You may be facing a HUGE and shrill reaction to your message, Todd, but many of us our applauding and hoping we will find the courage to speak up as calmly, clearly, and directly as you have, here. May God give us strength to stand firmly on testable truth!
Self evident that all men are created equal refers to refers to value and rights. Adding the creation: In the image of God He made them, male and female He created them, leaving unquestionable who is referred to.
Interesting chart of democracies’ lifespans. Since we are a republic, a democratic, federalist republic, it may move us into a a better category, or it may not. I see there are no republics listed.
I think you guys are at the point of no return on the Tytler Cycle as well. As the saying goes, from a Reublic to a Democracy and on through the rest of the cycle.
Thanks for the answer, but what would put the USA in the particular spot now? It’s a really important topic, and should have some logical discussion. Example: After our Constitution was signed, Ben Franklin was asked what kind of government we have. “You have a Republic, if you can keep it.” Have the People’s actions been known to affect the lifespan of Democracies?
The Founders were classically educated, which is why the system they created was pretty non-democratic. (Only male property owners can vote and the federal govt is elected by state legislatures; the original construction was a masterclass in oligarchy.)
They did that because of Plato's definition of democracy (paraphrase): "Democracy is a crew of sailors who, having mutinied and locked the captain in his cabin, went on a bender with the ships rum and are now arguing about who gets to use the tiller, despite all being drunk and none having any navigational training."
If you've ever heard the term "ship of state", that passage in Plato's Republic is where it comes from. And Plato was convinced that democracy would run it aground.
Adams himself was channeling Aristotle's teaching that only a group of people who have mastered personal self-government (virtue) can ever be capable of its collective form (democracy).
Always harkening back umpteen hundred years to make your case, like as if we haven't honed things since then!! Democracies go through the Tytler Cycle and slide into tyranny. You'll note that it's religion that gets them out of said tyranny, and to my point, we become less religious with the success of freedom said religion gets us.
The correct question is, how do avoid the Tytler Cycle without civil war as the solution suggested by Gearoge Washington (The Tree of Liberty will have to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots). I've come up with a pretty solid solution. Have you tried your hand at it? Try being productive for a change!!
I was agreeing with you, not arguing with you, John. (Although re-reading my comment, I can see why you took it the latter way.) I wasn't implying that you (or Adams) were wrong, rather that his view wasn't original but considered self-evident in European civilization for a couple of millennia. What's remarkable is that we managed to forget it in just a couple hundred years.
I'm not as convinced as you are about Tytler's veracity. I think he was played fast and loose with history to make a point. However, I think you (and he) are correct that sans-God, most of the West's cherished "liberal" institutions (incl democracy) can neither be derived nor defended. As I tell my civics students: "All men are created equal" is utterly nonsensical without some form of "man made in the image of God". If you're just a smart ape, who gave you those rights?
Sorry I gave you the impression I was arguing. :-)
This comment demonstrates why including a return of dominance to Christian beliefs in the public domain (like assuming its truth value to understand 'civics'!) is incompatible with 'restoring the west'.
The enlightened principles of our rights and freedoms compete directly with such religious sensibilities. The example you offer underscores this claim. You teach civic' without understanding the enlightened principles that underlie them. You demonstrate this (what I presume is ignorance) by equating a laïcitéa person (read, secularist) to "just a smart ape?" as if this in some obvious way detracts from these principles containing reasoned universality. We are smart apes. Your DNA proves this beyond any reasonable doubt. Then you add insult to injury by being baffled that some one, some thing, some divine agency, I guess, has to give these rights - shared by all and derived from the principles of reason - TO people rather than properly understood (as any basic civics course should clearly and unequivocally teach as outlined in the Constitution) as arising FROM the people as sufficient... a sufficient source for the direction of consent to be very clear: FROM the people TO authority. That's the basis of our borrowed consent called 'voting' to create a 'representative'. This understanding is both fundamental and necessary to justifying any kind of public authority! If you don't even grasp the basics of these reasoned enlightenment principles as the actual foundation of western liberal democracy, and insist we must all support a top down divine Christian authority in their place that undermines them, what possible chance do we have of restoring the west? It seems obvious to me that what is actually being proposed is a return to top down religious authority that took many, many centuries to overcome to make way for government of the people, by the people, for the people.
"enlightened principles of rights compete directly with such religious sensibilities"
I lack the bandwith to go through your comment point by point, but I stand by my comment. The Declaration of Independence is premised on the idea of natural rights, which Locke got from Christian teachings on Natural Law. The very next line of the document states this connection explicitly: "...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Short form, if you're just a smart ape (a naturalistic materialist view) you had no Creator and thus you have no natural rights.
My degree is in economics and poli sci and I've spent 10 years teaching those and Western philosophy, so others here can decide who they agree with.
Then you know that portion "by their creator" was added by the insistence of Franklin simply to make peace with the more religious founders. The key to remember is that although this was in the Declaration, nowhere does any such divine element appear in the Constitution. (That's why it's 'revolutionary'.) This demonstrates that rights as far as thee revolutionary American experiment is concerned do NOT come from above but from below, from the People. Although Christian religious apologists have tried to repaint this reality to align with the metaphysical notion of Christian 'natural' philosophy imported from Plato, (and, by such extension, the same metaphysical interpretation for 'natural' rights), the Constitution clarifies beyond any shadow of doubt. Being a person is sufficient to gain these rights. They are inherited by birth as far as the Constitution is concerned. This is self evident. This is sufficient. Why anyone needs to add a Christian creator element in order to have natural rights is completely imported into this by the religious person insisting for absolutely no reason whatsoever that some god is necessary. This is not true in fact because the Constitution doesn't contain any such reference. (This is why apologists insist on quoting from and only the Declaration... the insertion is all they've got to work with.)
I think you're taking the phrase All men are created equal too literally. It's realy a shield against those that think they're "all that" b/c they were born with a silver spoon in their nouth and you don't get to mistreat others b/c they're of a different class. It's what gives us Equality under the Law.
In other words, it's a sheild against snobs.
It's to understand that everyone's life and challenges are different, and deserving of respect regardless. Some kid that was severly abused by substance abusing parents that leads a straight life and holds down a job and doesn't steal or otherwise molest others is really good for him.
It sounds like you're envious against those born with a silver speoon. Those ppl have problems too. Mo money Mo problems!! Remember - Envy is the theif of joy. (thou shall not covet)
There is some evidence that this reference is more align with rejecting British primogeniture law of first born male inheritance. Certainly Jefferson wrote about this quite a bit when he talked about latter brothers causing wars (and going into the Church) to help advance them after their older brother inherited everything.
I'd say that to them it really WAS democratic, and certainly a lot more democratic than obtained elsewhere in the world. It took a while for the modern idea of mass democracy to really take root. Which is understandable because it's quite the undertaking, and it had never been done before.
I'm less enamored with mass democracy than you are. I may not be ready to sign on to "philosopher kings", but overall, I tend to agree with Plato. Or Burke. Or (oddly) with John Stuart Mill: "despotism is appropriate when dealing with barbarians." Although the phrasing is different, Mill sentiment there rhymes with Aristotle's.
I think there's certainly a discussion to be had, Brian. It used to be that there was a Household Vote, the idea being that if you could run a household/family with reasonable success then you might be someone that could be trusted with the fate of the nation. There's something in that idea, I think, even if it's hard to imagine going back to that sort of model now.
One of the assignments I give my civics students every year is to design a system of government for our (private) school if we all got stranded on a tropical island. We're about 150 families, all Christian and relatively close, so lots of options (even monarchy and communism) actually work pretty well at that scale. Most kids end up creating some kind of election system.
One year though, I had a girl who designed an election system, but it was 1 vote per family. I'd never had anyone come up with that before and I asked her about it. To her, it was completely logical: the base unit of society is the family, so why wouldn't your democracy start there.
Your "Household Vote" concept reminded me of her idea. And you're correct that the combination of property ownership, racial, and only-male requirements effectively created exactly what you're describing in early America.
I love that story, Brian! And I do believe the girl has a point. You hardly hear it discussed in the "mainstream" anymore but there really is no society without effective well-ordered families. The Puritan fathers of America understood this implicitly, as did everyone here in Britain. Then at a certain point we stopped talking about families and "family values" and only talked about the freedom and rights of individuals. You'll notice it also in the media now where there is hardly any family viewing to be had, whereas it was really the norm when I was growing up. Made for much better viewing, in my view, since the content had to be that much more rounded and palatable across all the generations and genders.
As in culture, so in politics, we certainly need to restore a sense of the importance of families to the integrity of our societies. As I say, the Household Vote used to be the norm in our Western democracies, and even if we can't go back to it we can learn from that earlier family-centred mindset. If you're interested in the background to all this, I can highly recommend a book by Nancy Pearcey called The Toxic War on Masculinity. As the name suggests, the book's interests are broader than just voting methods, but she nonetheless gives a very good treatment of the subject. One of those areas where you think you know how things worked, and then you realise that you actually know very little at all!
I feel ambigious about this subject. For a while my youngest daughter said she was a boy. (she was aged 11 to 14). I decided to be supportive but hoping this would blow over. One day she asked me to buy here a type of bra that would hide her growing chest. I refused because of the cost involved. In those years it seemed to be more normal to wish to change your sex than to celebrate it. Then, at 15. my daughter decided she was actualy female and had been since then.
Probably this is the normal way of things, and I sincerely hope parents in the same situation will keep calm and let youth and puberty rund its course. Actual transsexualism must be in the order of 1 in 10.000 I guess.
Oh no. The left can't let things run their course. They must foment, market, and obfuscate their conspiracy to advance the mental illness that is transgenderism. You daughter is just lucky to have escaped a course many do not.
I agree with this article but would just add the crucial point that secularization contributes to wokeism and political extremism precisely because human beings, by our vary nature, require some kind of religious worldview (we are Homo religiosus, as described by Mircea Eliade), so that when one faith is abandoned, another takes its place: in this case Leftism, which can be decribed as a functional religion or para-religion (i.e., it serves the same function as traditional religions, providing community, identity, ritual, a sense of ultimate importance and meaning). This is distinct from the essentialist definition of religion. The big difference, though, between Judeo-Christianity and Leftism is that the latter is idolatrous (or, in the case of woke Christianity, heretical) because it worships the ideal of a Utopian society. This requires the symbolic destruction of the ancien regime, the world it seeks to usurp, which is what leads to the religious violence of the Left -- which is not unlike Islamic jihad in that respect.
I would (and will) clarify that far too many of us are susceptible to religious world views because our biology is biased towards assigning agency. This has a an evolutionary benefit. So we see agency being assigned where there is none all the time. Religion writ large is just one example (goddidit). Aristotle assumed the same, that agency caused motion. But (fortunately for humanity) Galileo's thought experiment (inclined plane) went a far ways to put this metaphysical idiocy to bed once and for all and science was born as we know it today (methodological naturalism and the role of causal evidence). The benefits of putting aside these childish thoughts yields great benefit to all.
In the United States, the sexual revolution began in the summer if 1967 and was centered in San Francisco. These social changes have continued on ever since. Just the rambling thoughts of an old hermit.
Regardless of its underlying veracity, Christianity (and most religions) provide psychological tools and rituals for forgiveness. Take that away, and you end up with all the moralistic puritanism of a 17th century Quaker (although re-tuned to 21st century racial and sexual grievances) without any hope of redemption. The fact that such a futile and nihilistic worldview produces so little violence, is in indication of how much its Christian anthropology roots still echo in the Western world.
For all the talk of religion causing wars... in the modern world, institutional atheism has been far bloodier.
Is there a trope - like 'institutional atheism' - vilifying non believers that isn't regularly trotted out here? Nazism harnessed Christianity (I mean, military belt buckles said Gott mit uns - God is with us, for crying out loud). Stalin was a priest. The Ayatollahs claim a special relationship with some god's wishes. Totalitarian governments REPLACE one divine Dear Leader with another.
Like your prior comment, I'm reminded of Mark Twain's (likely apocryphal) line: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know that just ain't so.”
Joseph Stalin was not a priest. He went to seminary and was expelled.
I agree. However, the assumption of modernity is that religion is mostly a cause of division, strife, conflict, and violence. (Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins come to mind.)
The 20th century (Russia, China, N. Korea, Cambodia) largely discredits the idea that secular people are more peaceful.
I think it's more accurate to say that a certain kind of epistemology (one that admits/tolerates/supports belief in the absence of evidence) makes people more likely to be intolerant of those who disagree. It's not secularism or theism that determines how peaceful people are...it's how pragmatic and humble they are about the beliefs they do hold.
As a Christian, I wouldn't phrase it that way, but I think I understand what you mean. G.K. Chesterton said there's a "God shaped hole" in every human heart, and if we don't fill it with Him, we will fill it with something else.
And it's certainly accurate to say that Bolshevism, Nazism, and Maoism all played on religious impulses to fill that hole. They were quasi-religions in the sense that they were toalizing worldviews.
Cultural rot is indeed a problem. As another commentator (Vivir en México Sin Entender) wrote, "If a society loses confidence in transmitting its own inheritance—its moral language, its civic habits, its sense of responsibility and defense—it does not remain empty for long. Other frameworks rush in to fill the vacuum, often ones organized less around judgment than accusation."
I think this is exactly right. A west without its strong cultural heritage of which Christianity plays a vital role (needed to understand history, language, art, architecture, business, music, civic traditions etc.) cannot be understood or appreciated. So there has been a seismic shift away from this cultural heritage and a central plank of social cohesion. I think we have seen another framework - critical theory in all its various identitarian guises - rush in. The author correctly calls this a moral orthodoxy but claims without evidence or causal connection how this can be corrected by a 'return' to Christianity. Again, from the previous commentator:
"This shift can be seen across a range of institutions, including in some liberal religious contexts, where traditions once oriented around moral formation and obligation are increasingly expressed through the language of solidarity and moral indictment. Within that framework, complex political realities are recast as moral dramas, and certain actors come to embody the system’s deepest perceived injustices."
Returning to moral religiosity and its particular brand of moral orthodoxy as the OP suggests is the answer, we can see as no corrective for the current malaise. It's just another form of the same thing. The corrective is to return to liberal values that allows for individual religious belief but does not allow it to be imposed on everyone any more than today's progressive/woke/libtard moral orthodoxy should be allowed to be imposed on all. It's not the 'what' that is being imposed; it the imposing that's the problem dismantling and vilifying our common western heritage.
Despite being an atheist myself, I concede that the death of god is not necessarily a blessing for all personality types.
Whereas atheists have tended to regard the abandonment of religion as a step towards a more rational and sensible world, in fact the evidence seems to indicate the opposite.
It seems likely that perhaps the majority of the population have a hard wired tendency towards magical thinking and the abandonment of one religion merely makes way for its replacement by something which could easily be worse. Wokeness including all the gender nonsense being the latest manifestation.
I’m starting to wonder whether it would be a good idea to encourage the least objectionable religions for the benefit of the bulk of the population on the basis that otherwise they will just get involved in something worse.
Yeah, the magical thinking related to believing in an invisible, unprovable omnipotent sky daddy has *never* resulted in extremism, no sir.
I hate the woke stupidity as much as anyone, but did you actually read what you wrote? I find it's a useful exercise to try to figure out if my argument can be used against me. I'd suggest you try it, because Christian morality may be a valuable part of the Western ethos, but it's not necessary to believe in an Iron Age folk tale to agree with the moral principles. There's also nothing about Christianity that encourages scientific epistemology. Just ask Galileo.
Not true. It's true Christianity was against science at one point. But they did a 180 and became the most advanced and powerful military in the world as a result. If humans didn't need religion, it wouldn't exist, b/c human are like empty vessels, and what you fill them with matters!! And there's no denying the success of Christian-based western democracies. And no denying as we become less religious we become more evil. I don't practice religion myself, but I was raised with Christian values, and on reflectioin, they're pretty darn good. Do you believe in treating others they way you want to be treated? (Do unot others as others do unto you) ? Yeah, that's a Christian notion. It didn't come from Left wing communists or Islamists or atheists, as but one in 100 examples.
Humans are not empty vessels, our human nature is a deep part of all of us (and we don’t get our nature from religions like Christianity, rather religions derive from our natures). As for the Golden Rule, it was espoused before Jesus (by Confucious, the Buddha, Hillel, and others). It is essentially empathy, and any mother of two squabbling children would arrive at it herself.
The Galileo myth continues its poisonous lies over the years of time. Galileo had a bitter fight with the new Pope after years of lapping up his favors. He intentionally wrote scathing attacks on the Pope, which resulted in his being barred.
Are you aware that Galileo was a Christian, as were basically all of the pioneers of modern science? Many of the so-called battles between Science and Religion were actually battles between Christians holding to different philosophies. In many cases, it was actually Classical ideas of how the world and the cosmos worked that were holding back scientific progress.
Well, yes, but Hebrew cosmology and classical cosmology are equally wrong. My point is that being Christian is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being smart, decent, or moral. Any connection between Christianity and material success, scientific progress, or moral excellence is accidental. There are plenty of examples of people who have been Christians and argued against science, and who have been terrible people, and there are, conversely, plenty of examples of non-Christians who have been good people and/or great scientists.
The original article was arguing that it's dropping the "Judeo-Christian" heritage that gets you transgender insanity. There's *no* evidence of that at all, because what gets you that insanity is dropping a scientific, evidence-based, empirical epistemology. Christianity and Judaism are both predicated on a non-scientific, non-evidence/faith-based, non-empirical epistemology. Are there people who are both Christians and hold an empirical worldview? Sort of? But the core belief of monotheism, that there is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient creator deity, is *exactly* as provable as a private, ineffable sexed soul (or "gender identity"). They are both based on non-empirical epistemologies.
Transgenderism is destroying so many young people. The drugs themselves stop any chance they may of had to have children. And it's a solution that doesn't recognize that puberty is temporary, not permanent. Children need to be guided into respecting themselves for who they are, not for wishing they were something else.
"In learning to articulate its truths persuasively, humbly and lovingly, we must persist in refuting the postmodern lies surrounding us." Are you kidding? This is the status quo, and it ain't working.
As a Christian Therapist and Counselor Educator, we need many more Peer and Professional Helpers to assess and educate young people in Soul Care and Cure. We have developed ways to equip entire congregations in healthy thinking and relating to heal the broken-hearted and set the captives free. We dare not train a few expert Clinicians and leave the masses without ways to think clearly and relate healthily.
In over 50 years of Clinical and Educational work, I have never met a person confused about his/her sex. I met a few who thought they were fat despite their scales. It is a post-modern form of political and social insanity that only cons can support.
There are a lot of assumptions in what you say here that I think are distinctly open to question, James. I completely agree that being Christian is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being smart, decent or moral. However, I don't believe that is what the article is saying, and I'm not saying it either. Rather, the point is that a Christian worldview makes it more feasible for a greater number of people to live in a way that is profitable on all levels; spiritual, material and intellectual. This, we may say, is borne out by the actual history of the West, with the unprecedented levels of innovation and wealth it has created. (See The Book That Made Your World - written by an Indian intellectual - for more details.) But I would also say that this makes sense on a conceptual level too. Where Classical thinkers tended to assume that nature should conform to models that were "rational", the Biblical idea of God as a free agent above and beyond nature led Christians to explore nature itself for the clues to its inner workings. Since they believed in a Divine Lawgiver, they expected to find laws in nature. And that, of course, is exactly what they found! There is much more that one could say on these matters. For example, how there is a much more coherent basis for morality in the Bible than in the creeds of other religions. However, my dinner is ready and I think that is probably sufficient material for starters!
Yes indeed. "Self-evident" truths are really only self-evident in a Judeo-Christian context. Equally, the modern West's obsession with destroying gender, killing healthy people and erasing national borders can only truly be understood in terms of malign spiritual influence. It goes beyond mere social contagion or indoctrination, in my view. There is something downright demonic at work.
You may be facing a HUGE and shrill reaction to your message, Todd, but many of us our applauding and hoping we will find the courage to speak up as calmly, clearly, and directly as you have, here. May God give us strength to stand firmly on testable truth!
Democracy was only ever intended for a moral society. It is holly inadequate for any other.
"John Adams"
As we've become less religious, we've simultaneously become more evil.
Self evident that all men are created equal refers to refers to value and rights. Adding the creation: In the image of God He made them, male and female He created them, leaving unquestionable who is referred to.
Interesting chart of democracies’ lifespans. Since we are a republic, a democratic, federalist republic, it may move us into a a better category, or it may not. I see there are no republics listed.
I think you guys are at the point of no return on the Tytler Cycle as well. As the saying goes, from a Reublic to a Democracy and on through the rest of the cycle.
Thanks for the answer, but what would put the USA in the particular spot now? It’s a really important topic, and should have some logical discussion. Example: After our Constitution was signed, Ben Franklin was asked what kind of government we have. “You have a Republic, if you can keep it.” Have the People’s actions been known to affect the lifespan of Democracies?
The Founders were classically educated, which is why the system they created was pretty non-democratic. (Only male property owners can vote and the federal govt is elected by state legislatures; the original construction was a masterclass in oligarchy.)
They did that because of Plato's definition of democracy (paraphrase): "Democracy is a crew of sailors who, having mutinied and locked the captain in his cabin, went on a bender with the ships rum and are now arguing about who gets to use the tiller, despite all being drunk and none having any navigational training."
If you've ever heard the term "ship of state", that passage in Plato's Republic is where it comes from. And Plato was convinced that democracy would run it aground.
Adams himself was channeling Aristotle's teaching that only a group of people who have mastered personal self-government (virtue) can ever be capable of its collective form (democracy).
Always harkening back umpteen hundred years to make your case, like as if we haven't honed things since then!! Democracies go through the Tytler Cycle and slide into tyranny. You'll note that it's religion that gets them out of said tyranny, and to my point, we become less religious with the success of freedom said religion gets us.
The correct question is, how do avoid the Tytler Cycle without civil war as the solution suggested by Gearoge Washington (The Tree of Liberty will have to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots). I've come up with a pretty solid solution. Have you tried your hand at it? Try being productive for a change!!
https://sam-rogers.com/blog/tytler-cycle/
I was agreeing with you, not arguing with you, John. (Although re-reading my comment, I can see why you took it the latter way.) I wasn't implying that you (or Adams) were wrong, rather that his view wasn't original but considered self-evident in European civilization for a couple of millennia. What's remarkable is that we managed to forget it in just a couple hundred years.
I'm not as convinced as you are about Tytler's veracity. I think he was played fast and loose with history to make a point. However, I think you (and he) are correct that sans-God, most of the West's cherished "liberal" institutions (incl democracy) can neither be derived nor defended. As I tell my civics students: "All men are created equal" is utterly nonsensical without some form of "man made in the image of God". If you're just a smart ape, who gave you those rights?
Sorry I gave you the impression I was arguing. :-)
This comment demonstrates why including a return of dominance to Christian beliefs in the public domain (like assuming its truth value to understand 'civics'!) is incompatible with 'restoring the west'.
The enlightened principles of our rights and freedoms compete directly with such religious sensibilities. The example you offer underscores this claim. You teach civic' without understanding the enlightened principles that underlie them. You demonstrate this (what I presume is ignorance) by equating a laïcitéa person (read, secularist) to "just a smart ape?" as if this in some obvious way detracts from these principles containing reasoned universality. We are smart apes. Your DNA proves this beyond any reasonable doubt. Then you add insult to injury by being baffled that some one, some thing, some divine agency, I guess, has to give these rights - shared by all and derived from the principles of reason - TO people rather than properly understood (as any basic civics course should clearly and unequivocally teach as outlined in the Constitution) as arising FROM the people as sufficient... a sufficient source for the direction of consent to be very clear: FROM the people TO authority. That's the basis of our borrowed consent called 'voting' to create a 'representative'. This understanding is both fundamental and necessary to justifying any kind of public authority! If you don't even grasp the basics of these reasoned enlightenment principles as the actual foundation of western liberal democracy, and insist we must all support a top down divine Christian authority in their place that undermines them, what possible chance do we have of restoring the west? It seems obvious to me that what is actually being proposed is a return to top down religious authority that took many, many centuries to overcome to make way for government of the people, by the people, for the people.
"enlightened principles of rights compete directly with such religious sensibilities"
I lack the bandwith to go through your comment point by point, but I stand by my comment. The Declaration of Independence is premised on the idea of natural rights, which Locke got from Christian teachings on Natural Law. The very next line of the document states this connection explicitly: "...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Short form, if you're just a smart ape (a naturalistic materialist view) you had no Creator and thus you have no natural rights.
My degree is in economics and poli sci and I've spent 10 years teaching those and Western philosophy, so others here can decide who they agree with.
Then you know that portion "by their creator" was added by the insistence of Franklin simply to make peace with the more religious founders. The key to remember is that although this was in the Declaration, nowhere does any such divine element appear in the Constitution. (That's why it's 'revolutionary'.) This demonstrates that rights as far as thee revolutionary American experiment is concerned do NOT come from above but from below, from the People. Although Christian religious apologists have tried to repaint this reality to align with the metaphysical notion of Christian 'natural' philosophy imported from Plato, (and, by such extension, the same metaphysical interpretation for 'natural' rights), the Constitution clarifies beyond any shadow of doubt. Being a person is sufficient to gain these rights. They are inherited by birth as far as the Constitution is concerned. This is self evident. This is sufficient. Why anyone needs to add a Christian creator element in order to have natural rights is completely imported into this by the religious person insisting for absolutely no reason whatsoever that some god is necessary. This is not true in fact because the Constitution doesn't contain any such reference. (This is why apologists insist on quoting from and only the Declaration... the insertion is all they've got to work with.)
I think you're taking the phrase All men are created equal too literally. It's realy a shield against those that think they're "all that" b/c they were born with a silver spoon in their nouth and you don't get to mistreat others b/c they're of a different class. It's what gives us Equality under the Law.
In other words, it's a sheild against snobs.
It's to understand that everyone's life and challenges are different, and deserving of respect regardless. Some kid that was severly abused by substance abusing parents that leads a straight life and holds down a job and doesn't steal or otherwise molest others is really good for him.
It sounds like you're envious against those born with a silver speoon. Those ppl have problems too. Mo money Mo problems!! Remember - Envy is the theif of joy. (thou shall not covet)
There is some evidence that this reference is more align with rejecting British primogeniture law of first born male inheritance. Certainly Jefferson wrote about this quite a bit when he talked about latter brothers causing wars (and going into the Church) to help advance them after their older brother inherited everything.
I'd say that to them it really WAS democratic, and certainly a lot more democratic than obtained elsewhere in the world. It took a while for the modern idea of mass democracy to really take root. Which is understandable because it's quite the undertaking, and it had never been done before.
I'm less enamored with mass democracy than you are. I may not be ready to sign on to "philosopher kings", but overall, I tend to agree with Plato. Or Burke. Or (oddly) with John Stuart Mill: "despotism is appropriate when dealing with barbarians." Although the phrasing is different, Mill sentiment there rhymes with Aristotle's.
I think there's certainly a discussion to be had, Brian. It used to be that there was a Household Vote, the idea being that if you could run a household/family with reasonable success then you might be someone that could be trusted with the fate of the nation. There's something in that idea, I think, even if it's hard to imagine going back to that sort of model now.
One of the assignments I give my civics students every year is to design a system of government for our (private) school if we all got stranded on a tropical island. We're about 150 families, all Christian and relatively close, so lots of options (even monarchy and communism) actually work pretty well at that scale. Most kids end up creating some kind of election system.
One year though, I had a girl who designed an election system, but it was 1 vote per family. I'd never had anyone come up with that before and I asked her about it. To her, it was completely logical: the base unit of society is the family, so why wouldn't your democracy start there.
Your "Household Vote" concept reminded me of her idea. And you're correct that the combination of property ownership, racial, and only-male requirements effectively created exactly what you're describing in early America.
I love that story, Brian! And I do believe the girl has a point. You hardly hear it discussed in the "mainstream" anymore but there really is no society without effective well-ordered families. The Puritan fathers of America understood this implicitly, as did everyone here in Britain. Then at a certain point we stopped talking about families and "family values" and only talked about the freedom and rights of individuals. You'll notice it also in the media now where there is hardly any family viewing to be had, whereas it was really the norm when I was growing up. Made for much better viewing, in my view, since the content had to be that much more rounded and palatable across all the generations and genders.
As in culture, so in politics, we certainly need to restore a sense of the importance of families to the integrity of our societies. As I say, the Household Vote used to be the norm in our Western democracies, and even if we can't go back to it we can learn from that earlier family-centred mindset. If you're interested in the background to all this, I can highly recommend a book by Nancy Pearcey called The Toxic War on Masculinity. As the name suggests, the book's interests are broader than just voting methods, but she nonetheless gives a very good treatment of the subject. One of those areas where you think you know how things worked, and then you realise that you actually know very little at all!
I feel ambigious about this subject. For a while my youngest daughter said she was a boy. (she was aged 11 to 14). I decided to be supportive but hoping this would blow over. One day she asked me to buy here a type of bra that would hide her growing chest. I refused because of the cost involved. In those years it seemed to be more normal to wish to change your sex than to celebrate it. Then, at 15. my daughter decided she was actualy female and had been since then.
Probably this is the normal way of things, and I sincerely hope parents in the same situation will keep calm and let youth and puberty rund its course. Actual transsexualism must be in the order of 1 in 10.000 I guess.
Oh no. The left can't let things run their course. They must foment, market, and obfuscate their conspiracy to advance the mental illness that is transgenderism. You daughter is just lucky to have escaped a course many do not.
I agree with this article but would just add the crucial point that secularization contributes to wokeism and political extremism precisely because human beings, by our vary nature, require some kind of religious worldview (we are Homo religiosus, as described by Mircea Eliade), so that when one faith is abandoned, another takes its place: in this case Leftism, which can be decribed as a functional religion or para-religion (i.e., it serves the same function as traditional religions, providing community, identity, ritual, a sense of ultimate importance and meaning). This is distinct from the essentialist definition of religion. The big difference, though, between Judeo-Christianity and Leftism is that the latter is idolatrous (or, in the case of woke Christianity, heretical) because it worships the ideal of a Utopian society. This requires the symbolic destruction of the ancien regime, the world it seeks to usurp, which is what leads to the religious violence of the Left -- which is not unlike Islamic jihad in that respect.
I would (and will) clarify that far too many of us are susceptible to religious world views because our biology is biased towards assigning agency. This has a an evolutionary benefit. So we see agency being assigned where there is none all the time. Religion writ large is just one example (goddidit). Aristotle assumed the same, that agency caused motion. But (fortunately for humanity) Galileo's thought experiment (inclined plane) went a far ways to put this metaphysical idiocy to bed once and for all and science was born as we know it today (methodological naturalism and the role of causal evidence). The benefits of putting aside these childish thoughts yields great benefit to all.
In the United States, the sexual revolution began in the summer if 1967 and was centered in San Francisco. These social changes have continued on ever since. Just the rambling thoughts of an old hermit.
Regardless of its underlying veracity, Christianity (and most religions) provide psychological tools and rituals for forgiveness. Take that away, and you end up with all the moralistic puritanism of a 17th century Quaker (although re-tuned to 21st century racial and sexual grievances) without any hope of redemption. The fact that such a futile and nihilistic worldview produces so little violence, is in indication of how much its Christian anthropology roots still echo in the Western world.
For all the talk of religion causing wars... in the modern world, institutional atheism has been far bloodier.
Is there a trope - like 'institutional atheism' - vilifying non believers that isn't regularly trotted out here? Nazism harnessed Christianity (I mean, military belt buckles said Gott mit uns - God is with us, for crying out loud). Stalin was a priest. The Ayatollahs claim a special relationship with some god's wishes. Totalitarian governments REPLACE one divine Dear Leader with another.
Like your prior comment, I'm reminded of Mark Twain's (likely apocryphal) line: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know that just ain't so.”
Joseph Stalin was not a priest. He went to seminary and was expelled.
True enough. It's the religious training I meant to reference. Thanks for the clarification.
Neither theism nor atheism inoculates people from being moral monsters, evidence suggests.
I agree. However, the assumption of modernity is that religion is mostly a cause of division, strife, conflict, and violence. (Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins come to mind.)
The 20th century (Russia, China, N. Korea, Cambodia) largely discredits the idea that secular people are more peaceful.
I think it's more accurate to say that a certain kind of epistemology (one that admits/tolerates/supports belief in the absence of evidence) makes people more likely to be intolerant of those who disagree. It's not secularism or theism that determines how peaceful people are...it's how pragmatic and humble they are about the beliefs they do hold.
As a Christian, I wouldn't phrase it that way, but I think I understand what you mean. G.K. Chesterton said there's a "God shaped hole" in every human heart, and if we don't fill it with Him, we will fill it with something else.
And it's certainly accurate to say that Bolshevism, Nazism, and Maoism all played on religious impulses to fill that hole. They were quasi-religions in the sense that they were toalizing worldviews.
“undying attachment to abortion and euthanasia” - quite the adjective choice. So true.
Cultural rot is indeed a problem. As another commentator (Vivir en México Sin Entender) wrote, "If a society loses confidence in transmitting its own inheritance—its moral language, its civic habits, its sense of responsibility and defense—it does not remain empty for long. Other frameworks rush in to fill the vacuum, often ones organized less around judgment than accusation."
I think this is exactly right. A west without its strong cultural heritage of which Christianity plays a vital role (needed to understand history, language, art, architecture, business, music, civic traditions etc.) cannot be understood or appreciated. So there has been a seismic shift away from this cultural heritage and a central plank of social cohesion. I think we have seen another framework - critical theory in all its various identitarian guises - rush in. The author correctly calls this a moral orthodoxy but claims without evidence or causal connection how this can be corrected by a 'return' to Christianity. Again, from the previous commentator:
"This shift can be seen across a range of institutions, including in some liberal religious contexts, where traditions once oriented around moral formation and obligation are increasingly expressed through the language of solidarity and moral indictment. Within that framework, complex political realities are recast as moral dramas, and certain actors come to embody the system’s deepest perceived injustices."
Returning to moral religiosity and its particular brand of moral orthodoxy as the OP suggests is the answer, we can see as no corrective for the current malaise. It's just another form of the same thing. The corrective is to return to liberal values that allows for individual religious belief but does not allow it to be imposed on everyone any more than today's progressive/woke/libtard moral orthodoxy should be allowed to be imposed on all. It's not the 'what' that is being imposed; it the imposing that's the problem dismantling and vilifying our common western heritage.
Despite being an atheist myself, I concede that the death of god is not necessarily a blessing for all personality types.
Whereas atheists have tended to regard the abandonment of religion as a step towards a more rational and sensible world, in fact the evidence seems to indicate the opposite.
It seems likely that perhaps the majority of the population have a hard wired tendency towards magical thinking and the abandonment of one religion merely makes way for its replacement by something which could easily be worse. Wokeness including all the gender nonsense being the latest manifestation.
I’m starting to wonder whether it would be a good idea to encourage the least objectionable religions for the benefit of the bulk of the population on the basis that otherwise they will just get involved in something worse.
See article at:
https://newvinesintl.org/2025/12/prosperity-is-more-than-wealth-there-is-a-path-forward-and-the-wests-biblical-foundations-help-explain-why/
Yeah, the magical thinking related to believing in an invisible, unprovable omnipotent sky daddy has *never* resulted in extremism, no sir.
I hate the woke stupidity as much as anyone, but did you actually read what you wrote? I find it's a useful exercise to try to figure out if my argument can be used against me. I'd suggest you try it, because Christian morality may be a valuable part of the Western ethos, but it's not necessary to believe in an Iron Age folk tale to agree with the moral principles. There's also nothing about Christianity that encourages scientific epistemology. Just ask Galileo.
Not true. It's true Christianity was against science at one point. But they did a 180 and became the most advanced and powerful military in the world as a result. If humans didn't need religion, it wouldn't exist, b/c human are like empty vessels, and what you fill them with matters!! And there's no denying the success of Christian-based western democracies. And no denying as we become less religious we become more evil. I don't practice religion myself, but I was raised with Christian values, and on reflectioin, they're pretty darn good. Do you believe in treating others they way you want to be treated? (Do unot others as others do unto you) ? Yeah, that's a Christian notion. It didn't come from Left wing communists or Islamists or atheists, as but one in 100 examples.
Humans are not empty vessels, our human nature is a deep part of all of us (and we don’t get our nature from religions like Christianity, rather religions derive from our natures). As for the Golden Rule, it was espoused before Jesus (by Confucious, the Buddha, Hillel, and others). It is essentially empathy, and any mother of two squabbling children would arrive at it herself.
The Galileo myth continues its poisonous lies over the years of time. Galileo had a bitter fight with the new Pope after years of lapping up his favors. He intentionally wrote scathing attacks on the Pope, which resulted in his being barred.
Are you aware that Galileo was a Christian, as were basically all of the pioneers of modern science? Many of the so-called battles between Science and Religion were actually battles between Christians holding to different philosophies. In many cases, it was actually Classical ideas of how the world and the cosmos worked that were holding back scientific progress.
Well, yes, but Hebrew cosmology and classical cosmology are equally wrong. My point is that being Christian is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being smart, decent, or moral. Any connection between Christianity and material success, scientific progress, or moral excellence is accidental. There are plenty of examples of people who have been Christians and argued against science, and who have been terrible people, and there are, conversely, plenty of examples of non-Christians who have been good people and/or great scientists.
The original article was arguing that it's dropping the "Judeo-Christian" heritage that gets you transgender insanity. There's *no* evidence of that at all, because what gets you that insanity is dropping a scientific, evidence-based, empirical epistemology. Christianity and Judaism are both predicated on a non-scientific, non-evidence/faith-based, non-empirical epistemology. Are there people who are both Christians and hold an empirical worldview? Sort of? But the core belief of monotheism, that there is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient creator deity, is *exactly* as provable as a private, ineffable sexed soul (or "gender identity"). They are both based on non-empirical epistemologies.
Transgenderism is destroying so many young people. The drugs themselves stop any chance they may of had to have children. And it's a solution that doesn't recognize that puberty is temporary, not permanent. Children need to be guided into respecting themselves for who they are, not for wishing they were something else.
"In learning to articulate its truths persuasively, humbly and lovingly, we must persist in refuting the postmodern lies surrounding us." Are you kidding? This is the status quo, and it ain't working.
As a Christian Therapist and Counselor Educator, we need many more Peer and Professional Helpers to assess and educate young people in Soul Care and Cure. We have developed ways to equip entire congregations in healthy thinking and relating to heal the broken-hearted and set the captives free. We dare not train a few expert Clinicians and leave the masses without ways to think clearly and relate healthily.
In over 50 years of Clinical and Educational work, I have never met a person confused about his/her sex. I met a few who thought they were fat despite their scales. It is a post-modern form of political and social insanity that only cons can support.
There are a lot of assumptions in what you say here that I think are distinctly open to question, James. I completely agree that being Christian is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being smart, decent or moral. However, I don't believe that is what the article is saying, and I'm not saying it either. Rather, the point is that a Christian worldview makes it more feasible for a greater number of people to live in a way that is profitable on all levels; spiritual, material and intellectual. This, we may say, is borne out by the actual history of the West, with the unprecedented levels of innovation and wealth it has created. (See The Book That Made Your World - written by an Indian intellectual - for more details.) But I would also say that this makes sense on a conceptual level too. Where Classical thinkers tended to assume that nature should conform to models that were "rational", the Biblical idea of God as a free agent above and beyond nature led Christians to explore nature itself for the clues to its inner workings. Since they believed in a Divine Lawgiver, they expected to find laws in nature. And that, of course, is exactly what they found! There is much more that one could say on these matters. For example, how there is a much more coherent basis for morality in the Bible than in the creeds of other religions. However, my dinner is ready and I think that is probably sufficient material for starters!
Yes indeed. "Self-evident" truths are really only self-evident in a Judeo-Christian context. Equally, the modern West's obsession with destroying gender, killing healthy people and erasing national borders can only truly be understood in terms of malign spiritual influence. It goes beyond mere social contagion or indoctrination, in my view. There is something downright demonic at work.