Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Western civilization's immunodeficiency disease

Liberalism is to the social order what AIDS is to the body.  By relegating the truths of natural law and divine revelation to the private sphere, it destroys the immune system of the body politic, opening the way to that body’s being ravaged by moral decay and ideological fanaticism.  I develop this theme in a new essay over at Postliberal Order.

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31 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 10, 2024 at 1:22 PM

    Richard Dawkins gave an interview right before Easter where he spoke, apparently sincerely, about how he was a "cultural Christian" and very much liked living in a Christian country.

    It's pretty funny if you ever wanted to see the real life equivalent of Wiley E. Coyote covering his eyes right after he sawed off the tree branch he was sitting on.

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    1. TalmidApril 11, 2024 at 9:56 AM

      To be fair, i doubt that he did the whole existential questioning about what his cosmology says about not only society but his life, so this is not suprising.

      What a sad way of living.

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    2. AnonymousApril 11, 2024 at 5:36 PM

      That’s a great analogy!

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  2. AnonymousApril 10, 2024 at 2:54 PM

    WCB

    "Liberalism is to the social order what AIDS is to the body. By relegating the truths of natural law and divine revelation to the private sphere, it destroys the immune system of the body politic....."

    So. What you are saying is we need to turn America into a right winged theocracy? Perhaps with inquisitions? REALLY!?

    WCB

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    1. KurtApril 11, 2024 at 12:00 AM

      The very essence of government is to resolve controvertible issues according to some conception of the good and the state necessarily must do so with authority. It necessarily has to discriminate between different conceptions of what is good, true, and beautiful. Neutrality is impossible. Simply put, sound government should govern according to what is true and what is true is known via the natural law and divine revelation. When this is ignored, we govern with all kinds of falsehood and nonsense. We get Clown World, which is exactly what liberalism is.

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    2. DNWApril 11, 2024 at 10:51 AM

      " ... So. What you are saying is we need to turn America into a right winged theocracy? Perhaps with inquisitions? REALLY!?..."

      Nonsense.

      Your histrioncs aside however, you have already gone on record as accepting mob inquisition "justice" as an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the "sins" of sexism.

      You really ought to try and calm yourself; as you have become reduced to a perfect if embarassing object lesson in the intellectual and moral degeneration which results when emotion displaces right reason.

      To wit, twit:

      "WCB [ says]

      Oooooo! "The Mob!" Are you saying that dealing with a sexual harasser is not acceptable? Realistically, "Time's Up!" exists and may be a problem for those who have bad judgement in such matters.It is a different world now than 10 years ago. Sorry 'bout that, but it is how the world can work these days."

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    3. AnonymousApril 12, 2024 at 5:35 AM

      WCB, are the only two systems of government that you can conceive of "liberal democracy" and "right wing theocracy"? If so, you need to become more informed. If not, then ditch the false dichotomy.

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    4. ALEXANDER VIApril 12, 2024 at 9:46 AM

      So what is the alternative to Liberalism?

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    5. AnonymousApril 12, 2024 at 1:43 PM

      So what is the alternative to Liberalism?

      Dozens. If you don't mind heavy authoritarianism: totalitarians of many stripes, including communism, nazism, and others, along with tin-pot dictators galore.
      If you want something a bit less authoritarian: monarchy, both constitutional and other forms. Aristocracies of several stripes. Theocracies (including left wing ones!) may be either heavily or lightly authoritarian.

      If you want political power dispersed more widely: full-on democracy (better plan on a small state, e.g. the Athens with 5,000 citizens) - which in the ancient past was nothing like liberalism. And a number of variants of that.

      Liberal democracies are just a subset of the democratic options.

      Then there are hybrids: democratic aristocracies, monarchic republics, theocratic democracies, and so on. And don't forget hegemonic empires that in outward form are democracies but are de facto aristocracies of some type.

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    6. ALEXANDER VIApril 14, 2024 at 12:58 PM

      None of which are plausible or desirable for secular Western countries.....

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    7. AnonymousApril 16, 2024 at 1:32 PM

      Alexander, unless you think a right-wing theocracy (inquisition optional) is itself plausible or desirable for secular western countries, that is not relevant to the discussion at hand.

      Unless Dr. Feser somewhere actually advocated for a right wing theocracy with or without an inquisition, WCB's comment remains a non sequitur and an appeal to emotion. Those other options, unless you consider them substantially less plausible or desirable for western secular societies, remain live options for the purposes of this discussion.

      So do you concede the point, or are you asserting that a right wing theocracy *more* plausible and desirable than those other logical possibilities?

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  3. MPApril 10, 2024 at 3:05 PM

    It is interesting that, while in some ways Liberalism is like an "immunodeficiency disease", in some other ways the current version of it is like an "autoimmune disease" or "allergy", with overreaction to various real or imaginary threats (COVID-19, Global Warming, Racism, Sack of Congress etc.) being extremely common.

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    1. AnonymousApril 11, 2024 at 6:14 PM

      There is no such thing as overreaction to Global Warming. Scientists are unanimous in agreeing it is a very real and man-made threat and the less than one percent of scientists who say otherwise are paid by oil and gas companies to lie. Please admit this.

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    2. KevinApril 12, 2024 at 10:12 AM

      There is no such thing as overreaction to Global Warming.

      You might want to qualify that statement. I'm sure you would agree that banning all oil-based fuel immediately, requiring vegan diets and killing all livestock, and implementing a China-style one child per household rule would be an overreaction to global warming.

      And since it is established that it is indeed possible to overreact to global warming, it then becomes necessary to determine what is a sensible reaction, balancing all aspects of society and how a reaction will affect them, and whether it does more harm than good.

      Please admit this.

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    3. MPApril 12, 2024 at 10:22 AM

      Even if scientists were unanimous that Global Warming exists, is man-made and a threat (in fact, even if it simply was man-made and a threat), it would still be possible to overreact to that threat.

      And, of course, we have an example of silly overreaction right here.

      You could have written that 97% (DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024) or more than 99% (DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966) of climate-related peer-reviewed papers support the theory about "human caused climate change". But even that was not enough for you - you just had to claim "Scientists are unanimous", which is clearly false.

      And it is not as if you gained (or could reasonably expect to gain) anything you wanted by this overreaction. You merely created an impression that you are untrustworthy and that there has to be something wrong with that "consensus".

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    4. AnymouseApril 12, 2024 at 1:49 PM

      There is no such thing as overreaction to Global Warming.

      Actually, there is. Taking out humanity by nuking everyone to get rid of human-produced greenhouse gasses would stop our production of such gasses overnight (well, in a month, after our corpses stopped outgassing). But it would be an overreaction.

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    5. Not BobApril 12, 2024 at 4:23 PM

      There is no such thing as overreaction to Global Warming.

      Funny thing: I read this comment, with the capital G and W for "Global Warming", to mean that "there is no such thing as overreaction to the "Global Warming" political / religious mantra.

      Agreed: the mantra deserves very strong reaction, i.e. the reaction of bringing reason to bear on it and avoid stupid overreactions to ideas still being worked out by scientists. Note: not everything scientists say is "science" - just look at Fauci!

      If and when science (not scientists) has shown how much and where global warming is a problem for humans, it will still take years or decades for science to tell us what steps will be USEFUL and beneficial redress of those problems. And it will probably be still decades more time before economics (which, in some distant future, may become a science, though it has far to go still) can tell us which of those options could actually be implemented without overwhelmingly negative economic and social consequences.

      One overreaction to global warming would be to go off half-cocked into some "remediation" program that - surprise! - actually makes it worse. But people who have bought into Big State don't believe in the law of unintended consequences.

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    6. AnonymousApril 20, 2024 at 2:44 PM

      It is quite curious how those who make claims like "there is no such thing as an overreaction to global warming" simultaneously seem to insist on a particular single reaction to global warming. Other reactions that in principle seem to achieve the same goal (such as, for example, running large scale co2 filters powered by, if necessary, nuclear power) are never even brought up and explained as to why they wouldn't work.

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  4. Mick Jagger Gathers No MosqueApril 11, 2024 at 7:21 AM

    This is the ineluctable result of America having been created as it was - with religion a private affair so the wealthy could do as they desired without religion being an obstacle.

    Jesus is King and any country that legislates contrary to His Commandments is doomed.

    In America, we have positive law that publicly promotes the Four Sins Crying to Heaven for Vengeance yet men think that if they elect Donald Trump, all will be fine.

    It won't.

    America is an evil empire that strives to export its wicked beliefs.

    Of course, the AmBishops could try to change the situation, but they won't.

    In 1960 Reverend Father Gustave Weigel gave a talk at the Shrine of The Blessed Sacrament in Washington, DC. - the heart of Catholicism in America.

    The evil advice the Jebbie promoted was his assertion that a politician led a double life in which he believed thus and such in his private life but in his public role he could not act upon his beliefs because "...he is a man of the law which is framed for practical purposes and canonizes ho philosophy or theology."

    The is the source fo "personally opposed" that men like Mario Cuomo cited to try and defend his Catholic perfidy.

    What did the then National Catholic Welfare Conference (USCCB now) do in response?

    Did they condemn this fetid reasoning?

    No.

    They copied the speech and sent it to Diocesan newspapers all over Hell and Half of Georgia.

    And they have yet to excommunicate Satan's Servant, Joe Biden

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    1. AnonymousApril 12, 2024 at 2:05 PM

      America is an evil empire that strives to export its wicked beliefs.

      Yeah, but what's your point? America isn't "the West". The deformities that inhabit America aren't "the West". If America dies a death it deserves, this is not because it's "the West". The West included Greece, Rome, and the Holy Roman Empire, among others, and existed long before liberalism.

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  5. Vini TApril 11, 2024 at 10:05 AM

    Loved that analogy, Ed!

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  6. AnonymousApril 11, 2024 at 6:12 PM

    Define Liberalism. What is the bare minimum of what someone has to believe to count as a Liberal?

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    1. Edward FeserApril 11, 2024 at 10:32 PM

      You might try reading the article, which addresses precisely that.

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  7. AnonymousApril 12, 2024 at 12:52 PM

    It is mostly a waste of time to try to enforce conservative social norms through government writ, particularly where there is already a cultural consensus against such norms. Why would neo-Comstock laws or bans on no fault divorce or effective bans on abortion occur in 2024, a time when the US has never been more secular or culturally liberal? The post Dobbs bans on abortion are basically meaningless as people can easily cross state lines, the abortion rate is unchanged. Any time any conservative cultural war issue comes to a vote, we lose, unless (i) the vote is in the deepest parts of the Bible Belt, or (ii) the issue being voted on is something that even committed liberals are uneasily about, like sex change ops for minors.

    The effort to reverse the last 60 years of cultural changes by the ballot is tilting at windmills. Catholics/religious conservatives need to appeal to liberal values. We need to take the perspective that we are a religious minority that requires civil rights and the freedoms of conscious and association.

    The problem is that as society becomes more secular, the religious groups themselves are becoming more conservative (the Catholic Church in the US is a prime example). In an increasingly conservative church, more hardline political stances will have a certain in-group cache and will be promoted accordingly. So while it might earn a Catholic in-group brownie points to argue for the creation of a Catholic confessional state or re-prohibited same-sex marriage or whatever, this is a very politically naive position to take, and it could actively harm the ability of Catholics to preserve their rights under the liberal system as these exist.

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    1. TonyApril 12, 2024 at 4:45 PM

      These are matters of judgment calls about future consequences, with respect to which we can only guesstimate the likely outcomes, and for which we are making estimations based on incomplete information. All of us do that - both the conservatives trying to ban abortion, and you.

      The problem with your advice is that it only bears on short and (at most) mid-term prospects. What about long-term prospects? If a conservative judges that angling for laws that diminish or unwind no-fault divorce, or the others, might eventually affect the social mores as a whole so that the LONG TERM trend is (even among not-explicitly-religious people) toward a more traditional moral outlook, that could change how "effective" the ploys would be in concrete matters. After all, if it took us 150 years to get hear, it is not unjust to think of it taking 150 years to get out, one building block at a time.

      Catholics/religious conservatives need to appeal to liberal values. We need to take the perspective that we are a religious minority that requires civil rights

      This might preserve our (within the clan) ability to function for another generation, but it is effectively a wholly defensive strategy, and likely to be a losing strategy long term. A small (and shrinking) minority is unlikely to remain a vibrant, successful pocket of wholeness for 200 years without something that actively counteracts the majority pull on their children.

      The problem is that as society becomes more secular, the religious groups themselves are becoming more conservative (the Catholic Church in the US is a prime example).

      Actually, what is happening is that the vast majority of 70M "Catholic" people that - if conditions now were like they were 60 years ago - would be going to church fairly regularly, now go to church rarely or never. Where only 30 years ago the 70M had no hesitation calling themselves Catholic (regardless of their actual practices), now at least 40M of them are less and less willing to say they are Catholic and much less willing to agree with Catholic teaching (if they even recognize that, anymore). And less willing to claim that their views are "Catholic" views. So what is happening is that the core 8M or so that actually believe in following Catholic teaching and practice more or less fully are now more visibly "the Catholic" minority, and the views that they hold (and have held for all 60 years) are now a little more clearly "the Catholic view". But it is more clearly conservative because it is a much smaller group that is associated with that view. The main change is in associative alignments, not primarily in the views. There are SOME individuals who are becoming more conservative, or more traditional in their views as Catholics, but the rate of those changes is not faster than the rate of young adult Catholics losing their faith in universities (including "Catholic" ones), it is generally slower. Hence the change in "becoming more conservative" is the overt loss of inclusion of those who don't believe Catholic teaching, no longer being considered as part of the Catholic crowd in any useful sense.

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    2. AnonymousApril 13, 2024 at 7:21 AM

      You are applying a postmodern mentality to Catholics as a group. I don't mean that as pejorative scare phrase, but you are assuming that the goal of Catholics is to just get their way in government. Catholics don't think we can just reduce politics to power games where one group is attempting to assert their will over others.

      There are some situations in which the end just does not justify the means. Catholics don't just want abortion outlawed because we want to exert our preferences over everyone else, they want to outlaw abortion because it is objectively very evil such that it is very bad for you to participate in it. A political calculus based on pragmatism is just a complete non-starter on a lot of issues, particularly because Catholics also explicitly reject that all that is going on in politics is groups fighting one another. If the Catholic worldview is true, then God is real and grace will work in the world despite such concerns. Insofar as "conservative" can be substituted for something like "devout" or "holy" the only way which the Church will ever actually "get her way" is by becoming more conservative. Good cannot compromise with evil, and the entire reason why the Church has lost her moral authority in the eyes of the world is precisely because she has not been holy enough in the first place.

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    3. AnonymousApril 13, 2024 at 11:05 AM

      The prolife movement as it exists is not above power politics, and the hyper-focus on elections has it own corruptive effect on the church. Look at the Acton Institute. Billionaire Calvinists from Western Michigan who earned their fortune in a multi-level marketing scheme (Amway) pour millions of dollars into a think tank meant to convince Catholics that they should ignore their own church's social doctrine and support libertarianism, and they put a gay ex-Pentecostal priest at the head of it (Fr. Sirico). First Things and Crisis put out articles criticizing minor expansions of the welfare state by Democrats, things that De Gaulle or Adenauer or any Catholic in 1950 would be totally fine with. Instead of having an unique Catholic voice, the Church is turned into an arm of the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufactures, in the vain hope that one day this alliance will result in a national abortion ban. We are allying with people who want to require women who receive welfare checks to get IUDs (Isabel Sawhill) and require everyone else to work 100 hours a week with no bathroom breaks or PTO.

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  8. AnonymousApril 13, 2024 at 10:34 AM

    "The problem with your advice is that it only bears on short and (at most) mid-term prospects. What about long-term prospects?"

    -I would say those long term goals are better met through cultural discourse than electoral politics. I never said that we should not arguing that abortion is immoral or stop donating to crisis pregnancy centers. Those things can reduce abortion. The problem is going for ambitious legal reforms without first achieving a sort of cultural consensus that could support future legal reforms.

    "This might preserve our (within the clan) ability to function for another generation, but it is effectively a wholly defensive strategy, and likely to be a losing strategy long term."

    -If you think the average corporate liberal actively wants to make orthodox Catholics and Evangelicals into a subjected caste persecuted by the state, then that might be an accurate statement. I tend to think the libs are merely concerned about Catholics/Evangelicals discriminating against certain groups (such as gays). I think you can cut a deal with the libs on the basis of respecting individual rights--see the deal between the LDS and the gays in Utah regarding workplace discrimination. I think the more aggressive our side gets, the more aggressive the libs will get. Because the libs are in the majority, this will mean more persecution for our side.

    -Ultimately, creating a society that is both (i) a modern industrial civilization with a capitalist economy, and (ii) a society where conservative/Catholic/Christian social values are hegemonic, is a massive uphill battle. We see identical social upheavals every time a third world country joins the first. Look at South Korea. Point to a first world country where traditional religious values have more influence than consumerism and individualism. You can't. The cat is out of the bag.

    Perhaps squaring the circle between modernity and tradition is impossible, and the kind of society integralists are talking about actually requires a pre-industrial level of economic development to be practicable--yeoman farmers and trade guilds. This is Alasdair MacIntrye's position and Chesterton and Belloc sometimes talked in a similar tone. That position is extreme, but it illustrates how severe the problem is. Given all of the things weighted against our favor, a more defensive posture is justified.

    "Actually, what is happening is that the vast majority of 70M "Catholic" people that - if conditions now were like they were 60 years ago - would be going to church fairly regularly, now go to church rarely or never"

    -This is all true, but there also has been polling of US priests demonstrating that the younger priests are more orthodox. The conservatives are the group on the rise within the church.

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    1. AnonymousApril 16, 2024 at 3:35 PM

      "-I would say those long term goals are better met through cultural discourse than electoral politics. I never said that we should not arguing that abortion is immoral or stop donating to crisis pregnancy centers. Those things can reduce abortion. The problem is going for ambitious legal reforms without first achieving a sort of cultural consensus that could support future legal reforms."

      Why is this never a problem when the other side does it? Obergfell legalized so called gay marriage well before national support for the idea was above 50%, for example. This did not seem to cause long term electoral or cultural problems for those in favor of expanding LGBT "rights" in fact the opposite seems to have happened. The legal change seemed to be a catalyst for further cultural shifting of the Overton window.

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  9. AnonymousApril 15, 2024 at 5:41 PM

    -This is all true, but there also has been polling of US priests demonstrating that the younger priests are more orthodox. The conservatives are the group on the rise within the church.

    This is quite right. But look at the hard numbers: there were 335 men ordained in 2023 (in the US) vs 1000 in 1965. Something like 1,000 priests leave the ministry each year to be laicized or as deserters. And more than that die in service or retire each year. The numbers of solid, orthodox Catholic priests is gaining a higher percentage in part because the number of others is rapidly diminishing. If 250 of the 335 new priests are staunchly conservative (probably an overestimate), that change would be a drop in the bucket of the overall priesthood if not for the withering from the other side.

    If you think the average corporate liberal actively wants to make orthodox Catholics and Evangelicals into a subjected caste persecuted by the state, then that might be an accurate statement. I tend to think the libs are merely concerned about Catholics/Evangelicals discriminating against certain groups (such as gays). I think you can cut a deal with the libs on the basis of respecting individual rights--see the deal between the LDS and the gays in Utah regarding workplace discrimination.

    It is my estimate that this is wishful thinking. The mainstream liberals might be like this, but they are not the main voices that set the liberal agenda. That is controlled by the much-farther left than that, and they are directly antagonistic to the entire architecture of the normal family, the normal subsidiarity that leaves decisions at lower levels of the political arena, the normal morality that came from Judeo-Christian principles. These are the people - even 12 years ago - that wanted to force Catholic entities like the Little Sisters of the Poor (who take care of indigent elderly) to pay for abortions and contraceptives as employer's medical insurance. Now they want to force all employers (including Catholic entities) to pay for gender change surgery, even though it is experimental and many doctors doubt that it is a good idea simply on medical grounds.

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  10. AnonymousApril 16, 2024 at 11:09 PM

    It would be interesting to compare/contrast Liberalism to Communism from a Right Wing perspective. For instance, compare/contrast the former East Germany to West Germany. Two different systems dominated those countries, and they are both now united under a single, Liberal state. Which region of Germany is better off today, from a Right Wing perspective? You could also pick countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary, etc.

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