Catholic World Report facebook twitter RSS The CWR Blog How can
the many brave new worlders be defeated? At first glance, the
Jacobins, Marxists, Nazis, rapacious industrial and financial
oligarchs, and modern jihadists have little in common. Weren’t
the Jacobin revolutionaries democracy’s standard bearers?
Weren’t they guided by reason and Enlightenment principles?
Aren’t Marxists, past and present, social scientists opposed to
oppression by the aristocracy and capitalist robber barons,
striving to end class conflict? Weren’t the Nazis an inevitable
product of oppressive WWI unconditional surrender terms? Aren’t
industrial and financial oligarchs entrepreneurs and community
builders? Aren’t modern jihadists seeking retributive justice
for historically oppressed Muslims?  “An attractive end
justifies messy means.”  This end? A brave new world, requiring
destruction for re-construction, requiring the elimination of an
ethos of self-donation, self-sacrifice, and self-identification
with the Jesus of the Gospels