The Legerdemain of the Secular Age

Adler's word (meaning "slight-of-hand") as the new, impressive, and effective means of deconstructing speech, winning arguments, and imprisoning the human soul

Feb 01, 2023

Guilt by association with an imaginary boogeyman is all the rage. Rewrite history, then pretend that, e.g., because Sarah is the great-great-granddaughter of a Confederate officer (who by the way lived through our terrible national conflict to emerge as an archetype of Lincoln’s vision: a patriarch of a line of proudly American Airmen, Coasties, Mariners, Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers, and defenders of freedom) Sarah is bad. Admittedly, the Confederate angle is a gimme. Ok. Let us say that Sarah appears to be Anglo-Saxon, and from the Midwest or South, thus reprehensible by ethnicity and region. Those variables alone merit a good shunning. You respond, “But you are white . . .” The retort: “That’s not the point.” Naturally, you go on: “Ok, what is . . .” Then, the body slam. “Shut up. Keep up. Ok, so let’s say . . .” If those sinister implements in the young socialist’s tool belt are unavailable, use the last refuge of a modern-day villain-maker, “They (meaning Sarah) use the pronoun, ‘she,’ to describe themselves (that is, Sarah).” So “let them (meaning “her”) be shunned.” In junior high, we had a less erudite but quite effusive phrase for this kind of talk: “He just makes up stuff.”

We have a crisis of words that would make George Orwell blush. To wit, the unflappable classicist Mortimer Adler wrote, “Semantics currently has vogue as a critical instrument for safeguarding discourse from ambiguity and nonsense and perhaps also for spotting metaphysical legerdemain.” “Legerdemain” is a neglected word, which is why Adler used it. "Legerdemain” means “trickery.” I know that because I just looked it up. Now, I could say, “Yes, the last time I used that word was—.” But it would be a lie. I used it about ten minutes ago when I tried it out for size before starting to write. The word is bigger than I am, but I will leverage its use with the gravitas of Adler. So, for this piece, I will use it and use it again. As Peter Townsend cried out in his anthem, “We won’t get fooled again!” He could have just sung, “Legerdemain no more!”

Adler could write at a safe distance from the apparent unlikely time when words would have no meaning. But the vogue of Adler’s era has evaporated beneath the scorching dry heat of an intense and oppressive mutant nova. As the Bolsheviks are safely entrenched in their dacha, the deadly Chernobyl-like cloud rains down foolishness on the land. The cloud is a toxic mix of beastly lust for a centralized power reacting with its insufferable secular ideology, then administered with dastardly political machination. The reality of the unreal requires a new postulate. Following Adler, I offer the following:

Semantic legerdemain well past the can’t-turn-back point of suicidal absurdity for the purpose of stealing the God-endowed rights of Man is defrauding people of the ability to speak and by natural influence to think thoughts after God (viz., the irrefutable laws of God are doubted, rejected, then dismantled, in order to promote an insipid spirit-crushing power play). We can only pray that the spirit of 1776 will yield a new, nonviolent, and reasoned response: “Don’t tread on me with your Orwellian prattle.”

The Holy Scriptures warn against the legerdemain of evil men that spawns theological and social anarchy.

Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies (Psalm 141:3 ESV)!
Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint but blessed is he who keeps the law (Proverbs 29:18).
Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil (Matthew 5:37)
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

Pharaoh’s magical tricksters were powerless before that one man, Moses, who was called by God to follow Him and set His People free. The thought is a comfort. Thus, the Apostle Paul:

The very weapons we use are not those of human warfare, but powerful in God’s warfare for the destruction of the enemy’s strongholds. Our battle is to bring down every deceptive fantasy and every imposing defense that men erect against the true knowledge of God. We even fight to capture every thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ. Once we are sure of your obedience, we shall not shrink from dealing with those who refuse to obey (2 Corinthians 10:4-6 Phillips Translation).

I think I will let the word rest. I have used it to excess. But maybe if we expose the goofy Oz behind the curtain, we will be free from its grim chicanery. Hmm. There we go again. Another word.

References

Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Second Edition, vol. 2, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 526.

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