Giovanni Paolo Panini, Public Domain
Western society faces unprecedented social turmoil. This situation has arisen primarily through the political and legal imposition on society of aberrant identity ideologies in the form of race, sex-gender, and other humanist-derived tribalist fabrications. These construals are contrary to the natural order and the common good of all.
Sociologist Marc Eichenbaum frames the social friction this way, “We live in an era of intense social discord and distrust. Countries, communities, and families are torn apart by political disagreements. We have forgotten how to disagree and forgive.” The upshot, declared Eric Voegelin, is a “crisis of Western civilization.”
This development is not new. In 1947 the prestigious Mount Pelerin Society, convened by Nobel laureate Frederick Hayek, stated that “the central values of (our) civilization are in danger.” The values referred to include the “rule of law,” “human dignity,” “freedom of thought and expression” and “absolute moral standards” – all of which can be considered the “precious possessions of Western Man.” The Society’s spokesperson explained that the source of danger is an “ideological movement” which requires resistance through “intellectual argument and the reassertion of valid ideals.” The absence, therefore, of grounded realism, coupled to cognitive dissonance by ardent proponents, makes ideology a perfect conduit for intersecting victimhood causes such as race, sex-gender, tribalism, settler-colonialism, and other radical leftist causes, generally.
The West’s classic liberal democratic political tradition, balanced through preservation of timeless ideals such as the intrinsic value of each person, inherent freedoms, definitive truths and virtues, is the most appropriate avenue through which to attain or re-establish ideals that lead not only to social justice for all citizens, but also to ensure the common good of society as a whole. In so doing, a great civilization’s culture is firmly established or regained, as the case may be. Therefore, the neo-paganist ideological assault upon these crucial tenets of the West needs to be repulsed, commencing at ‘grass roots’ level through the social influence and electoral political powers of the average citizen.
Despite attempts by leading social and political theorists such as Steven Pinker (‘The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature,’ 2002) and Thomas Sowell (‘A Conflict of Visions,’ 2007) to explain the ‘Ideological Origins of Political Struggles’ (the sub-heading to Sowell’s book), the rise of the current political and social conflagration cannot fully be understood in secular terms. Here, political scientist Joshua Mitchell, avers that “Only by seeing the distorted pseudo-Christian roots of identity politics can the defenders of tradition – and of justice tempered and supplemented by mercy – truly take up the challenge of our time.” Mitchell impliedly raises the idea of perceiving these deviant ideologies through the lens of contrasting values that underpin the founding documents upon which, for instance, the United States is birthed, such as the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself. In this context, Christopher Dawson cautioned, “A society which has lost its religion, becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.”
The underlying cause of social turmoil, therefore, is a spiritual-religious rebellion derived from political, legal, and social adoption of fashionable secular humanist ideologies, wholly contrary to the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which Western culture is founded. This is not to overlook the seminal importance of Greek and Roman principles such as democracy, rationality, and rule of law espoused by the West’s political and cultural order which, combined with Judeo-Christian value-laden principles, constitutes the exceptionalism of Western civilization.
Fashionable, but narrow, identity ideologies have ancient paganist origins, notably that of Hellenist Gnosticism with its emphasis on wisdom gained through a dualist view of the primacy of the incorporeal human psyche contrasted with the material world, particularly the physicality of the human body which is denigrated as irrelevant. It is understandable, then, that R.R. Reno believes the “woke revolution, like so many modern revolutions, manifests a spiritual disease and, since this is so, our deepest resistance must be spiritual.”
Compared to the definity, rationality, and timeless validity of the Judeo-Christian tradition with its far-reaching impact in society, idealist identity ideology in its various disguises is bereft of rational integrity, realism, and moral equivalency. Furthermore, it is contrary to the common good of all citizens. In general, an ideology’s ethereal flexibility makes it susceptible to populist manipulation and appealing to social revolutionaries. Dwight Longenecker illuminates this rationale, “ideology offers an easy way out of the messy reality that is Christianity, and offers the comfort of a single idea that rules everything. The idea is a god that looks good. However, it is a false god.” He adds that those “who do not belong to the ideology or dare to criticize the group are targeted, bullied, vilified, and excluded,” resulting in an “enforced implementation of the good idea.”
Such is the orthodoxy and orthopraxis of contemporary ideologues seeking a refabrication of Western social life through removal of all Judeo-Christian-inspired tenets, particularly the legal, social, and cultural regulatory customs emanating from established ethical principles. The issues then become a matter of constitutional complexity because the United States’s founding documents, as an example, guarantee freedom of religion and the inherent rights and obligations of all citizens.
History indicates that the greatest challenge to freedom of religion is generally big government for it presumes to reflect the public square. A typological example is the French Revolution of the 18th century. In that particular case, the new authority embraced the constrictive secular, anti-religious, ideology of the moment demanded by many protestors. In like manner, the Biden Administration has created an opportunity for rapid advancement of race and sex-gender identity ideologies hitherto considered irregular by the majority populace, and contrary to accepted values and the commonweal of society. The consequence, wrote Richard John Neuhaus in an earlier context, is that “the American people can no longer publicly express their obligations to the Creator.” Hence, “it is to be feared that they will no longer acknowledge their obligations to one another – nor to the Constitution in which the obligations of freedom are enshrined,” he adds. This inevitability is vividly manifest throughout contemporary society.
Accordingly, a return to Judeo-Christian realism, with its sober view of the human being and detailed ethical paradigms, is the only counter-revolutionary movement that can defeat revolutionary idealism seeking a humanist utopia. Eric Patterson states that “Christian realism stands in stark contrast to the violent idealism of revolutionary ideologies that wish to conform the world to their fantastical blueprints.” His view is that, in diametric contrast to revolutionary idealism, “Christian realism emphasizes political order and justice.” Patterson is quite correct: social order, social justice, fairness, and distributive justice through the rule of law, applied equally, is what enables cultural harmony.
There are thus grave issues facing Western societies. Malevolent ideological assaults incessantly befall traditional ideas of truth, personal identity, sex-gender, race, fatherhood, sexuality, the nuclear family, masculinity, femininity, the youth, and society as a whole. These esoteric fabrications amount to nothing less than an attempt to compromise an individual’s secure emotional and psychological well-being; the satisfaction derived from long-established Judeo-Christian principles pertaining to identity, dignity, and purpose.
In this post-modern setting, the bête noire of Judeo-Christianity is rampant corruption of secular culture, intersecting with New Age paganism. Mary Eberstadt remarks that “the religious divide of our time is between those who think they can compromise with the sexual revolution without compromising their faith,” and those who remain steadfast to Judeo-Christian principles. Capitulation to identitarian ideologies inexorably ends in both institutional and individual moral failure.
Our past, a span of many centuries, reflects a kinetic potency of secularism and paganism through the ages— and this momentum will presumably continue. In a persuasive study titled ‘Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times,’ authors Van Den Broek and Hanegraaf believe that “we witness a new interest in historical alternatives to the dominant components of Western culture.” The “dominant component” referred to is that of Judeo-Christianity, and the “historical alternatives” are Hellenist paganism and Platonic humanist rationality— the latter concepts being the dominant structures behind the ideological assault on the West’s traditional Judeo-Christian order.
Yet, it is impossible to escape the obvious influence that Judeo-Christian values and norms have had on our society. So much so, that certain atheists and agnostics mourn the expiration of its influence, especially in the areas of ethics, absolute truths, order, and uniform morality. They desire a return to the constancy of age-old norms. The Scottish philosopher Niall Ferguson, who refers to religion as “magical thinking,” laments that atheism does not have “an evolved ethical system.” Ferguson adds, “evolution alone does not get us to be moral.” His solution is to “adopt the inherited wisdom of a two-millennia old religion.” In Ferguson’s view, society cannot be based on atheism for it is “a very dangerous metaphysical framework.” Ferguson is correct, as evolution, being an expression of practical atheism, does not have a rational moral philosophy or objective truths, or a metaphysical telos, and nor do other humanist ideologies. Instead, in secularist environments, truth is culturally and subjectively constructed, adapting to the prevailing fashionable ideology. In any event, materialist determinism cannot generate coherent incorporeal values, particularly a defined, rationally construed, transcendent, and ethically valid concept of uniform morality acceptable to human society.
As a result, there is no other explanation for the existence of definitive morality other than the primacy of a natural law emanating from the Creator. Concerning this natural law, C. S. Lewis propounded:
It is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. There never has been and never will be a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world.
Lewis further explained that ideologies consist of natural law elements which have been “arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation.” Phrased another way, truth cannot be categorized as truth unless it is of a transcendent character and therefore cannot be socially or subjectively fabricated. Humanist-based morality has to attempt validation through the deconstruction or disparaging of natural law precepts. In such a case, emphasis will instead be on reframed values suited only to eccentric hypotheses — despite a lack of coherence, rationality or other objective conventions.
Douglas Murray, an intellectual from the United Kingdom, describes himself as an “uncomfortable agnostic who recognises the virtues and values the Christian faith has brought.” Murray criticises contemporary Christianity by explaining,
The Church is not doing what so many of us on the outside want it to do, which is preaching the Gospel, asserting its truths and its claims. When one sees it falling into all the latest tropes, one thinks ‘well, that’s another thing gone just like absolutely everything else in the era.’ I am a disappointed non-adherent.
A sorry view of the Christian churches, ironically emanating from an agnostic viewpoint. In the United States, social and political philosopher Charles Murray, in like manner, believes “the American republic is unlikely to survive without a resurgence of Christianity.” Naturally, Murray is referring to ethical parameters relating to the “common good” – itself the public virtue attendant upon the articulation of norms derived from the theistic natural law tradition, as redacted in the Mosaic codes and the law of Christ.
Due to the political, legal, institutional, and social support for applied secularist-paganism – in the form of humanist identitarianism – the ethical roots of Western civilisation and culture remain under threat of marginalisation. This alarming state of affairs will persist until a reversion to the traditional ethical-moral ethos of society, rooted in timeless biblical principles, is decisively re-established. The Constitutional principles already exist, but what is needed is the political and legal will to interpret and enforce them in the manner originally intended by the Founders of our nation.
These critical threats to the West’s noble culture are self-generated in the sense that the democratic liberal tradition allows for emergence and enforcement of ideas and ideals, contrary to the established order. Consequently, the West has only itself to blame for failing to preserve the beneficent values that have served it well for centuries. An ancient quotation from Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) concisely illuminates the present situation: “Upon being struck by an arrow, an eagle once said when he saw feathered shaft, “With our own feathers and not by the hands of others are we now smitten.”
