Here’s an interesting, if somewhat wrong, take on my book The Benedict Option and Archbishop Charles Chaput’s book Strangers In A Strange Land. It appears in the LA Review of Books, and the author is Benjamin Teitelbaum. It begins:
Cont...An East Asian parable tells of a man who confronts a tiger in the forest. Unable to escape, and lacking the strength to subdue the animal by force, he opts for a third tactic. He leaps on its back and rides. One day the tiger would grow old, and if the man remained inconspicuous and patient, he might survive long enough to witness its decline, at which point he could grab its neck and start to squeeze.This parable entered Western politics through the writings of Italian fascist-sympathizer and race theorist Julius Evola. The defeat of Hitler and Mussolini convinced him that nothing could stop the advance of liberal modernity — which he regarded as an anarchic scourge that sought to render natural human difference, moral truths, and tradition meaningless. He resigned himself to life in a postwar West where confrontation with progressive dogmas like equality and liberty was tantamount to political suicide. Resistance for the true anti-liberal consisted instead in secrecy and self-preservation. The tiger of modernity, he wagered, had a limited lifespan, and only those who kept themselves intact would be positioned to strike once the beast began to sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment