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O tempora, o mores
Publikováno 29.09.2021 v kategorii: Publikované články

Our world is changing. We are witnessing the rise of wild progressivism and the destruction of tried and tested social structures, virtues and individual freedoms taking place before our eyes.


What’s more, the process of change is accelerating. It is no longer proceeding by the salami slicing tactics, as in the fable of the boiling frog. It is developing in a revolutionary way, without delay and without much discussion. Opponents are being silenced and socially liquidated. The liberal left, the progressives, are forcing their agenda on us in every way. Their propaganda attacks us in every other television commercial, in children’s shows, in the arts in general, in the activities of pressure and interest groups, through the policies of banks and other corporations.

The political scene cowardly backs away from them or even supports their agenda eagerly. The progressives are proceeding in a truly totalitarian manner. We have come to overuse the term, but it does not fit every unfreedom, every dictatorship. Many dictatorships of the past made do with political and economic power, or with control of the tools of propaganda. But they did not always have the ambition to reach as deeply as we see today, including into interpersonal and family relations and into the nature of individual identity. The incoming power has such an ambition. It also reaches into intimacy, into private life, into thought, into purely personal intimate relationships. That is to say, completely (totally) into all aspects of human life and human nature. That is why, in fact, only the present trends may finally be captured and fit with the term „totalitarian“ perfectly.

We can all see it. There is no place for the good old world anymore. And now I must pause. Yes, you’re right. It’s the barking of a bald old man. A bark so similar to those heard from old men unable to adapt to progress since at least the time of Cicero, in the form of the anguished cry „o tempora, o mores“ (oh the times, oh the customs). And at least since those times (but certainly much earlier) there have always been the unruly youth and the outraged older generation, who had no choice but to throw up their hands. But there is one difference. And that is why you are reading these lines. Not because of the one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-and-eight-hundred-and-ninenty-second lamentation over the decline of the world.

There is one difference. A significant difference. Not only in the fact that true rebelliousness is necessarily linked to a willingness and readiness to endure consequences, hardships, punishments, repercussions, ostracization, a determination to make sacrifices. Nothing like that is risked by today’s spoiled revolutionaries. But there is a more fundamental difference. Yes, the youth have always rebelled against the prevailing conditions and orders. Each new generation has wanted to break away from the existing rules and the existing world order. Even mine. I too could have my underground Mánička youth thrown in my face, my youth from which I have not yet fully grown up. (Máničkas have been boys with long hair, named after a puppet; she is a girl who is a friend of Hurvínek, a much more famous boy.)

Yes. We too rebelled, we too did not listen, we too did not want to respect social conventions. But why? Partly out of misunderstanding, I’m sure. But mostly because we wanted to live our own lives. As all generations of rebels before us had wanted to do. And that’s the big difference from today.

We didn’t impose our lifestyle, our way of life, our big beat, our clothes, our hair, our opinions on the older generations. But today’s revolutionaries are not concerned with living their own way. No one is stopping them from doing that. They want to impose their ideas of life on the rest of us. We’ve been living a bit like the slogan of one of the most left-wing musicians of the 1970s, Johnny Rotten, who, ironically, by some unintentional magic, made perhaps the most conservative statement in history when, when asked if he thought he was going to change the world with his songs, he replied, „But I don’t want to change the world, I’m just trying to keep the world from changing me.“

But today’s revolutionaries want to change the world. Not for the sake of being able to live their own way, but because of the godlike conviction that all other people – young and old – should henceforth live according to the new revolutionary ideas. These progressives are not defending their way of life, they are attacking ours, they want to change us, our lives, they want to rule the world and impose their order on it.

So if the revolution underway today bothers anyone, it is not just the lament of the one-thousandth generation over the new next mischievous age. And if anyone is fighting that revolution, it is not just a manifestation of a cold clinging to outmoded patterns of living. It is a defense of the freedom to live in one’s own normal world.

Published on Neviditelnypes.cz (The Invisible Dog) on September 9, 2021

Translation byl Luboš Motl

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