The Age of Evasion
ALAN writes:
In your post on the “Religion of Peace,” you quoted a newspaper statement that Americans are “searching for answers.” That struck me as hilarious and true. I immediately recalled a remark Ayn Rand made in a speech in 1960:
The truth about the intellectual state of the modern world … which distinguishes it from other periods of cultural crises, is the fact that what people are seeking is not the answers to problems, but the reassurance that no answers are possible.
— Philosophy: Who Needs It; Ayn Rand (1982), p. 71
Modernists are searching not for answers but for new and improved excuses and evasions, because there is nothing Modernists hate more than responsibility and accountability. The first responsibility of any grown-up is to see that X is so, i.e., that there are certain realities that cannot be evaded, papered over, or defined out of existence. But this is precisely what modern Americans – “Liberals” and “Conservatives” alike – assiduously refuse to see. To borrow a phrase from English professor Eric Larsen, modern Americans are “a nation gone blind.” They are morally obtuse.
Evil exists. Some people are evil. Not all people want the same things. Conflict exists and is inevitable between and among all people. Ordinary men and women have understood these things for centuries. Modern Americans do not want to understand them because they stand at odds with utopian fantasies like diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance, and open borders. (more…)









