[S]tarting in the late 19th century the intrinsically good and purely Western idea of “free enterprise” was transmogrified into the very unpleasant phenomenon of “capitalism.” Unbridled development, being a symptom of this, is thus a hallmark of the New Civilization that has overtaken the West.
But just try to convince a young idealist of the New Civ persuasion that “capitalism” and the cult of consumption are betrayals of Western ideals made possible only because the West has been defeated. Good luck. For the enthusiastically New Civ youth, the reckless remaking of the landscape, the suburban sprawl, the reinvention of farm life in the image of faceless global mega-corporations, these are all expressions of the evil Western civilization that enslaves its victims’ physical life, just as its Christian religion enslaved their minds.
It is part of our task to learn how to show these innocent victims of the thought-system of our times that the ugly expressions of “capitalism” are evidence of the disaster that will inevitably result when internal moral constraints are removed from the culture, when people are freed to pursue profit without any trace of a conscience. In other words, to somehow get them to see that they are sawing away at the limb they are sitting on.
Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.73
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