By David Warren

"Out of the One, Many," is my motto for today. Note that it is the opposite of "E Pluribus Unum," which, I trust, some Americans may still recognize.

From my hero Nirad Chaudhuri (1897-1999) I learned that the former is the Hindu view: "Eko ham vahu syam" (plus accents). I approve of both mottoes, even though I am not a multiculturalist, or in any way sympathetic to identity politics.

Of the two, perhaps I prefer the Indian aphorism, because what came from the mouth of the Creator to the Orient, differs from what we find on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States - which declares, Novus ordo seclorum, the Latin for a "New order of the ages." (Some Frenchman suggested it.)

In my reactionary view, we do not want a "new order" in politics or religion, but to persist. Anything that leads us off the ancient path is misfortunate; our ambition should be to get back on the road to Heaven.

But there is no prospect of this in the time we see ahead.

After the coming federal election, civilization may be over for the foreseeable future, yet only the losers of the contest will know it. The winners will be too busy celebrating.

The Republicans argue that this is the most important election since Washington, or I should write, "since 1788-89," when George Washington wasn't exactly elected.

And then, in 1792, he was unanimously "re-elected." It was rather like the success of Kamala Harris in 2024, in the sense that no ballots were ever dirtied. She was mysteriously elevated.

The Democrats have, however, claimed that if Donald Trump, who once got millions of votes, gets them again, it will be "the end of democracy." How terribly disappointing if he wins, and it isn't.

At least, disappointing to me, a foreigner; although, as several million illegal immigrants may be voting, I don't see why I should be excluded.

Indeed, I see no reason why the entire population of the world shouldn't be entitled to mail-in ballots; although many of us will discard them. (Understandably, given the cost of postage.)

But such incidental considerations aside, my terminal boredom with month after month of media obsession, has made my own desire to end democracy grow and grow - and not only in the United States. (I'm Canadian after all.)

My desire is to recover some freedom, and "democracy" will never let that happen. Nor, even rhetorically, was it designed to do that, but instead to suffocate us all in bureaucracy.

Which the American Founders sought to impede by establishing not democracy but a Republic.

This, as I have argued before, and as mediaeval scholastics argued long before me, is the decisive issue. They were against popular voting because "the people" cannot rule. They can only form themselves into factions, to cultivate mutual antipathy. And democracy will, sooner or later, bring out the worst of this.

Imagine how much happier Americans would be, if they didn't even know they were Democrats, or Republicans. Or Europeans might be, if they did not have even more ridiculous choices.

Of course, they were already forming political parties in XVth-century Florence; but then, since Adam, sin has been a feature of sublunary life.

Similarly, there have always been rivalries for power, and censorship, chiefly organized by political factions, whose leaders have invariably been thin-skinned.

Moreover, there has always been complacency about this, among the great majority of people, trying not to call attention to themselves. If they must voice objections, they do so in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

The most intelligent people, together with the most cowardly, know how to shut up. But Christians have more often than not proved the most heedlessly bold; and anti-Christians often bolder.

More particularly, the political war in the West has long been between Left, and Right; which is to say, Idealists and Christians.

In "practical terms" we can only resist the metastasis of this spiritual cancer by resisting idealism, and this cannot be ...