{"id":44187,"date":"2019-03-05T07:18:20","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T12:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44187"},"modified":"2019-03-05T07:18:23","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T12:18:23","slug":"us-conservatives-pursue-a-ben-option-of-global-ramification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44187","title":{"rendered":"US Conservatives Pursue a \u2018Ben Option\u2019 of Global Ramification"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"US<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

US Conservatives Pursue a \u2018Ben Option\u2019 of Global Ramification<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Are we \u2018Rome\u2019? The question has weighed heavily<\/a> on the minds of American conservatives, libertarians and Catholics at their various conferences. Is America headed the way of the Roman empire? Bureaucratic decay, massive public debt, an overstretched military, a political system seemingly incapable of responding to challenges \u2013 \u201cthe late Roman empire suffered these maladies, and so, some fear, does contemporary America\u201d, notes<\/a> The American Conservative<\/em>, a journal which has been pursuing this \u2018line\u2019 diligently, and with a growing constituency, over a number of years. (Note that this is not the constituency of Vice-President Pence who represents an Evangelical, fundamentalist, literal insistence on imminent Redemption, with its \u2018Rapture\u2019 politics).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Conservative<\/em> rather warns:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf libertarians on the Right worry about structural collapse \u2013 cultural and religious conservatives add a moral and spiritual dimension to the debate. Rising hedonism, waning religious observance, ongoing break-up of the family, and a general loss of cultural coherence \u2014 to traditionalists, these are signs of a possible Dark Age ahead\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And this is their narrative<\/em> in response to these fears: Around the year 500 (CE), a generation after the Franks deposed the last Roman Emperor, a young Umbrian man (i.e. hailing from a rural province in Italy), was sent to Rome by his wealthy parents to complete his education. However, disgusted at \u2018Rome\u2019s decadence, he fled to the forest, to pray as a hermit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His name was Benedict. And he went on to found a dozen monastic communities, and wrote his famous \u2018rules\u2019 which are credited with having helped an earlier culture and its values survive in needy times. Professor Russell Hittinger summed up Benedict\u2019s lesson to the Dark Ages like this: \u201cHow to live life as a whole. Not a life of worldly success, so much as one of\u00a0human success\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Conservatives Pursue a \u2018Ben Option\u2019 of Global Ramification Are we \u2018Rome\u2019? The question has weighed heavily on the minds of American conservatives, libertarians and Catholics at their various conferences. Is America headed the way of the Roman empire? Bureaucratic decay, massive public debt, an overstretched military, a political system seemingly incapable of responding to challenges \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14457,150,1024,8203,827],"class_list":["post-44187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-alastair-crooke","tag-collapse","tag-rome","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44188,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44187\/revisions\/44188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}