Chesterton on the Remaking of America

I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who give us generally to understand that every modern reform will “work” all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen. If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, “Oh, I would certainly insist on this”; or “I would never go so far as that”; as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever done quite successfully – force men to forsake their sins. Of these it is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.
-G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

Atheist's Faith in Love

During Eucharistic adoration today, I was daydreaming about the atheist view of love as I heard it from the Atheist Experience television show and podcast. I supposed it would be called a reductionist view, i.e. love is just biology—chemicals, instincts, and the like which Mother Nature has put into us to keep the game going. Yet, according to these atheists, love is still meaningful. I beg to differ. When I experience love, it seems to me to be about something...something real...and its being about something real is precisely what gives it its meaning. Once you say, "Oh, that's just atoms arranging themselves this way and that in obedience to the laws of physics so as to give me this epiphenomenal experience."—all meaning is eviscerated. I regard this atheist/materialistic definition of love is an a priori definition that corrupts the data instead of explaining it. The only definition into which the data fits, I think, is the definition of love as ultimately transcendent. Atheists who believe that love (or anything else) is meaningful are trying to have their cake and eat it too—the joys of transcendent realities with a philosophy that can't account for them. What struck me today, was how this puts them was on par with their view of religious believers. God-belief, according to atheists, arises from the emotions and leads weak-minded people to believe in something that's not really there.

(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Be a Moral Absolutist!)

"Modern 'broadmindedness' has a quality that can only be called sneakish; it endeavors to win without giving itself away, even after it has won. It desires to be victorious without betraying even the name of the victor. For all sane men have intellectual doctrines and fighting theories; and if they will not put them on the table, it can only be because they wish to have the advantage of a fighting theory which cannot be fought." -G.K. Chesterton, "Rabelaisian Regrets"

The Left loves euphemisms and one of its favorite is 'tolerance'. 'Tolerance' is code for moral relativism. Those who congratulate themselves for being tolerant are really congratulating themselves for being moral relativists. Those who are scorned as intolerant are really being scorned for being moral absolutists.

There's a reason why the left employs the words 'tolerance' and 'intolerance' instead of 'relativism' and 'absolutism'. Doing so affords them the pretense of moral superiority, which is much easier to foist on the American public than intellectual superority. The Left domineers the opposition by calling it names, because they cannot convince it by giving it arguments. Because they have no arguments. It is precisely because their views are so hollow, that they must push them in the public sphere through the demagoguery of 'political correctness'.

The stripping of Carrie Prejean of her crown is nothing but the discrimination against someone for being a moral absolutist, for merely holding a different metaphysical view when it comes to human morality (a view which happens to be backed up by all the major religions of the world and virtually all of human history). This should put to the lie the idea that we can build a society on unchecked individualism in lieu of the common good.

Prejean was not on a soapbox. Her desire was to keep her opinions to herself, but she was cornered, at which time she courageously stated her belief in the most humble and benign manner possible. Is this how we treat people in America who, when asked to do so, respectfully declare what they believe? I hope this puts to the lie that Liberals are liberal.

"In real life, people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all." -G.K. Chesterton, Heretics