The Mandate of Heaven

 

Abortion laws by country. Red = fully illegal. Blue = legal. 

To an atheist, the thought that heaven is intervening in world affairs is no doubt fanciful. But once you accept the existence of God, or even, as with the ancient Greeks or Chinese or Hindus, of cosmic justice, the assumption that God is directing history is inevitable. Miscreant societies may do mysteriously well for a time—the Devil has his powers too—but heaven will in due time strike down a Carthage or a Nazi Germany or a USSR in dramatic fashion.

Over time, the good guys usually win. One may protest that this is only because the history is written by the winners. This is not true. Losers usually survive to write their own histories, and history is based on documentary evidence by which one can arrive at the truth of things. In most wars, there is a good side and a bad side, and the good side wins. Is there any obvious counter-example?

That being so, the wholesale acceptance of abortion, by America and by most other developed countries, is the surest possible indication that they have lost the moral high ground, and so are due for decline or sudden collapse. It is the same sin that finished Carthage, or Canaan.

The puzzle is who might rise to replace them? Ibn Khaldun had a useful theory, that a decadent civilization would inevitably and rather suddenly be replaced by “barbarians” from the fringes, just beyond their direct control. They would be a group disciplined by adversity, not some established rival power.

The regime that is set to replace the USA as world leader will not, if Ibn Khaldun is right, be China. China shows at least the same level of moral depravity—as demonstrated by legal abortion—as the US. It will not be Russia. It will not be Japan. It will not be Europe, East or West.

If we use where abortion is and is not legal as a guide to moral health and strength, the best candidates for new leadership seem to be Subsaharan Africa, the Muslim world, Latin America, and the Philippines.

In that group, I would put my money on Latin America and the Philippines. They combine this ethical core with a form of the philosophy of liberal democracy which made Britain, France, and America seeming favourites in God’s eyes over the past few centuries. They seem to fit Ibn Khaldun’s description best as the barbarians just beyond the gates. The Africans and the Muslims seem more peripheral to America; and less united among themselves.

You might scoff that they are poor and disorganized. But the ascension of a new power can happen suddenly. Spain launched her world empire in 1492, the very year she finally drove the Moors out of the homeland. The Dutch began their world empire even as they were fighting a war of independence from Spain. Such current adversity can build solidarity and social cohesion.

Together, the Philippines and Latin America have the demographic weight. The Philippines alone has a larger population than Britain or France.

The transition will need to be sparked by some new ideology, I imagine—something not apparent now. Liberation Theology and Friere’s critical pedagogy look like attempts at this, but duds. Marxism is not a viable platform; it is unethical. And the US might recover, if, as anticipated, the Supreme Court dismantles Roe v. Wade.

Gervais at the Golden Globes

It seems to me Ricky Gervais’s monologue at the Golden Globe Awards marks an important new stage in the ongoing popular revolution against entrenched “elites.”

The protest has now moved from the streets into the halls of the palace.

We saw perhaps the same thing too when JK Rowlings recently fell afoul of the far left. And then did not apologize. We have seen it in the recent politically incorrect grumblings of ex-Pythons John Cleese and Terry Gilliam.

And all have been, perhaps, emboldened by the prior example of Jordan Peterson, an academic who bucked the academic speech codes, and prospered instead of being ruined.

It is a critical point; as when, during the French Revolution, members of the First and Second Estate began defecting to the National Assembly. For these are members of the elite defecting.

Gervais is himself a card-carrying member of the glitterati. Nor is he any right-winger. He aggressively advocated for the Corbyn Labour Party as recently as the 2017 UK election; this year, he was neutral.

It is important that Gervais was mocking them. That is extreme: he is saying they do not deserve to be taken seriously. This means that, very suddenly, it may be UNCOOL to be leftist. The peer pressure to conform to leftist ideology may be flipped.

His criticisms through humour were not political, either. They were on moral grounds.

That is the crucial point. The current elite no longer holds the moral high ground, as they must to justify their status and their privilege. They are beginning, belatedly, to see this themselves, just as the nobles and clergy did in the French Revolution.

Gervais almost said this in so many words: “You have no standing to preach to anyone. Just take your award, thank your agent and your God, and --.”

Tellingly, I see news sources transcribing that would “God” as “guard.” Which makes no sense, but to acknowledge a God might be, to them, too traumatic. They fear judgement now too much.

This is not the point at which the house of cards, or the Bastille, comes down; that is when the order is given to fire on the crowd, and the ordinary soldiers will not muster, or will not obey. But this is the point at which the collapse is inevitable.

The mandate of heaven, as the Chinese would put it, has moved on.