In the Final Analysis . . .

Only Two Ideologies

"I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued.  "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles.  One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units.  The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community--which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.  The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality.

Humbugs and dilettantes has always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible.  

--Ivanov, Rubashov's interrogator.  Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon--"The Second Hearing"

Knowing the Enemy, Part I

Ships Passing in the Night

We have observed before on this blog that the West is failing miserably to understand ISIS--President Obama failing worst of all.  There are a number of reasons for this.  Firstly, the West is secularist and materialist in its philosophical, ideological and religious outlooks.  It projects its world-view onto other hearts and minds around the globe.  When these folk fail to live up to Western expectations, but rather live other philosophies and religions, Western leaders bemusedly scratch their heads.

Secondly, the Commentariat and the ruling classes in the West (as part of their secularism) despise other religions as ignorance personified.  The West's "selfie" view is that it has shrugged off the coils of superstition, gods, heaven, hell, and eternity.  There is only matter, which is both brute and blind.  Any suggestion otherwise is regarded as pre-scientific and pre-rational.  Any other view, except the West's, is ignorance personified.  Thus, the West views religious people (Christians included) as uneducated, untaught, and ignorant.  They are, therefore, primitive and superstititious. 

Thirdly, the West has a confused understanding of "fundamentalism" (which in the present Western lexicon is a term of contempt).

The Triumph of the Left

We're All Marxists Now

In his book, The Broken Compass, Peter Hitchens describes and and seeks to explain how there is no longer any substantial ideological debates in the UK.  Rather there is an ideological consensus, shared by both "left" and "right".  That consensus is nurtured in the bosoms and minds of an elitist few who now dominate the Labour and Conservative parties.

Hitchens illustrates this situation by contrasting the UK with Russia.

Russia is no longer an ideological state, externally or internally.  It no longer seeks global power, and in some ways is less interested in the minds of its citizens than are "Western" countries which demand increasing obedience to the formulas of political correctness.  In Russia you may hold what private opinions you like.  Just do not challenge the state.  In Britain, your private opinions may be reported to the authorities and get you into trouble, even if you believe your actions are part of normal life and you have not wish to challenge the state.  This paradox is one of the most alarming facts about the modern world, and is unfortunately too little understood.  . . .

Here as everywhere else in the formerly anti-Marxist "West", the supposedly beaten Left have become the establishment.  The Left and their utopian ideas dominate the civil service, the arts, broadcasting, the academy, the bench of bishops, the courts and the police.

They now censor (and censure) speech and thought, through the formulas of political correctness.  They place narrower limits on the speech and writing of others than the Lord Chamberlain ever did on the London stage.  At the same time they dispense with any rules that might get in their own way.  A liberal will defend to the death your right to disagree with her.  Disagree with her, and she will call the police. [Peter Hitchens, The Broken Compass: How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning (London: Continuum, , 2009) p. viii, ix.]

The same realities hold true in New Zealand--with one major difference.

Ends That Justify Dissembling

Habitual Liars

Every so often politicians or those active in legislative chambers "show and tell".  They let us know what is (or has been) really going on.  One such moment has taken place in the United States.  One of the architects of deeply unpopular Obamacare has acknowledged (to a select audience) that at a critical point the language of the bill was crafted to disguise the truth.  The truth being disguised was that Obamacare, at its heart, is an enforced application of socialised medicine, where the more wealthy pay for the healthcare of others, through a taxing mechanism.

One of the architects of Obamacare said the law was written in a deliberately “tortured” way and relied on the “stupidity of the American voter” to ensure its passage.

In a newly unearthed 2013 clip, Jonathan Gruber, the MIT health economist who helped craft parts of the Affordable Care Act, got fairly candid about the tactics used to get the Affordable Care Act passed during a panel at the Annual Health Economists’ Conference last year.  “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes,” Gruber said in one 52-second clip. “If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”

Gruber then trumpeted the value of a “lack of transparency” — and called American voters stupid.  “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber said. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass.” [Emphasis, ours]

Lack of transparency--or dissembling, deceit, lying--is ever a favoured device amongst the enemy, for they are children of the Father of Lies.  Ideologues, for whom a cause justifies all means to achieve it, will ever resort to lying and duplicity to get their way. 

In New Zealand our recent history provides a classic example.

Ideological Curios, Part II

Israel, Palestinians and the Secular Left

We lament any crass, nationalist idolatry which intones, "My country, right or wrong". But it seems as though, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the world is filled with ideologues who have fallen into just such an idolatry.  Amongst these groups it is "My Israel, right or wrong" or "My Palestinians, right or wrong".  In both these cases, beneath the surface lies a controlling ideology which frames either Israel or the Palestinians as all good or all bad.

In a previous post we discussed the flawed biblical theology of Dispensationalism which leads professing Christians to side with Israel, right or wrong.  More accurately, they rarely see any wrongs when it comes to Israel.  Ironically, this highly motivated stream of Christians are acutely aware of the depravity and secularity of the West, including their respective host countries, but are blind toward the same failings and evil coursing through Israel's veins.

A similar, but reverse blindness can be found amongst the secular Left in the West.  Peter Hitchens, who for many years deliberately walked in the pathways of the Left, explains:

Testing Ideologies

Ain't No Fig Tree

The terms "ideology" and "ideological" are  used as an insult these days, more often than not.  To accuse your opponent of being ideological implies that they are out of touch with reality, closed minded, impractical, dangerous, even absolutist.  The term, "idealist" less so.  In common parlance, an idealist is someone close to sainthood--a person who puts their ideals and beliefs ahead of themselves and who is willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of a higher, nobler cause.  Usually, however, their devotion it is said that their devotion has put them out of touch with reality.  Which is to say they are slightly mad. 

Whether being ideological or an idealist is good or bad depends upon the ideology in question.  Stalin and Hitler and Mao were ideological.  They could even be said to be idealists, in the sense that they were controlled by a set of ideas bigger than themselves, to which they were committed and devoted servants.  So was Mother Theresa.  But in the case of the former, the ideology was evil; consequently the idealists devoted to it were given over to evil.  Not so with the celebrated Christian in Calcutta. 

Whether we like it or not, or are aware of it or not, every human being is controlled by ideologies of one shape or form.

Confronting Islam . . . . or Not, Part II

Playing Pop Music to Break Down the Walls

In Part I of "Confronting Islam . . . . or Not" we had recourse to a series of essays [Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies From Communism to Islamism, edited by Katharine Cornell Gorka and Patrick Sookhdeo (McLean, Va: The Westminster Institute/Isaac Publishing, 2012.)] The point was made that the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union gained traction when Western leaders began to "tell the truth" about communist dictatorships.  Prior to that time the received wisdom was that it was dangerous to tell the truth because it risked provoking the Soviet Union into belligerent reactions. 

The general theme of the essays in the above collection is that one must fight and win the ideological war.  It is equally, if not more important, than winning the military or intelligence or economic conflicts.  Yet it is the war front which the US in particular and the West in general are remarkably unwilling to acknowledge.  Today the West has retreated to a quietism and pacificism when it comes to Islam worse than its early conduct of the Cold War. 

The lengths to which the US government has gone to cover over the influence of Islamic doctrine, beliefs, traditions and practices upon Islamic terrorism is literally incredible.

Confronting Islam, or Not . . . Part I

The Evil Empire

We have recently been reading a series of essays, entitled Fighting the Ideological War.  The overarching focus is upon the West's need to fight Islam ideologically.  Several of the essays argue that the West has failed miserably to this point, firstly to see Islam as an ideology, and, secondly, to combat it at the ideological level.  One essay draws parallels with the Cold War.  It reads like a comic opera.  [John H. Moore, "Ideology and Central Planning: Lessons from the Cold War", Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies From Communism to Islamism, edited by Katharine Cornell Gorka and Patrick Sookhdeo (McLean, Va: The Westminster Institute/Isaac Publishing, 2012.] 

Moore points out that in the 1950's and 1960's the overwhelming consensus amongst credentialed academics was that the Soviet Union had a superior economic model and philosophy to the West.  Socialism was succeeding in making the Soviet Union economically wealthy, whilst the West was being overtaken in almost every sphere.  The Soviets were inevitably going to dominate the world.  The Commentariat believed that this would be the outcome because socialism was an inherently better system than capitalism.  In other words, as the Cold War progressed the establishment in the US, both in and out of government, in the media, and in academia had already capitulated. 

It all turned out to be untrue.

Anti-Dogmatism

Invincible Ignorance

Dogma gets a bad rap these days.  One of the most cutting slurs available is to call your opponent "dogmatic" or his views "dogma".  As with all slurs, the thrust is twofold: if you call out your opponent for being dogmatic, the immediate assumption is that you, on the other hand, must be reasonable, pragmatic, and open-minded.  By casting the aspersion at another you paint yourself in a noble light. 

Economist, John Kenneth Galbraith scorned dogma in true dogmatic fashion: "When people are the least sure, they are often the most dogmatic."  This is ad hominem at its most sublime: my opponent is firm in his views, but the very firmness betrays his underlying doubt and uncertainty.  Wow.  Who would have seen that coming. 

Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould also dogmatically warned of the dangers of dogmatism:

Deceptions

The Dishonesty of Pragmatism

Whenever a public spokesman or talking head decry ideology in favour of (open-minded) pragmatic solutions, beware.  Lurking behind the statement is always a particular ideology, all the more destructive because hidden.  The appeal to pragmatics over ideology is a subterfuge, a deceit.

The common stereotype is that someone who is ideological in his approach to matter of justice or equity or the role of the state is blinkered, myopic and empty headed.  The pragmatic man, however, comes forth without preconceptions, focusing only upon the facts and realities.  The pragmatic man is subtle, clever, open minded, scientific, rational and so forth.  There is, of course, a natural fit between pragmatism and evolutionism.  Under the latter, things emerge.  New entities come into existence.  Conditions change permanently (or at least for a time).  Ideology tries to prevent all this, locking man into ancient rules and formulae which bear no relationship to the complexities of our modern world. 

Consider how "reasonable" John Kenneth Galbraith sounds to our modern ears:

Diverting Political Debates

Tragedies We Inflict Upon Ourselves

Political ideology is a diverting area of study--particularly when politics are operating in a secularist cocoon.  Of course, politics and government in the West are overwhelmingly secular in our generation.  (The United States is the final bastion of anti-secularism but its decline and fall are now well down the track.)

Political ideologies of both Left and Right all agree on one critical maxim: there ain't no God.  Whether in Cameron's Whitehall, Hollande's Elysee Palace, or Obama's White House the conviction is shared.  It is certain because shared.  Everyone agrees.  When it comes to politics and government, we are all atheists now.

Darwinist Self-Deception

Round and Round in Self-Serving Circles

Darwinism rapidly evolved into a cosmology, which is a theory of everything. A theory that explains everything that exists can never be falsified. Its successive iterations (social Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, neo-neo-Darwinism) simply illustrate the religious, non-scientific nature of the Darwinian cosmology. The version of evolutionism is changing all the time: what changes not is the cosmology itself--that matter is ultimate and is randomly auto-existent. When scientific experimentation and evidence calls into question the currently prevailing version of evolution, the version adapts and changes like a wax nose. What never changes is the underlying, framing cosmology. The reason is that the cosmology is religious in nature and that science always conforms to the religious paradigm in which it operates.

Reading Darwinists is tiresome because with a straight face they claim a scientific foundation, on the one hand, whilst qualifiying, bending, re-interpreting, reshaping, redefining, and adapting so that everything fits their deeper truth-commitment, their cosmology, on the other. But the fit is always incomplete and prejudiced. Scientific scepticism is readily supplanted by a willing credulity. The bubbles keep escaping.  What this shows is that to the Darwinist mind, the cosmology is far, far more important than the science. The latter is the garb of hypocritical self-respectability, not substance.

Take the following quotation as an illustration of the point:

Evolutionary thinking is particularly useful in illuminating our view of childhood in the realm of facultative adaptation—a sort of "if then" proposition built into our genes. Evolution and genes sometimes say, This is how it must always be, but often they say, If in such-and-such an environment, respond with this adaptation, but if in this other, very different context, respond with that one. Sometimes the consequences are dire for children. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, of McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, have shown that abuse and neglect, up to and including killing children, are almost 100 times more likely in households with an adult male who is not genetically related to the child. Nothing, I think, could make it clearer that evolutionary explanations must be kept completely separate from moral and legal judgments. Yet this well-established fact about violence committed against children, independent of socioeconomic status and shown across national boundaries, should lead us to a new ways of thinking about abuse prevention. They can be subtle, not draconian, but they should recognize the facts.
(Melvin Konner, How Childhood Has Evolved, The Chronicle Review. (Emphasis, ours)

Observe the self-deceitful, sleight-of-hand. "Evolutionary explanations must be kept completely separate from moral and legal judgments" . . . And the question is, Why? Genetic "evidence" shows that a certain kind of person is predisposed to murder the children in his household. Surely, "scientific" rigorous evolutionary theory would say that this is entirely appropriate and consistent with the theory. But no. Moral and legal judgments must suddenly intrude, and reject the murder of children. Why? Ah, well, even broader cosmological arguments kick in and claim that moral and legal constructs, whilst not embedded in genes, are also part of the gradual evolution of the species to higher plains. Really. And the scientific evidence for that is . . .?

But, further, the inescapable reality is that when Konner and evolutionists talk about moral and legal judgements that would, in this case, be inveighed against a foster parent killing a non-genetically descended child, there can be no fundamental absolute moral or ethical or legal condemnation of such an act from within the Darwinian cosmology. There is only the reality of conflict upon which evolutionary processes proceed. The murderous parent is (presumably) protecting his genetic strain. In this case the criminal justice system is the challenger. In order to proceed higher, combat must take place. If the erstwhile criminal succeeds and gets off scot free, he has advanced the race (or at least his particular genetic strain) and called into question the validity of the current moral and legal code, which would have been proved impotent and weak in this case. Surely. Thus, the evolutionist who appeals to the "higher superiority" of legal and moral codes which must be set against the genetic codes, is simply and comprehensively begging the question. In a universe where matter is ultimate and is randomly auto-existent, the notion of a "higher superiority" of anything is egregious question begging.

Legal and moral codes exist, which, according to the Darwinian cosmology, means that they, too, have to be the product of evolutionary development. But if they are successfully broken and overcome, that too is a development, a step forward, a progression. Darwinian evolution is not uniform and linear. Within the evolutionary process there are many blind alleys. For the evolutionist, today's moral and legal codes may be (and probably are) one of them. No evolutionist can gainsay without being guilty of duplicitous special pleading.

So, the insistence that "evolutionary explanations must be kept completely separate from moral and legal judgments" is an egregious deceit in the light of Darwinian cosmology. To pretend otherwise is contemptible sophistry. You cannot have it both ways. Ah, we long for the good-old-days when Darwinists were more honest and self-respecting. But as for scientific objectivity, it long ago self-defenestrated in favour of an irrational, internally contradictory religion.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Earthly Clay on our Heavenly Boots

Douglas Wilson January 17, 2010
Posted in Blog and Mablog

I want to begin by noting the importance of being loyal to a bunch of things -- in every area of life. I do not speak of idolatrous loyalty, but rather a fierce kind of Chestertonian loyalty to the piles of stuff and collections of people that God surrounds all of us with.

If we are loyal in idolatrous ways, we soon discover that such loyalties are binary, with other loyalties not tolerated. But if we are loyal in Trinitarian ways, we discover that our loyalties are textured, layered, tangled, and glorious. And the more of them I have, the more grateful I am, and the more grateful I am, the safer I am in this perilous world. This is the only protection against lying ideologues and ideologies.

The ideologue has read fat books, and has thought deep thoughts. He is bitingly cynical about those of us who crawl on the earth, as he observes us all from his balcony of abstractions. He can line up ideas, end to end, and has all kinds of reasons for his lack of natural affection. This phenomenon occurs whether we are talking about culture, politics, marriage, or theology. It is countered, not with more ideas for him to line up in a row, but with a host of molecular connections -- from those who have paid membership dues in Burke's little platoons.

The ideologue is afraid to clutter up his life, because it might distract him from the Cause, whatever the Cause might be. Like Lenin, who did not want to listen to music because it stirred up unwanted sentiments, the ideologue views everything that lays a claim on our loyalties with suspicion. Don't you know that money could have been given to the central committee? Don't you know that a few more sacrifices would advance the cause of world missions? Don't you know that this ointment could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor? The ideologue is constantly jockeying for position, and is always ready to throw a sharp glance . . . or elbow. As Ambrose Bierce put it once, exhortation is to put the conscience of another upon the spit, and roast it to a nut brown discomfort.

The problem is, that in the world God made, everything lays claim to our loyalties, and everything does right to do so. If we love God, He shows us how to love our neighbor rightly. If we love God, He causes all our loves and loyalties to sort themselves out into wonderful patterns. He is not threatened by any of it. Just as the crystal patterns of the snowflake form in mystical ways, so also the glorious connections of a biblical life, crammed full of interesting things, form up in mystical ways.

Never trust a man who wants to arrange things he has no affection for. Never give authority to a man who wants to govern things in accordance with an Idea. And it doesn't matter if it is a good idea -- in fact, the better the idea, the worse everything will be if he gets his way. Nothing worse than clinical and pristine accuracy.

What sorts of loyalties need to be sorted out? God has fashioned the world in such a way that these things vary from person to person, family to family, and nation to nation. That's as it should be. There is a lot of fun overlap, there are things completely different, and there are fun vists to other people's homey customs -- like my introduction the other day to the tim tam slam. You can ask the Australians about that one.

But, speaking for myself, what kind of loyalty jumble are we talking about? Well, this would include, but not be limited to: the submarine service, Scotland, my wife's neck, the pie faces of my grandchildren, fourteen and counting, the Westminster Confession, the creeks and inlets of Maryland, the Lord's Supper, Southern Baptists, the evergreen forests of Idaho, mowing the lawn, bicameral legislatures, King Alfred, the book of Romans, the faithfulness of Augustine, the illustrations of Thomas Watson, oatmeal for breakfast, hot coffee at a truck stop in Wyoming in the early morning, a good book and a roaring fire, broadband, American cheerfulness, cussedness, and generosity, the Winchester rifle, preaching the Word, and pick up trucks. I may have inadvertantly left some things out. In that order? No, that was a random order. The order would change depending on what the circumstances were.

The lists that every one of us could (and should) generate makes some people think that we are just lining up thousands of actual or potential idols. Well, sure. This is a sinful world, and bad things happen in it. But my experience shows that idolators are far more likely to be focussed and narrow than expansive and generous. This is because there is only one God who can keep track of all the things that I have to be grateful for, and ought to loyal to. But in order to have that God, the triune God of Scripture, keep things in order, I must honor Him above all things. If I honor and worship Him rightly, He will keep the rabble of my many affections in order.

The ideologue detects the presence of such affections, and assumes some sort of idolatry. But it is actually the absence of loyalties, the deadening of natural affections, that is the tell tale mark.

The point? It is a variation of a point that I believe Richard John Neuhaus once made. It is this: when I stand before God, I will of course have nothing to commend myself apart from the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But I will nonetheless stand before Him as an American, a churchman, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a son, and a brother. If I try beforehand to divest myself of these connections, as though they were earthly clay on my heavenly boots, then I have radically misunderstood what God has called us to do.

It's the Arrogance, Ma'am

Why Conservative Governments Do Better

All democracies, unless they are grounded in the Christian faith, drift inevitably into despotism. Democratic governments invariably expand their controls and regulations over all of human life.

Consequently, it is reasonable to expect that left-wing governments will hold political office for the majority of the time in modern democracies. Democracy and big-government ideologues would appear to be a marriage made in heaven. If democracies are ever drifting leftward as electorates persistently look to government for the solution even to their petty problems, then it seems inevitable that political parties with names such as Labour, Democrats, Social Democrats, or Liberals (in Canada, not Aussie) would hold the reins of power more or less persistently and consistently.

But clearly this is not the case. It turns out that despotically drifting democracies tend to prefer "right wing" or conservative rulers far more than one would expect. There are at least two reasons for this. In the first place, conservative parties and factions are themselves subject to the universal democratic drift towards despotism. If mini-skirts are "in", conservatives will wear their skirts just one centimetre longer than the labourites. They will follow the left-ward drift albeit at a respectable distance. Thus, it is relatively easy for conservative regimes to retain popular support.

As we have seen in New Zealand, when centre-right governments are returned to power their first order of business is not to scare the horses. Thus, they conserve the previous left-wing's advances of statist controls and powers. Modern right-wing governments tend to be consolidators: they have the function of making the electorate comfortable with the newly enhanced state powers. But they often do so with a "human face". They set about calming and quieting the horses, speaking mellifluously about freedoms and commitments to individual liberty and upholding the integrity of families. Uttering the words, even while continuing to maintain or even expand government despotic control, has a strangely calming narcotic effect upon skittish electorates.

Thus, democracies which really lust after bigger and bigger government, provided it continues to pay them out, tend to be more comfortable with conservative administrations. They "feel" better and more comfortable whilst the despotic drift continues.

But there is another reason why left-wing political parties do not do as well as might be expected in ever increasingly socialistic democracies. It is that they are quickly perceived to be arrogant by the electorate. The problem is that left-wing politicians tend to believe that they actually do know what is best for people: essentially more government, bigger government is better. Quickly this translates into politicians knowing what is best for voters. Left wing politicians are easily and naturally perceived as arrogant.

Voters hate arrogance on the part of their servant-rulers. The irony is that both voters and politicians really share a common belief that governments can do it better (in virtually everything). But voters don't like to have this rammed up their noses--as it were. They like to be respected, courted, won-over. They like their politicians to do the dance of a thousand genuflections in their direction. But left-wing politicians are more hidebound by naked ideology: the risk is that ideology quickly overshadows the mincing dances towards the electorate. The lust for the "greater good" can make left-wing politicians stridently impatient.

The rapid declension of the Obama administration and the Democractic Congress in the United States is an apt illustration of the conundrum. Obama and the Democrats have been increasingly fixated upon introducing socialised medicine into the US. With good reason they believe that if they get it in now, the conservatives will never turn it back. They just know that it is going to be good for the country. At heart, we suspect the overwhelming majority of the electorate probably likes the idea that the government will be there for them in a medical emergency or costly illness. But quickly the Democrats political capital has evaporated as an electorate has felt un-consulted, jilted.

Obama and the Democrats are now tagged with elitism and arrogance. Their response is to double up and drive harder--as all ideologues will. If they continue, it is possible that the 2010 elections will send them into a generational political wilderness.

But, let us be clear. If the Republican party ends up dominating federal and state politics in the US for the next twenty-five years it will not stop the despotic drift of the US into socialism-by-another-name. It will only effect the speed of the drift and the comfort of the electorate along the way.

The only way this would not occur is if a significant majority emerges in the United States which no longer regards government as their de-facto god because they have truly repented and humbled themselves before the Living God, and received mercy at His gracious hand. Such things, however, usually take two or three generations to eventuate. And, like all true works of Messiah, they are impossible to predict; they can only be seen and known after the fact.

Regardless, all Christians who are properly taught, understand that there is no hope and no salvation in modern secular democracies. Can there be any hope in a culture which, in its final analysis, has nothing other than a creed of "our god is our belly"? But our hope ever remains in the King of all kings; His realm is inevitably growing and expanding. In the end, truly sustainable democracy will emerge all over the earth where the power of government is extensively proscribed out of the people's love for God and for their neighbours. Omni-competent despotic governments, and the secular democracies which spawned them, will be obsolete.