2. Slogans of the Revolution
At other times, these obstacles consist of revolutionary slogans that are frequently regarded as dogma even in the best circles.
The Fall of Granada in 1492, Painting by Carlos Luis Ribera y Fieve.
A. “The Counter-Revolution Is Out of Date”
The most prevalent and harmful of these slogans claims that the Counter-Revolution cannot flourish in our day because it is contrary to the spirit of the times. History, it is said, does not turn back.
If this peculiar principle were true the Catholic religion would not exist, for it cannot be denied that the Gospel was radically contrary to the milieu in which Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles preached. Also, Germano-Romanic Catholic Spain would not have existed, for nothing is more like a resurrection, and hence in a certain way like a return to the past, than the full reconstitution of the Christian grandeur of Spain after the eight centuries from Covadonga to the fall of Granada. The Renaissance, so dear to revolutionaries, was itself, from various points of view at least, a return to a cultural and artistic naturalism that had been petrified for over a millennium.
History, then, contains comings and goings along the paths of good and the paths of evil.
A recently divorced Marine announces his divorce with a message on his car.
Incidentally, whenever the Revolution considers something to be consistent with the spirit of the times, caution has to be exercised, for all too often it is rubbish from some pagan time that it wishes to restore. What is new, for example, about divorce, nudism, tyranny, or demagoguery, all of which were so widespread in the ancient world? And why is the advocate of divorce regarded as modem while the defender of indissoluble marriage is considered outdated? The Revolution’s concept of modern amounts to everything that gives free rein to pride and egalitarianism as well as to pleasure-seeking and liberalism.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Ch. VII, Pgs. 91 – 92.
