The Religious Revolution

Carson Holloway April 06, 2021

Editor's Note:  Cartoon added by me. RK

What does the Left want with regard to religion in America? Here, as in many other areas, the left seeks not mere reform but revolution. This is not to say that they expect to accomplish their aims in one fell swoop, like the Jacobins or Bolsheviks—using force and terror to throw down one faith and erect another in its place. Rather, they have been pursuing their revolution—patiently, peacefully, and legally—for the last seven decades. Nevertheless, they seek to fundamentally change religion’s place in the American polity.

Simply put, the Left wants to dethrone and subordinate traditional Christianity. They wish to prevent it from ruling America’s public culture and force it to obey a public culture, one the Left is busy establishing and enforcing. This is the very definition of revolution: a reversal of power relations........ those who founded and built up our country regarded religion as a precious institution, necessary to the preservation both of popular self-government and of individual rights..............

The founders considered religion an essential solution to this problem. In his Notes on Virginia (1788), Thomas Jefferson asked: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?” Similarly, George Washington, in his celebrated “Farewell Address,” admonished his countrymen that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” of “all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity.” “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism,” Washington continued, “ who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”....... the historical record supports the founders’ and Tocqueville’s claims about the importance of religion to a free and just society. .............

Having succeeded to a considerable extent in their quest to dethrone religion from its influence over the public mind, the left wants to subordinate religion to a new, non-religious morality.........According to the new dispensation, then, gay couples not only have a civil right to marry, but also a civil right to be sheltered from the implicit disapproval of Christians—or, for that matter, of Jews or Muslims or any religious believers.............According to the ACLU, when religious believers do not want to provide services at a same-sex wedding ceremony, or demur at having to pay for their employees’ contraception, they are just using their religion as an “excuse to discriminate against and harm others.”........To Read More....

 

Limitless Misrule

When it comes to progressive ambitions, nothing is off the table. 

 

William Voegeli  April 4, 2021 

Many thinkers and activists on the American Left call their philosophy progressivism, but no one uses the term changeism. The belief that change is necessary does not mean that all change is progress.

Progressives have done little to explicate which goals they want to progress to. By making a process its central idea, progressivism alerts us that we can neither hope nor expect to reach a state of affairs where progress would no longer be necessary, possible, or desirable. At the same time, it insists that moral flexibility is the defining characteristic of moral sanity. Philosopher Richard Rorty, highly influential within the American Left, wrote in 1999 that “no sharp break divides the unjust from the imprudent, the evil from the inexpedient.”...........

This elevation of group identity and group rights leads to the denigration of individual rights. Imagining the world after a century of progressive advances, Rorty anticipates that the prevention of “gross economic and social inequality” will take precedence over guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Similarly, “talk of fraternity and unselfishness” will displace an older, inexpedient seriousness about rights............To Read More.....

Permanent Racism

What the Left wants on race.

April 5, 2021 David Azerrad @ Claremont Institute

Given the Left’s monomaniacal obsession with fighting the evils of racism, you could be forgiven for thinking they have no greater commitment than its ultimate eradication. Heck, they even occasionally say so—when they’re not demonizing white people and demanding color-conscious policies in perpetuity, that is.

In truth, the Left will never voluntarily let go of the claim that systemic racism pervades America, that it is “part of our DNA that’s passed on,” as Barack Obama says. The widespread belief that America is racist greatly empowers the Left. Having successfully defined themselves as the party of Anti-Racism, they occupy the moral high ground in America. And from that vaunted perch, they can condemn and absolve at will. The louder they denounce racism, the louder they proclaim their innocence........The Left will never admit it, but the end of “racism” would be an unmitigated disaster for them.

So long as the Left controls the discourse, it’s going to be racism from here until the eye can see—and beyond. So long as the purported eradication of racism is the priority, the Right will never beat the Left at their own game. The more racist America is, the more urgent the fight against racism, the more exalted are those who fight this scourge (the Left), the more tarnished are those who defend America and its past (the Right).

By any objective assessment, systemic racism has long since been eliminated in America. There are no racist laws or policies anywhere on the books, as was the case for much of our history. No one but the most marginal of internet trolls openly calls for white rule. Racism in any historically recognizable form has not existed in America for decades.

In fact, every national institution of any significance is devoted to “diversity,” i.e., helping blacks. Under the guise of “affirmative action,” standards are lowered to admit and promote them. Most importantly, our fellow black citizens have been granted the greatest of privileges: they are absolved of collective moral responsibility for their actions. As the new Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram Kendi, likes to say: “there is nothing wrong with black people.” By contrast, entire academic disciplines are devoted to studying everything that is wrong with white people and whiteness...........

Historically dominant-groups—i.e., whites, but above all straight white men—must be punished. They must not only welcome this punishment, but adopt a deferential pose vis-à-vis non-whites to atone for the sins of their fathers. Racial justice ultimately demands that the guilty, whose sins cannot be expiated, be punished and humiliated in perpetuity............To Read More.....

Illegal Immigration Destroys Sovereignty

Our ruling classes reject our right to govern ourselves.

 

Edward J. Erler April 5, 2021 

Controversy about immigration in America is as old as the nation itself. The Declaration of Independence presents as one of the “Facts…submitted to a candid world” that “the present King of Great Britain” intends to establish “an absolute Tyranny over these States” because he has obstructed “Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither.”

The Declaration had proclaimed that “the Laws of nature and of Nature’s God” entitled the American people to assume, “among the Powers of the earth,” a “separate and equal” sovereign nation. This nation would be based on the “consent of the governed” and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” The clear message conveyed by the Declaration was that a sovereign nation-state has plenary power over matters of citizenship and immigration.

The framers understood that only a nation-state could support constitutional government and the rule of law. Constitutional government is grounded in the sovereignty of the people who grant limited powers to government for the protection of their “safety and happiness,” including the protection of their natural rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Today, left-liberals and progressives attack the nation-state as the source of almost every imaginable evil—war, racism, imperialism, ethnocentrism, white supremacy, and innumerable others. Against the nation-state are opposed such lofty ideals as multiculturalism, political correctness, open borders and the abolition of citizenship. If these ideals are not accepted, leftists riot, or threaten to. But the Left’s assault on America’s immigration policies is perhaps even more destructive than rioting...........To Read More......

 

 

The Rise of Corporate-State Tyranny

Joel Kotkin May 17, 2021 @ Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life

In explaining his shift away from Maoist economics, Deng Xiao Ping, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, described his market-oriented changes as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Today, American businesses, as well as the media and academic establishments that serve them, increasingly embrace what can best be described as “Chinese capitalism with American characteristics.”

A convergence between the world’s two superpowers is taking place. In the United States, as property and power further consolidate, the “diffusion of power,” so critical to democracy, erodes and autocracy develops naturally. Only players at the highest level possess the heft and the motivation to influence policy.[1] This powerful front consists of a new alliance between large corporate powers, Wall Street, and the progressive clerisy in government and media.

Its agenda consists of several goals. On the corporate front we have the emergence of “stakeholder” capitalism, which embraces the state’s priorities implicitly and those of the progressives generally, as a way to please regulators, the woke among their employers, and, to some extent, their own consciences. In this they resemble companies in authoritarian states—like Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, and today’s China—where private capital accumulation is permitted but dissent from the agreed norms of the media-government-academy, once the privilege of individuals and corporations, is now largely verboten.

Yet complicity in the West differs from fascist or corporate socialist standards in one important way. In wealthy societies, a large part of the corporate elite does not see widespread economic growth or rising living standards as a goal but as an impediment to meeting the demands of the “stakeholders,” who are largely defined by the clerisy, their orbit of nonprofits, cowed media, and their academic mentors. Profits are fine in this arrangement but only if they do not increase the material consumption of the populace while allowing new advantages to select racial or lifestyle minorities. The new corporatism is not bad for established capitalists but offers little to the middle or working classes, or, for that matter, to smaller independent businesses.

The New Convergence

The concentration of power in few hands, whether in the Chinese or American variant, has its true antecedents not in Marxism, as is often claimed, but in European fascism. Benito Mussolini, who viewed himself as a “revolutionary” transforming society, not a traditionalist, wanted the state to become “the moving center of economic life.”[2] He successfully co-opted Italian industrialists to build new infrastructure and the military, and he used them to fight off Italy’s historically militant and socialist-oriented unions.[3] Corporate power was essential to the ideology of fascism; it was critical to achieving its revolutionary goals. Not only did Mussolini rely heavily on large landowners and companies for his seizure of power in the run-up to the March on Rome. Once the fascists were in power, Confindustria, the leading organization of Italian industrialists, was glad to see the end of class-based chaos and welcomed the state’s infrastructure surge. This may have not made all capitalists fascists at heart but it preserved what Mussolini called “formal adherence to the regime.”.........To Read More....