily Post would probably severely censure anybody who would take exception to the religious views of his hosts or guests. It would be “tactless” and demonstrate a lack of good breeding. Yet it would be an even greater crime to appear at a formal dinner in sports clothes and not to don the rigorously prescribed uniforms: tuxedo or tails. So we have today disunity in the necessary things and uniformity in the “doubtful things,” not to speak of charity which has been replaced by ambition.

In order to illustrate the situation even more accurately one might take the example of a tree with roots hanging in the air and the branches fixed individually on iron poles. The situation in ancient Rome and in the United States have certain parallels when we remember that both countries served as meeting places for the most different religions. The Roman chaos of Isis, Mithras, Jahveh, Zeus, Kybele, Jupiter, and Saturn has been matched by Mary Eddy-Baker, Joseph Smith, Aimée S. Macpherson, and others. This variety of forms has caused religion to be held as something merely relative (an opinion not a truth). People who dogmatize furiously about the President, the gold reserves of Fort Knox, and the New Deal become suddenly vague, “broad minded,” and uncertain if they talk about religion. They look to the most abstruse laymen for “orientation,” and nowhere is the distrust for the expert greater than in this domain.1 Astronomers, mathematicians, biologists, electrical engineers, and movie stars expound publicly their views about God, eternity, grace, and original sin, whereas nobody would dream of asking archbishops or professors of divinity about their opinions on atom smashing, protoplasm, or short waves.

Catholicism fits very badly into this “pantheon,” it fits into it only as ancient Christianity did into the multiform, liberal religious world of the first century A.D. Christendom was then considered to be an unsporting, disagreeable, exclusive, and totalitarian low-class sect, which “didn’t play the game.” Catholicism in the United States is frequently looked upon with similar feelings. One will find Unitarians in America who invite Episcopalian ministers to preach in their churches and — what is less surprising — Jewish rabbis delivering their sermons in Presbyterian houses of worship. This concessionalism and interdenominationalism leads to that famous nonsectarian attitude that culminates in the saying: “There’s truth in every religion,” which is precisely the gist of the parable of the ring in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The true early Christians never minded being used as living torches or as crocodile fodder. Sectarians now too often forget the tradition of these heroic martyrs, and the intolerance even of their sectarian fathers. One finds Presbyterian pastors using “Luther” as their Christian name and Lutherans who are called “Calvin,” oblivious of all the abysmal antagonism between the ex-monk and the dictator of Geneva, who founded their respective religions. One also wonders whether the rabbis preaching in Lutheran Churches know anything about Luther’s contempt and hatred for their race and faith. One at least can imagine how the refusal of Catholics to “play the game” adds to their unpopularity.

But apart from their unpopularity, they are in an extremely difficult and delicate position. This in spite of the fact that with their twenty-three million souls they are the largest religious community in the country.2

It is therefore difficult and unjust to blame American Catholicism for not having produced an “independent” Catholic type. But if the Catholic is just a “plain American,” a “fellow like you and me” or a “regular guy,” then we do not deem the situation satisfactory. The “average American” is either a Catholic type or he is not. If he is not, then the Catholic has to decide whether he wants to represent the type of his Church or the (temporary) ideal of the masses. He cannot compromise on that provided he is aware of the existence of such an alternative (which he very seldom is).7

Yet if the dynamic American Catholic is aware of this issue then he must face another decision, another alternative — either he must go into some sort of Catholic ghetto (which still exists intellectually and socially to a certain extent) or go out and conquer the country for Christ. One has only to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York standing on a summer afternoon in the very shadow of the steel and concrete masses of Rockefeller Center to understand the essence of the Catholic ghetto more readily. The paradoxical side of that problem is that there are so many Catholics in that ghetto without having decided to be culturally Catholics. These Catholics, living strictly after the precepts of their religion, will nevertheless be helpless victims of “progress” and the industrial civilization with its identitarian tendencies. It may be exactly their fear of total assimilation which drives them into a state of separation and seclusion.8 But this again does not cancel the tendency to be a “regular guy” and we see the Catholic striving to be more American than the non-Catholic American (taking the word American in its contorted, late nineteenth-century sense). And here we must not forget that mimicry is always a sign of weakness and defense. Defense is the characteristic of the Church in America in spite of her striving often to take the initiative and the offensive. It is also mimicry and the spirit of self-defense which led indirectly to the establishment of the Bellarmine legend and the emphasis the American Catholic puts on his loyalty to un-American democracy.9 Here and there the American Catholic’s “clericalism,” a timid reliance on priestly guidance in purely worldly matters, breaks through (the lack of an aristocracy leaves the clergy supreme) with the danger of giving the impression for a Jansenist puritanism. In this particular guise his “attraction” and magnetism is almost zero. To expand, the Church in America needs men of the faith who are also men of the world.

Catholic education in the United States is a problem in itself. The grade schools and the high schools have a level not considerably higher than the non-Catholic schools. Yet the colleges and universities — affected by the spirit of “intellectual democracy” — are in their scholastic attainments not always as conspicuous as they should be. But Catholic institutions of higher learning have a very special task, i.e., to provide America in general and the Catholics in particular with something new; they have to create a Catholic elite. While the birth rate remains the Catholic problem of quantity, the elite remains the Catholic problem of quality. The future of Catholicism in the United States rests on these two pillars.

But if the intellectual standards in colleges and universities were everywhere to be raised as high as responsible Catholics would like to have it, a large exodus of the students to the non-Catholic state universities, where they receive an education on the money of the taxpayers, is to be dreaded, seriously imperiling an educational system which has few endowments and is financially based upon tuition fees paid by the students.10 Thus the competition of the secular institutions of higher learning and the lack of financial resources make the creation of a large Catholic intellectual aristocracy almost impossible. Other ways and means must be found to carry out this necessary task, and such first-rate institutions as, for instance, the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto seem to promise a brighter future.

Another problematic chapter of American Catholicism is its political affiliation with political trends popularly (but not accurately) called “democracy.” Responsible Catholics (ecclesiastics and laymen alike) have by their utterances and writings created the impression that the cause of the Church and the cause of world “democracy” is one and the same. The most desperate efforts have been made to proclaim St. Thomas Aquinas, Bellarmine, and Suarez as “early democrats,” while the Founding Fathers, as we know, were opposed to ochlocracy. The skeptical attitude of the Church toward political mass movements in the past centuries is little mentioned in Catholic schools, and the students seldom become aware of the fact that the Church has a basically hostile and negative attitude toward the very spirit of our time (and rightly so). There is little emphasis given to the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX which makes excellent reading (and sense). Today more than ever before it is a timely document. There are in America few Catholics who would dare to read aloud (in mixed society) such a condemned statement as the one contained in the Syllabus taken from the Allocution Iamdudum cernimus (March 18, 1861):

The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.11

And there is indeed little probability that Pius IX would take a more conciliatory attitude toward “modern civilization” in our present year.

A Catholic may certainly be a convinced political “democrat,” i.e., a believer in popular representation. Such a conviction is not incompatible with Catholic dogma. This question moves clearly on the plane where In dubiis libertas is written in flaming words. But it is highly doubtful whether “democracy,” with its modern ochlocratic trends, agrees with the parfum of the Church which is monarchical, patriarchal, and “aristocratic” (in the qualitative sense). Catholic democratic parties could only be found in such countries where Catholics were a not fully respected minority — as, for instance, in the Second Reich. But hardly had the Center Party declared itself for “democratic” institutions (and the republican form of government) when the Bavarian deputies seceded from the party. The Catholics in Bavaria were a majority and thus they did not care for an egalitarian attitude so significant for the “underdog.” The whole rapprochement between the Church and popular governments with liberal principles dates only from the rise of superdemocracies, which proved to be even greater evils than their milder forerunners. Choosing between the ancien régime12 and the Gironde, the Church would always have sided with the ancien régime; in the choice between Gironde and the terror régime of Robespierre, the Church would incline toward the Gironde. This is not the indication of a wavering, unprincipled attitude but the Church has to strive to establish the best possible conditions for a Catholic life and a Catholic existence. Said Pope Pius XI, “In order to save the souls of our children We would not hesitate to negotiate with the devil in person.”

Yet there is definitely the tendency in this country to identify Catholicism with popular representation and one must add that this attitude is represented sometimes by the best heads of the Church in America. There is Dr. Mortimer Adler who attempts to prove (not exclusively on Thomist grounds) that “democracy” is not only the best form of government but the only just one; there is a book called God and Democracy, written by a fine mind; and there are many numerous other attempts to come to conclusions which are dangerously close to an anathematization of all nondemocratic thought. Yet the most powerful argument against “democracy,” i.e., its lack of the element of love, often causes nothing but endless astonishment, because the line of argument of these Catholic democratists is purely intellectual-rational.13 If one mentions to them Catholic thinkers of the first order who objected to ochlocracy, they are frequently labeled as “victims of the prejudices of their time,” which argument may turn out to be a boomerang.

This lack of respect for the postulate of liberty in doubtful things (In dubiis libertas) is similarly felt in the domain of theological thought. Thomism, in the American branch of the Catholic Church, has an almost absolute monopoly. St. Thomas is cited as practically an infallible authority and sometimes even a Jesuit may become apologetic when the name of Molina is mentioned. The necessity for unity is overstressed; a typical characteristic of every religious group in the diaspora. The fear is that the hostile majority may interpret as disloyalty friendly criticism within the Church. Yet it is difficult to see how these shortcomings can be eliminated unless the Church is successful in achieving three tasks: the formation of a Catholic culture at least in certain parts of the United States, the creation of an equivalent to a Catholic “Aristocracy,” and the conquest of the intellectual key positions. Unless these goals are reached the Church will necessarily have to continue to remain in the “ghetto,” and in spite of the fact that she alone possesses the full truth it will be her fate to be a “sect among sects.”

Catholics must not forget that their religion is far too great to be identified with any political trend, party, or ideology. (This does not hold in the negative sense as ideologies contradicting tenets of faith or morals are incompatible with the Church and must clearly be combated.) A Catholic supporter of the ideals of hereditary monarchy should similarly object to having “God and Monarchy” named in the same breath. Political parties and ideas come and go. Nations, governments, nay, even constitutions,14 rise, decline, and perish. Only the Church remains. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis. The promise, “I will remain with you until the end of the world,” had been given to us by Jesus Christ and not by Thomas Paine or Robespierre.

We have touched already the problem of the child of technical civilization who is unable to amuse himself alone. Most English people suffer from the same shortcoming. Conversation is almost out of question. The South or East European (or the Central and South American) on the other hand is still able to sit and to talk or even to be silent and to look for hours thoughtfully into the sky. Not so the product of the technical world; he needs his artificial clubs and his very amusement is provided by an elaborate and expensive industry; this amusement industry is of an astounding manifoldness, it comprises not only Coney Island and Play-land, but also the whole legion of trashy magazines full of sex, crime, and financial success, and — last not least — the movies, this serialized production of daydreams. Even England has an average of 17,000,000 “picture goers” weekly in peacetimes; on Albion’s green island relatively good seats can be obtained for as little as fifteen cents in out of town cinemas for double-feature performances. Here the little man after the day’s miseries is received by a smart-looking gentleman in a tuxedo, usherettes with naked legs, and the sweetest fake smile, who accompany the “patron” to his upholstered seat where he receives consolation and forgetfulness.20 Drugged by the oscillating pictures our little man starts to identify himself with the hero. He, the little accountant in the button factory, who is suppressed and persecuted by his boss, his wife, his daughters, and his “friends,” now identifies himself with the athlete of Hollywood on the screen, who chokes the tigers with his bare fists. Similarly, the elderly working woman seated next to him identifies herself with the glamorous daughter of the millionaire who has only to give a languishing look in order to have ten men with sleek black hair and buccaneer moustaches at the beck of a finger. Then comes the awakening and the emptiness. . . .

The inner crisis of America — the cultural as well as the religious and the political one — cannot be overlooked, although the prophecy of de Tocqueville hardly takes into account the older American tradition and sounds therefore less convincing. America’s great danger lurks at that impasse where lay government must forcibly change into an expert government.22 This is the critical moment when Fascism, Nazism, or something similar might easily step in, and then all would be lost.

There is an additional danger in the emptiness and monotony of “small life” in the United States, in the monotony of suburbia, in the small towns and in the agrarian plains, a monotony greatly created by uniformity. Boredom and routine could here easily make an appeal to vital energies looking for an outlet, aspiring to “action,” craving for adventure. James T. Farrel in his various novels has again and again portrayed the “lost young man,” in his attempts to color his barren existence by some form of violent activity. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of Studs Lonigans who do not know with what to start their lives, and that is true not only in the big cities but also in small towns and villages. What after all can the average young man, eager for action in the world of today, do? Duels, crusades, discoveries have come to an end. The “inner kingdom” of phantasy and imagination has been dried out by “sober thinking” or comics and movies. Naturally, there is religion and the Holy Folly of the Cross, there is intellectualism (the consolation of the intellect), there is alcohol and sex (the adventures of despair) or, finally, crime: the attraction of Blue Jaw Magoon’s Purple Gang, the life of a “gorilla” or of an ace trigger man. The pent up energies of young manhood needs some sort of outlet in the stone deserts of Brooklyn, Detroit, or Chicago.

These inner political issues of utmost gravity are now overshadowed by the grim realities of a total war in which our very existence is at stake. Conscription (and voluntary service) will absorb a large proportion of the young men who will profit from a little discipline and drill.24 The hold of the experts, the presidential power, the importance of the ministries and the armed forces will increase constantly. This war may prove after all to be a great opportunity to make the necessary reforms which will reform lay power and recast party influences in a qualitative sense and thus avoid the danger of the formation of a mass party and the rise of a mass leader after the war. To carry out this task properly, to enact this transition without the further (lasting) loss of liberties for the individual needs divine assistance. Nothing is more difficult than to swim against the stream and to act against the “spirit of time” short-circuiting the development from ochlocracy to tyranny and to reach over to the “next” historical period, which must be one of freedom in an order supported by law and knowledge, not one of collective tyranny based upon a sensate hysterical animalism. There is no such thing as a historical fatality; there is only a historical nemesis which punishes those who have hesitated to act when action was still possible.

The last war gave a few totalitarian teetotalers an ugly chance to pass a law which regulated the diet of Free Americans. The war is, as the Greeks have recognized it before, the father of all things. The present war may prove to be the turning point to a new era and the καιρός, the “time of opportunity and action,” may be nearer than any of us believe. The moment of necessary reform will come and the new way of life (both changes intrinsically interconnected) may not be so far behind. This new way of life must be the synthesis of two great traditions; the Catholic one and the Anglo-American one, Baltimore and Boston, faith and liberty. This new-old way of life must be like a tree with roots in the past, roots in the soil and its branches and leaves must be turned to timeless, eternal truth. It must not be made of paper; it must be living and pulsating, satisfying the heart as well as the intellect.

Poor and glorious America! Never in history has a country carried such great responsibility in its formative age, in its period of growth and maturation. Never in history have men of good will all the world over looked with such great expectancy and hope toward any other land. Never in history had a nation more bitter struggles to regain its balance, to find its soul, to shape its face than America. Europe was a hard and cruel mother continent to the Americas, covering them with her amorphous surplus population, dumping these in incoherent fragments over a young country barely emerging from its childhood and adolescence.

Without wealth and without tradition, without learning and often without piety, did Europe’s lost children arrive on these shores to start a new life, to help in building America. Never were men more cruelly exposed to the ravages of industry, to the temptations of money, to all heresies and aberrations of a godless century, of a faithless age. The Europeans in the shadows of their cathedrals, under the walls of their old monasteries, had something to lean upon, reserves to draw from. And yet, it is the parent who has fallen a victim, who has become the “Apostle of her Apostasies,” and it is America that has taken over the torch from her trembling hand.

Said Edmund Burke, America’s great friend and advocate:

The Western world was the seat of freedom until another, more Western, was discovered; and that other will probably be its asylum when it is hunted down in every other part. Happy it is that the worst of times may have one refuge still left for humanity.25

 

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26 It is significant that religion and politics are the two domains where modern man manifests such a deep conviction in lay intuition. “Democracy” has indeed for the secularized American the same importance in these instances, as National Socialism for the secularized German, or Communism for the irreligious Russian.

27 There are twenty-three million Catholics in the United States. The sum total of people claiming church membership is sixty-four millions. Fifty-two per cent of the population of the United States profess no established religion. Other estimates speak of forty-two million “potential” Catholics. It is held that the official Catholic census can take no adequate account of the “floating” and nondue-paying Catholic population which would vastly increase the figures.

28 This was usually done by a temporary division of the classes in three groups — Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. This religious instruction was not given by the regular teacher but by priests, ministers, or rabbis who drew a salary from the state.

29 Theodore Maynard writes in his book The Story of American Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1941), about the menace of the city birth rate in relation to American Catholicism. Reprinted in Vol. XXXIV, No. 23 of Commonweal under the title “The Lost Land.”

30 With the exception of the Soviet Union and the Third French Republic.

31 The Irish list would include such names as Liam O’Flaherty, James Joyce, Francis Hackett, and Sean O’Faolain.

32 Theodore Roosevelt came out brutally against the Catholics when he said: “The Catholic Church is in no way suited to this country and can never have any permanent growth except through immigration, for its thought is Latin and entirely at variance with the dominant thought of our country and civilization.” A good half of these statements are at variance with truth, yet they express a real sentiment and like all half-truths they have a kernel of truth. The Catholics will have to change America. Omnia restaurare in Christo, is a program for the world which excludes neither the City of Rome nor the United States.

33 See the estimate of Fr. Victor Dillard, S.J., regarding the Ghetto Catholic in his article in Etudes, April, 1940.

34 The reader is reminded again that we distinguish (following strictly Platonic and Thomistic principles) between a republic, a legitimate form of government, and democracy, its corrupted form.

35 Even in spite of tuitions the self-sacrifice of orders (Jesuits, Christian Brothers, etc.) is necessary to keep Catholic education going.

36 The sense in which the propositions in the Syllabus are condemned can be learned only by searching the documents from which they have singly been taken. No Catholic should disdain the accumulated wisdom of 2000 years. “Liberalism” is here clearly the continental, Rousseauan brand, not the Anglo-American tradition in the sense in which it is employed, for instance, by Christopher Dawson.

37 The Church would naturally prefer the France of St. Louis to the superficial and frivolous ancien régime.

38 The nonrational values play a very small part (if any) in Thomist philosophy.

39 Even Jefferson was a bitter enemy of the idea of constitutional immutability.

40 It will take a long time until the Anti-Catholics in this country will drop the charge against Catholicism that it is “Fascist.” This illusion is based on the usual ignorance concerning Catholicism as well as Fascism. The view that Catholicism is terroristic and based on violence while Protestantism is liberal, enlightened, and mild — is almost general. Read in this connection Giuseppe Gangale Rivoluzione Protestante (Torino, 1925). The thesis of this book is Protestant, Fascist, and Anti-Catholic to the core.

41 That explains the lack of ambition of the nonprogressive European who always would feel outraged if accused of being ambitious. A young Englishman or American would consider the same characteristic as highly flattering; in France the remark “c’est un ambitieux” is extremely derogatory.

42 The best conservative cultural review of Germany is called Das Innere Reich— The Inner Realm.

43 William Dean Howell in his Criticism and Fiction (New York, 1891) attacked phantasy as an “aristocratic” vice. “Democracy” in his opinion is bound to “realism,” i.e., Sachlichkeit, p. 321.

44 This is typically “Protestant” limitation as the North European development of ecclesiastic styles stopped with the reformation. Neither did Catholic architects have enough courage to build modern churches. An imitation gothic church is not a sufficient or efficient challenge to pagan modernity. Modern art must be either destroyed or “baptized” and it can only be destroyed if we provide a living alternative.

45 The June, 1940, number of the American monthly Screenland brought an article entitled: “Satisfy Your Suppressed Desires at the Movies.” Thus the cinema is acknowledged as a clearinghouse for Freudian “complexes” and a repair shop for defective personalities.

46 Communism in the United States is thus largely an outgrowth of humanitarianism aggravated by the candid superstition of progress. It lacks thoroughly the interesting apocalyptic qualities of Eastern Bolshevism in its early stage.

47 Which means either discrimination in franchise or ascendancy of the administration over the legislation.

48 We will deal with this question (and the whole problem of American culture) more intensively and extensively in our next work.

49 Neither should it be forgotten that a disillusioned generation well disciplined and skilled in the arts of war can become an even greater asset in the hands of a totalitarian leader.

50 Cit. by Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1910).

• 1* See the letter of Mr. William S. Bennet, prominently displayed in the New York Times, Apr. 5, 1942.
• 2* Apart from the fact that we rather borrow our terminology from the Fathers of the Constitution than from radio commentators or the speakers at women’s clubs.
• 7* Military Manual published in 1928 and in use for the succeeding four years. (TM 2000–25)
• 8* Cf. Stringfellow Barr’s article “Ourselves Again” in Tomorrow, Oct., 1942. Condensed reprint in the Catholic Digest, Nov., 1942. This essay of the president of St. John’s, Annapolis, not only evaluates democracy correctly, but also gives an outline of Hitler’s democratic background.
• 9* Democratic rights for school children have been postulated by the disciples of John Dewey, while David Lloyd George demanded in all earnestness plebiscites for the Central African jungles (in a public speech on Jan. 5, 1918).
• 10* About the problem of “democracy” in relation to the popular representation in the United States. See pp. 247–248.
• 11* While man living in the old, traditional form of culture is a dreamer, modern, ochlocratic man is frequently the victim of illusions.
• 12* Cf. Bernard Fay’s excellent Freemasonry and Revolution. (Boston, 1935.)
• 13* By federalism we clearly understand a tendency which is the very opposite of federalism in the American sense. We have to distinguish between centralism, federalism, and separatism; centralism wants the whole concentration of power in a single body, federalism demands a division of power with a marked influence of local administration, separatism recognizes local power only and stands thus clearly for the dissolution of the state into independent parts.
• 14** This idea has been well developed in Josef Leo Seifert’s brilliant work Die Weltrevolutionäre (Von Bogumil über Hus zu Lenin), Vienna, 1930. This work is based on P. Wilhelm Schmidt’s and Gräbner’s Kulturkreislehre. It is also symptomatic that the leaders of the republican movements of Italy, Hungary, and Austria are all titled; Count Sforza, Count Ferdinand Czernin and Count Michael Károlyi. A scion of the princely family Löwenstein represents German republicanism in the United States. (The reader is warned that the terms “First Estate” and “Second Estate” for the Nobility and Clergy are interchangeable as they are not really historical. Only the term “Third Estate” is unequivocal.)
• 20**Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a République.
• 22*Guglielmo Ferrero in his The Reconstruction of Europe, New York, 1941, makes a very strong point of this fact.
• 24* The Slovaks speak a language which is almost identical with Czech but their history, tradition, and character marks them out as a totally different people.
• 25** The Serbs cynically listed in their statistics every Bulgarian as “Yugoslav.” Neither was a difference made in their census between Serb, Croat, and Slovene.
• 26TO PUT in its right light and scientific context the technical word democracy is naturally our first task. Representative government as established in the United States is not synonymous with democracy. The Founding Fathers established a republic (res publica, politéia), not a democracy. And many of the Founders of the Constitution of this country have repeatedly emphasized this fact in so many words. Some of the best American minds have again and again called attention to this important fact and have protested loudly against the use of the term democracy for the fundamental laws of their country, which they respect and by which they abide.*
• 27We see, then, from the plurality of present-day connotations of democracy that it would be thoroughly unjustified to use the term “democracy” in any other sense than in the classical and universal one.* We may well agree that the mischief started by uneducated popularizers has already reached such proportions that a Hercules is needed to clean this Augian stable of popular misconceptions, false labels, and mispresented ideologies. Even some of the more intelligent writers have become a prey to popular pressure, and as modern intellectuals do not lead the masses any more, but follow them and subordinate their ideas and language to the demands of the market, the confusion has now reached its climax.
• 28Today democracy is confused with liberalism,* freedom, and prosperity alike.
• 29“Democracy” as an ideal of the Founding Fathers is equally denied by W. H. Hamilton and D. Adair in The Power to Govern (New York, 1937, p. 158). It must also be borne in mind that the protest against calling the Constitution democratic comes from historians of all groups, yet while Rightists praise lack of “democracy” in the Constitution, “Leftists” like Charles Beard* and H. Rugg are prone to condemn it outright.
• 30We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive “self-realization” has favored the increased use of wrong labels. It is deplorable that even Catholics have become victims of this chaos in verbiage. They have naturally “their” democracy, the Leftists have “another one,”* and even Conservatives indulge in the worship of a thing called “democracy” with a thoroughly different content. The only way out would be to discard the label completely, restore it brutally to its pristine meaning, and to call the things hitherto covered by the label with their proper names.
• 31In order to denote the classical interpretation of democracy as well as its cultural concomitant we have chosen to use the word ochlocracy and — as its adjective — ochlocratic.* The Greeks used this expression strictly in the sense of mob rule, regardless whether these mobs created majorities or minorities. The selection is not a very happy one, and the reader is reminded that we understand under “mob” not the “lower classes,” but just the vast masses of inferior people which can be found everywhere; these products of a soulless culture and civilization who in their terrifying mediocrity are neither fish nor flesh, have neither face nor expression, neither wisdom nor knowledge, piety nor enthusiasm, faith nor charity, hatred nor love, those who go neither with the angels nor the devils and because of their lukewarmness will be spat out by our Lord on the day of reckoning.
• 32It is almost in the strictly classical sense of the Greek word ochlocracy, to which reference has just been made, that the United States Army Military Manual* defines democracy in Section IX, Lesson 9, on “Representative Government.” Having first described autocracy as resulting in “arbitrariness, tyranny, and oppression,” it goes on to what it considers the opposite extreme:
• 33While many may consider the government established by the Founding Fathers as a constitutional democracy, it is clear that no such idea entered into the mind of those from whom Americans derive their form of government, nor did these men give coloring to such an interpretation by their own actions.*
• 34We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category. Dostoyevski, in his Possessed, has predicted accurately how an egalitarian superdemocracy would function. The Soviets have fulfilled this prophecy to the letter.
• 35The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunderstood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings! Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he proposed to use the expression Unité du genre humain. Gustave Thibon has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality — and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. These are then usually the “traitors” who do not “play the game” and must be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler.
• 36The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunderstood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings! Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he proposed to use the expression Unité du genre humain. Gustave Thibon has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality — and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. These are then usually the “traitors” who do not “play the game” and must be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler.
• 37It must furthermore be borne in mind that equality stands for monotony and not for harmony. A harmonious melody can only be established by different unidentical musical tones. These tones must be assembled and have to follow in a certain sequence; otherwise they will result in chaos and not in melody. Human society presupposes such an inequality and unity. Thibon has seen very clearly this issue which can only be solved in the sign of love.
• 38“It consists in purifying and organizing the inequalities from the point of view of a deeper equality, or, to put it more precisely, in making inequality serve unity. But this unity, what else is it but love and what is love without God.”
• 39This clarification is quite necessary because many a good Christian — and that holds true for most of those living in the Western Hemisphere — has an unclear notion about human equality. The American Declaration of Independence mentions the fact that the human beings are “created equal.”* This is true in the theological sense, and in the theological sense only. Two newly born babes are equal before God whether their parents are white or colored, American or foreign, registered in the Virginia Blue Book or in the rogues gallery. This theological equality continues until the time comes when they commit morally responsible acts. Judas Iscariot and St. John the Evangelist were equally conceived in original sin and free from personal sin, but how different their end! Heaven and hell are not identical. It is actually the privilege of our environmental determinists to discard the terms “saint” and “sinner” and to supplant them by pragmatic expressions like “social-unsocial” or “adapted-unadapted.” Dostoyevski prophesied this moral relativism in his chapter on the Grand Inquisitor (Brothers Karamazov), where he sees humanity declaring through the mouth of its science that there are no trespasses and no sinners but only “hungry people.”
• 40Apparently a great deal of misinterpretation is floating about concerning the interpretation of the American Declaration of Independence. The signers would certainly have been the worst hypocrites had they given to their document the same interpretation that so many give to it today. We can understand their attitude only if we remember the fact that the basis of the American Republic is an aristocratic whiggish one, which largely lacked that deeper “democratic” element in social relations as we find it in southern and eastern Europe, and perhaps in South America.
• 41Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.’ It puts us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flocking to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed without free will! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that “democracy stands for equality before the law,” whereas the law is largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. There is, of course, one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Determinism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy.
• 42Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.’ It puts us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flocking to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed without free will! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that “democracy stands for equality before the law,” whereas the law is largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. There is, of course, one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Determinism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy.
• 43The second attack against integral Christendom, gaining momentum right now, comes from the nonuniversal herdists. They put the human beings into watertight hierarchic categories frequently of a racial nature. This new racial determinism, creating racial aristocracies, responsible to a collective “race” but not to a personal God, and racial proletariats with no hope of an earthly salvation, is not less a danger than the classic panherdism. The desire for racial purity in order to achieve the perfectly uniform herd leads to brutal persecution and finally to the strictest imaginable uniformism. The Germanies without the Jews will be an even more monotonous place than the Germanies with persecuted Jews. We will experience in Central Europe the integral boredom which Myerezhkovski considers to be the fatal characteristic of the Realm of the Antichrist.
• 44We should always bear in mind that the Church and ochlocracy cooperated badly in Europe, that the forces inimical to the Church always fostered ochlocratic tendencies. One cannot dismiss the latter fact as purely accidental. Of course there is no incompatibility on dogmatic grounds. The question moves on a plain where in dubiis libertas is written in flaming letters: “In doubtful matters, liberty.” Yet the atmosphere, the parfum of the Church and that of “democracy,” when blended in the political and cultural sphere, emits a bad stench. A parallel reading of the works of our authoritative “democratic” essayists, poets, and other creative writers (from the Leaves of Grass to the City of Man) with the encyclicals of Gregory XVI and Pius IX would give a mortal shock to many “progressive” Catholics who think that the Church ought to come to terms with the spirit of our time . . . (which may, overnight, become the spirit of yesterday). These encyclicals at least express the spirit and policy of the Church in unmistakable directness and clearness.
• 45If there were nothing else than the final and inevitable development of political ochlocracy into the modern party dictatorships it ought to be enough to make the Catholics more skeptical toward this governmental tendency and its ultimate consequences. (We refer here also to the demand of “more democracy!”) It is not a good counterargument to state that everything is evil in a state of exaggeration. Herdism is essentially a “low” sentiment. As nucleus and carrying power of a philosophy of earthly existence it becomes definitely an evil. A real good on the other hand can never be exaggerated enough. There can never be, in human society, enough of the acceptance of the Cross and of charity, never enough loving differentiation and hierarchy, never enough of the spirit of Maundy Thursday when our Lord, the pope, the emperors, kings, and bishops knelt down to wash the feet of twelve Apostles or of twelve beggars. Nor is the custom discontinued in our day. This is hierarchy and charity, order and love.
• 46Yet the great impulse for our modern ochlocracy and democratism comes from France. The French Revolutionaries have tried to copy antique forerunners, but they were not very lucky in their efforts. There is a certain Swiss influence connected with this revolution, yet this element has nothing to do with the democratic peasant spirit of the Original Cantons. It emanates from the eighteenth-century enlightenment which has a strong Swiss, or rather Genevan background. This French town, acquired by the Swiss at a later period of their existence, had already produced its famous two Johns: Jehan Cauvin (from Noyon) and Jean Jacques Rousseau. M. Dunan’s humanitarian Red Cross, the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, the League of Nations, and the socialism of M. Nicole were scheduled to follow.
• 47This pagan geocentrism has changed the very content of our culture. The “happy end” of the cheap, popular novels and the films is nothing but the outcome of the supposition that the human drama finds its ultimate conclusion here on earth. The Calvinists in their materialism took a similar attitude. The more subtle Atheist, of greater experience, has contempt for the “happy end” and substitutes for it a stubborn heroical pessimism which comes pretty near to integral despair. The modern Catholic French writers like Mauriac and Bernanos avoid the happy end in relation to this life. Paul Claudel, in L’Ôtage, expresses his disbelief in earthly justice by punishing the people of good will and rewarding the villains in the last scene of this play. For the Christian the earth is essentially a “vale of tears.”
• 48It is important to remember that Christianity had not abolished slavery. Neither had the Church ever praised this institution, like Calhoun, because the whole relationship of master to slave was not important enough in the light of a life eternal to be combated with furious indignation apart from the fact that even a slave had every protection in a truly Christian society. But now the servant was an “eternal” servant, the master an “eternal” master, and the rich man possibly all through his assumed existence a rich man; thus the hatred of the lower classes now became wide awake. The employees had during the Middle Ages a knowing smile for those in the higher stations of life; they knew it could easily happen that a rich prince might suffer agonies in hell while a leprous beggar sat in the immediate nearness of God’s throne.
• 49Yet the conquest of time and space is only partially a final aim and ultimate goal of a herdist society. Every ideology visualizes a certain end and ochlocracy is no exception of the rule; the end is not as clearly formulated as in communism and one can say that it has been agreed upon by some sort of general consent. But even in spite of the fact that this ultimate aim is not of such a teleological nature as that of the proletarian Millennium of Karl Marx,** it is nonetheless chiliastic; the democratic middle class of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always believed in some sort of “endless progress.” “Progress” is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudo-religious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells’s, “Of Things to Come,” the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy. This identity of teleological outlooks explains the mutual admiration of certain déraciné Americans and Soviet-Russians for their respective fatherlands.*
• 50Yet the conquest of time and space is only partially a final aim and ultimate goal of a herdist society. Every ideology visualizes a certain end and ochlocracy is no exception of the rule; the end is not as clearly formulated as in communism and one can say that it has been agreed upon by some sort of general consent. But even in spite of the fact that this ultimate aim is not of such a teleological nature as that of the proletarian Millennium of Karl Marx,** it is nonetheless chiliastic; the democratic middle class of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always believed in some sort of “endless progress.” “Progress” is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudo-religious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells’s, “Of Things to Come,” the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy. This identity of teleological outlooks explains the mutual admiration of certain déraciné Americans and Soviet-Russians for their respective fatherlands.*