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Important considerations from the European essayist Wolfgang Bruno (news links in the original):
Ali Sina is the Iranian ex-Muslim behind the website www.faithfreedom.org. Along with other former Muslims such as Ibn Warraq, Sina is spearheading what may be the first organized movement of ex-Muslims in Islamic history, made possible during the past ten to fifteen years by Muslim immigration to the West and the growth of the Internet. Publishing rational criticism of Islam, reaching hundreds of thousands of people and potentially hundreds of millions of people across the world, has never been done before until a few years ago. This is also part of the inspiration for my own suggestion of creating an Online Infidel Library, with dozens of books critical of Islam being made available online. It is no exaggeration to say that if the likes of Ali Sina, Ibn Warraq and Wafa Sultan prevail in the face of the traditional death penalty for leaving Islam, then Islam will never again be the same. Ibn Warraq has estimated that 10- 15% of the Muslims in the UK are actually apostates. If that percentage reflects the Islamic world as a whole, we are talking about a number of people the equivalent of a country the size of Japan. Even half of this is a country the size of Britain. This is the soft underbelly of Islam.I am fortunate enough to have read Ali Sina’s excellent, upcoming book, which, sadly enough, hasn’t found a publisher yet. I agree with Sina on most important points, especially the fact that Islam probably can’t be reformed and that we are very close to a new world war triggered by Islamic fanaticism. Sina writes a lot about reclaiming the West's morality and what's wrong with the West. This closely mirrors what I am doing in my own book, which so far has the working title: "Reformation Impossible: What’s Wrong With Islam and What’s Wrong With the West?” According to Ali Sina, the West is now a moral relativistic society, where the vacuum created by religion is sorely felt. But at the same time, Sina questions whether a return to religion is the way to go. In an email to me, Sina writes the following: “But is religion the answer? How can we go back to religions when we know they are based on lies? I think our challenge is to find a way to salvage morality and family values without the burden of religion. Maybe I am asking too much. But there must be a way. There must be more choices than either believing in lies or becoming immoral. There must be a middle ground. This point is fundamental to the survival of the western civilization. We must find an answer to it.”
This is where Sina and I part ways. As this is probably one of the most important issues of our age, it could make for an interesting discussion. Can you have morality without religion? I’m not so sure, which is why I will recommend a strengthening of the traditional Judeo-Christian religion of the West. When I first thought of writing my book, I imagined myself concluding it with some short recommendations for how Westerners should deal with Islam and Muslim immigration. The more I have looked into the matter, the more I have discovered that the really interesting issue is not what's wrong with Islam, but what's wrong with the West, which is why I will devote up to one third of the book to answering this question.Europe has been threatened by Islam several times before, but has managed to withstand it. Why not now? If we want to mount a defense of Western civilization, then we first need to define exactly what Western civilization is. I have found that the West at the beginning of the 21st century is mired in an internal cultural battle, an ideological civil war over the purpose of the West that is sometimes so severe that combined with Muslim immigration it could even trigger physical civil wars in several Western nations in the near future. One of the contenders is what I will label the ideology of Egalitarianism, of which Multiculturalism is the most prominent component. If you analyze the ideology of Egalitarianism, is has Marxist roots in ideas about forced equality. Basically, it says that all cultures are more or less equal, and that there is nothing particular about Western civilization that makes it worth preserving. It may even be worse than all other cultures. To display attachment to your own culture is considered racism and frowned upon. As is to be expected with its Marxist roots, it has its stronghold of support in the political Left. However, what makes Egalitarianism and Multiculturalism particularly dangerous is that its support transcends that of the traditional Left and has penetrated deep into the traditional Right, too. As long as large parts of our elites adhere to the notion that all cultures are equal, it will be impossible to mount any defense of the West. Which means that Multiculturalism and Egalitarianism need to be discredited if Europe is to have any chance of surviving.
In defining what Western civilization means, we will sooner or later face the question of how closely it is tied to the religion of Christianity. I would define myself as a Christian Atheist, the way Oriana Fallaci does. I am not personally religious, but I have gradually grown more positive towards Christianity, especially after I started studying Islam. I now think that defining Western civilization without its Judeo-Christian religious component simply doesn't make sense from a historical or philosophical point of view. I thus disagree with people such as atheist Richard Dawkins, in viewing religion as all bad. We also have to ask what will replace the traditional religions if we remove them. I have been puzzled by the seemingly cozy relationship between European Socialists, who in theory should be anti-religious, and Muslims. I have found that this can be explained if you postulate that the difference between religious and political ideologies is not always clear-cut, but should be more accurately described as a gliding scale. The defining difference is not the belief in God, but the belief in the rights of the individual vs. the rights of the collective group. As Ibn Warraq puts it: The fight is not between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between those who value freedom and those who do not.
Socialists frequently mock Christians for basing their worldview in belief in something that cannot be proven and has never been seen. But since Marxism cannot be proven and no successful Marxist society has ever been seen, don't Socialists also base their worldview on belief in something that cannot be proven and has never been seen? And don't they follow their ideology with religious fervour and denounce their critics as evil? German sociologist Max Weber has stated that the modern, capitalist economy in Europe was based upon the Protestant work ethic. If capitalism is based upon Christianity, doesn't it become logical for anti-capitalists to undermine capitalism by attacking its religious base? Is Socialism a religion disguised as a political ideology, and is Islam a political ideology disguised as a religion?
Maybe we should abandon the common distinction between religious and non-religious ideologies. I will postulate that it is sometimes more useful to think of them as religions with God and religions without God, Marxism being a religion without God. Philosopher Eric Hoffer has written a book called “The True Believer, ” where he tracks mass movements throughout history. He includes some critical words about Christianity, but perhaps the most striking feature of his book is that he shows how religious and seemingly non-religious movement share many traits, and may sometimes be interchangeable: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” I have myself heard Leftist Multiculturalists describe themselves as “the forces of Light,” “the forces of Darkness” being all those evil racists who oppose Muslim immigration. This is in fact a deeply religious world view, which could have been shared by members of the Spanish Inquisition. “We are the forces of Good. Those who disagree with us are not just wrong, but Evil, and we have a perfect moral right, even duty, to suppress their views by any means necessary.”
This line of thought seems to be shared by many Leftists, which is why they feel perfectly justified in stifling the freedom of speech of their opponents, even by violent means. A Marxist is a person who doesn’t believe in God, but still thinks he is God’s representative on earth. As Eric Hoffer says: “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.” Perhaps what we are seeing in Europe is a coalition between two religions, Socialism and Islam, united not in the belief in the same God but in hatred towards the same Devil: The capitalist and Judeo-Christian West. The attacks Western Leftists mount on Christianity have little to do with “tolerance” and a lot more to do with discrediting a troublesome rival creed that stubbornly keeps blocking the road to Utopia.
One of the reasons why so many intellectuals in the West accept the idea that Islam has been “misunderstood” is because this is the same excuse they use for their own favorite: Marxism. Famed historian Eric Hobsbawm has for instance argued that Marx was misunderstood, and that the Communism of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union wasn’t “real Marxism.” It certainly was real for the tens of millions of people whose lives it destroyed. If an ideology results in devastating failures everywhere it is tried out then there is not something wrong with the interpretation, there is something with the ideology itself. What good is a “guide” that leads people to shipwreck every single time?
Although weekly magazine “The Economist” can be plain awful when dealing with issues related to Islam or Muslim immigration, they can still be sensible on other subjects. In an article called “Marx after communism,” they demonstrate how Leftism is in fact a new religion:
It is striking that today's militant critics of globalisation proceed in much the same way (as Marx himself). They present no worked-out alternative to the present economic order. Instead, they invoke a Utopia free of (…) social injustice, harking back to a pre-industrial golden age that did not actually exist. Never is this alternative future given clear shape or offered up for examination. And anti-globalists have inherited more from Marx besides this. Note the self-righteous anger, the violent rhetoric, the willing resort to actual violence (in response to the “violence” of the other side), the demonisation of big business, the division of the world into exploiters and victims, the contempt for piecemeal reform, the zeal for activism, the impatience with democracy, the disdain for liberal “rights” and “freedoms”, the suspicion of compromise. (…) Anti-globalism has been aptly described as a secular religion. So is Marxism: a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on.
Claire Berlinski, author of the book "Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too" also notes how many Europeans, when asked, will declare themselves more alarmed by American imperialism than by Islamic radicalism. According to her, Europeans have in recent memory suffered two great losses, that of their religious faith and that of its replacements—ideologies involving the idea of human perfectibility, leaving Europeans paralyzed by shame and self-doubt. They have retreated into a kind of cocoon of technological and physical comfort. Americans are much more hopeful for the future than Europeans, partly because they are more religious in a conventional sense. But Americans also have an idea of what it is to be American. “America’s sense of itself doesn’t include the memories of the Somme and Passchendaele; it doesn’t include the memories of Auschwitz and Dachau. It is still possible for Americans to revere their own nation without irony, to revisit its past without despair.” Berlinski connects the death of Christianity in Europe with Europe’s anti-Americanism, which can reach such passionate heights that it strays from anything that can be remotely described as rational and approaches the status of quasi-religion:
What I’ve noticed is a quasi-religious and messianic character to this anti-Americanism, particularly in the way it seems inevitably to be linked to anti-modernism and anti-Semitism. It is this mystical element of the anti-American movement that is both most interesting and alarming. Anti-Americanism, particularly as it is expressed in Europe, seems to me more than an expression of simple inanity, nostalgic yearning for greatness past, or an external projection of failed social programs. The critical question, I think, is what kind of spiritual void, what kind of existential emptiness, does anti-Americanism serve to fill?
Ali Sina is not a stupid man. He sees this, too. In order to subdue people and impose on them your Marxist ethos, Sina says, you have to rob them from their own identity, their own culture, heritage, mores, government and religion. Once you rob them from their identity and selfhood, you can shape them in any way you like. “The society can live without religion but it can't live without morality. We must not throw the baby with the bathwater. Judeo-Christianity has done a lot of harm, but it has done also a lot of good. It has given birth to the greatest civilization that mankind has ever known. Let us not be biased. This democracy that has brought to the world this much progress in the last couple of centuries, could not have been born in any other culture.” Later, however, Ali Sina says that: “I admit that Judeo-Christianity has outlived its utility.” Then he goes on to criticize ALL ideologies, not just religious ones: “Ideology is evil. It robs one from rational thinking and once one loses that ability, he become like an animal. To the degree that you subscribe to an ideology, any ideology, you become dehumanized. Man is noble because he is capable of independent thought. You lose that through beliefs and ideologies.”
Sina’s motto is “Don’t be a follower, be your own Prophet.” But is this feasible? I would argue that most human beings are neither willing nor able to come up with their own set of moral values, and even if this was possible, I’m not sure whether it would always be desirable. Don’t we then wander into the territory of moral relativism, Multiculturalism and “to every man his own truth,” precisely what Ali Sina himself warns against?
As somebody once put it: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” The retreat of the traditional, Judeo-Christian religion in Europe during the 20th century left the door open to a new set of “religions without God” that in many ways proved at least as harmful as the “intolerance” they were supposed to replace. Marxism killed more than 100 million people during a few generations. The negative argument against removing the Judeo-Christian religious base of the West could thus be that whatever flaws might exist in the old system, what will replace it could well turn out to be worse. There are also more positive arguments in support of it, which I will discuss in the second part of this essay.
Posted by Robert at April 20, 2006 3:18 AM
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There are some interesting comments along the way, but I think much of what Bruno has to say is implausible - both theoretically and historically. (And Claire Berlinski, whom he quotes, sounds fairly dotty.)
Bruno's main assertion seems to be that "multiculturalism" stems from Marxism. But this is absurd. From the point of view of Marxism all these "cultural viewpoints" would be so much ideology (in the specific sense given to the word by Marx) as opposed to the Marxian viewpoint which is, of course, said to be "scientific". (The ideology of "multiculturalism" may have appeal to similar kinds of people - those who are antagonistic towards the West. And maybe some "Marxists" can believe contradictory things. But these are different questions.)
It would be quite a labour to trace the intellectual history of these attitudes, but I suspect one would do better looking at Jean-Jacques Rousseau and at the German Romantics, specifically Gottfried von Herder.
The insistence on the importance of culture is actually more a product of conservative thought than of anything emanating from the left. English speakers of a literary bent will think immediately of T. S. Eliot. And the interest in kultur among the German Romantics has a immediate cause in, as it were, an act of self-protection against the supposed universalism of the Revolution as brought to them by the French in the person of Napoleon. So, if we look to "Marxism" as an explanation for the genesis of political attitudes having to do with culture we would seem to be looking in the wrong place.
But quite how the ideology of "multi-culturalism" arose I don't pretend to know. It seems to me one would actually have to have a very shallow understanding of culture - to misunderstand its political significance - to believe that a state could, as it were, "run" several "cultures" in tandem. It would be, as Roger Scruton points out, "an attempt to legitimize war, by giving to the separate cultures separate political identities." It is a recipe for civil conflict. And whence the curious idea that variations between cultures renders value judgments impossible?
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at April 20, 2006 6:13 AM
"Religion without god"... is not possible. However, "god without organised religion" is a much better approach in my view. Or maybe "syncretism" as it is happening in Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_of_Japan#New_Religions
Most people need god today and need a way to discuss it. They shall be allowed to discuss without getting organised. Organised & institutionalised religion is a threat, not religion itself. So dont let religion to get organized as the Vatican and various islamic schools have done.
That is my view. Keeping religion and god personal and not allowing it to interfere in our social life is what I prefer. After all, Islamisation is nothing but the creeping of religion into our lives.
Posted by: csa bill at April 20, 2006 8:07 AM
Wow Brilliant!
Posted by: Weatherob at April 20, 2006 8:28 AM
Yojimbo: The roots of Multiculturalism are complicated. Multiculturalism does seem to appeal to Leftists in particular, but it is true that it does appeal to many traditional right-wingers, too. The Left is not the source of all the problems of the West. We wouldn't be in so much trouble as we are if that was the case.
csa bill: Marxism in many ways closely resembles a religion, complete with Holy Books, Prophets, intolerance towards non-Believers etc.
at April 20, 2006 9:02 AM
There is also a discussion of this here:
http://forum.atimes.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6755
Posted by: Wolfgang Bruno at April 20, 2006 9:11 AM
If any one is interested in Ali Sina's forthcomming book about Islam,(The dangerous Islam)you have to go to his site-faithfreedom.org,and reserve your copy now itself. I was told it is a very daring book,which reveals the inner most secrets of Islam,which only a Muslim can reveal.Already about 2700 copies have been booked,and if a sizable orders come forward,this book can find a publisher.
Posted by: sofia at April 20, 2006 9:48 AM
Both Bruno and Yojimbo admit that the etiology of multi-culturalism is something of a mystery. I would suggest that the mystery is dissolved once we recognize that the "multi" aspect is, for the naive adherents, a self-contradictory incoherency, and for the more intelligent adherents, a deception. That is to say, multi-culturalism is, quite simply, not really about recognizing all cultures to be equivalent and morally relative: it is about condemning one particular culture -- the modern West indissolubly linked to its Judaeo-Christian foundations, which has been, historically, the major force resisting political Gnosticisms (formerly known as "heresies") which are based upon a utopianist intolerance for the tension of existence.
There is no Multi-culturalism. It is more accurately a Counter-culturalism, countering Western culture. This Counter-culturalism in all its myriad forms has, as Bruno points out, nothing to offer to replace Western culture, except for vague versions of the modern Gnostic myth of the immanentized eschaton, for its proponents know (consciously or semi-consciously) that the West has been the guardian of the existential tension between this life and the next life (the eschaton), the tension between imperfection and perfection which cannot be abolished in time or in history, the tension that, intolerably for the Gnostic mentality, refuses to end the pains of imperfection for the simple reason that it knows, rationally, that it cannot.
at April 20, 2006 11:18 AM
I'll drink to that.
Posted by: Interested at April 20, 2006 11:39 AM
It would be nice if someone would define 'morality'. Ali Sina lives by the Golden Rule: do unto others.....
If the argument for religion is to provide a base for morality so that members of society do not hurt one another, then it is not needed and the Golden Rule is enough.
If the argument for religion is that we mere humans need a 'higher power' to provide rules of conduct leading to a morality (plus other oddities like dietary restrictions), then I will jump off that ship.
If the argument for religion is to 'provide meaning' to one's life, then I demand an explanation. What it really sounds like is something to calm one's fears about death.
Ali sounds to me like a Buddhist when he says for everyone to be their own prophet. Buddha said, "YOU are the light. Rely on none other than the light." Buddhist teaching, or at least what I gleaned from years of Zen Buddhist study and practice, is that Buddha wanted everyone to experience the truth about the nature of the universe that he experienced for themselves. The total focus of Zen Buddhist meditation is to become a Buddha yourself, meaning to experience the same truth. Blindly following a teacher or even a teaching is worse than doing nothing.
Zen Buddhist practice only begins at kensho or satori, meaning the direct experience of the Absolute as being one thing. One cannot live in the Absolute, but must live in the world of the relative, realizing that each individual thing partakes of the absolute and its existence depends on it.
Compassion, humility, kindness and the like will then come from experiencing the truth that all people and things partake of the Absolute. You really ARE your brother/sister.
However, in the world of the relative, this knowledge is tempered by the fact that if someone physically attacks my family, I will protect them and probably gruesomely kill the attacker.
So, what do we need religion for?
Ethelred (www.challenging-islam.org)
questioningislam@yahoo.com
Posted by: Ethelred at April 20, 2006 12:23 PM
Wolfgang Bruno:
Yojimbo: The roots of Multiculturalism are complicated. Multiculturalism does seem to appeal to Leftists in particular, but it is true that it does appeal to many traditional right-wingers, too.
I'd dispute whether multiculturalism "appeal[s]" to many - or perhaps any - "traditional right-wingers". And I think there is a distinction between a recognition of the socio-political significance of culture and a belief in multi-culturalism.
I think there are two questions here, viz. the (probably tangled and difficult to recognize) genesis of this doctrine and its "appeal". There are two questions here, not one.
So far as conservatives go, it's interesting to note that Edmund Burke spoke up for the Indians -
Here the manufacturer and husbandman will bless the just and punctual hand that in India has torn the cloth from the loom, or wrested the scanty portion of rice and salt from the peasant of Bengal, or wrung from him the very opium in which he forgot his oppressions and his oppressor.
- and Samuel Johnson (Idler, No. 81 [82]) for the Native Americans. Fairly lone voices at the time. I suppose there might be a recognition of the complexity of culture at the bottom of that - as well as simple notions of justice. But I don't suppose either would have welcomed the notion of groups on British soil that were forming "states within a state": following their own culture and not loyal to the Crown. As I said in the earlier post, that's a recipe for civil strife.
As for your comment to csa bill, I see the point. Another poster here sometimes quotes Eric Voegelin: Voegelin had Marxism pegged as a "political religion":
But, on the other hand, Oakeshott makes a similar point, but in rather different terms, when he pegs Marxism as form of "rationalism".
What's more persuasive? The notion of a political religion - or of "gnosticism" (another Voegelinian term)? Or the notion of "rationalism" in the Oakeshottian sense - of the reasoning mind outrunning what is reasonable?
Posted by: Yojimbo at April 20, 2006 12:35 PM
So, what do we need religion for?
C. S. Lewis, always of interest, would have said for everything else. In other words, one shouldn't imagine God as providing "rules of conduct leading to a morality". From that point of view, he says, IIRC, worship of God would be no different from Devil-worship.
Morality is, rather, the first postulates of practical reasoning (and is fairly widley recognized):
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition4.htm
Morality, he suggests, points to God rather than the other way round - a view you can find in Burke and Kant, too.
But don't ask me - I'm agnostic.
But, yes, I see the point: given that the "Natural Law" that he describes is valid, it is not always easy to do as one should. Believers can petition for help in doing so by means of prayer - always assuming there is help to be had.
Posted by: Yojimbo at April 20, 2006 12:51 PM
For everything else doesn't cut it. What does that mean?
I maintain that the purpose of religion (the real ones that is) is solely to mitigate the fear of death. Period. The rest is man made garbage.
So, again, if one is not afraid of death, what good is religion?
Ethelred
Posted by: Ethelred at April 20, 2006 1:12 PM
For him, what he said: the problem of actually obeying the moral law - for a start, at any rate.
Maintain what you like. I wasn't recommending that view, which I don't, in fact, share - simply laying it out for any intrinsic interest it may have.
Posted by: Yojimbo at April 20, 2006 1:26 PM
Nature's moral law is: eat thy neighbor.
(E.G. -Flukes that burrow into bare feet and find their way up into your eye lens' to cause 'river blindness' seems a rather obscure impulse to impart to you life forms from an 'intelligent creator', -a example that can be multiplied a billion times in cruelty, bizarrity and agony.)
If this is the law of 'Nature's God', God help us.
Nature mysticism, like the Tao, can inform a more realistic view of the actuality of this deadly world.
And, with it can come the realization that only we have had the conceptual reflection to establish compassion.
Morality begins with humanity.
The ancient "Gods" were all absolute despots, -bloodthirsty, irrational and capricious.
(And these were considered their 'admirable' qualities. See: Deuteronomy, The Popul Vuh, The Poetic Eddas, The Koran, ad nauseam.)
Morality is an unfolding development, not a dead dictate.
We have civilized our 'Creators'.
Not the other way around.
The reflecting human heart is the source of any hope, not frozen dogmas in man-inscribed books.
Because only we feel the breath of death on our necks. And can sympathize will all-such threatened life in response.
Empathy is the birth of humanity.
Teach the decencies found in any faith, but leave room for growth of new insights.
And deeper hearts.
Sina's fundamental worry sounds too abstracted (academically dislocated from reality), and he needs to get out more.
People are doing good and being decent everywhere. (Food banks, donating blood, rehabbing houses, etc., etc., etc.) And they aren't usually worrying about whether there is a "God" looking over their shoulder and nodding approvingly.
It is basic, post-'natural', human decency.
Opposing the animal drift of creation. And all the ancient vengeance-seeking deities.
So, we need to encourage the good impulses in our spirits. Then we won't have to worry about the future. Because we're resilient, inventive, and, given a chance, incredibly humane.
God, or not.
(Which only death will answer, anyway. And that's a knowledge I'm out to postpone as long a possible.)
Posted by: profitsbeard at April 20, 2006 2:08 PM
The reaction of Thomas Hobbes to the Puritan deformation and its destructive consequences on political order have interesting echoes today with a deformation similar to that of the Puritans of the 17th century, Islam (though with important differences, not the least of which being the latter's global metastasis in an equally global context of predominate denial of its danger).
An interesting article explores the Hobbesian response:
Civil theology in the Gnostic age: progress and regress by Michael Henry:
Voegelin diagnosed what he regarded as the Gnostic nature of modernity in the seventeenth-century Puritan "lust for massively possessive experience," an un-Christian libido dominandi for achieving existential security by drawing transcendence into immanence to transform all experience into proofs of divine election. Thomas Hobbes's remedy for the destructive conflicts stirred up by the Puritan drive to possess certainty was an immanently salvific Gnostic civil theology that effectively rejected transcendence and permitted all citizens to have a relationship with the divine only through obedience to the terrifying Absolute Sovereign, the intracosmic "mortal god," who dictated the form of "Christian" worship compulsory for the whole society and prophylactically sealed off the "Christian Commonwealth" against intrusions by transcendence. Because for Hobbes "there was no public truth except the laws of peace and concord in a society," (6) he constructed civil theology as a "peace" in which soulless human beings attain worldly salvation from the imminent fall into non-being through death in the state of nature by suppressing not only the Puritan appropriation of transcendence but also the spiritually ordering power of amor Dei. The enjoyment of the "natural right" to physical self-preservation in a cosmos devoid of divine presence is the substitute for the soul's quest for immortality through participation in divine transcendence.
As Benjamin Wiker points out, the concept of modern natural rights comes from Hobbes and "Rights, according to Hobbes, were simply the name we give to our amoral desires, desires that ... are in and of themselves no sin." (7) If we contract our souls to purely immanent beings then our natural desires in the earthly sense define the good and the right. To a hedonist the concept of natural rights means that our liberty to gratify our self-centered desires cannot validly be constrained except by others' liberty to do the same. Since we most urgently desire to be, to live, all the specific laws of nature that Hobbes lists are ultimately rules for postponing death, the summum malum, not commands that guide us to do what is right in itself, for no such thing exists. The Hobbesian Commonwealth has no substance of order and participates in nothing. And just as the fear of death and the desire to live drive human beings from the chaos of the state of nature to establish a lawmaker in the Commonwealth, so, for Hobbes, "rights precede laws, and all laws are merely conventional, having as their only purpose balancing claims of rights," that is, the law is the arbiter among warring passions.
In natural law theory God is the Absolute Sovereign transcending all earthly sovereigns, but in Hobbes' natural rights theory, "since it was based in the Epicurean materialist rejection of nature as intrinsically ordered and God as the orderer, there was nothing above the human-made law to which one could appeal." (8) In John Locke's revision of this theory, since the entire purpose of government is the economic function of the preservation of property, the political realm has nothing to do with the good life in the sense of virtue or the rational life in the sense of noetic reason as participation in higher truth, but is "the complete servant of Epicurean hedonism ... [And] the only goal for our common life, and for the laws that direct and define our common life, will be economic.... [which] amounted to redefining our highest pursuit as material pleasure, rather than spiritual perfection." (9)
For the entire article, see
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0354/is_1_47/ai_n13779404
Posted by: Television at April 20, 2006 2:13 PM
I am a firm advocate of free market capitalism... However, today free market capitalism is alive because of Marx. He was infact the guy who theorized about a colossal class struggle between labor & capital. His theories and remedies to prevent exploitation... (minimum wages, trade unions etc)... have been incorporated into mainstream capitalism. Marx's ideas saved capitalism from the capitalists. His ideas are the reason why we have SEC, labor protection etc.
Having said that capitalism is far better than communism (and any form of economic leftism) simply because capitalism is about survival and continuity... not goals. Is there any company in the world that says that they have achieved their goals and want to wind up or there is nothing more they want to do??? This survival & continuity ideology is the strength of capitalism... it simply absorbed certain Marxist views to survive and continue. Eventually true capitalists know that their profits depend on the community (the customers) they serve and will want to build that community and expand it... simply to make more money.
Marx himself knew this... but he theorized that human greed will outweigh other social concerns. Interestingly, capitalism is going liberal... many companies take their social responsibility seriously. Nike and few others refused to source from chinese and vietnamese firms that employed child labor. MacDs is working with fishers and farmers to implement sustainable fishing & farming in their communities. Not because they want to help, but to make profit.
Some communists are also pragmatic. China is the best example of that when it comes to economic reform. Cuba is an extreme example of the non-pragmatic clan. In India the Communist Party rules in two states and they are doing extremely well in attracting FDI in one of them.
Putting communists & islamists in the same light is unfair. The communists know the power of capitalism extremely well and also know that they have to adapt to changing times. Islamists on the other hand are idealists who are unwilling to change. And that is their undoing.
Posted by: csa bill at April 20, 2006 2:48 PM
It will be helpful if Reformation Impossible is made available online so people can read it for free. The Islamic Fanaticism is such a powerful menace, people should not always have to pay to find out who their enemies are.
Posted by: Christian at April 20, 2006 4:27 PM
This is an incredibly interesting article and thread of responses. Mr. Spencer, congrats for running it.
Television, I'll have you know that I'm a Puritan in theology. Respect Eric Voegelin as I may, I say that he read us wrong.
Herr Bruno: Vielen Danke.
But I join with others in saying there can be no "Christian atheism". Perhaps you and Fallaci are stumbling into the discovery that the things that make the West worthwhile are the fruits of Western civilization's having been touched by God's grace in Christ. And, the whole of the New Testament presupposes that God did indeed speak by Moses and the Prophets (it's why the Christian Bible has both the Old and New Testaments bound in one volume; and anyone who limits the "Christian Bible" to the New Testament has no appreciation for how God works). I would thus urge you to open the Bible again and read it with such eyes. They say Luther's German version is still a good translation.
Posted by: Kepha at April 20, 2006 7:32 PM
Kepha - I agree. Starting with Christians, let the West open the Bible.
Posted by: bdarrell at April 20, 2006 8:19 PM
"But since Marxism cannot be proven and no successful Marxist society has ever been seen, don't Socialists also base their worldview on belief in something that cannot be proven and has never been seen?"
Actually, the only successful socialist/communist societies have been religious. Monastaries, both Christian and Buddhist, where all members hold everything in common and work together for common goals. The early Christians also lived in this manner.
“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:32-35, ESV).
Of course, the key here is that such religious societies are voluntary while ideological socialism is based on oppression and force.
Posted by: Provoslavni at April 20, 2006 10:25 PM
I posted this in Bruno's blog:
"Sanctity of the individual indeed is the very origin of the concept of Humanity, and constitutes the most evident divide between Civilization and barbarism.
"We must recognize that Sanctity of the individual is not a Greco-Roman concept, but (up to my knowledge) is an idea first recorded in the Book of Genesis, where it is stated that every person is created "in the image of God" --tzelem Elokim in the original Hebrew (Genesis 1:26,27).
"On the other hand, as the source of this view is theistic, there is no real moral foundation of the concept of Humanity without trusting in the Creator. The moral inconsistence of Human Rights activism and other secular socio-political movements exemplifies this.
"Besides, moral resilience is hardly possible in a materialist view of the world, and nearly all types of religious belief hold a bolder moral position compared to secularism."
at April 21, 2006 11:21 AM
Mr Bruno - before this thread fades off into cyberspace I just wanted to say that the issues you raise in this post are so complex that I am left tongue-tied. I'm thinking seriously about them though and actually have been reflecting on them for awhile. I was raised a Catholic but had basically abandoned Christianity some 25 years ago and just prior to 9/11 I had spent many years reading the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti - the man who so obviously had an impact on Mr. Sina. When I grasped the threat of Islam I was forced to take a hard re-look at Krishnamurti whom I had so adored. I still think Krishnamurti is right but his views raise very serious problems in a world coping with the Islamic threat. Actually, everything he discusses in his books has the MOST relevance to Islam! So I am not surprised that he had such an impact on Ali Sina. To make a long story short, I started attending Catholic mass again about a month ago, after a 25 year hiatus. So I guess that's my answer to the question you raise in your title. Right now, yes, I think the west needs to return to its Judeo-Christian roots in order to merely survive, until the day comes that Islam is gone from this world.
By the way - just wanted to say how much I admire your essays. Really brilliant.
Posted by: Caroline at April 22, 2006 9:28 AM
P.S. On the off-chance that any Muslims reading this thread might be interested in reading Krishnamurti (who has written dozens of books) - The First and Last Freedom is his best.
Posted by: Caroline at April 22, 2006 9:40 AM
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