I make note of Billy posting the following cartoon the other day. It’s a rather nice depiction of the Suicidal Tendencies of liberals.
Perhaps, it is more correctly referred to as the Suicidal Tendencies of secularists.
Now I’ve already written to this point, when I spoke the other day of our Advance toward secularism, which tends to feed into our lack of understanding of right and wrong. So you’ll notice I pull out that quote of GK Chesterton again.
And I responded to him, thus..
…
Ponder the words of GK Chesterton….
“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.’ (G.K. Chesterton,Orthodoxy, 1909)
As I understand it, Chesterton is writing about happenings in Russia during the build-up of the Russian Revolution. Similarities between what he writes about and what the cartoon points out are striking. So striking in fact that to my mind it is a positive link between what was going on in Russia in Chesterton’s day, and what’s going on here now.
It occurs to me to point out also that a lot of this is coming from the Eastern philosophies which have found such traction here in the West over the last few decades. Specifically, the Hindu, wherein we find the argument that the concepts of Good and Evil are relative and not absolute.
Also eventually found themselves packaged with in what is laughingly called New Age philosophy. And guess who has a group embraced New Age philosophy?
The point I guess I’m making here is that there are a large number of factors chipping away at the foundation of Western society which is among other things the concept of the absolute.
I’m not altogether sure that I’m saying this very well. Forgive me, if I’m not. But it occurs to me that when you remove the stone of moral absolutism from the foundation of Western thought what kind of nonsense that is depicted in the cartoon is the direct result.
Now, like it or not, the idea of moral absolutism is essentially judeo-christian in nature. Always has been. The move away from that ethic continues to lead us toward what we see in the cartoon. And leads us to other problems as I mentioned last week.
