Why we should not give in: an insight into the existence of the good and its superiority to evil

The other day, by sheer coincidence (the kind of “coincidence” that happens constantly in life and shows that there is mental as well as physical causation running the world), while searching for something at VFR on an unrelated topic, I came upon this exchange:

Dr. Sam Francis put it well in his 5/26/2003 column, when he described the ruins of the “Conservative movement”—

“…frankly, not only is what remains of that “movement” not worth staying in; it’s not even worth leaving.”

And I think there is only one reason why those of us here at VFR have no good answer to Mr. Wall’s question as to what to do: There is nothing we can do. We’re finished.

I join with everyone else here in agreeing that we should go down fighting, and standing for what we know to be right. But realistically, we are done.

And if anyone believes otherwise, and has any concrete plan to rebuke this tidal wave, then please, PLEASE, step forward, as I would so love to be proven wrong!

Posted by: Joel on July 2, 2003 8:17 PM

I don’t have a plan, I have an anecdote. About ten years ago I was watching Stanley Fish being interviewed by Richard Hefner on the PBS program The Inquiring Mind. The sheer audacious evil and nihilism of the post-modern, truth-denying Fish—which was not opposed at all by the courtly, old-fashioned liberal Hefner—was incredible. But as I was watching this unutterably disgusting, evil man, an odd thing happened—I began to believe all the more in God. It struck me that such evil COULD NOT EXIST unless there was a good that it was rebelling against. After all, the very motive of the evil was to deny truth and goodness. Which means that such evil could not exist of itself. It is purely a derivative phenomenon. Therefore the greater the evil, the more that proves the existence of the good, and its power to defeat evil.

The evil that seems to be taking over America is like that: it calls us back to the truth of which it is the opposite and the enemy. So there is a plan. It is to know the truth and to resist the false—whatever particular political form that resistance may take.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on July 2, 2003 8:44 PM

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Matthew H. writes:

Your anecdote about seeing Stanley Fish on TV reminded me of the line from Wilfred Owen’s classic poem from WWI, Dulce_Et_Decorum_Est:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

This off-hand analogy, though used to make a different point, has always suggested to me the spiritually crippling nature of Evil.

A quote of Ronald Reagan’s comes to mind:

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

We should also remember Christ’s words in Matthew 7:24-27:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

Moral truth, of the sort scorned by the likes of Stanley Fish and “Roissy in DC,” is the only secure bedrock of civilization.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 26, 2009 08:59 AM | Send