0097 Before proceeding to part three, on the rise and fall of economic liberalism, allow me to recapitulate the rise and fall of political liberalism (part two) using the Greimas square modified for Diesen’s approach to theorizing civilisation.

0098 The key word, labeling an attribute of civilization, is pluralism (A).  Pluralism outwardly manifests the changes of the season.

Here is the picture for Western civilisation from the point of view of the USA.

0099 Each of these statements addresses the question, “What is pluralism?”

“Pluralism” is a spoken word, whose meaning, presence and message change according to the civilisational season.  In the winter season, the word, “pluralism”, is replaced by apparently similar (yet substantially different) term, “diversity”.

0100 Why aren’t conservatives simply “uneducated” in the winter of sovereignty?

Why are they deplorable?

Well, wealthy educated (il)liberals, who occupy most of the federal institutions, including interstate corporations, have a way of buying now and paying later.  The method increases the amount of money that the Federal Treasury owes, under the stipulation that the same amount of fiat currency will eventually be printed by the Federal Reserve Bank, who is currently the main purchaser of loans from the Federal Treasury.  In short, the money borrowed by the Federal Treasury to implement big government (il)liberal objectives may eventually end up as money in circulation, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.

0101 What does this imply?

The so-called “deplorables” are left holding the bag, because they have to either pay the Federal Reserve Bank the amount that the bank printed in order to purchase the Treasury Bills that foreigners, who have figured out the scam, now refuse to buy or pay through inflation.

So, “diversity” means that pluralism is dead, because the ones saddled with the debt will, of course, be blamed for their ignorance of the ways that the meanings, presences, and messages of words have changed over the years.

0102 Here is a picture of the seasons for gesellschaft (B).

0103 Liberals promote individual autonomy.  Some would say, “individual sovereignty”.  Others would say “individual freedom”, without mentioning the concomitant, “and responsibility”.

This promotion sounds rational when compared to the irrational network of overlapping obligations that entangle the average European at the start of the 1600s.

This promotion sounds even better when some authorities start to claim the jurisdiction of other authorities, as if jurisdiction is a plump little lamb and the claimants are wolves (think vast monastic properties and ambitious barons aiming to establish their lordship over the same territories).

0104 When the bloodshed ends with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the notion of the individual is in the air, along with the image of pluralism, picturing a balance between people who are tolerant of others and people who are intolerant (that is, liberals and conservatives).  

By autumn, the educated liberals bask in the warmth of their own righteousness (after all, they are the tolerant ones) and recoil from the lack of interest by conservatives (who should be paying attention to the liberals, but are happily occupied with their own traditions).  In order to resolve this inequity, educated rationalists promote organizational objectives that require sovereign power to implement.  They will get their way even without buy-in by the inattentive conservatives.

0105 The USA North’s victory in the war of southern rebellion paves the way.

One hundred years after that victory, bigilibs are established in the large federal bureaucracies. The expansion of the federal government begins in earnest during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

0106 Here is a diagram of the seasons for gemeinschaft (C).

0107 The American Constitution, particularly its first amendment, aims to separate religion from sovereign power.  The reason?  The thirty years of war preceding the peace of Westphalia involves a wicked mix of politics and religion.  Indeed, political action takes place under the guise of religious mandates.  Here, “religious” means “Christian factions”.

Of course, Christian factions do not appreciate the treaty of Westphalia.  The king decides which Christian factions are permitted and not permitted in his jurisdiction.  Members of certain factions (take a guess which ones) migrate to America and establish a new presence for the concept of pluralism.  The federal union of former colonies will not establish a religion (that is a Christian faction), but each state can promote or neglect whatever religion they wish.

Conservatives, preserving and promoting their own religions, are we, the people.

0108 Just as the term, “individual autonomy” (spring) shifts to “individual sovereignty” (summer) then to “individual freedom as opposed to belonging to a backwards-looking religious sect” (autumn) then to “individual freedom without responsibility” (winter), the term, “religious” (spring) shifts to “conservatives” (summer) to “Judeo-Christians, who don’t care about political action,” (autumn) to “Judeo-Christians, who conspire to impose their rigid beliefs upon the ‘freedom-loving’ bigilibs… or maybe I should say… Judeo-Pagans” (winter).

0108 Over and over, Diesen says that a civilisation starts to fail when the balance between gesellschaft (specialties that name political, religious and other cultural things) and gemeinschaft (tradition, community, and all that goes into belonging) fails.

The balance rests on a fulcrum, a balance point, a grand idea, an organizing principle, that also changes through the seasons.

Here is a diagram of the seasons for the fulcrum-theme (D).

0109 At this point, I have described Diesen’s story in my own words.  For Diesen’s own words, the inquirer must consult the text of his book, titled The Decay of Western Civilisation and the Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.