The Rise of Radical Secularism

Just read a fantastic book review on NRO by Joseph Morrison Skelly about Herb London's new book, America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion. (Psst: You should read it, too.) Obligatory excerpt, but it's all worth reading:

London identifies five developments in our time that have paved the way for the ascendancy of radical secularism. They include the rise of multiculturalism; the decay of traditional religion; the degeneration of the liberal virtue of tolerance into an unwillingness to discriminate (relativism, in other words); transnationalism, which is “the effort to reduce or eliminate the national heritage of European states through continental harmonization” — and a phenomenon creeping into American life; and “a loss of existential confidence that is at the same time a failure of nerve.” There is a historical dimension to this process, too, since the assault upon established religion has deep roots in the West, including Friedrich Nietzsche, as mentioned above, and extending back to the radical French branch of the Enlightenment, which the author acknowledges early on in his book.

This is reason number one why no thoughtful Christian, in my estimation, should be voting Democratic. I think a lot of Christians see the Democrats as caring more for the disadvantaged--something Republicans surely need to work on. But Christians also need to be aware of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern liberal movement and understand where the Democratic Party--Barack Obama included, emphatically--wants to take us.

The Prospects Of The Political Right

PowerLine Blog's Paul Mirengoff continues a debate between himself and Peter Wehner over the prospects for conservatism. Read his entry here.

Real conservatism recognizes the truth that a moral citizenry is more important to a nation than good laws. It also understands that bad laws can encourage vices among the citizens that create problems that legislation is unable to remedy. Conservatism is a force for stasis, whereas liberalism is a force for decadence, and the nation--with rare exceptions--lurches leftward politically because it lurches downward morally.

Liberalism, at worst, calls on your desire for material comfort and security, and at best on your wish for material comfort and security for others. In no case does it--or can it--call on something higher than the self, than the individual, and its material wants. Implicit in its arguments is the fact that moral progress is impossible without economic comfort.

Conservatism, on the other hand, calls relentlessly on something higher than the self. It insists that the moral fiber of the nation is more important than its economic stat sheet. It believes that family, community, religion, and tradition are more important to the encouragement of responsibility and morality than economic security.

Our laws have increasingly operated under the assumption that pain is the only absolute evil, and it has taught us as a people to be cowards. A nation in which a quarter of high school girls has contracted an STD regards an economic depression as the worst imaginably calamity, but doesn't realize that it is more than halfway under the quicksand already. Can such a nation turn back and reject the idolatry of comfort?

The smart money is, long-term, on "no." And the evidence is a striking lack of conservative principles among modern "conservatives." John McCain is running against the big-company CEOs who shouldn't earn so much more than you and against big money in politics, crowding out the "little guy"; his appeals are purely to envy. It was George W. Bush who said that when someone hurts, government needs to move. Congressional Republicans and their please-the-people pork binges are hardly distinguishable from Democrats anymore, and they pay the price at the polls. We've come a long way from the stirring words of Ronald Reagan.

But appeals to a higher principle don't work in a democracy except in times of crisis. During our last major national crisis, a leader stepped up and inspired a nation. How long will we have to wait for the next such crisis? And when the next one does come, will we have the moral strength to stand up under it?

The Intellectual Weakness Of Liberalism, And Its Wrong Direction

Three recent stories highlight inherent weaknesses in modern liberal concepts of governance. First, Muskegon Pundit notes that Nebraska's state Medicaid will no longer provide for penile implants, declaring sex medically unnecessary. (Get the government out of the bedroom! Erm...) I always knew liberals hated poor people, I just didn't know how much. But, I kid the system. Anyway, I think we can all agree that almost everything one does in life relates to one's health somehow. With government-provided medicine inching ever closer, we also inch ever closer to giving government authority to decide what we eat and how much we exercise and sleep; this article shows how it may come about that government may start deciding what's really necessary for you to do, and what's not necessary. (Nyah, nyah!)

A second story, passed along by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, relates the problem of increased drunken driving that results from smoking bans in bars. Apparently, people who want to smoke in a bar will drive longer (surprise!) to get to a jurisdiction where it's allowed, and the result is more accidents from drunk driving. The law of unintended consequences strikes again! And it is this inability to predict all the results of legislation that makes ridiculous the concept that government can use legislation to control the amount of negative outcomes.

Finally, Allahpundit notes a case in which a Canadian court overturned a sentence they considered overly harsh...a sentence passed by a father and contested by his daughter. Specifically, grounding from a school trip for breaking household rules. This example of a completely inappropriate intrusion by the state into strictly family matters reminds me of Hillary Clinton's admonition that we have to jettison the concept of "someone else's child"--i.e. that parents have a special authority over their children. The doctrinaire rationalism and egalitarianism of the Left is incapable of dealing with children, who are indisputably not governed by reason and indisputably unequal in ability to adults. The Left's movement toward increased governmental authority to parent children manifests itself, in part, in insistence on universal K-12 public schooling and court rulings such as this.

More predictable news about the American Left? They're proposing to nationalize our oil refineries, Fox News reports. (H/t: Muskegon Pundit.) Conservatives have been predicting for years, and been ridiculed for it, that the Left would move toward increasing nationalization of industries as they come to be deemed "necessary," and thus inappropriate for private control. Well, health and oil are going. Food is already heavily involved in government. How much more, and how soon? Anytime you weaken property rights in favor of some social goal, you are on a slippery slope. We'll see how this turns out.

The Moral Power Of Ideas

ALERT: Before reading, please understand that this book's opinions and conclusions are not exactly or necessarily my own. I shall comment on them after I finish explaining them. They are summarized here, gentle reader, for your curiosity and reflection. End alert.

Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, has compiled research in his new book, Makers and Takers, that purports to show that conservatives are pleasanter, more responsible, more ethical, and more productive members of society than are liberals. Here is a column he wrote for the Daily Mail Online about it. A portion:

The statistics I base this on come from the General Social Survey, America's
premier social research database, but they are just as relevant to the UK, as I
believe political belief systems drive one's attitudes, regardless of where you
happen to live.
Those surveyed were asked: 'Is it your obligation to care
for a seriously injured/ill spouse or parent, or should you give care only if
you really want to?' Of those describing themselves as 'conservative', 71 per
cent said it was. Only 46 per cent of those on the Left agreed.
To the
question: 'Do you get happiness by putting someone else's happiness ahead of
your own?', 55 per cent of those who said they were 'very conservative' said
Yes, compared with 20 per cent of those who were 'very liberal'.
It's been
my experience that conservatives like to talk about things outside of themselves
while progressives like to discuss themselves: how they are feeling and what
their desires are. That might make for a good therapy session but it's not much
fun over a long dinner.

Read it all; there are a lot more interesting statistics to look at, all with the same conclusion drawn by Schweizer: in almost every way that a citizen can be considered to be so, conservatives are better people than liberals.

Okay, gentle leftist reader, that's the end of the part where you clench up like Jimmy Carter in Tel Aviv. Well, maybe the end. Soon more like Frank Rich in Kansas. Anyway.

I'm sure that Schweizer is aware that such research does not show that all conservatives are better people than all liberals, and it would be ridiculous to think so. But the point, and I think Schweizer's point here, is not to call liberals selfish and evil people; instead, the point is that the political philosophies that animate the Left are often both symptom and cause of a grinding materialism and self-centeredness. It insists that human happiness, and thus the efficacy of government, can be read from a series of statistics about wage trends, income inequality, and employment; it insists that social obligations are an impediment to freedom that cannot be allowed to stand.

As people break from the bonds of family and church for the sake of freedom, and as they sink into economic bondage for the sake of egalitarianism, they seek meaning more and more from material sources: leisure, comfort, longevity. Indeed, all these things are increasing rapidly; it is a testament to how wrong the liberal philosophy is that our ever-wealthier society is growing even more rapidly in discontentment and despair. Those of us who hang on to our social responsibilities and duties, our traditions and customs, seem to be closer to finding real happiness.

This is why I place such an emphasis on Obama's speech to the San Francisco liberals: it is terribly revealing of his materialism, his insistence that the blue-collar workers of Pennsylvania ought to find meaning from money and possessions rather than from God, family, and tradition. He never considered that they might be happier that way. Barack is the exciting new priest of an old and failed philosophy, a vain hope for people whose lot is unending despair.

Wow, serious post today. Well, cheers!

Liberals And Conservatives Just Have Different Moral Values...?

A friend, who has become increasingly liberal as he has progressed through college, recently sent me an article that purports to shed light on why conservatives and liberals have honest misunderstands that lead to name-calling. I wish I still had it--and I may be able to coax it out of him again--but its title was something like, "'Are Conservatives Stupid, Or Evil?" The article's surprising (to its readers) conclusion: Neither! Liberals are simply more concerned with how proposed policies will affect everyone involved, while conservatives are more concerned with in-group loyalty, purity, and respect for authority.

Now, I'm a strange conservative because I'm a strange person. By that, I mean that I have made political philosophy a much deeper area of study and thought than the vast majority of Americans. My liberalism--that is, American conservatism--is grounded in a conception of the proper scope of government that also happened to be the major contributor to the United States Constitution. It has its roots in John Locke, the Baron de Montesquieu, and several others. This conception was transmitted to me partially through my father, and partially through a man I consider to be an intellectual hero nearly unparalleled in American history: William F. Buckley. It is not based on feelings or good intentions; it is a intellectual belief.

Doubtless, the political views of some conservatives stems from a respect for authority, purity, and the in-group. But my classical liberalism, and those of many of my friends, is based specifically on government non-intervention, and none of those moral values from which conservatives' views supposedly stem. But it is easy to see how a liberal, like those whose research is used to support the article's argument, would perceive conservatives' values in this way.

When progressives look at policy, they do indeed look at its effects on various groups. In fact, this is their main viewpoint for policy. Their intent is to make groups equal; thus, affirmative action counteracts the corrupt power relationships between race and gender groups, progressive income taxation counteracts the corrupt power relationships between rich and poor, etc. From this standpoint, it is easy to see how conservative views could be seen as deliberately unequalizing. In some cases, particularly the issue of gay marriage, this might possibly be a fair characterization. But in the case of flat taxation, lowered government spending, and decreases in government services, conservative concerns are not about power relationships between citizen groups, but simply between the government and the citizenry.

This concept is so foreign to most modern liberals' minds--and to the minds of people in general, often--that it usually does not even occur to them. When it is made explicit, it is more often an object of wonder than a position seriously to be debated. More harmfully, history has been often written by Progressives--whose devotion to cartoonish images of reality that constitute a sort of modern Big Lie is legendary and continues to this day--who have forgotten many important details of that important time in our nation's history when progressivism overtook classical liberalism as the nation's most influential political philosophy. (This is the reason that I consider Jonah Goldberg's book to be so crucial to a real understanding of America's political history, as well as modern liberalism in general.)

Are conservatives evil? Dumb? Morally different? Not at all; they are the out-group of an elite cultural liberalism that, contrary to conventional wisdom, favors above all things purity, the in-group, and respect for the authority of government.

Argh! More Posting Promised

I've posted far less than I would like, mostly due to work. However, there is another cause: Jonah Goldberg's brilliant and important book, Liberal Fascism. Here is one brilliant summation of why liberals (the real kind) such as myself despise progressive governance:

"The village may have replaced 'the state,' and it in turn may have replaced the fist with the hug, but an unwanted embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny."

(The "village" of which he speaks is Hillary Clinton's village which it apparently takes to raise a child. This means, to Clinton, that there "really isn't any such thing as someone else's child"--her words. Yipes. New meaning to the term "nanny state"?)

I Am A Heretic

My friend "ThinkCarpeDiem" has posted an objection to this post about the competition between liberalism (i.e. modern conservatism) and progressivism (i.e. modern liberalism). Unless there is an outcry for it, I shall not post that objection--you can look at the link yourself--but I think the counter-comment I wrote clarifies my position on this issue. Read on:

TCD:
Thanks for the comments. I think you may have misunderstood
what I wrote, because I'm not entirely sure what relation your comment has on my
post. But I shall attempt a response.

1. I think your impression is that I mean that liberals are not smart. That's not what I said at all, and in fact there are many quite intelligent progressives both in the past and now. What I said was that progressivism is not an intellectual movement;
it isn't about philosophy, it's about action. It has certain underlying
assumptions, primarily that government has the authority to take action in any
area of life if it may improve people's lives. It assumes that all those
opposed to the sort of government action they desire are either immoral,
ignorant, or insane. These facts can be traced throughout the history of
progressivism.

2. I don't believe progressives are inferiors. I do believe they are incredibly wrong about the role of government, and dangerously so. I do not flinch from speaking the truth that communism, fascism, syndicalism, and many other utopian dreams were--and are--motivated by the same or similar ideals expressed in the modern progressivist movement. Finally, I do not respect those who, having reflected upon the situation, would unhesitatingly choose to take away my freedoms for their view of a better society. There are many who would choose to take away my freedoms without inspecting where such a choice takes them or what motivates it. But the
sort of person who has thought about it and still chooses to enslave me to their
utopian vision is the sort of "well-intentioned busybody" that C.S. Lewis
decried and who is worthy of no respect or admiration, only contempt and
defiance.

3. I know that your dream is that good-natured debate and
reflective thought will bring everyone to a consensus about what should be done,
or at least amicable disagreement. The problem is that there is no debate
between classical liberalism and progressivism. There is no intellectual
defense of progressivism that has been presented for many years, because
progressives for many years have not considered themselves in need of
defense. Their good intentions, reverence for "science," and impulse to
action are all the evidence they need that they are right and their opponents
are wrong. This is the reason that progressivism has become a secular
religion. Classical liberalism is then not simply a competing view to be
debated, but a heresy to be demonized.

Socialism Watch

Representative Maxine Waters (D., Venezuela) yesterday threatened a major oil executive with "socialization" of the oil industry if off-shore drilling didn't produce lower gas prices:

Link: sevenload.com

At least she's honest about which direction she wants America to go, unlike Barack Obama; if your philosophy is that the government exists to solve problems, then what better aspiration could there be than government take-over of large, crucial industries?

Now, at present these are merely the ravings of (I believe) the same notoriously batty representative who also asked NASA spokeshumans on the House floor if the Pathfinder robot saw our flag on Mars. In this instance, she also couldn't come up with the correct word for what she wanted to do: "nationalize." On a deeper level, she couldn't possibly be ignorant of what generally happens to oil production--key to lowering prices--when the government takes over...could she? (See Mexico and Venezuela for results.) But under the influence of the Obamas, Clintons, and Edwardses of the world, our nation inches closer to this possibility.

Of course, if government did take over the oil industry, the prices would likely be raised on purpose, if they could get away with it. After all, gas usage contributes to global warming! Modern liberalism--or, to use the correct term, "progressivism"--is all about making a better world and a better people through government policy. As Jonah Goldberg has written, it's what inspired Leninism in Russia, Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and the vast government experimentation of the Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson administrations.

Waters's socialist remark should be a reminder of what is at stake in this coming election--although McCain is as close to a progressive as self-proclaimed "conservatives" get. Her party, should a Democrat win the presidency, will have a nearly free hand to attempt to engineer society however it wishes. Caveamus...let us be wary.

Political Philosophy Matters

John Hinderaker of PowerLine posted this attack on John McCain made by Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the
son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military,
"and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said
Friday.

"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with
Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always
having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

Harkin said that "it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but
another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just
how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."

Hinderaker notes that this comment functions to exclude any military volunteer--much like all of our currently serving soldiers--from political discourse. Fair. But there's a bigger point to be made here about how Leftists think, what their philosophy is.

I once had a friend tell me that I wouldn't oppose government social spending if I was poor. This argument always takes me aback, a bit, but that's because it doesn't adhere well to rules of logic. (It's a sort of ad hominem fallacy.) But the entire Leftist philosophy is based on ad hominem fallacies that come down from such thinkers as Karl Marx. Socialism, Feminism, and Critical Race Theory all depend on a sort of identity politics: You can't understand racism, sexism, or class exploitation unless you're an oppressed person. You're an oppressed person by belonging to a certain group. Not in that group? Don't think oppression exists? Well, you just can't see or understand it because of who you are. It's easy to see the epistemological problem here; is the Emperor really wearing clothes?

One of the favorite oppressed underclasses of Democrats is military draftees who oppose(d) the war they participated in. American war heroes are in precisely the opposite camp. The only truly legitimate voices, to the modern liberal, are those of select "oppressed" groups--oh, and the modern liberal himself, since he/she is their protector and spokesman. It should never be a surprise that a war hero is denigrated for being a war hero.

To the modern liberal, the United States is often symbolic of imperialistic, racist, sexist, and capitalist hubris--bear with my caricature--and in a similarly symbolic way, those who fight us are the heroes. Thus Che Guevara--now-famously honored with a poster in a Houston campaign center for Barack Obama--and Alger Hiss are idealized and romanticized, while true heroes like John McCain and Oliver North are despised.

Michigan Democrat's Mask Falls Off, Briefly

Nick DeLeeuw posts a characteristically caustic comment about a Democrat's derogation of dummies. (You like that?) Anyway, it seems that Mark Grebner, a Democratic strategist and member of the Ingham County Board of Commissioners, claimed that whereas Democrats were gaining ground in wealthy suburbs and remaining strong in urban centers, they were losing among rural folks and blue-collar workers--people he called "stupid." Here's a bit from Nick:

Just so we've got this straight... if you go to the book store to pick up the NYT and sip a latte then you're a smart person but if you go to work at the factory, put in an honest days work and support your family then you're an idiot? Oh, and the best part, the "urban cores" are solidly Democrat and not "stupid people." Apparently folks who make the least and depend on government the most are brilliant. Hey, they figured out how to milk the system and make a living doing nothing, right, Mark?

Surprise, surprise. More evidence that the REAL party of stereotyping isn't sitting on the right side of the aisle, if any such evidence were needed. You see, sipping lattes and reading the Grey Lady...that's how life is supposed to be for the decision-making class--that is, the people who are smart enough to run society. The proles, on the other hand, just have the job of believing the promises of future prosperity and being satisfied with the lottery and food stamps. I think the Dems are taking their stereotypes about country bumpkins and illiterate factory workers a bit too seriously.

I wonder why, incidentally, blue-collar workers are leaving the Democratic Party in Michigan? It's not as though their jobs have been endangered by irrationally structured and excessive corporate taxes. It's not like the corrupt, power-hungry unions who have been exploiting them for years own this state's Democratic Party. And it's certainly not as though the Democrats advocate for extreme environmental policies that will hasten the demise of the Detroit auto industry on which so many jobs and so many schools' revenue streams rely. So what's their deal?

Video: Liberal Fascism

Chris at Apologies Demanded posted an excellent video of Jonah Goldberg on Hannity and Colmes, discussing his important book, Liberal Fascism. Colmes's argument against Goldberg basically consists of this: "Your book has a Hitler with a smiley face on the cover! You're trying to make it look like the Left is all Nazis!" And his debate strategy is basically to shout Goldberg down whenever he tries to say something. I think that this, and Goldberg's "choppy as hell" interview on The Daily Show, shows how important the facts in this book are and how damaging to the Left. For years, the idea was that if you wanted to deride a leftist you called him a socialist, and if you wanted to deride a right-winger, you called him a fascist. Well, the truth is that Fascism and Socialism have the very same philosophical underpinnings, which underpinnings they share with modern liberals. Think here of Karl Marx and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and their principles of rationalism and class struggle. The Right of today is very much descended from a slightly older and more traditionally American philosophy, the classical liberalism of Smith, Locke, Montesquieu, and others.

Here is the video:

Why I Am Not A Conservative

That great book by F. A. Hayek was brought to my mind the other day while musing about a discussion I had with one of my friends about universal health care. In it, the great classical liberal thinker explained that the people Americans call "conservatives" are actually in the liberal tradition, since they believe in voluntary associations and lack of government coercion. Modern "liberals," meanwhile, are really in the socialist tradition, since they favor government coercion for the purpose of enhancing equality; they consider themselves liberals because they believe that freedoms can only be delivered through social and economic equality.

This is an excellent Wikipedia article on the subject, from which I learned much to write this post.

The main distinctions are, as I see it, that the classical liberal believes that rights are inherent in man and negative in nature; that is, that one has the right not to be coerced through violence. (The right not to be coerced through violence is a tricky one, and I shall probably take it up in another post.) By contrast, the modern liberal believes that rights are delivered to man by government and are positive in nature; in other words, that a government can guarantee many different rights, including the right to health care, the right to food, the right to housing, the right to free speech, etc.

Much like the Utilitarianism and Social Contract Theory we're studying in my Ethics class, I find modern liberalism to be too compatible with social engineering for my taste. In my view, classical liberalism respects the dignity of each individual human being--after all, we are made in imagine Dei--and thus is far the more liberal view.

I'm not really a conservative--I'm a classical liberal. But it's probably too late to reclaim that word, tarnished by long association with an illiberal American left wing.