The Points Of Convergence

I have spent decades studying Eric Hoffer, and one of the sources of enjoyment for doing so is to see how young, current conservative thinkers arrive at some of his conclusions independently. For example, I was watching a Jordan Peterson video this week, and he was pointing out that the fundamnetal proposition of the West, that the individual is sovereign, has led to peace, prosperity, individualism and captialism as we have moved away from collectivism and tribalism with their incessant warring and savagery. Let me quote from Thomas Shactman, Page 195 and 196, of his autobiography (American Iconloclast) of Hoffer: "Hoffer would eventually decide that the calm of the 19th was an aberration, and that in the twentieth the world would return to its old savage ways though in a post-industrial rather than in a preindustrial context: 'The nineteenth century despite its unprecedented changes was a century of law and order. In Britain, where the changes were most spectacular, the lower orders that early in the century had turned the cities into savage became meek and law-abiding. The First World War was a watershed of effective authority . . . Was it the terrible slaughter of the war that shook authority? Hardly so. It was the loss of hope.' Elsewhere, Hoffer has characterized the 19th century as the century of the middle class, and it is. Now the middle class is the class of Western individualists, and they are the most civilized, opponents of trialism, collectivism and endless conflict of what identity group against other identity groups. Now, the middle class is under attack, especially in America, by the Left, as they regard the world as nothing but an incessant struggle for power between rival groups, rival tribes. Neither Hoffer nor Peterson want the collectivist to take control of society again with their regressive, revolutionary policies.