Obama As a Case Study in Modern Liberalism
The liberal humanist mindset presently dominates public discourse in the Western world. Anyone who is persona gratis and has "tenure" (academics, media, politicians, entertainers, celebrities, etc) all think the same way about the western world. The constant drawing upon the same world-view leads to the mistake that it is true. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes believable. It's called brainwashing.
In this Blog we focus constantly on delineating and exposing this mistaken worldview. We call it variously the mind of Unbelief, secular humanism, materialistic humanism, secular idolatry. All of these terms fall under a common rubric of "Athens" and point to a common pervasive assumption: that Man is the ultimate reference point of existence.
It is important that we understand how this mind of Unbelief is framed. In President Obama, we have a walking day-by-day case study. This, of course, is not to say that Obama is a humanist liberal and someone like our own Prime Minister, John Key is not. Both are secular humanists: both believe deep in their beings that Man is the ultimate and final reference point of existence. Both are in precisely the same camp, as it were. The only disagreements they would have is over the details.
However, the reason Obama makes such an interesting foil and case study and John Key does not is that Obama is "out there" and Key is less so. Obama (like John Key's predecessor, Helen Clark) represents a greater degree of self-consciousness over secular liberal humanism, and he is seeking to apply it with vigour in his new position. That is why he is so interesting. That is why he provides a walking case study of the Liberal Mind.
Obama's first press interview as President was with the Arab television station Al Arabiya, broadcasting out of Gaza. This was no doubt deliberately done. It was designed to "send a message". The message was one of reconciliation. Obama was concerned to make it clear that the US did not hate Arabs, that under his watch it would be reasonable and even handed, consultative, and disinterested between conflicting parties. It would, first of all, listen.
Even as Obama endeavoured potently to symbolise his liberal humanist values to the Arab world you could almost hear the sighs of gratification and thankfulness all around the western world. The new US President was indeed a true modern intelligent sensitive enlightened secular humanist liberal. He was truly one of us. He was in the camp, so to speak.
By this very public and deliberately symbolic act, Obama put his secular humanist credentials on display before the world. In acting this way, Obama was drawing upon one of the great central planks of the Liberal Mind: that evil is extrinsic to humanity. It follows relentlessly, does it not, that if Man is the ultimate source of truth and value, evil is defined as that which is inhuman--contrary to the true nature of man. Evil is caused by external factors; it does not come out of the human heart, intrinsically from within man. Man is intrinsically good because there is no higher definition of goodness than Man himself.
Evil is, therefore, to be dealt with by removing the external factors that cause it to exist. If you create a sterile atmosphere, disease is repressed and dies out. Thus, the evil on display in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be dealt with by changing the external circumstances--and a key part of this is removing the apparent or perceived hostility of the United States toward the Palestinian people.
Now Little Green Footballs tells us that Al Arabiya is the "virulently antisemitic Arab satellite network that regularly broadcasts support for jihad and militant Islam". This, according to the evidence is "the very same channel that allows Hamas rockets to be fired from their studio building in Gaza."
So, here we have an Arab satellite network that is stridently anti-semitic, has been abetting Hamas's unprovoked attacks upon Israeli civilians and Israel generally, and is a supporter of armed military jihad. Obama would know all of this. He did not act ignorantly.
But--and here is the real point--all these things do not matter to the Liberal Mind. They are distractions and irrelevant. They need to be overlooked. Why? Because "these people" only do such terrible things (and the Liberal Mind, when directly challenged on the issue, will say that such things are evil and wrong) because they are conditioned into it by externalities. Evil is externally determined. Change the conditions and the evil will cease.
So Obama and the Liberal Mind are saying, in effect, to the Arab militants, "Look, the things that you are doing are not right, and we don't condone them in any way. But we also know that you have genuine grievances--and your actions are not really and truly who you are. We also believe that deep down you don't really want to do these terrible things. We believe that you have been pushed into them against your inner will because of terrible circumstances and injustices and suffering. If we change the circumstances and address your grievances we believe that you will no longer want to exercise jihad against non-Muslim nations, that you will become peace loving and reasonable people (just like ourselves) and that you will tolerate and even support Israel's existence. So, we are going to offer you the hand of friendship in good faith, and as we do so we believe this will give a chance for your true inner righteousness to shine forth and overcome your current evil beliefs and actions."
That is why the Liberal Mind is prepared to turn a blind eye to atrocities and crimes committed by Islamists (most of whom are seen as being disadvantaged, oppressed, and poor.) This is why the President of the United States deliberately chose to co-operate with Al Arabiya and give them his first Presidential interview. What Al Arabiya currently supports and advocates is irrelevant. What it will potentially become as a result of extending the hand of friendship is all important. It is the bigger and longer game the western Liberal Mind believes is fundamentally important.
The Liberal Mind is naive. It is also gratuitously self-serving and arrogant. For if Man is the ultimate reference point, who is to say that what Al Arabiya and the jihadists represent is not ultimately right--since are they not also Man? Ah, says the Liberal Mind--they are not representing Man as we define him to be. Precisely. In the end, the Liberal Mind represents nothing more than egregious self-righteousness and a kind of preppy priggishness.
If Man is the ultimate reference point in the universe, and the basis for all truth and authority is the mind of Man, then all that men do and are remains intrinsically and necessarily condign to humanity and implicitly good. To criticise or demur can never be anything other than the expression of cant, or a bias, or a mere personal or cultural preference.
That is precisely how the humanists in Al Arabiya and their fellow jihadists will see it. For they, also, represent the Liberal Mind--just a different version of it. For Obama, the Liberal Mind has produced doctrines such as human rights, tolerance, respect, and the rule of law. He has made the grave and arrogant mistake of conflating Western secular political ideology with humanity itself--making them one and the same. It is the same mistake made by the NeoCons. (Remove Saddam Hussein and Iraqi's will embrace Western democratic ideals and become like "us".) They are all alike humanist liberals. But the jihadist version of the Liberal Mind dismisses these things as a mere Western prejudice. For them, humanity and the world is what the jihadist says it is--and are they not also human, and is not their collective mind as equally ultimate as the Western Liberal mind?
In the end, Obama risks being an ineffectual irrelevance. The jihadists will dismiss him in a nano-second. But in the meantime, he is a wonderful walking case study of the Liberal Mind and its vacuity.
However, against Obama and the Liberal Mind stands the eternal indictment of the Scripture: "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:10) Certainly the western liberals don't, for they refuse to know it. Continuing to suppress the truth in their self-serving arrogance, they have been noted and marked.
(Hat Tip: Half Done)
Postscript: We are pleased and gratified that the Israeli government appears to have listened to the counsel and advice of Contra Celsum! It now looks to be following our suggestion of retaliating for each Hamas attack on an "eye for an eye" basis. It is a step in the right direction, we believe. (See the following IAF bulletin. Hat Tip--Whaleoil) However, it needs to be more public and more relentless in this policy. Every Hamas attack (not just the spectacular ones) needs to be publicly documented and broadcast in Gaza; then a retribution response needs to be carried out; then another public broadcast upon completion identifying what happened and why; followed by a promise that no further action will be taken, unless Hamas commits violence upon Israeli citizens or territory.
We are also gratified that Israel seems to be targetting carefully its responses and is able to identify the Hamas personnel responsible. Intelligence from inside Gaza must be superb, which suggests a lot of help from Gazan citizens, which in turn implies that they have realised that Hamas regards the people in Gaza as mere cannon fodder to be used up in a larger theatre of war.
4 comments:
I think you're going a bit far to say that Jihaists have a "liberal mind". They don't think evil is extrinsic to the people they hate, e.g. GWB, Americans.
And any Jihadist or Hamas member who follows Islam closely would place Allah, not man, in the centre of their worldview. How is any of this humanist or liberal?
You use big words but when you label everything in opposition to you as simply "liberal" you start to look no more intelligent than the idiots who use it as a cuss-word, without regard for the word's positive connotations, like equality & freedom, cf Galatians 5.
Hey, binSchmidt thanks for your comments.
Some responses:
1. Clearly jihadists think evil is extrinsic to them. It is a long time since we have heard jihadists saying, "Lord, depart from me for I am a sinful man" or "Lord have mercy upon me for I am evil, born in sin." Rather jihadists are always calling for jihad upon others. For sure they regard others as evil, but the point is that the evil is extrinsic to themselves and the world will be made much better by removing that evil off the globe. And that is one of the hallmarks of the Liberal Mind. So, there are close parallels and similarities.
2. We take your point about one of the meanings of the word "liberal" is to be without restraint, to be free and open handed. That meaning of the word is still in use. It was the meaning which applied when classic liberalism first arose in the West: politically it meant minimalist government and maximum personal freedom. Its closest descendant today is libertarianism.
But the meaning and application of "liberal" has shifted over three hundred years. Now political liberals are at the forefront of complusion, more rules, controls, regulations, "big" government, higher taxes, etc. Why is this? Well, both classic liberalism and modern liberalism have shared a common belief in the intrinsic goodness of Man. Classic liberals tended to think that if individuals were free they would naturally and instinctively do what was right. But since over the centuries perfection failed to evolve, liberalism had to change its view. While it still believes that man is intrinsically good, evil persists, so it has had to recognise that there are systemic and extrinsic forces making man fail to be as good as he could and should be. Therefore the Liberal Mind is now almost exclusively focused upon removing whatever external evils it has identified--which, irony of ironies leads liberalism to become profoundly illiberal, controlling, and regulating. So in general historians of political philosophy speak of classical liberalism and modern liberalism. The former argued for a minimalist state, the latter advocate an ever growing and controlling state. But what has not changed from classic liberalism to modern liberalism is the common belief about the intrinsic goodness and perfectability of man. Moreover, what is also common between the two is the assumption that Man is the measure of all things, and answers to no-one but himself.
3. You point out that strict Islamists and jihadists would place Allah at the centre of their world view, not man. Superficially this may appear to be the case, but let us put a question to you: does Allah exist or is he a figment of Mohammed's febrile imagination? In other words, is Allah an idol, in the same category as Bel, Zeus, Jupiter, and Baal? The answer is of course yes. Allah is a figment and creation of the mind of fallen man--so in Islam, as in all false religions, Man is the measure of all things, Man created Allah in the sense of making the whole thing up, and therefore Man is fundamentally at the centre of the Islamic world view.
Now to be sure the particular views of the world held by Islamists and Liberals are superficially very different but they share common assumptions and starting points. Maybe this is one reason why elite Liberals have rushed to bow down to Islamic demands all over Western Europe and the UK.
We will be posting more on Islam in the near future.
1) I see. So by this standard, you must regard George Bush as having a liberal mind, too, since he seems to think the solution to the world's problem's is to get rid of the evil dictators like Saddam, install democracy, and watch freedom reign.
2) Fair point, though I would point out that modern liberalism, though it is very illiberal when it comes to economic and certain other freedoms, probably allows more freedom of expression, speech, religion, and sexuality than ever before.
3) I thought you'd say that. But then, I happen to believe God is a figment of the imagination too, so from my perspective, by that logic, Man is at the centre of all the major worldview systems.
In response:
1. Yes, you are correct. George Bush has showed many manifestations of the Liberal Mind--not only in foreign affairs, but also in his complicity with the Democrats in deficit (debt) spending.
2. Try opposing modern liberalism over any of its sacred cows and you will find out very quickly just how intolerant and illiberal the modern liberal is.
3. If you continue as an Unbeliever you will of course remain conditioned to see man as god. The only debate you can have with fellow Unbelievers is which variant of man-as-god you personally prefer, but in the end it can never amount to more than a matter of personal preference, not the truth. As Sartre once observed, truth only has existence if it has an infinite reference point. Regrettably for Unbelief, last time we checked Man is neither infinite, nor eternal, nor unchangeable.
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