Instructor of Sociology

= Wharton County Junior College

&nb= sp;

“A= ll civilization rests upon the executioner… He is the horror and bond of human association… Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world,= and at that very moment, order gives way to chaos, thrones topple, and society disappears.”[1]

---Joseph de Maistre

&nb= sp;

   &= nbsp; When scholars consider the social observations of Joseph de Maistre,= the problem is often imagining their influence and impact on our world of today= . Was Maistre relatively alone in his ivory tower of staunch theocratic dogma or were his words and ideas taken to heart by some that used them in an attempt to change the course of entire societies? This paper will ex= amine the scope of Maistre’s works and attempt to demonstrate that the unbending, reactionary perspectives to which he adhered exerted both a great theoretical and practical influence on the evolution of the American politi= cal system, the incubus of the nationalist (and even fascist) ideologies, and a historical basis for the development of modern Latin Catholicism.

   &= nbsp; Some scholars, like the eminent late British historian Isaiah Berlin, share the opinion that Maistre’s influence on modern social thought w= as somewhat limited, having only a remote and perhaps propagandist influence on modern fringe movements. Whil= e Berlin acknowledged that many of Maistre’s ideas obviously held some sway ov= er the development of twentieth-century Western dictatorial governments, he st= ates that, “his day is done, his world has no relevance to any contemporar= y or any future issue.” Othe= rs disagree. De Maistre biograph= er Richard Lebrun (1988) along with the late Romanian-French philosopher-histo= rian Emile Cioran both believe that his tenets will live to rise again periodica= lly as traditionalist or nationalist movements evolve to combat a world in moral and ethical decay.

   &= nbsp; The social structure Maistre advocated seems derived from Plato̵= 7;s Republic and Laws coupled with the Christian tradition. It sounds strikingly similar to the famous sermon embarked upon by Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov who recited= the lines,

No science will give them bread= as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us.’ = They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyo= ne are inconceivable together… There are three powers, only three powers= on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience of these feeble rebels for their own happiness—these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority (Dosto= evsky, 1990: 253, 255)

   &= nbsp; Maistre also seems to have had an influence on some of the ultra-nationalist and reactionary thinkers of the late nineteenth and twent= ieth centuries, namely Nietzsche, Pareto, Sorel, D. H. Lawrence, Charles Maurras= [2], and several leaders of the European and Latin-American populist movements.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> There is no doubt however, that Maistre’s influence touched the idea of how a society should ideally = be structured in a divine, naturalistic manner. The examination of his ideas may h= elp to better understand the foundations of modern political phenomena, from milit= ary coups and dictatorships, to religious fundamentalism, anarchism, the militia movement, and even the anti-abortion crusades.

   &= nbsp; Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre is classified today as a French anti-Enlightenment, Catholic reactionary when in fact, he was not a Frenchm= an at all. He had been born in <= st1:place>Chambéry, Savoy in 1753, at a time when the provi= nce did not belong to France. His family (who was of French orig= in) had settled there more than a century before and had made their mark politically but were not among the nobility (Bertrin, 1910: 1).   Concerning his birth, de Maistre wrote that, “Destiny had meant me to be born in France, but having lost her way in the Alps, dropped me in Chambéry.” To Maistre, France was “the fairest kingdom after the Kingdom= of Heaven” (Berlin, 1990: 103). One of t= en children, Joseph had been educated by the Jesuits and they, along with his parents inspired him with an intense love of religion and a detestation of eighteenth-century philosophical rationalism. He spent his life discrediting the principles which led to the French Revolution and defending the positions of the counterrevolution.

   &= nbsp; Reciting anathemas such as, “Everything in the French Revoluti= on is miraculously bad,” (Cioran, 1992: 25) de Maistre condemned Protest= ants as being “the most dangerous enemy of the human race, destroyers whose aim was to sap the foundation upon which all societies rest.” Men who lifted their hand against = the universal Church, people like Voltaire and Rousseau, were no more than the secular disciples of the great subverters—Luther, Calvin, and their followers.   He derided Protestantism as being nothing more than the revolt of individual reason against the sole basis of all authority.&n= bsp; Catholics had never rebelled against sovereigns, according to de Maistre, and even in the case of the Spanish Inquisition, the revolt was against the usurpers of the faith, to preserve the minimum degree of stabil= ity and security without which no society can survive... (Berlin, 1990: 135-6). To de Maistre, man did not exist but m= en certainly had a divine purpose in being. He stated what he believed to be the obvious in his Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg:

It is man who is charged with t= he slaughter of man… So it is accomplished… the great law of the violent destruction of living creatures.&n= bsp; The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death. (Berlin, 1990: 111)

   &= nbsp; And, sounding remarkably similar to Burke on the existence of the be= ing called man, Maistre wrote:

The Constitution= of 1795, just like its predecessors, was made for man. But there is= no such thing as man in the world.= In the course of my life I have se= en Frenchmen, Italians, Russians… but as for man, I declare that I have never met him in my life; If he exists, he is unknown to me (Berlin, 1990: 100).

   &= nbsp; In fact, Henri de Saint-Simon adopted as the goal of the Saint-Simon= ian school of thought the reconciliation of Maistre’s beliefs with those = of Voltaire. This alone heralded Maistre’s tremendous influence. Such an endeavor though, proved to be quite an undertaking. Voltaire stood for individual libe= rty, Maistre for authoritarianism; Voltaire for Enlightenment, Maistre for darkn= ess; Voltaire hated the Roman Church, Maistre liked even its vices and regarded Voltaire as the Devil incarnate. Yet, there seems to be a frightening truth in this Saint-Simonian idea. For though their perspe= ctives may be polar opposites in ideology, their relative ruthlessness and eloquen= ce, steeped in historical analysis creates a shocking reality based on principl= e, one which certainly has crept into more modern political perspectives, a quality having been inherited by Marx, Lenin, Sorel, Pareto, Tolstoy, and e= ven the authoritarians of the twentieth century (Berlin, 1990: 158-60).

   &= nbsp; There does seem to be a great association of these ideas with those = of Auguste Comte, the professed “father of sociology,” who was him= self a staunch, royalist, traditionalist Catholic who had attended a polytechnic university and became expertly versed in the merits of science and technology. Comte, a disciple= of the Saint-Simonian school (and for a time the close associate of Saint-Simon himself), had actually attempted to synthesize the ideas of de Maistre and Voltaire. On one hand, he was infatuated with the idea of French utopian socialism, on the other, establishing a authoritarian council to usher in a new scientific age where traditional religious values could be applied to the worship of society itself. He termed his new rel= igion positivism, of which sociology= was a part, and offered himself as the only man with the intelligence and ability= to lead the world into this new epoch of history. (Collins, 1989: 20-9) While Comte’s thoughts of gr= andeur and generally crazy propositions never had a great impact anywhere in Europe, there is some justification for their impact elsewhere. The nation of = Brazil adopted many of the positivist ideas of Comte, even including on their flag= the positivist motto, “Order and Progress”[3] (Sugrue, 1996).

   &= nbsp; While Spencer, Darwin and others believed that man had progressed from the simple to the complex, Maistre was convinced that the savages of his day were the result of the “fall of man.” Echoing Montesqui= eu, Maistre writes:

The savage cuts down the tree to eat its fruit; he unharnesses the ox given him by missiona= ries and cooks its flesh with the wood of his cart. After three centuries all he wants= of us is powder to kill others, fire water to kill himself. Thievish, cruel, dissolute, he nevertheless differs from us. We at least have to overcome our nature; the savage follows his; crime is his nat= ural taste, he feels no remorse… parricide, eviscerating his mate, scalpin= g, cannibalism, wild debauchery… What is the purpose of savages in creation? To be a caution to us. To show us how deep man c= an fall. The language of tribes = is not the primitive strength and beauty of a beginning, only the confusion and ugliness of decay. It is the = debris of ancient languages in ruins. (Berlin, 1990: 133)

      He was not= alone in his ideas. In the English-speaking world, supporters of this idea included Richard Whately, t= he Archbishop of Dublin, along with the Duke of Argyll.[4] Whately’s contention was that “no community ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called civilization”; in short, all barbarous and savage races are but fallen descendants of races more fully civilized.= The Duke of Argyll took Whately’s argument one step further, declaring that men have been frequently found “among the woods and ro= cks” in a higher state of civilization than on the fertile plains, such examples being cited in Mexico, Peru, and e= ven Scotland”[5] (White, 1997: 2). The implica= tion was that weaker tribes, who were sinking in culture either escaped or were driven away by the stronger into more remote and unfavorable regions. This accounted for the great archaeological civilizations of the new world and demonstrated that men who cannot conform to expectations, tradition, or authority, or those who rebel against it see their culture destroyed.&nb= sp; As their lifestyles changed, so too did their cultures collapse, dow= n to even their languages becoming crude, childlike, and vulgar.

      As Weber h= ad concluded in The Protestant Ethic a= nd Spirit of Capitalism (1904)[6], the worldly asceticism and attentiveness to individualistic values among ea= rly Protestants that were intrinsic to Heavenly salvation were instrumental in launching the Industrial Revolution. He had= not only become convinced that Industrialism had developed in Europe largely du= e to the influences of the Protestant Reformation, but among nations in which reformation had occurred were found the earliest vestiges of the industrial economy. The advance of scien= ce was naturally a part of industrialism and progress, and certainly was a integra= l element to Martin Luther’s concept of the calling. As an unsympathetic opponent of the Enlightenment in general, Protestantism, the new era of industrial productivity, and the age of invention, de Maistre commented that, “A= ll intellectuals are bad, but the most dangerous are the natural scientists.” He had eve= n told a Russian nobleman, during Maistre’s service as Ambassador to St. Petersburg from the King= dom of Sardinia, that “Frederick the Great was right when he said that scientists were a great danger to the state... Too much, even of literature, is dangerous, and the natural sciences are still more worthless…” (Berlin, 1990: 120-1). Maistre even, perhaps propheticall= y, proclaimed that “no religion can resist science, except one” (Bertrin, 1910: 2). One celeb= rated passage discussing his view of science begins:

One of the inevitable drawbacks of science in every country, and every place, is to extinguish that love of action which is the true vocation of man; to fill h= im with sovereign pride, pervert him from himself and the ideas which are prop= er to him, to make him the enemy of all subordination, a rebel against every l= aw and every institution, a born champion of every innovation… (Berlin, 1990: 120-1).

   &= nbsp; Generally, these sentiments reflect basic Catholic traditionalist thought as evidenced by Robert Merton’s (1968) work, Social Theory and Social Structure. According to Merton, in reviewing studies comparing Protestants and Catholics, even as late as 1900, Protesta= nts represented without exception a larger part of the student body in those sc= hools which emphasize scientific and technical training, while Catholics concentr= ate their interests on classical and theological training (Merton, 1968: 645).<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Numerous studies have also found t= hat unusually large proportions of outstanding scientists tend to be Protestants. In Alphonse Candolle’s well-known study entitled, Histoire des sciences et des savants, in 1885, he found that within continental Europe there were more Protestant scientists than Catholics, even though Catholics outnumbered Protestants better than three to one (Merton, 1968: 6= 48).

   &= nbsp; Another contemporary who shared de Maistre’s basic views was t= he French nobleman, Louis de Bonald. Although Maistre greatly admired and corresponded with Bonald, the t= wo never actually met (Berlin, 1990: 101). When Savoy was attacked and occupied by France during the revolutionary period, Maistre was forced to flee to Switzerland, Italy, and = Sardinia, eventually accepting an appointment as the Sardinian Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, Bonald was an equally eloquent critic of both science a= nd the industrial era. He longed= for the “good old days” of the pre-bourgeoisie era. His admiration of the feudal order= was consistent with his despising of the industrial age. Bonald, like de Maistre, concluded= that industry was not an independent force that would guarantee peace and liberty. “Agricultural society was, in every respect, superior to industrial society.” “The agricultural family can= feed and nourish itself—it is not dependent on other men and other social events to assure its continued existence.&= nbsp; The industrial family, on the other hand, produces children whom it cannot be sure of supporting, dependent as it is on the vicissitudes of the market…” The agricultural family respects the natural and divine order because the fathe= r is the authority, unlike the industrial system in which the father, mother, and children are isolated, and family unity is disturbed. Coupling harsh labor on children (= which prevents their education and destroys their health) with discarding the weak and the old who cannot work, the industrial revolution divides society into hostile classes and factions while agrarianism had unified it (Zeitlin, 1997: 58-9).

   &= nbsp; The age yet to come was not a reversion to agrarianism but the movem= ent toward a new, exultation of the common man albeit in an industrializing world. It was here where Romanticism was born and where both Maistre and Bonald were required to co-exist.

   &= nbsp; Though there is little that de Maistre had in common with the undisciplined, emotional, and unstable spirit of Romanticism, there was a curious parallelism between his thought and that of the latter. Both saw the Reformation as the so= urce for rationalism and free thought, both saw the Revolution as the dawning of= a new era, both supported a renewed religious unity across Europe<= /st1:place>, both were inspired by the thought of an imminent spiritual revolution, and = each were enemies of Enlightenment and admirers of Medieval Catholicism (Dawson, 1995: 6). Regarding America, yet another curious parallel was emerging-- the view of a society without respect for authority dividing and turning upon itself.

   &= nbsp; John Adams wrote in A Defenc= e of the Constitution that “Democracy, simple democracy, never had a patron among men of letters.” He added that, “The people are always expecting to be served gratis, and to be paid for the honor of serving them…” It was an age in early America where the aristocracy still governed, where the landowner was the politicia= n, the taxpayer, and the voter. = The constitutional system of government was in place but egalitarianism was certainly not the order of the day. When poets like Whitman and Emerson[7] began to sing the praises of democracy and rejection of the traditional ord= er, a new movement expousing self-reliance, experience, and nature was born. Emerson was the most influential of these “men of letters” and appealed to a variety of egalitarian= and innovating impulses common among many Americans. His ideas had much earlier been po= sited by Tocqueville: the passion for simplicity, the dislike of hierarchy, and t= he impatience with discipline and restriction. When Emerson made the bold move of reducing God to his concept of the Oversoul, when he appealed to individual judgement, preached growth, change, and becoming, and praised a freedom unfettered by compromise or parchment, he had become a prophet of the revolt against authority. His politi= cal theory became increasingly socialistic, as he was well aware of the Aristotelian principle that “men cannot exist without proper community.” He rejected individualism for this reason and he shunned materialism and authority to u= sher in the new age from the “old tenures.” Stating that all political systems= must be founded upon “absolute right,” Emerson designated the personality of the “violent hero” or the “wise man”= as the sole authority to establish righteousness. He even pointed to Osowatomie “John” Brown, the fierce abolitionist and butcher of innocent m= en at Harper’s Ferry and in Kansas, as the archetype of righteousness. Referring to Brown, Emerson said that he “made the gallows glorious like the cross.” Unfortunately, nowhere did the concept of sin find a place in Emerson’s scheme, and such fatalistic indifference to moral considerations and the personal responsibilities in Emerson’s thought were not only seen as politically irrational but a dangerous doctrine for a people (Kirk, 1986: 240-3).[8] By eliminating authority in his sy= stem, Emerson was driven to create an authority for his system, one based on principle, but never the divine. Exerting compliance through the force of the “violent heroR= 21; and “martyr” mimics not only the basis of de Maistre’s Christianity but embodies the grandeur of Maistre’s own “executioner,” the force without which no society can survive.[9]

     If Emerson had a= dopted the idea of the existence of sin, he well may have recognized, like Maistre, that man is corrupt, that his appetites need restraint, and that the forces= of custom, authority, law, and government, as well as moral discipline, are required at all times to keep sin in check (Kirk, 1986: 244). As a social optimist ignoring the = fact of sin, Emerson, like Rousseau, adhered to the supremacy of benevolent instincts. He long had been r= eady to discard the “old tenures” and introduce the powers of emotion (Kirk, 1986: 244). But as Max Scheler stated in his work Ressenti= ment, “when the visceral sensations are greatly stressed and intensified, t= heir influence on the vital and communal instincts very often makes the affective impulses change their direction. The latter now turn against their own bearer. The result is “self-hatred,&= #8221; self-torment,” and “revenge against oneself.” In a word, nations can collapse un= der governance guided by emotion rather than authority. As one keen French observer of thi= s very phenomenon stated, “a savage who cannot commit vendetta consumes hims= elf, weakens, and finally dies” (Scheler, 1972: 72). If a people cannot achieve social = unity and adherence to law and custom through core beliefs, values, and consistent normative structures, they may well turn upon each other and face their own internal destruction.

     Of all of Emerson’s critics, a Vermonter named Orestes Brownson answered the loudest. Brownson, a long-ign= ored American thinker with a restless mind, sampled nearly every dissent of these Transcendental times, and in the end, embraced orthodoxy with the fervor of= a man who had found sanctuary (Kirk, 1986: 245). “We have heard enough of lib= erty and the rights of man” he wrote. “It is high time to hear somet= hing of the duties of men and the rights of authority.” To Brownson, “Protestantism descends through three states: first, the subjugation of religion to the charge of civil government; second, the rejection of the authority of temporal government, and submission of religi= on to the control of the faithful; third, individualism, which ‘leaves religion entirely to the control of the individual, who selects his own cre= ed, or makes a creed to suit himself, devises his own worship and discipline, a= nd submits to no restraints but such as are self-imposed.’ In short, “under Protestanti= sm, the sect governs religion, rather than submitting to governance; the congregations bully their ministers and insist upon palatable sermons, flat= tering to their vanity;” and w= hich assert the universal and absolute supremacy of man. This tendency is fatal to democrac= y for it stimulates insubordination, disorder, disloyalty, and ultimately, rebell= ion (Kirk, 1986: 246-7). Constitu= tions cannot be made, said Brownson, agreeing with de Maistre, they are the produ= ct of slow growth, the measure of a nation’s historical experience, or m= ere paper. All of them are genera= ted through Divine Providence, never the deliberate wisdom or will of men. In Europe, monarchy and aristoc= racy ought to be perpetuated because the entire tenor of their existence is bound within these institutions. In= America, the commons alone mi= grated here, and must struggle to maintain the republic in its purity, strictly obeying its laws, and cleaving fast to its written Constitution (Kirk, 1986: 248). As Brownson wrote:=

Our great danger lies in the radical tendency which has become so wide, deep, and active in the American people. Ceasing to regard any= thing as sacred or venerable, spurning what is old, injuring what is fixed, setti= ng adrift all religious, domestic, and social institutions, we borrow nothing = from the past and ignore the data of experience. We even try and deny that language= has exact meaning…We shall not escape from this deluge of change and peri= lous experiment until we recognize the principle of authority: God’s authority. This cannot be apprehended without the Church. As Protestantism and its fumbling offshoots decay before our eyes, upon the mound of dissent must rise the fortress of orthodox belief, without which human sin and foib= le know no limits, without which, order and justice perish (Kirk, 1986: 249).<= /p>

     This is the great fallacy of revolutions to de Maistre. Though growth and change occur in society, nothing good or permanent= has ever been accomplished overnight. All improvisation carries the seeds of its own decay. To change things abruptly and viol= ently becomes the central crime of revolutions (Berlin, 1990: 132). De Maistre rabidly adhered to the = idea that violence should never be used for change, only for preservation.<= /o:p>

     Following the Fr= ench Revolution, there was actually a revival in religion, or at least a renewed respect for religion. Support= ers of the Revolution stated that their intention was never to destroy the Church,= but rather to make it a part of the machinery of the new bureaucratic state (Dawson, 1995: 1).   This= is evidenced by Rousseau’s idea of a civil religion, where he could not = even fathom a society existing without some form of religious faith (Sugrue, 1996). De Maistre gave no cre= dence to civil religion, and none to Protestantism either, only embracing traditi= onal Catholicism coupled with the governance of the ancien regime. He stated once that, “Louis XIV stamped on Protestantism, and he died in= his bed, full of years, in a blaze of glory.&n= bsp; Louis XVI caressed it, and died on the scaffold” (Berlin, 1990: 137). It goes without saying = that because the Revolution in France happened at all, Mais= tre saw in it some divine purpose. “What we are witnessing,” he wrote, “is a religious revolution; the rest, immense as it seems, is but an appendix” (Dawso= n, 1995: 5). <= /p>
     Though many revolutionaries had hoped to limit the religious function to that of educational institution whose business it was to make men useful and obedie= nt citizens (reminiscent of Marx’s decry that religion was the opiate of= the people), Maistre saw this movement as a divine calling to rebuild the old order. The attempt to reform = faith was in essence a threat against those who would rise up and reclaim the gol= den age of monarchy, heredity, and Church.&nbs= p; He saw the power of a God who destroys to create and erases to write anew. De Maistre regarded the Revolution as the cleansing fire which would purify and regenerate <= st1:country-region>France and restore the French monarchy which would emerge stronger than ever before. With the fulfillment of these objectives, the divinely inspired wars of the Revolution would have accomplished its work (Dawson, 1995: 4-5).

     No word was ever= used more by de Maistre than the adjective “divine.” Whether referring to constitutions, sovereigns, heredity, monarchy, the papacy, or even war, in short, to any authority consolidated by tradition, the divine was readily applied. The association of the Divine with= every moment, event, terror, or custom was de Maistre’s forte. Witness Maistre’s opinion on= human conflicts:

If self-interest= is what men pursue, why do they not form a league of peoples and attain to that universal peace which they profess that they so ardently yearn for? There is only one valid answer: men’s desire to immolate themselves is as fundamental as their desire for self-preservation or happi= ness. War is the terrible and eternal la= w of the world. Indefensible on the rational plane, it is nevertheless mysteriously and irresistibly attractive. At the level of reasoned utilitarianism, war is indeed all it is thought to be, mad and destructive. If nevertheless = it has governed human history, this only shows the inadequacy of rationalist explanations… Wars will not cease, however hateful, because wars are = not a human invention: they are divinely instituted” (Berlin, 1990: 121-2= ).

     Burke had recogn= ized the beneficial influence of Catholicism as a preserving force. Tocqueville described its conserva= tive tendencies in American life as well. Irving Babbitt (who was not a supporter of the Roman Catholic faith) wrote that it well might become the only effective instrument for preserving civilization. Maistre had ado= pted this premise all along.

     With the fall of= Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the Jacobin leaders Robespierre, Marat, and Danton instituting the Reign of Terror, de Maistre’s worst fears had = been realized. The Jacobins began changing France= institutionally, even= down to the calendar. The year 179= 2, the first year of the French Republic, became year “one” and even the months were renamed. The brutal Robespierre though, ref= used to stop the bloodshed even after the enemies of the Revolution (among them = the clergy) were suppressed. He w= as arrested and executed in 1794 and a more reasonable constitutional governme= nt was put into place and protected by a young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. Among the most interesting discussions of de Maistre is his ironic and paradoxical dilemma regarding Robispierre. Though he venomously opposed both the Jacobins and t= he French Revolution, the despotic, authoritarian control exercised by the Fre= nch leader and his henchmen was still preferable and admirable in comparison to= the man-made rules and human liberties afforded by constitutional democracy (Berlin, 1990: 171).

     When Napoleon be= gan his reign in France= , Maistre’s atti= tude toward him was curiously ambivalent. On one hand, Napoleon was brutally destructive of ancient values and= the enemy of both Pope and Monarch. On the other hand, he maintained an astute grasp of the realities of power and held great contempt for democrats, liberals and intellectuals. De Maistre was powerfully attracte= d to the man who had restored France to glory, and Bonapar= te himself was impressed by Maistre’s writings, which he was said to find politically sympathetic. Even though de Maistre longed to meet Napoleon, he never did, having to follow h= is orders against it in his role as Sardinian Ambassador to Russia.[10]

     Maistre, like He= gel, and in the twentieth century, Oswald Spengler[11], were convinced that they were living in a age that was witnessing the decli= ne and death of a long epoch of human civilization. When Masitre died in Turin, Italy in 1821, his works we= re not forgotten. In the twentieth century, de Maistre’s influence can perhaps be found primarily among = the theorists of Nationalism both in Europe and Latin America<= /st1:place>. Charles Maurras, often considered = the precursor to the modern Fascists, attempted to collaborate with Hitler for perhaps the same reason Maistre strangely admired both Napoleon and Robespierre. On the scale of values:

…power com= es almost highest, because power is the divine principle which governs the wor= ld, the source of all life and action, the paramount factor in the development = of mankind; and whoever knows how to wield it, above all to make decisions, acquires the right to obedience, and is by that token instrument chosen by providence or history, at that particular moment, to work its mysterious purposes (Berlin, 1992: 170-1).

     The Nationalistic movements in Latin America, particularly in Argentina in the twentieth cent= ury were intended to be a hybrid between Christian teachings, Greek philosophy,= and Roman order. Unlike the Fasci= sts in Italy and Germany, the Nationalists bot= h in Spain, Portugal, and in Latin America<= /st1:place> remained closely conn= ected to the church. Founded on the Aristotelian dictum of “man as a social animal,” coupled with t= he “world of kings, estates, guilds, and “natural inequalities,= 221; the movements sought to defend the “national soul,” undertake nationwide moral purification, and prevent the breakdown of the countryR= 17;s spiritual unity. The National= ists upheld authoritarian rule while opposing liberalism, democracy, and capital= ism and communism alike[12] (Rock, 1993: xvii-xx). The La= tin American Nationalist movements are of great significance in their relations= hip to de Maistre and the entire embodiment of French counterrevolutionary thou= ght as these movements lasted well into the latter part of the twentieth century and from time to time manifest themselves still today in less developed Lat= in nations. While many foreign influences aided these movements in Latin America (often emanating from= priests in Rome who doubled as journalists and political activi= sts for the church, and through publications from Spain which documented the historical grandeur of General Franco’s Falange[13]), ideas from French sources were per= haps the most ideological and useful to the Latin-American Nationalists.

     The writings of Charles Maurras, himself influenced by de Maistre, were labeled by one Argentine commentator as “romantic manifestations or anti-romanticism.” His writings had become popular in Argentina as early as 1920 and = upon his death in 1952, Maurras was lauded by Argentine Nationalist leader Julio Irazusta as “the greatest teacher of politics of his time.” Maurras’ key contribution according to many was to stress that the state should encourage “the = multitude of small spontaneous associations and autonomous groups that existed before= the state itself and would probably survive after its demise.” Maurras was viewed as the Nationalists’ Thomas Aquinas (Rock, 1993: 17).

     Among other infl= uences on Latin Nationalism with ties to de Maistre’s original works include= d: Georges Sorel, who proposed using myth to create “an epic state of mind” among the general population;&= nbsp; Vilfredo Pareto, who characterized society as divided into the “exceptionally gifted minority and the ‘mediocre’ majority”; and Marcelino Menéndez= Pelayo[14], often referred to as the “lay saint of the Falange”. =

     In the late nine= teenth century, Menéndez P= elayo lead the crusade to restore Spain to its true Catholic “self” and its “providential mission.” For Pelayo, it was only through re= ligion that Spain<= span style=3D'font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'> had developed its cul= ture, strength, and well-rooted institutions.&nb= sp; For him, the Inquisition had produced, in only two short centuries, = some of the purest literature and national solidarity ever seen in Europe. The eighteenth-century Enlightenme= nt, which Pelayo called “the most perverse and ungodly age in historyR= 21; literally destroyed Spain. The nation and its peoples lost th= eir religion, their language, its science, its arts, “and everything that= had made it wise, powerful, and feared in the world” (Rock, 1993: 11).

     Menéndez Pelayo stirred the spirit of Spanish culture to= ward rebirth. For both Spain and Spanish America, a new “apostol= ic and warrior spirit” would emerge to reclaim the “historic essence of our society” (Rock, 1993: 12). “Saving civilization”, in the words of Maurras, meant destroying “Rousseau’s optimistic metaphysics,” “Ka= ntian idealism,” and the “God of the inward conscience” expouse= d by both Protestants and Jews. It= also meant rejecting capitalism and democracy, and especially one of democracy’s reprehensible manifestations—feminism. Thought by the Nationalists as a phenomenon created by the United States= , feminism had been encouraged to spread pacifism and thus to weaken resistance to American imperialism (Rock, 1993: 21). Even Bonald had recognized that one of the dangers of representative government = lay in the opportunity it “offered for foreigners to intervene in [nation= al] affairs” especially, as he couched it, “with their gold” (Rock, 1993: 9-10). Maurras concurred that often in democracies, “t= he rule of justice was replaced by the rule of gold,” which had become t= he “judge of all thinking.”[15] The “rule of gold” was “indifferent, the most absolute, the least responsible” of all possible forms of government. Even the French sociologist Gustave Le Bon, who had become another strong influe= nce on the Spanish and Argentine Nationalist movements, stressed that popular democracy was nothing more than mass irrationalism in action, a point strikingly similar to the French conservative writer Hipolite Taine who sta= ted that:

The life = of a people, its institutions, its beliefs, and its arts [represent] the visible thread of its invisible soul. [Each people is] an organism created by the past… Infinitely more numerous = than the living, the dead are infinitely more powerful than they (Rock, 1993: 17= ).



   &= nbsp; De Maistre, Bonald, Maurras, and their followers in Latin America had all hoped for what has been referred to as a “futurism of the past.” &= nbsp; As Maurras proclaimed, the “laws of gold” need to be supplanted by the “laws of blood” which would reunite and resto= re to society a Godly Golden Age (Rock, 1993: 18). It is perhaps no coincidence that = the depiction of Jesus on the Cross adopted by most Latin Catholics is the imag= e of a man suffering desperately, bleeding from his wounds, and in need of death. This is precisely the = image of suffering Maistre applies to all of mankind. He viewed our society as:



…an inextricable network of weak, sinful, helpless human beings, torn by contradictory desir= es, driven hither and thither by forces too violent for their control, too destructive to be justified by any comfortable rationalist formula. All achievement was painful, and l= ikely to fail, and could be accomplished, if at all, only under the guidance of a hierarchy of beings of great wisdom and strong will, who, being the repositories of the forces of history (which to him is almost God’s w= ord made flesh), laid down their lives in performing their task of organization, repression, and preservation of the divinely ordained order; by this act of sacrifice achieving communion with the divine order, whose law is a self immolation which defies explanation and brings with it no reward in this world (Berlin, 1990: 173-4= ).

     There may never = be an answer to the scholarly debate about how much influence de Maistre’s philosophies have had through history or what ideological roles, if any, similar perspectives may today play in our modern, technological world. One thing seems clear, however. Counterrevolutionary ideas traceab= le back to de Maistre and others significantly imp= acted nationalist movements both in Europe and Latin America<= /st1:place>. Even today, these sentiments still= arise from time to time in political dialogue.&n= bsp; Witness Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez, the leader of the failed 1992 military coup in Venezuela, who in 1999 was elected the country’s new president, quoted just last month[16] as saying, “We’re in apocalyptic times, there’s no middle ground. Either you are with G= od or you are with the devil, and we are with God.”

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