speaking of Jacobins

and today's pretenders who purport to lead us

The ending of this is below>>
http://www.fireeater.org/Pages/LT_Content/Archives/Fire%20Eater%20Archives_A/childress_2004.pdf

I used them to end the above linked piece and they are those of
Richard Weaver>> http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods22.html

We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity
to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.
That is why, when we reflect upon the cataclysms of the age, we are
chiefly impressed with the failure of men to rise to the challenge of
them. In the past, great calamities have called forth at least heroic
postures; now we detect notes of triviality and travesty and we have the
feeling of watching actors who do not comprehend their roles.
Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the
existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until
it again distinguishes between good and evil. Hope of restoration
depends upon recovery of that clearness of vision and knowledge of form
which enable us to sense what is alien or destructive, what does not
comport with our moral ambition. The time to seek this is now, before we
have acquired the perfect insouciance of those who prefer perdition.
For, as the course goes on we rejoice in our abandon and are never so
full of the sense of accomplishment as when we have struck some bulwark
of our culture a deadly blow.