V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

INTRODUCTION

About half a century ago, two refugees from the communist regime in Czechoslovakia debated the future in Paris. One of them maintained that for men thinking is as indispensable as eating and digesting, and in view of the infinite variety and variability of genes, any attempt to suppress human thinking and to force human society into a society of an antheap, and therefore totalitarian regimes, must collapse. The other countered with the observation that ants had not always lived in the same way as they were living at present, that they obviously evolved into perfect coordination from a community of complete and more independent individuals, and that therefore humanity could follow the same path and totalitarian regimes could succeed.

The purpose of this book is (1) to concede that the latest evolution of humanity is proving the second debater right, (2) to describe how this is coming about, (3) to assert that it does not have to be so, and (4) to open the discussion on ways and means to lead humanity in a right direction.

It is common to describe any present situation as critical, decisive and a crossroad in history. This is to a certain extent true: panta rei, history does not stand still, and therefore each of its steps, each historical period, each answer to any situation co-determines what the future will be. But there are differences. As long as such turns and innovations take place within the framework of one civilization, they do not change the basics of things. The shifts in power among Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia left undisturbed the elements constituting a civilization: the spiritual underpinning and the arrangements between people and peoples and the principles of society and economy.

To a different category belong changes which bring about the destruction and replacement of such fundamental elements and thus the rise of a different civilization. This process is usualy connected with great demographic changes. The rise of Greece and Rome created a new civilization on the ruins of the Fertile Crescent one, and when it perished under the impact of Christianity and the invasion of Germanic and Slav tribes from Eastern Europe, a new, the Christian Western civilization arose victorious and dominated the world.

The rise of a new civilization is a drawn out and costly process, costly in spiritual and material goods and especially in human lives. The signs of its beginning and progress are impossible to hide and under the assumption of human freedom can be avoided by man's reason and will. Such signs are clearly visible in the present situation. They are the challenge to the spiritual foundation of Western civilization's values and institutions by materialistic principles; the denial of the exceptional position and mission of humanity in creation and the view of man as an equal, non-special part of the animal and inert world; the enmity towards family and nation as humanity's main institutions; and the bypassing of its structured political arrangements: the state and its most valued form, democracy, replacement of government as a codified manner of ruling, by governance as an informal and therefore uncontrollable rule; all these changes paralleled by far reaching demographic shifts herald the end of the road for Western civilization.

Dealing with such a complex situation requires a comprehensive understanding of politics. This is the purpose of this book: to enlarge the knowledge of objective truth about politics rather than to express an opinion. Search of the truth is not directed mainly towards the past, but to the present and the future. But its seeking, representing and proving has two disadvantages. It is necessary to explain the terminology and the structure of organizing the acquired knowledge, which is tedious and whose direct connection with the main subject, i.e., politics, is not always obvious. The dealing with the truth must rely on past knowledge commonly known and possibly considered boring and superfluous, although new light is cast on it from new observations.

The contents are presented here in four parts.

The first objective ("A"chapters) is to explain politics as an activity of beings endowed with freedom, i.e., reason and volition, who act purposefully. In the interest of precise and clear terminology, it must be introduced by the book's most tedious part: the first two chapters devoted to the logic of purposive thinking and its two poles: purpose and means. With the help of these instruments, it then follows the creation of purposes, their coalescence into movements, the transformation of movements into political movements and of political movements into political organizations; the utilization of the management of public affairs as means for attaining the sundry purposes, and the types of government. For the purpose of the book, it is necessary that these chapters cover not only politics as they exist in the United States, but generally; therefore this descriptive part is the longest portion on which the rest is based.

The second objective ("B" chapters) seeks to determine generally valid criteria, i.e., absolute standards for judging the facts delineated in the preceding five chapters; such criteria are the feasibility of purposes and the suitability of means. These two qualities depend on the relationship of the observed phenomena towards the two tendencies pervading being: the tendency of unfolding its potentialities into actualities (evolution, development) and their collapse (devolution, entropy). Man can, in his freedom, choose between them; he can choose destruction, even his own destruction. This book follows the principle "being is better than non-being" as the absolute good: evolution over entropy, growth over decline (stagnation is not a third alternative due to the unceasing change of the existent world).

The third objective ("C" chapters) is the application of the established criteria to the present world political scene in order to evaluate positive elements of the present civilization, the nature of the surging new civilization and the eroding of Western civilization by the forces of the new individualistic culture of economic and biological materialism. It also deals with their methods and strength.

The fourth objective ("D" chapters) is the examination of options humanity has for its future development. Not surprisingly, the decision lies largely with the United States due to its unique power position in the present configuration. Thanks to their manipulations of domestic politics, from the United States springs most of the financial and political power of the promoters and realizators of the "global governance" among the world's elites.

After consideration of these factors, the conclusions of this book can be summed up as follows:

Half a billion children have been outsmarted, outmaneuvered and deprived of their main human right: to be born. Billions of "ordinary people" are being outsmarted, outmaneuvered and deprived of a basic human right: to pass on their life to their children. It happens due to their political ineptitude and organizational haplessness. Their numbers and their power immeasurably overwhelm the agents of the "civilization of death,"  but they need a program and gradual realization of a new world order benefiting humanity, its spiritual and material growth, a program of saving, sharing and using the resources of this planet to serve humanity and to push humanity's new frontier past the limits of this planet into space. The United States has led humanity victoriously in the struggle for democracy; it is also spiritually and technologically capable to lead it in the preservation and perfection of the civilization which gave birth to human rights and democracy. This demands political action, and someone should try it.

This book includes also the experience of over forty years of international banking including the service of chairman of the National Association of the Council on International Banking and representing the American banking community during international conferences at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris and even more so the traces of fifty years of participation in politics, clandestine and public, under two totalitarian and three democratic regimes, as inmate of a concentration camp in Germany, a political refugee in France and a citizen of the United States to which, at the end of the road, by this summary of a tortuous life, I confess my thanks.