We’ve seen it time and time again.

No matter if it is political, economic or religious orthodoxy, it will ruin whatever it touches. We saw it with the Spanish Empire, a vibrant social, political, economic growth in Spain all brought crashing down by the imposition of a religious orthodoxy. We saw it again with the USSR. The imposition of a political and economic orthodoxy took only seventy years to demonstrate how utterly useless it was. We can see it again with Putin’s Russia, but that is another story, for another day. The World is starting to drown in its own economic, environmental and political messes with Neoconservative economic policies failing us. Such is the dogmatic approach by the bankers, the economists, the Right, the new inquisitors of Orthodoxy, even camp followers, that we can’t even discuss alternatives without them being labelled “socialist” policies of left wing politicians.

Nevertheless, there is nothing that salaciousness can do that will do as much harm as the life throttling grip of orthodoxy. Set up a standard for “purity and right-thinking”, demand that this be the standard for all, spy on your neighbor lest he disagree with your conception of right and punish him if he does. Make certain we all think alike or, better, don’t think at all; and there will be a general crushing of intellectual curiosity and growth. The knock on effects of this are all too painful for society to last too long.

In a healthy society, dissent is free and can be endured. If some of the dissent is unpleasant to many people-that’s what makes it dissent, that’s the price you pay for social health. Where we have failed is in not policing the idea of “what goes too far”. A tolerant society does not, and should not tolerate the intolerable. Just we have to define what is intolerable, and that is where we come undone. We have never done that successfully. We absolutely need a clear definition of what constitutes hate speech as opposed to genuine dissent.

Something else we need to consider. So many would be “social purists” would have us think that a permissive society, or a “you-think-you-please” society is not healthy. We have actually tried the kind of society in which unbridled repression sees to it what we think, write, say, and do is only what some dominating force says we may. In hindsight, we can see what an unhealthy society really is, and there’s no mistaking the results.

In the sixteenth century, the Protestant movement split the Church in Western Europe. In some regions, Great Britain, the Netherlands, in particular, and parts of France, the result was a move in the direction of a more religiously permissive society to a greater or lesser degree. There was some backsliding over the following centuries, for sure, as orthodoxy re-emerged, but these were eventually dampened by the Enlightenment, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some eight hundred years of religious warfare was brought to a standstill, and the finale, I dare say, was the establishment of the United States and the 1st Amendment.

In other regions, orthodoxy gathered its forces and clamped down, determined that opposition views would be excluded totally. Nowhere was the drive for orthodoxy more thoroughgoing, nowhere did it make as much headway, as in Spain, which was the most powerful nation in Europe at that time. But that power faded as the grip of orthodoxy closed about the national throat. There were many reasons for the decline, but I suggest the major cause was the fear of thinking that permeated the land. Spain did not share in the fermenting growth of commerce, manufacturing, science, and technology that boiled and bubbled in France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, each of which beat Spain and, for a time, inherited Spain’s place in the world.

Russia too partook in some aspects of Western growth. The Renaissance had barely touched Russia, but the Orthodox Church held a firm grip over the country. The support of the Church for the Tsar and the Tsar’s support for the Church cemented its position in the country. So strong was the Church that Russia did not participate in the Enlightenment, remaining in an essentially feudal state right up until the Revolution. There were some changes, but the Tsar-Church alliance was still very much in charge.

The Ottoman Empire lasted for six hundred years, from its establishment, about 1300, until its final collapse in 1921. It too underwent periods of Orthodoxy, mainly after about 1800, until it was so heavily in the grip of a strident, but incompetent, leadership, it too fell by the wayside. Interestingly enough, Jews were better treated in the Empire than were Christians. At different times, Jews rose in political ranks, but Christians barely made it past slavery. You could still buy an Armenian slave child in Constantinople in the last decades of the Empire, along with a pound of opium.

The point of these ramblings is that today a new Orthodoxy has arisen. Riding on the back of the failures of Neoconservative economics, the Far Right has come back into prominence in many places. Italy has elected a Far Right Government. the UK now has a “Reform” Party, led by Far Right Winger, Nigel Farage. Marie Le Pen in France could very well form the next government. Perhaps the most surprising resurgence is in Germany. Not in a position to form a Government, they have been making strides in regional elections, especially in the former East Germany.

Nowhere is the push for a more stringent orthodoxy more apparent than in the US. The election of Donald Trump gave the Heritage Foundation, a Nazi think tank, prominence. Trump denied knowing anything about it, but it is not surprising the number of Trump’s “initiatives” were firstly outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” book. As well, a large number of former Heritage Foundation executives, operators, agents and authors have found themselves in positions within the Trump Administration and White House staff. But then so have a couple of Jeffery Epstein’s “acquaintances”.

Trump’s America is focusing on Trump as “Dear Leader”, the dictatorial despot, and no doubt, the omniscient, omnipresent genius of his mind is far too much for one nation to bear. Opposition to Trump is growing, but with so many collaborators in the destruction of democracy in the US, it is going to be difficult to dislodge him and his successors.

This creates the same problem that has existed within every other country, Empire etc, the need to shut down private thinking. The enforcement of a stringent orthodoxy, intolerant of dissent is the Republican’s only choice here. Trump has consistently doubled down on every misstep, misjudgment, every horrific statement demonstrating his incredible lack of ability and, more worrisome, his growing mental issues.

This is the same pattern used by most despots, most dictators until it ends in war, sometimes a civil war or invasion of another country, but war none-the-less. Mao and Kim are exceptions, but both maintained a rigid “foreign threat” scenario to keep their population in check. Putin is today, developing the same strategy, using the fear of invasion from NATO to quell growing unrest and opposition to his war in Ukraine. Franco stayed out of World War II, probably more because Spain could not afford involvement, trying to recover from the Spanish Civil War a few years earlier. I could romanticize here and say that the Spanish would likely to remember the last time there was direct confrontation between England and Spain, and Franco didn’t want to go through that again, but I won’t.

Stringent orthodoxies always reduce standards of living. Nations are always made poorer as a result of stringent orthodoxies. It is only when the orthodoxy is released that things really improve. China is probably the greatest modern example of that.

China under Mao was hidden, a largely agrarian society, trying to mix it up with the West but failing. On Mao’s death, 1976, Hua Gaofeng became leader but didn’t last long. He was replaced with Deng Xiaoping, who turned China’s fortunes around. Nixon had visited China in early 1972, and was entertained by all the top Beijing people. Relations had begun to thaw, but China was a long, long way behind. It took Reagan’s introduction of NeoConservative economic policies to push the tight investment restrictions in China back. Deng went with it and China’s industrial growth equaled that same intense recovery of a post-war Japan. Chinese living standards have improved dramatically as a result.

It is, today, those same policies that Trump and his cronies are whining about, and blaming Biden for. Like always, Trump’s orthodoxy isn’t paying attention to facts, it’s always the “other side” at fault, no matter who the “other side” is. Trump’s orthodoxy requires that people ignore facts, accept his alternate facts. And it is that denial and convenient ignoring of facts that will bring the US down.