Mouldy Tyrannies, Free Spirits

Freedom For Us, Controls for Everyone Else

There are two ways in which a secular society can be organized.  It can be built upon maximising a form of human freedom, or it can enforce one view as absolutely right, imposing it upon all.  The former champions liberty of opinion and freedom of thought, word and deed.  The latter champions order, structure, and the one right way.  The former reflects libertarianism.  The latter reflects an authoritarian dictatorship either by One or the Party.

Unbelief will always pull either one way or the other.  But over time, libertarianism will crumble and tyranny will win out.  Why?  Libertarianism has no authoritative standard by which the limits of liberty can be nailed down. It has no authoritative standard to define what the human being is who is to be free.  Humans in the womb, senile humans, comatise humans don't necessarily qualify.  Sexual perversions performed by sexual perverts do.  Man-boy-"love" must enjoy the protections of liberty.  Libertarianism produces the ruthless discarding of humans from their own race. Libertarianism inflicts a deadly tyranny upon those judged to be "outsiders".

At the same time, libertarianism must foster and allow and even indirectly encourage views which champion authoritarianism, its opposite. Libertarianism is a vacuum which the natural order eventually abhors. Consequently, all secular societies gradually morph into tyrannies of one kind or the other.

Here is an example of  what we speak.
  In the United States there have been a couple of recent examples of free speech being punished by those professing to be offended.  The first is the case of the Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich  forced to resign because he contributed to an organisation opposing homosexual "marriage".  The second was the withdrawal of an honorary degree being awarded by Brandeis University to human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  The latter's offence: her sustained public criticism of Islam's tyranny over women.

The liberal Commentariat considered both matters and punished both Eich and Ali, effectively ruling that their speech, opinions, and ideas were to be suppressed, and that they were to endure repression.

Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, pointed out what we Christians have known all along.  The Left does not believe in liberty--not for its opponents.  The Left's view of liberty is that it wants freedom for itself, but control and repression for everyone else.

Earlier this year, a column by a Harvard undergraduate named Sandra Y. L. Korn briefly achieved escape velocity from the Ivy League bubble, thanks to its daring view of how universities should approach academic freedom.  Korn proposed that such freedom was dated and destructive, and that a doctrine of “academic justice” should prevail instead. No more, she wrote, should Harvard permit its faculty to engage in “research promoting or justifying oppression” or produce work tainted by “racism, sexism, and heterosexism.” Instead, academic culture should conform to left-wing ideas of the good, beautiful and true, and decline as a matter of principle “to put up with research that counters our goals.”

Korn's view of freedom is progressively taking control--which, as we suggest above, is inevitable in the halls and confabulations of Unbelief.  Whilst libertarianism is actually a vacuum, which Unbelief will abhor and strive to fill with a version of command and control.  Douthat goes on:

The defect, crucially, is not this culture’s bias against social conservatives, or its discomfort with stinging attacks on non-Western religions. Rather, it’s the refusal to admit — to others, and to itself — that these biases fundamentally trump the commitment to “free expression” or “diversity” affirmed in mission statements and news releases.

This refusal, this self-deception, means that we have far too many powerful communities (corporate, academic, journalistic) that are simultaneously dogmatic and dishonest about it — that promise diversity but only as the left defines it, that fill their ranks with ideologues and then claim to stand athwart bias and misinformation, that speak the language of pluralism while presiding over communities that resemble the beau ideal of Sandra Y. L. Korn.

He concludes that he can live with progressivism.  It's their lying that is toxic--lying about freedom, holding up freedom's mask, whilst underneath ardently working and militating to suppress all who disagree with them.

Now all this might sound a bit over the top to the ears of all ostriches embedded in grainy stuff.  But Douthat's point is proved beyond reasonable doubt by the comments of readers, rated most popular, at the end of his piece.

We provide just three samples of the evidence that Douthat is right:

Example 1: Rima Regas 

"This refusal, this self-deception, means that we have far too many powerful communities (corporate, academic, journalistic) that are simultaneously dogmatic and dishonest about it — that promise diversity but only as the left defines it, ..."

You can't have it both ways, Mr. Douthat. Once Eich's donation of $1,000 to Prop 8 became known to both the employees under him aware and of it and its implications as to his likely bias as a boss and the board above him, it was absolutely appropriate for both to make their feelings known and for the board to make an ethical decision as to where to stand. This is self-correction at its finest. Ethics won. Possible bias at every step of Mr. Eich's management of the organization he headed was thwarted. . . .

Where you are wrong, again, Mr. Douthat, is that diversity doesn't - shouldn't - include its opposite. In a world where we strive for the forces of good to win over evil, evil gets canceled out and not invited to have a permanent place at the table.  That is the point you always miss consciously and subconsciously.

[Note the self-deception of the correspondent endorsing the same evil which she is also arguing against. There must be tolerance and diversity, but not for things "we" disagree with.  The appeal she makes is to her own self-referenced absolute standard (ironically calling her opinions good versus her opponents  evil) to which all others must be made to conform.  And when conformity is enforced, it is euphemistically described as "self-correction".  Ed.]

Example 2: DR

You've gotta hand it to conservatives for coming up with yet another way to dress up bigotry. Now they call it "diversity of thought."

Example 3: Stephen

No Ross, being fired for for financing hate is not a violation of free speech, nor is it hypocritical for those who advocate diversity to fire them. When people say they want a diversity of ideas it's implicit that the ideas pass even minor scrutiny. This means nearly all 'conservative' ideas don't pass muster, like global warming denial, creationism, or the belief that homosexuality is going to infect and pervert children (the idea Eich's money went towards expressing).  

Douthat is right.  Tolerance is afforded only to those with whom the secular left agree.  The secular right cannot survive because it needs to ensure the left have oxygen, and lebensraum.  In a secular society, power, in the end, always comes out of the barrel of a gun: it does not reside in liberty of conscience and freedom of opinions.  The Left will always win, and its tyranny will carry the day.  The void into which evil integrates is tyranny.  Favoured opinions will be accorded freedom and liberty.  All others will be suppressed violently.

In the meantime, we Christians continue as merry warriors, resisting evil wherever we find it--amongst the Libertarians or the Left.  Our hope, both for ourselves and the whole world, lies not in Ayn Rand, nor in Kim Jong Un, but in God and His Son. They will not fail, for none can stay their hand.  The long arc of human history will eventually co-incide with the longer arc of redemptive history.  Therefore, nor shall we fail.  The future belongs to us, in Christ Jesus.