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Words of Mass Instruction, February 26, 2009
In this extended essay the author explores the spiritual malady afflicting the West by identifying & diagnosing the auto-immune disease of radical secularism and showing how it renders our civilization vulnerable. In many ways, London echoes the warning of the French philosopher Chantal Delsol as expressed in her works on contemporary Europe:
Icarus Fallen and
The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century. There's a vast difference between healthy & militant secularism as London explains in the first chapter. In its extreme form it's a belief system that aims to destroy the foundations of our culture. It arose out of multiculturalism - which is not the same thing as the healthy appreciation of diversity - that celebrates all other cultures except the Western. The multicult carries the germ of self-loathing.
Some of the pillars of radical secularism are the following: (a) Truth is relative & subjective. (b) Reason & Science can solve all problems. (c) Technological advancement is the panacea & the state will administer the medicine. (d) Nationalism & patriotism are evil by definition. It is thus a materialistic faith that does not understand spiritual matters, least of all the threat posed by fanatical religion. Terrorism is ascribed to material deprivation and social injustice. This religion claims that once everybody enjoys material well-being, all hostility will disappear. Robert Conquest considers this utopian delusion as a resurgent
dragon of expectation.
A perverted form of tolerance, moral relativism, is inverting good & evil, rendering people indifferent to the suffering of others. The latest dystopian vision, far advanced in Europe, is transnationalism which suppresses healthy expressions of nationalism, promoting instead a "black market" form as so entertainingly revealed by Claire Berlinski in
Menace in Europe. A general loss of confidence in tradition and culture goes hand in hand with the decline in traditional religion and the growth of a vast array of substitutes, some of them quite detrimental; conspiracy theories form part of this cluster. The main movement, however, is militant secularism spearheaded by authors like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris &
Christopher Hitchens. To be fair, the case of Hitchens is a bit different; he may be a radical secularist but he is also a brave warrior for freedom and the dignity of the individual.
Chapter 3 deals with the limitations of science. There is a complete misunderstanding of the interaction between science, faith & society. It isn't science but faith which upholds the fragile notion of personal dignity with its reliance on conscience, responsibility & moral agreement. For a more detailed examination of this issue, I refer the interested reader to
Michael Polanyi's 1946 book that provided a brief outline of the historical process by which the current crisis has arisen. (He warned against the idea that liberty does not mean the acceptance of any obligations & that freedom of thought means the rejection of any type of traditional beliefs including those on which freedom itself is based).
Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks lucidly traces the betrayal of truth & reason in the modern era. London next explores the ineradicable nanny view of the state as solution to societal ills, whilst in chapter five he looks at patriotism/nationalism. The history of nationalism has understandably bred disillusionment, but the radical secularist fails to see that it is the manner of expression, not patriotism per se, which is good or evil.
The author observers that the religion of radical secularism harbors a virulent hatred for Christianity, hence the paranoid fear of "theocracy" in the USA. It is once again a profound misunderstanding of Judeo-Christian values, a false perception of them being stifling, rigid & oppressive. In the past, rigidity of religious/ideological thought indeed led to persecutions, wars, the Holocaust and the Gulag. But it is the Biblical tradition, leavened by the Enlightenment that has always sustained liberty, tolerance and respect for the individual, making America great. The widespread impression of the God of the Bible as harsh & inflexible is a tragic error; one of the most moving books revealing His compassionate nature is
The Prophets by Abraham Heschel. Without a sense of the transcendent, mankind embraces the fatuous and falls prey to stupid or sinister spiritual substitutes.
The final chapter investigates the concepts of tolerance, discernment & discrimination. An unwillingness to judge leads to indifference. In this regard, please see
The Contract Of Mutual Indifference by Norman Geras. Of course there's plenty of hypocrisy in traditional religion but this vice isn't lacking in secular humanism, nor is intolerance. And tolerance itself has been distorted. The original meaning of enduring that of which one disapproved has shifted to the active encouragement of ideas & behaviors by elements of society. Tolerance extended to manifestly evil practices becomes cowardice & criminal complicity; an example is when European authorities ignore honor killings or women abuse amongst immigrant communities.
The West is thus sending the wrong signals; shallow materialism, hedonism & eagerness to negotiate are interpreted as weakness by our enemies. Our culture's pursuit of the pleasure principle is based in another pillar of Western civilization, the Hellenist. Although admirable in many ways, psychologically it is suicidogenic as anyone familiar with Greek myth will know. The antidotes to all of these pathologies are available in the unfairly maligned Judeo-Christian scriptures as pointed out by Kaplan & Schwartz in
A Psychology Of Hope. Although Herbert London is Jewish, he thinks a renewed appreciation of Christianity would be remedial. He means that the benevolent role of religion in society ought to be valued, knowing that fundamentalism is merely another form of utopian delusion.
London considers it a matter of urgency that the emptiness of the secular humanist paradigm be exposed and recognized as a threat to the future of freedom. Calling for the recognition and defense of America's religious heritage, he appeals to the churches to mobilize the spiritual strength to fight for the most noble and liberating tradition the world has ever known. Profound and thought-provoking, America's Secular Challenge is at the same time an accessible and enjoyable read.
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