Comments on: No Escape from the Liberal Labyrinth

By: Jonathan Prejean

Jonathan Prejean — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:46:27 +0000

The trouble is that the spiritual guides aren't exempt from the corruption of advancing techne over wisdom. There are plenty of shepherds who have fallen into the same trap, particularly on the illegal immigration issue (excuse me, *cough* cardinalmahoney *cough* *cough*). Pushing a liberal agenda in the guise of spiritual teaching isn't any better, and it's arguably worse. I give Auster credit for having spotted the same problem in Catholicism. Unfortunately, Auster has such a poor grasp of Christian philosophy that he thinks that this is a natural result of Catholicism, rather than a corruption thereof. See, e.g., http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006031.html http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003275.html Shame that Auster is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Catholicism was the antidote to precisely this sort of thinking for much of Western history.

By: Roach

Roach — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:47:23 +0000

I wrote a piece realted to this in discussing C.S. Lewis's criticism of science: http://www.affbrainwash.com/chrisroach/archives/020620.php

By: Roach

Roach — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:45:53 +0000

A sense of the tragic is completely missing from liberals; even horrible natural disasters, like Tsunamis and Hurricanes, make liberals instinctively search for the (white) person to blame. No sense of the tragic limits their sense of man’s possibilities or of the blame due to those who have succeeded in a world comprised partly of those lingering pockets of poverty, imperfection, sickness, etc.

I think this combination of materialism, hubris, utopianism, and the relic of Christian guilt and self-examination, is why liberals love western health care so much, even as they express their constant disappointemnt in the west: They really seem to think if we just eat more bran, quit smoking, and give up our property rights, then the government will use technology to make us all live forever. Instead we’ve become a nation of sickly and highly medicated old people, whose physical and mental frailty has induced the next generation into fits of exercise and dieting under the rubric of “wellness.” They realize old is not enough, especially if it means you look and act old because of the unstoppable and unpredicatble effects of ageing. The materialist philosophy of the remainder of society, even when their senses are revolted, are led down the same path by their own collective and inordinate fear of death.

Much can be learned about liberalism from its exagerrated views of the importance of health care in securing health, and the importance of conceiving of “health” as coextensive with the human good. One can be healthy and spiritually sick; and even the healthy will one day face that undeniably unhealthy moment, the moment of death. To live in light of this unavoidable and ever-closer event is to live in the light of reality.

By: Rick Darby

Rick Darby — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:31:47 +0000

Liberalism offers stretch-to-fit-anything concepts like “diversity” and “tolerance.” What it lacks, among other things, is the idea that there is such a thing as the human condition.

And that’s a serious problem, because it sees off any possibility of understanding that an inherent part of our nature is to fall short of the glory of God. I don’t care for the word “sinful,” but it does express an idea that liberalism has no word for: that we all live to some degree in a state of ignorance, of self-centeredness and paucity of love.

Once you understand that, you recognize that the best use of state power is not to try to create Utopia: that’s impossible for beings as flawed as we are. But a state can legitimately strive to use even people’s imperfect drives, such as self-interest, in a rational way (e.g., national defense and a capitalist system with checks on the power of big corporations).

Denying that there is a human condition that makes perfection impossible in this world (although it may be sought in the spiritual realm), liberalism must look at all social problems as the fault of the system or of some oppressor group victimizing other groups.

And since, by and large, Western society is richer and functions better than “underdeveloped” nations, it can’t be, to the mind marinated in liberalism, because the West has gradually learned over centuries to restrain or harness the human condition. If, as liberalism believes, mankind is perfectible in its present state, then the contrasting misery of so much of the world can only be ascribed to racism or exploitation.