by Bill Nugent
Article #211
In this presidential election year in the US it will be helpful and entertaining to take a look at the dominant political ideology of our time. The dominant political ideology is liberalism. Liberal politics is directly derived from its philosophical and religious roots. Moreover, I will show you that liberal politics is self-refuting. If any ideology is self-refuting it means that to affirm it is to deny it. I will show you that liberal politics is so logically conflicted that it is self-contradictory and therefore self-refuting.
I guess if you’ve read this far you’ve figured out that this article is not standard conservative punditry. Most pundits deal with the branches but this article will expose the roots. I will not discuss the details of the current political issues but I will show you the foundation of the social permissiveness that is called liberalism.
Liberal politics is the natural outflow of liberal theology. Liberal churches tend to produce liberal voters. Liberal politics, especially in its more radical forms, derives not just from the liberal “mainline” church down the street but also from the secular viewpoint taught in the schools and news media. The most extreme form of liberal theology is secularism. Secularism, which I equate to atheistic materialism, is the de facto state religion of the United States.
Christianity, even liberal Christianity, is essentially banned from the public schools, the public square and most public forums in the United States. The situation in Canada and Europe is not much different. The public schools teach an implicit atheistic materialism in classrooms from K through 12. This is why I call secularism “The American Religion.”
The most obvious example of the institutionalization of secularism is the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the taxpayer funded classrooms. Evolution is the origins myth of secularism. A public school teacher doesn’t stand in front of a class and say “God doesn’t exist” but by teaching that life formed by random collisions of atoms without a Creator the students certainly walk away indoctrinated into the new American religion of secularism.
As you know, if you’ve been reading my DTF articles, I’ve often shown the mountain of scientific evidence that shows the impossibility of molecules to man evolution. Ironically it’s the latest developments in science, especially microbiology and genetics that has shown that even the simplest living cell is a myriad of irreducibly complex protein based systems that is far too complex to have formed by chance. The fact that the public schools refuse to allow open discussion of this and other flaws in evolution is compelling proof of the unbending religious nature of secularism.
Evolution has become the new historical narrative, the new social myth that provides no dignity of man or inherent value of the individual. There is no transcendent lawgiver in the secular tribal myth. Secularism provides no standard of right and wrong, no ten commandments. Secularism also abolishes the future because it teaches that all conscious thought of each individual ends at death. Convinced that there is no future, young people tend toward despair, narcissism and drug induced euphoria.
So then what of the American religion? How does it give us liberal politics? Secularism is in essence the denial of the existence of God and therefore a denial of the existence of God’s law. In the absence of God only people can make law. The claim that only people can make law is called “legal positivism” and is the very heart of liberalism. The implicit atheism of secularism also means the denial of absolute morality. Absolute morality is the concept that there is an ultimate definition of right and wrong that applies to all people across all cultures at all times in history. The view throughout most of the history of western civilization is that God gave the moral absolutes in the form of commands given in the Bible.
The secular denial of God means the denial of the moral absolutes given in the Bible. What secularists have promoted in its place is called “moral relativism.” Moral relativism is the idea that morals are culturally or personally determined and one culture cannot claim moral superiority over another culture. The phrase “Different strokes for different folks” captures the essence of postmodern moral relativism.
At first blush this seems very open minded. A sociology professor stands in front of his class and says “We must not be judgmental about an isolated tribe that practices polygamy and infanticide.”Yet that same professor waxes very judgmental and gets very angry at someone who dares to discuss the scientific flaws of evolution in a college classroom!
This is where we begin to see the self-refuting nature of liberalism. Liberalism openly claims that there are no moral absolutes which is to say that there are no moral laws with any real authority. If there is no moral authority from whence do the liberals themselves derive the authority to deny a student the right to discuss the flaws of evolution? To say “relative morals” is like saying “dry water” because the very strength of morals is their absoluteness. Morals are boundaries and if boundaries are not drawn in clear unbending terms they are meaningless.
If a liberal were to be consistent he would have no basis for judging or restraining anybody. Hence liberal politics would cease to exist if they consistently followed their central premise that all morals are relative. If conservative Christian morals can be overturned by the liberal society then the new permissive, politically correct morals can also be arbitrarily overturned.
If a liberal is cornered and confronted with the logical inconsistency of moral relativism the liberal will sometimes appeal to a modified system of moral absolutes. The liberal might say “Everyone knows that infanticide is wrong.” At which point the conservative says “So then you admit to the existence of a moral absolute? Where do you get this moral absolute? Is human life sacred? I thought you were an evolutionist and claim that in nature that it’s survival of the fittest and human beings are descended from animals?” If the liberal retreats back into moral relativism he loses his authority to condemn even something as awful as infanticide.
The social permissiveness of moral relativism and the liberal political ideology derived from it is self-refuting because if morals are relative then all moral systems are equally invalid and equally lacking in authority. To the liberal the affirmation of liberal politics is of equal value with the refutation of liberal politics. Hence liberalism is self-refuting.