Making sense of current events

Much is being revealed in the way some Hillary Clinton supporters are behaving in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency of the United States.

For instance, there are the teary-eyed teenagers and young adults taking up space at so-called “institutions of learning” who, ever since the election results were made final in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, have been rendered practically catatonic and left curled up in a fetal position  (which is ironic given their attitude toward infanticide).

This implies, of course, that for every emotionally paralyzed student there is at least one equally unhinged parent or guardian that provided the dysfunctional home in which they were raised.

In many places, there are evidently a boatload of irresponsible educators on hand only too pleased to abandon to important work of teaching in favor of coddling the sniveling little drama queens.

Speaking of drama queens, there are the apoplectic Hollywood hypocrites and news media leftists who are using the public forum with which they’ve been blessed to label 50+ million hard working Americans as “uneducated racists and homophobes” thus inciting raw hatred while hiding behind slogans allegedly promoting “love.”

Then there are those who must be understood and engaged, not just as whiners and whackos, but for the criminals that they truly are; namely, those who have no respect whatsoever for the rule of law and have since taken to the streets to disrupt the lives of as many other citizens as possible.

Most on the other side, both in the U.S. and abroad, seem to be looking upon this spectacle with a degree of incredulity; stunned, as it were, by the sheer senselessness of it all.

As with most things, however, simply taking a step back and viewing the situation through the lens of Catholic tradition provides a great deal of clarity – in the present case, enough to make it clear that the unseemly behavior of the #notmypresident crowd actually makes perfect sense.

You see, the one thing that all of the aforementioned Hillary supporters have in common is that their behavior is a natural byproduct of “liberalism;” not as defined by political pundits, but as taught by the Magisterium of the Holy Catholic Church.

In the words of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, “liberalism” may be broadly understood as a “disposition of the soul that leads a man to deny the sovereignty of God and to refuse to submit to it.” (cf Against the Heresies)

Sure, it is commonplace for the practitioners of liberalism to claim allegiance to God – importantly, however, not as made known according to Divine revelation, but only insofar as they choose to define Him.

When liberalism as such is embraced, the self is elevated above all else. Ultimately, therefore, the liberal is left to think and to act according only to the dictates of unconstrained personal opinion; i.e., “to deny the sovereignty of God and to refuse to submit to it.” (ibid.)

In so denying God, liberalism necessarily entails the denial of objective truth itself, and this, of course, is the very definition of what it means to abandon reason and intelligence.

By contrast, authentic liberty “belongs only to those who have the gift of reason or intelligence.” (cf Pope Leo XIII, Libertas)

Pope Leo XIII further contrasts liberalism and liberty thus:

The unanimous consent and judgment of men, which is the trusty voice of nature, recognizes this natural liberty in those only who are endowed with intelligence or reason; and it is by his use of this that man is rightly regarded as responsible for his actions. For, while other animate creatures follow their senses, seeking good and avoiding evil only by instinct, man has reason to guide him in each and every act of his life. (ibid.)

When liberalism is embraced; objective truth thereby having been denied, what remains in the aftermath is little more than abject emotionalism that serves to feed man’s inclination toward evil.

It is with all of this in mind that such things as young adults wailing in fear of phantom incursions against their precious little “rights,” news personalities nodding in agreement to the claim that Trump’s election was a “whitelash against a black president” (even though Hillary-of-the-Hamptons is about as pale skinned as they come), and local government officials doing their level best to incite a “national shutdown on inauguration day” makes perfect sense.

Each and every one of the truly deplorable persons mentioned above, and others like them, are operating on emotional auto-pilot; having long since chosen to abandon reason and intelligence in favor of elevating personal opinion over objective truth.

In other words, these are the actions of individuals who have chosen to coronate themselves; claiming an autonomy that proposes to reign over and against the Sovereignty of Almighty God.

And now for the bitterest observation of all:

The reason so many have done so is, first and foremost, because those who have been charged with proclaiming the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the name of Holy Mother Church have been failing in that duty for more than half-a-century.

Our Lady warned us. We’ve ignored her. And now we’re paying the price.