Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

En su afán por lo novedoso, las nuevas generaciones suelen descartar a pensadores del pasado, en detrimento de la diversidad en las ideas. Algunos autores gozan de una vida literaria prolongada, gracias a lectores que encuentran en su obra, enseñanzas intemporales, válidas y vigentes. Excluirlos, sería borrar o echar al olvido una contribución intelectual única y exclusiva.

El legado literario de Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), como el de George Orwell, cobra vital importancia en estos momentos de desorden social. De carácter intenso y controvertido, como ser humano Koestler fue excepcional e inclasificable. Su vida, admitió en cierta ocasión, se resumía en la huida de sí mismo. Su relación con el mundo fue una de amor y odio. Para sobrevivir, tuvo que condicionar su temperamento para encajar en los moldes esquizofrénicos de los tiempos.

En su infancia y tras la caída de la "Comuna húngara", su madre, que era judía, se refugió con su hijo en Viena. Allí, Arthur estudió ingeniería en la Universidad Politécnica (1922); luego trabajó en una fábrica en Palestina como asistente de ingeniería (1926). Deslumbrado por el marxismo-leninismo, se hizo miembro del Partido Comunista Alemán (1931) y militó como periodista de la izquierda en la Guerra Civil Española. Sometí mi lenguaje y con él mi pensamiento a un proceso de deshidratación y luego lo hice cristalizar en los esquemas de la jerga marxista, escribió, desilusionado por las atrocidades causadas por la ideología que abandonó en 1938, poco antes de la II Guerra Mundial.

Koestler se estableció en Londres donde trabajó como corresponsal de guerra para periódicos ingleses y franceses. Posteriormente se hizo ciudadano británico. En 1940 publicó el libro que le daría la fama como escritor. Prohibido por los regímenes comunistas y quemado por los fanáticos, aún sigue figurando en la lista de los mejores libros del siglo.

The Fabian strategy takes its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucous, the Roman dictator given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian General Hannibal in southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC). Essentially, the Fabian strategy is a military strategy where grand battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection.

The party employing the Fabian strategy believes that time is on its side and badgers the enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply lines and debilitate morale. To defeat Hannibal, Fabius avoided engaging him in grand battles to deprive Hannibal the propaganda value of major victories and to wear down his endurance. In American history, General George Washington made good use of the Fabian strategy to harass the British, and in Russia the Fabian strategy was used against Napoleon’s Grand Armée.

In 1884, the Fabian Society was founded in London with the explicit goal of advancing socialism via gradual reforms in democracies rather than by revolutionary overthrow. To this day, the Fabian Society exerts significant influence in British politics, for example, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is a member. The Society’s logo is a tortoise representing the group’s preference for a slow, unnoticeable transition to socialism. Interestingly, the original coat of arms of the Fabian Society was a wolf in sheep’s clothing indicating the group’s strategy for achieving its goals.

If globalization is the economic integration of nations in a world where technology has all but erased once formidable barriers to long-distance communication and transportation, globalism is its cultural and ideological counterpart. In theory, the same dynamics might apply. As economies merge, cultures merge as well.

As we move deeper into the 21st century, a global melting pot blends everything and everyone together. A planetary civilization marches united into a future of peaceful coexistence, ecological restoration, human life extension, and galactic exploration.

If people were saints and reality utopia, this idealized version of globalism could be embraced without reservation. Globalism, like communism or neoliberalism, is beautiful when described in these abstract terms and not rooted in the real world. And there is a legitimate moral imperative for us to try to come to terms with what civilization will look like as technology continues to shrink the world. Technology makes globalization, in some ways, inevitable. But what ideology regulates globalization is a choice.

This is the lens through which to view the identity struggle that currently grips the United States and other Western nations. It clarifies what is at stake and points to the consequences of getting it wrong. Unfortunately, for reasons that are not hard to explain, people are not saints and reality is not utopian. Thus, the institutions currently defining policy in America are doing almost everything wrong. Their malpractice is pushing America into decline at the same time as it is alienating allies and empowering malevolent regimes. It must be corrected.

In two fundamental areas, the consensus of America’s elites, relentlessly escalated in policies imposed both by unelected administrators and elected officials, is horrifically wrong.

In 1831, a French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville was commissioned to travel to the United States of America and report back on its prison systems. Once he arrived, however, Tocqueville became broadly fascinated with the upstart nation. Spending nine months in the U.S., Tocqueville richly observed the American people and America’s political system. His observations were published in two volumes, in 1835 and 1840, titled Democracy in America. Many things intrigued Tocqueville about America, and one of those was the practice of the Catholic faith in early America. Tocqueville’s insights ring true even today.

When John F. Kennedy ran for office, some people openly and angrily insisted that his Catholic faith would make it impossible to properly serve as president. (Strangely enough, no one seemed to make that objection during Joe Biden’s campaign, but that is a story for another time.) More recently, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., insinuated that Amy Coney Barrett’s practice of her faith would stand in the way of her functioning as a Supreme Court justice. At Barrett’s hearing, Feinstein addressed her: “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

There is an anti-Catholic attitude that Catholicism somehow makes one unfit for either American citizenry or governance, but that stance was diametrically opposed to Tocqueville's beliefs. He posits, “I think that the Catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy.” And that was not only a philosophical stance, but one formed by observation of early America. Tocqueville writes, “At the present moment more than a million Christians professing the truths of the Church of Rome are to be met with in the Union. The Catholics are faithful to the observances of their religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines. Nevertheless, they constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States.”

Tocqueville, a Catholic himself, certainly realized that human law proceeds from eternal law; thus, all men are subject to it. From the Catholic perspective, no one is above the law or above justice. He writes, “On doctrinal points, the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak, it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but, reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God.”