Privileges and Pride

'One Ring to Bring Them All and in the Darkness Bind Them'

Beware the man whose fundament for truths and morals rises no higher than himself or his kind.  Such a person is apt to oppose most vehemently all Christians, whose fundaments rest on a Being infinitely higher and wiser than mankind.  The vehemence rests of two planks.  Firstly, the frustration that arises from being uncloaked, being exposed as resting opinions, truth, and ethics on wishful thinking, not metaphysical substance.  Secondly, the frustration of having to discourse with one whose God does not and will not bow to the "wisdom" of a creature.

But worse, often the one whose fundamental belief is that Man is the measure of all things, is not just filled with hatred for the contrary view.  He also has a love of power, secretly lusting to rule over others, controlling them so as to reinforce his ideas.  As philosopher Bertrand Russell once said: "Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power."  Quite so.

As Jonah Goldberg put it:

Hatred of the Church, sometimes understandable, often deranged, is too often the hallmark of men whose will to power drives them to clear the field both of competing sources of authority as well as any institution that gives voice to conscience.  From the Jacobins to the Kulturkampfers, to the Nazis and the Bolsheviks the witness of Christian faith has buzzed the ears of evil men to the point of distraction.  In one of countless pithy ditties against religion, Voltaire proclaimed a decade before his death in 1778 that Christianity "is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloody ["idea"] to ever infect the world'"  He may have been hero of free inquiry and civil liberties, but if only he had lived a little longer, he'd have seen the anti-religious movement to which he lent his intellect unleash the Terror and kill in a few short years tenfold the number of men killed in three hundred years of the Spanish Inquisition.  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.253.]

 J.C. von Krempach gives us a modern example of the genre.  The homosexual lobby has coined a term to slur any opposition, the merest hint of criticism of homosexuality: homophobia.  [The word is a hoot, really.  Christians do not fear homosexuality any more than they fear lying or covetousness or murder.  Homosexuality is wicked and sinful, but it takes its place in a vast phalanx of human evils.  For Christians to be deflected by such a word would be akin to the lobby of thieves coining the term kleptophobia to slur opponents of their particular lusts and expecting that Christians would take notice.]  But the point is that homosexuals are trying to silence opponents, to exercise authority over them, compelling them to be mute.  Clearly open hatred and a disguised love of power is at work in this particular instance.  Von Krempach cites a Green European MP, Ulrike Lunacek who is demanding that  in Europe

“hate speech” and “hate crimes” against LGBT people should be subject to specific criminal sanctions. Of course, we all agree that there should be no expression of, or incitement to, hate in the public sphere – but why do LGBT people deserve a special protection that other people don’t deserve? Why does Mrs. Lunacek not come up with a proposal that would afford equal protection and equal attention to all, including non-homosexuals? When, as it has happened twice in the last few months, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels was physically attacked and insulted by homosexualist/abortionist activists, did anyone hear Mrs. Lunacek protest? But the intention of the Lunacek-report apparently is to create a privilege for the LGBT-Lobby: they alone are to enjoy the right to freely express their opinions, whereas any public statement that is even remotely critical of their agenda will be denounced as a “hate crime” and evicted from public debate. (For example, collecting signatures for a petition protesting against attempts to redefine marriage is, according to this logic, a “hate crime”. The apparent purpose pursued by the LGBT lobby is to stifle democracy and the freedom of expression, and to intimidate critics.)