The saddest thing of the past 25 years - the unthinking, unrepented, almost universal drift Leftward of once-decent people and institutions into a whirlpool of the inversion of Good

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The title says it. Over the past 25 years or so, I have watched appalled as almost every person and institution that previously I respected and admired, or even loved, has gone over to the dark side. This has been a terribly sad thing.

It is not that these people and groups have nothing good in them - of course they do. But it is a matter of balance - what once did more good then harm, had the heart in the right place; now does more harm than good, and the heart is fixed upon lies.

The people and institutions have succumbed to the inversion of Good: they have substantially relabelled virtue as wicked and vice as the-new-good; they have become habitually dishonest, systematically exaggerating their positives and deliberately concealing their negatives; they pronounce ugliness to be beautiful, and give awards to the hideous and soul-destroying anti-aestheic worlds they make.    

People who were once sensible and decent, organizations that were once working for sensible and decent goals, have thus by increments capitulated to the prevalent secular, Leftist evils; ideas that are superficially merely wrong or nonsensical or 'a matter of opinion' but which - once adopted - reveal themselves to be malignant cancers, actively and pervasively and terminally-destructive of Goodness in its manifestations.

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It is like (and perhaps not just 'like') demonic possession: once fine churches, colleges, hospitals, schools, charities, professions like medicine and law... now spewing slight variations on the same corrosive stuff about diversity, social justice, global warming, inclusiveness...

If you want a clear example of great goodness turned to the service of evil, take a look at the web pages of The Salvation Army: http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/ - it is all there, all the hype, the weasel words - the fingerprints of a modern Leftist bureaucracy corrupted by state subsidies and indistinguishable from the propaganda of government offices. [See note below.]

In fact take a look at the web pages of any and all large and powerful organizations and you will nearly-always see exactly the same underlying purpose at work.

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And this has most often happened without any observable crisis, and without much in the way of objection - no visible or audible protest beyond a few private grumbles.

And - having been very thoroughly corrupted - there is no perceptible awareness among persons or organization that they have, in fact, changed sides - that they are no longer even trying to do what once they were trying to do; but are now dominated by the slogans and pseudo-goals of a political correctness which is almost wholly dishonest and destructive.

And without such awareness, there seems no prospect of repentance.

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All this is terribly sad to me - a population, including many friends and ex-mentors, that has slid insensibly into very thorough, very comprehensive wickedness.

The main explanation is - I think - weakness; the weakness that comes from lack of roots - and the lack of roots from a lack of faith in anything real, objective, solid. In this respect the adherents of 'liberal' religion are indistinguishable from the prevalent agnosticism, atheism and New Age spirituality - all have drifted down the same slippery slope at the same rate and ended up in the same place of corruption, and flaccid, spiteful, aimless destruction of the Good.

So, the sadness is that so much which I thought strong was not strong; so much that I thought brave was not brave, so much that I thought principled was not principled. 

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These are not men and women who have been broken by the system, crushed by overwhelming forces; rather, they are men and women who drifted feebly into corruption by incremental steps; because they were simply floating, bobbing-along like a buoy broken from its anchor, in an increasingly wicked world - floating, especially, in that sea of lies, sensation and despair that is the mass media.

The mass media has carried almost everybody and every organization into this deeply sad state of hollow horribleness, which is in fact a maelstrom, a whirlpool downward - so that there is an acceleration, and more powerful suction, as time goes by.

And - even worse - even among those who are not in that state, almost all people and institutions that remain on the side of net-Good are perceptibly drifting towards that whirlpool: it is a matter of 'not yet' rather than of them holding firm.

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This situation provides near certain grounds for pessimism: for believing that things will get worse; but it is not, after all, grounds for despair.

This passage from the Gospel of John (Chapter 10: 26-30) explains why: it is a source of immediate consolation, and solid grounds for ultimate hope. Jesus is speaking:

Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.

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No matter what kind of world we live in, no matter if everyone around us has fallen; if we hear and follow our Lord then his hand is about us - and nothing on earth can pluck us from his hand. 

We are ultimately safe. We have hope based on that certainty. 

And that certainty is what motivates, en-courages and enables us to fight back; to look about us at what may be done, and do what we personally can, in what manner we personally can, to save some others. 

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Added: I used always to be referencing Nihilism by Eugene Rose (later Father Seraphim Rose) - but I still regard this small book as the best and deepest description of the scope and nature of that modern malaise which I call secular Leftism (or political correctness).

http://www.oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm#V.

Inter alia he explains why the above mass apostasy from The Good has happened, even/ especially among erstwhile kindly, decent folk:

Nihilism has become, in our time, so widespread and pervasive, has entered so thoroughly and so deeply into the minds and hearts of all men living today, that there is no longer any "front" on which it may be fought; and those who think they are fighting it are most often using its own weapons, which they in effect turn against themselves...

Nihilism is but one side of [the modern] Revolution. Violence and negation are, to be sure, a preliminary work; but this work is only part of a much larger plan whose end promises to be, not something better, but something incomparably worse than the age of Nihilism. If in our own times there are signs that the era of violence and negation is passing, this is by no means because Nihilism is being "overcome" or "outgrown," but because its work is all but completed and its usefulness is at an end. The Revolution, perhaps, begins to move out of its malevolent phase and into a more "benevolent" one--not because it has changed its will or its direction, but because it is nearing the attainment of the ultimate goal which it has never ceased to pursue; fat with its success, it can prepare to relax in the enjoyment of this goal...

Nihilism is, most profoundly, a spiritual disorder, and it can be overcome only by spiritual means; and there has been no attempt whatever in the contemporary world to apply such means.

The Nihilist disease is apparently to be left to "develop" to its very end; the goal of the Revolution, originally the hallucination of a few fevered minds, has now become the goal of humanity itself. Men have become weary; the Kingdom of God is too distant, the Orthodox Christian way is too narrow and arduous. The Revolution has captured the "spirit of the age," and to go against this powerful current is more than modern men can do, for it requires precisely the two things most thoroughly annihilated by Nihilism: Truth and faith.

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Note: Since I browsed the Salvation Army website yesterday, I have been 'spammed' with advertising from them, asking for money, situated on numerous of the web pages I have looked at - presumably via a cookie. This kind of high pressure marketing pretty much says it all that needs to be said about what has become of the Salvation Army.