I think the reports of liberalism's death have been greatly exaggerated. Liberalism has misstepped before (looking at you, eugenics), but the strength of liberalism is its ability to be highly adaptive and self-correct organically. The fact that Deneen was celebrated for his illiberal proclamations just 26 years after Fukuyama's victory celebrations for liberalism shows our collective short memories and love of pessimistic criticism more so than it shows any true rot within the liberal worldview.
I agree that the current disillusionment with liberalism can be an effective onramp to Christianity for many, but the more Christianity is positioned as an alternative to liberalism rather than liberalism's complement, the more authoritarian illiberal Christianity benefits. Liberalism and Christianity have worked well together for most of the US' history. Splitting up now risks a house divided just as illiberal regimes around the world are posing threats we haven't seen in decades. The US has always had a gyrating balance between Christianity, national tradition, and liberal rationality. We sacrifice one leg of that stool for the benefit of the other two at our extreme peril.
I feel like eugenics was not liberal...early 20th century progressive, but out of step with the principles of philosophical liberalism.
I also agree that liberalism, what John Rawls called mere political liberalism and not metaphysical liberalism, is a set of principles of government we must preserve. However, the naked public square, Rawls's "public reason," liberal agnosticism about the good has all shown itself incapable of preserving political liberalism itself. It actually requires a Stoic or Christian belief in the rationality of human beings, in the intelligibility of nature, in a moral natural law.
I'm hoping to publish things defending liberalism and the Reformation against the trad-cath critiques soon, by the way. ;)
I guess I view the progressive movement as an iteration or evolution of liberalism. Hate arguing about definitions, but if you don't think the progressive movement counts as philosophically liberal, would you agree the postmodern woke movement doesn't either?
"liberal agnosticism about the good has all shown itself incapable of preserving political liberalism itself" - I'll definitely keep reading and see how you defend this in the future. I'm open to this idea, but am initially skeptical. Strident views about the good led to the 30 years war, witch hunts, and persecution of the puritans that made the founding of a liberal society on American shores a necessity in the first place. A bit too expansive of a debate for a comment section, but I'm excited to keep reading your thoughts on this point :)
Excited for the defense of liberalism and the reformation pieces as well
I should preface my response by saying that there are several iterations of Christianity, such as Liberal Christianity, cultural Christianity, Biblical Christianity, etc.
The one I was referring to was the Biblical one. It is antithetical to the glaring idolatry at the heart of Secular Humanism. The doctrine of the assumed good of humanity would nullify any need for Christ’s death in the Cross. Humanism is a bid to create our own salvation, with the help of a benevolent State. That is a tough sell to some.
Fair enough, I agree that secular humanism is at odds with biblical Christianity, but I don't think historical liberalism inherently leads to or causes secular humanism. Liberalism is a framework that allows for the flourishing of many worldviews, including both secular humanism and biblical Christianity. It's up to biblical Christianity and Christian apologists to show why it should be the preferred worldview. Liberalism allows for these worldviews to compete in the marketplace of ideas, but it does not dictate which idea is to be the winner.
That would be nice if it was the case. The Christian doctrine of Sin leads Humanism, Christian, Liberal, or otherwise, to conflict. Conflict is the natural state of humanity, regardless of what they believe. I think “progressivism” is a natural extension of Liberalism. It is just showing the true colours of the idea that Man is his own deity, providing an elevated opinion for himself as he creates his own reality. Humanism, derived from the liberalism of the Enlightenment, (helped along by Darwinianism) was the driving force behind Nazism is my reading of history. “We are better than you so we should rule over you.”
I agree conflict is the natural state of humanity, which is why we need liberalism. Enlightenment liberalism was born of a desire to avoid the horrors of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion. The ancients asked "what is the best that can happen, and how can we get there?" This question culminated in the wars of religion, where the ends of achieving "the good" "justified" truly terrible means. The moderns instead asked "what is the worst that can happen, and how can we avoid that?" The answer was the liberal worldview - the diffusement of power, pluralistic tolerance, and checks and balances built into the Madisonian system. Nazism and Communism were a reversion to an authoritarian project trying to impose "the good" through any means necessary, so they were antithetical to liberalism. This is an interesting but longer discussion so DM me if you'd like to continue so we don't keep clogging up this post :)
'The US has always had a gyrating balance between Christianity, national tradition, and liberal rationality. We sacrifice one leg of that stool for the benefit of the other two at our extreme peril.'
Good point. The issue with national tradition is that it requires a degree of movement towards cultural homogeneity, even within the multicultural 'melting pot' of America with its grand experiment which stood the test of time for so long, before beginning to fail. Multiculturalism 2.0 insists upon almost no adoption of common custom and value. Cosmopolitans don't realise how the seemingly trivial and simultaneously vital can be for fostering social cohesion. In the UK, it's not uncommon for people to keep hens for fresh eggs. At the same time, no Brit would embark upon such a plan, without first promising their neighbours a ready supply of lush and golden eggs. Romanian families, not familiar with this small nicety of neighbourly etiquette quickly find themselves the recipients of noise complaints, and that's before one considers the baleful influence of competition over shared parking, as well as the belligerence likely to be encouraged by weekend long renditions of loud Eastern European rap music...
Besides, White Western population often fare far better with incoming migrant population than migrant population with other migrant populations. If our Western media was more honest, we would see more than the occasional instance of open warfare between competing gangs of young men of differing ethnicities, only aired because the police response. Value pluralism is not a natural concept. It's unique to the West (or almost), and needs to be imparted.
I agree national tradition requires cultural assimilation, but I don't think that's nearly as under threat as many claim, at least in the US. The US has assimilated mass immigration waves in the past when as much as 15% of Americans were foreign-born in the early 20th century. We're currently nearing that level again, but today we're generally more tolerant, so our "assimilation limit" should be even higher. The first generation rarely fully assimilates, but the second and third generally do. The US also benefits from a selection effect due to the difficulty in making it into the country in the first place, especially if the immigrant isn't from the western hemisphere.
It depends. Australia had developed a highly successful model of high immigration with their post-WW2 Populate or Perish policy. However, since the early 2000s it began to erode the safeguards for blue collar labour protections, and as a consequence they've started to see the beginnings of what's been happening everywhere else in the advanced economies of the West.
Basically you can run high levels of immigration, so long as it's of the market dominant variety. Historian Niall Ferguson looked into the history of America and found four instances where the rate of foreign-born citizenship rose above 14% of the population. It wasn't the only factor. Each period also required a cyclical major economic downturn. But the response was entirely predictable. Populist movements sprung up and the Overton Window shifted Right. In each previous case the Populists lost, but only because more conventional mainstream politicians decided the threat from populism was too great and decided to enact severe immigration restrictions for a generation or more.
It's also worth noting that virtually in every country in Western Europe, including known 'Right'-leaning hotbeds like Sweden, attitudes towards immigration have soured.
Importing scientists, computer programmers, writers, journalists and doctors is a good thing. This is because the percentage of the population which has the cognitive abilities for a given role, as well as all of the various psychological traits, along with the specific desire to select into a specific range of highly demanding disciplines (where the individual will likely spend seven years plus, in education) is actually quite rare- especially when those at the right tail of the cognitive spectrum have a plethora of choice.
If, however, you are in the 50% who are basically unsuitable for higher education, or the 70% who are unlikely to derive any economic benefit from higher education, then the situation is entirely different. Imported labour competition is directly against your economic interest, likely to reduce your living standards and expose you to problems like labour insecurity and rentier economics.
The other thing about the better form of immigration is that foreign-born citizens from better educational backgrounds, higher up the SES spectrum with lower ingroup preference, tend to self-sort along the basis of interest and socioeconomics, naturally integrating into existing communities. Lower SES migrants self-sort along ethnic and cultural lines. This inevitably means community displacement. High Openness To New Experience individuals (including myself) will think this is wonderful, but what they miss is that it also tends to wipe out the incredibly rich and diverse history and culture of pre-existing unique communities. Of course, the people move, and generally to nice middle class neighbourhoods, but the shared history and soul of location is amputated. Of course, gentrification was also about economics, but it was mainly about culture and the loss of unique identity.
The long and the short of it is that some immigration is incredibly good, whilst other types are absolutely disastrous. Central to our thinking should be the understanding that for most people unfortunate to be born into the unlucky portion of the genetic lottery, there should be a route to an occupation which equals or exceeds the earnings of 95% of graduates for the first ten years of their post-education careers, provided they are willing to undertake work which is unpleasant and/or work hard in physically or technically demanding roles. A degree is supposed to be investment over the course of an entire career, not a pay-off obtainable for most within the first few years of graduating. Otherwise, we've unwittingly constructed a cognitive hegemony and have instituted technocratic feudalism, in which only the children of the Elect can prosper.
I have been looking at the dichotomies of our Western Culture through the lens of a Christian worldview (in what I believe to be the proper pursuit) for almost 50 years, having been captured by its holistic solutions to my personal mess (which was a life of being an itinerant hippie, dealing with serious issues with guilt over the death of a baby in my teens through alcohol and drug abuse) Redemption looks pretty good from that hole.
The last decade or so has brought great changes to Western Culture, with every step taking us some distance away from the foundation of Christian biblically-based thinking. The new evangelists of Woke Liberalism chipped away at that foundation with, strangely enough, no interest in delineating their idea of a replacement. Having been in the construction trades for 40+ years, I know what happens to a structure without a foundation.
Given that the Woke Worldview is a departure from rationality, I was convinced from the start that it cannot last very long. Watching in horror as the steadfast institutes of civilization were overrun with this madness, I saw the Centres of Politics, Education (first higher, then lower), Justice, Media, and Healthcare, among others, take on these new ideas on how to create the Perfect Enlightenment Society and apply them to their purview. Even some corners of Mainline Christianity fell to these new ideas, notably without regard to the clarity of our supposed objective source of truth in the Bible. I knew from the start that totalitarian methods would be needed to move it forward in any significant capacity.
If it is true that, as you say, it is starting to crack, it is a reasonably good sign. I am hesitant, though. With all the necessary building blocks of Society compromised, who is going to look after the great swell of victims of the fall from both sides of the debate? The mistrust permeating through the culture due to the soft totalitarianism of the institutes mentioned above, disqualifies them from the task. What can we do?
The only institute that remains, though battered and bruised, is the Essential Christian Church. Members will be found in most congregations, some with higher percentages and some with lower. In the mature expression of a biblical worldview, those Christians are able to subsume their own lives for the greater purpose of the Kingdom of God and engage in the common good. They have learned to serve their generation by the Will of God, regardless of who it is who needs their ministry. They have been volunteering in that capacity for years. (about 2000, to be exact)They have earned the limited tax exemption given to their organizations, giving $5 to $8 back to the community for every $1 they get, according to many demographic studies.
The hesitation in my response is the question of whether the Church is ready to respond as I believe it must. I also have lost all hope in the institutes of our lives. Once I believed in them to provide much-needed social change. I no longer can see them in that capacity. All my sources of hope have dried up except One, and He is enough. He is fully capable of creating something new out of this mess. He is able to make the Church ready.
In the words of Isaiah, the prophet, “Here I am, Lord. Send me."
“This, in turn, suggests a new moral to be taken from the failure of liberalism and secularism alone: That only a religious alternative could withstand wokeness.”
I have given up my association with multiple Buddhist organizations recently because they could not withstand wokeness and/or Covidian nonsense. I have never been involved in a Christian organization, but I have seen that much or even most of Christianity has also failed to withstand modern insanity. That phenomenon goes unmentioned in this otherwise well done article.
At the same time, I have been finding much inspiration from Christian sources since my departure from my Buddhist organizations, from people like CS Lewis, Jonathan Pageau, and Paul Kingsnorth. I’ve also been working my way through the Bible for the first time in my life (I’m 42). Nonetheless, I’m hesitant to join a church because, although I now see much beauty, truth, and wisdom in the Christian tradition, the mind viruses are everywhere. They seem to take over every institution of any significant size. There does not seem to be any refuge from the madness other than in diffuse and decentralized online spaces like Substack, and in the writings of the religious saints and sages of the distant past.
David, I love these reflections. As a life-long Christian, and an aspiring intellectual for the last decade, you indeed find that there is no institution that perfectly preserves true spiritual vitality. It is diffuse and decentralized; in great thinkers and writers; and in the saints and sages - to quote you.
This is why I embrace the projects of conservatism and Christian humanism. A Christian affiliation doesn't enable Christian institutions to stand against liberal and modernist trends. Only a conservative affiliation helps there. And Christianity must engage in the hard work of understanding, not only its own Scriptures, but the world and human nature in all their complexity. Only that good work can deliver us from mind viruses. You may enjoy my two recent podcasts, both of which encourage the diffuse and decentralized approach to the Christian life. Here's one of them: https://open.substack.com/pub/joelcarini/p/make-sermons-short-again?r=k9yk0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
Interesting. I’ll give your podcasts a listen. The Buddhist tradition to which I’ve been connected has a long history of being apolitical. The founders of the tradition were forest monks who resolutely refused to state political opinions. They discussed only matters related to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths - the cause of suffering and the path leading to its cessation. But even this tradition has gone woke and supported medical tyranny. The monks are now regurgitating mainstream narratives as if they contain deep spiritual wisdom. It’s nuts!
So I now think there’s wisdom in religious communities being quite deliberate and straightforward about their political orientation. Trying to be apolitical in the current environment is just an invitation to be consumed by all the mind viruses going around. As the saying goes, you can’t stay neutral on a moving train.
Douthat tapped into a sense I have that we're living in a moment that I call, with only some hyperbole, "the failure of all ideas." By which I mean, there's no idea to be all that optimistic or excited about. Maybe it's an addendum to what Douthat has been describing as "decadence."
So yes, liberalism has failed. But also, per the "end of history" argument, its political alternatives have failed. Douthat's observation on the death of Marxist optimism is something I've been thinking about the last few years but haven't seen many people call out: they don't seem to believe, as the Bolsheviks did, that their ideas will bring about a beautiful new man and a beautiful new society. They mainly just observe that capitalism has in some sense failed to deliver on its promise. Which is admittedly at least somewhat true if we're living amidst the failure of all ideas.
Techno-optimism has also failed, and that's probably the one that hits closest to home for me, as someone who, as a kid, was inclined to fantasize about the wonders technology would bring within my lifetime. Maybe AI will be different, but to this point not only has technology failed to continue delivering the sort of productivity benefits that it did in the mid-20th century, but consumer computing technology has also plateaued, a trend that started in the 00s but was obvious to all in the 2010s. And it turns out the capstone of the PC revolution, the smartphone, might just be a mental poison that is making our kids anxious and depressed. Maybe our adults too.
I have this feeling that, when those ideologies were ascendant, if you saw a fellow Christian apostatize to become a Marxist or a fascist, there might be a part of you that wondered if they were on to something. Perhaps this was the way of the future and your ideas were hopelessly old-fashioned. Perhaps we really could build that better world by setting old-fashioned ideas aside. But the secular alternatives are so hopeless now that there is no temptation. Liberal theologies have also failed to deliver on their promise and made clear to all that they are sinking sand.
At this point, we're left with Christ, or the abyss of nihilism.
I enjoyed reading the Douthat piece - thanks for the recommendation! I think you're right, though for every individual person, it takes particular life events to see through the false promises of, for example, technology. Belief in technology seems the most enduring on a secular right, and I'm not entirely persuaded of the complete techno-pessimism of which I was persuaded several years ago. However, I do think the main stories and narratives are coming crashing down. Admittedly, it's happened before, so new secular stories may arise. Our offer of Christ has to do the work to show its connection to these cultural events, the moral foundations of society and so on. Maybe we can persuade that that is the way, and not the next secular story.
>it takes particular life events to see through the false promises of, for example, technology
This is probably true. I think I'm a few years older than you, and for me, a formative experience was witnessing the hyper-improvement in personal computing technology -- including game consoles, mobile phones and the Internet itself -- from childhood memories in the late 1980s through the maturity of the smartphone circa 2010. My father was a PC enthusiast, and it's still incredible to look back at the improvement that happened in 10 years' time from the 486 in 1989 to the Pentium III launched in 1999. It's a striking contrast to the relative lack of improvement in the past 10-15 years.
But for someone a decade or two older than me, maybe they were astonished by the progress of rocketry after watching the moon landing, imagining cities on the moon and then, to Mars. Their equivalent of the 2010+ stagnation of consumer computing was the 1980+ stagnation of the space shuttle program. Maybe today's kids will be thinking this in 20 years' time about the stagnation of AI.
As for techno-pessimism, I think it's a good prediction that technology will continue to improve for a long time to come, and it will have unforeseen benefits and consequences. I'm not so pessimistic as to deny that. But the rate of improvement will probably continue to decelerate, i.e. the second derivative is negative. And even as the "world of bits" has slowed outside of one domain (AI), non-computing technologies are progressing even more slowly.
The problems with arguments from usefulness is that it is hard to see how something being useful has any impact on whether or not it is true. There are plenty of scientific antirealists out there who deny any connection between usefulness and truth. Ptolemaic astronomy was very useful.
My reply would be that we've already had decades of Christians arguing for Christianity's truth - but most people object to Christianity, especially today, on the grounds that it is bad: homophobic, exclusive, dogmatic, etc.
People believing that Christianity is good does wonders for their willingness to talk about the further question of whether it is true.
Also, the fact that there scientific antirealists does not disprove a connection between usefulness and truth; it only shows that some people are not persuaded by the argument from utility to truth. But Christ says, "You will know them by their fruits." The goodness of the fruit of Christian discipleship is the primary evidence of its truth.
I didn't want to bring it up, but I lean pretty strongly to antirealism, mostly because I lean pretty strongly towards idealism, so its me you have to convince that truth and usefulness are necessarily connected! In fact, some truths are actively harmful. As for how Christianity is seen by its enemies, how exactly are its critics wrong? We have dogmas, we exclude not Christians, and we prohibit homosexual acts as contrary to nature. By the definition of homophobia, exclusive and dogmatic, we seem to qualify, do we not?
But do you see why I think it's necessary to persuade people that Christianity is good? Even if inferring from goodness to truth is fallacious, people do make that inference often, and Jesus encourages it.
On the latter points, I would try to argue that having dogmas is not the same as dogmatism, excluding non-Christians is not exclusive - because anyone can become a Christian, and upholding a traditional sexual ethic is not homophobic. The last point has been the burden of posts on same-sex attraction: https://joelcarini.substack.com/t/sexuality
Yes, I agree that it is important to make people think Christianity is good, Pascal makes the point that we ought to make people want Christianity to be true and then proving to them that it is. My issue is that our adversaries do not understand what good means. They disagree with you on what homophobia means. I have read your posts on sex related stuff, and my own opinion is that homosexual orientation is real, but it is also a mental illness that we ought to try and cure. Unfortunately, no progress has yet been made in fixing this mental illness yet, and Christians who suffer that burden have to live without being able to have normal married lives until a cure is developed. Any action on their unnatural desires would be adultery, but just having them, as long as they are not indulged, is not.
But Ptolemaic astronomy was not as useful as what we got later from Copernicus and Kepler. So, relative usefulness does have a connection to what is true in this example.
Actually, there is very little difference in terms of predictive power between geocentric and heliocentric models. The Greeks, and before them the Babylonians, were very good at predicting the positions of stars and planets. When Copernicus introduced his heliocentric system it was actually worse than the geocentric model because he clung to circular orbits! If you add enough epicycles you can approximate reality as close as you like! The problem is that epicycles are unnecessarily complicated, not that they cannot do the job of predicting where planets will appear in the sky.
You are implicitly defining "useful" in a way that excludes true explanations. If one model explains why something happens and also predicts what will happen, while a second model predicts what will happen but fails to explain why, you are defining them to be equally "useful." Apparently, understanding lies outside of usefulness, which is highly debatable.
In any case, Kepler's model lends itself to understanding, in such a way that is coherent across all calculations involving gravity, not just for astronomical bodies. How can that be explained except by noting that it better corresponds to truth?
After answering that question, reconsider your original statement, "... it is hard to see how something being useful has any impact on whether or not it is true." Kepler's model: more true, more useful.
That is a wider use of useful than I am used to. I first encountered philosophy of science from instrumentalists, so I have a tendency to speak in their terminology. If you extend useful to better explanation, that is a much more defensible position and reminds me of the position of Stephen Toulmin in "Foresight and Understanding" the best case for scientific realism I have ever read.
There are still some serious philosophical issues with scientific realism which bother me, though, but I am not sure that is something that can be easily discussed in a comments section!
Where I’m currently hung up after reengaging with Christianity is the exclusivity. If God really is Being itself, how can something/someone that unfathomable tie the salvation of finite creatures to a specific religion, in a world where it isn’t even guaranteed that finite creature will be able to learn of it, understand it, and/or overcome the cultural/psychological barriers to adopting it?
Steve, I agree that’s a big big deal. I would just point out that there are two distinct issues there. After all, there are some Christians who are universalists: they believe that salvation comes only through Christ, but that *all* people will be saved through Christ without regard to knowledge of or belief in him.
On the second point, which is really about the justice of God, I highly recommend the end of CS Lewis’s book The Last Battle. There, a figure who had been following the equivalent of Islam finds out, in the end, that he had actually been pursuing the true God. There is a principle in the Bible that we will be judged in accordance with what we know, and that is a comfort to me on that topic.
The other question is really about the particularity of Jesus himself. Why didn’t God just create a universal religion based on a morality that everyone knows? Why tie religion to one particular Jewish man in the first century?
There, I think there is actually a beauty in particularity. Every human is a particular, contingent individual, and God chose to redeem humanity through a particular human being. Or so Christianity teaches. Personally, I find that a beautiful and persuasive claim, but certainly one to wrestle with.
Glad to hear, Steve! I'm encouraged. I'm with Jordan Peterson on this point: Don't claim to believe something you don't believe. Put this stuff to the test. No need to leave your reason at the door.
I feel like I barely survived the seduction of secular liberalism almost exactly in time to watch it start to flounder as the dominant cultural modality.
Exactly, right! Though I do wonder, on the ground with today’s teenagers, if wokeness has been more effective at seducing or if liberalism was. The moral fervor of wokeness has great seductive power.
This just another kind of special pleading by another flavor of liberalism: Christianity. If you accept universalism in any form, then liberalism will remain. Identity is the only morality and for Whites the only viable identity is 'White' not 'Christian'. For over thousand years Christianity convinced Whites to kill one another and destroy indigenous White cultural patrimony across Europe. Even as Whites are continually under cultural and physical attack, all 'Christians' can think about is expanding the market for their faith.
The author writes identifies two kinds of liberalism; classical liberalism (libertarianism) and a "cultural liberalism" that promised freedom and prosperity for all people regardless of skin color, political affiliation, religious beliefs, or sexual identity.
Cultural liberalism does NOT promise prosperity for all. It promises *respect* for all, regardless of your station in life; prosperity is off the table for most of the lower orders.
Both of these liberalisms are ultimately right wing in that they serve the interests of elites. For classical liberalism it is the Capitalist Elite and for cultural elite it is the Mandarins.
Left out is New Deal liberalism, which was about prosperity for all. The other two liberalisms as well as conservatives are arrayed against this type, as it would command the allegiance of a large majority.
I think the reports of liberalism's death have been greatly exaggerated. Liberalism has misstepped before (looking at you, eugenics), but the strength of liberalism is its ability to be highly adaptive and self-correct organically. The fact that Deneen was celebrated for his illiberal proclamations just 26 years after Fukuyama's victory celebrations for liberalism shows our collective short memories and love of pessimistic criticism more so than it shows any true rot within the liberal worldview.
I agree that the current disillusionment with liberalism can be an effective onramp to Christianity for many, but the more Christianity is positioned as an alternative to liberalism rather than liberalism's complement, the more authoritarian illiberal Christianity benefits. Liberalism and Christianity have worked well together for most of the US' history. Splitting up now risks a house divided just as illiberal regimes around the world are posing threats we haven't seen in decades. The US has always had a gyrating balance between Christianity, national tradition, and liberal rationality. We sacrifice one leg of that stool for the benefit of the other two at our extreme peril.
I feel like eugenics was not liberal...early 20th century progressive, but out of step with the principles of philosophical liberalism.
I also agree that liberalism, what John Rawls called mere political liberalism and not metaphysical liberalism, is a set of principles of government we must preserve. However, the naked public square, Rawls's "public reason," liberal agnosticism about the good has all shown itself incapable of preserving political liberalism itself. It actually requires a Stoic or Christian belief in the rationality of human beings, in the intelligibility of nature, in a moral natural law.
I'm hoping to publish things defending liberalism and the Reformation against the trad-cath critiques soon, by the way. ;)
I guess I view the progressive movement as an iteration or evolution of liberalism. Hate arguing about definitions, but if you don't think the progressive movement counts as philosophically liberal, would you agree the postmodern woke movement doesn't either?
"liberal agnosticism about the good has all shown itself incapable of preserving political liberalism itself" - I'll definitely keep reading and see how you defend this in the future. I'm open to this idea, but am initially skeptical. Strident views about the good led to the 30 years war, witch hunts, and persecution of the puritans that made the founding of a liberal society on American shores a necessity in the first place. A bit too expansive of a debate for a comment section, but I'm excited to keep reading your thoughts on this point :)
Excited for the defense of liberalism and the reformation pieces as well
There are some ideas that are too antithetical in the Secular Humanism of Historical Liberalism for Biblical Christianity to be a comfortable spouse.
That didn't seem to be the case for most of US history. Which ideas would you be referring to?
I should preface my response by saying that there are several iterations of Christianity, such as Liberal Christianity, cultural Christianity, Biblical Christianity, etc.
The one I was referring to was the Biblical one. It is antithetical to the glaring idolatry at the heart of Secular Humanism. The doctrine of the assumed good of humanity would nullify any need for Christ’s death in the Cross. Humanism is a bid to create our own salvation, with the help of a benevolent State. That is a tough sell to some.
Fair enough, I agree that secular humanism is at odds with biblical Christianity, but I don't think historical liberalism inherently leads to or causes secular humanism. Liberalism is a framework that allows for the flourishing of many worldviews, including both secular humanism and biblical Christianity. It's up to biblical Christianity and Christian apologists to show why it should be the preferred worldview. Liberalism allows for these worldviews to compete in the marketplace of ideas, but it does not dictate which idea is to be the winner.
That would be nice if it was the case. The Christian doctrine of Sin leads Humanism, Christian, Liberal, or otherwise, to conflict. Conflict is the natural state of humanity, regardless of what they believe. I think “progressivism” is a natural extension of Liberalism. It is just showing the true colours of the idea that Man is his own deity, providing an elevated opinion for himself as he creates his own reality. Humanism, derived from the liberalism of the Enlightenment, (helped along by Darwinianism) was the driving force behind Nazism is my reading of history. “We are better than you so we should rule over you.”
I agree conflict is the natural state of humanity, which is why we need liberalism. Enlightenment liberalism was born of a desire to avoid the horrors of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion. The ancients asked "what is the best that can happen, and how can we get there?" This question culminated in the wars of religion, where the ends of achieving "the good" "justified" truly terrible means. The moderns instead asked "what is the worst that can happen, and how can we avoid that?" The answer was the liberal worldview - the diffusement of power, pluralistic tolerance, and checks and balances built into the Madisonian system. Nazism and Communism were a reversion to an authoritarian project trying to impose "the good" through any means necessary, so they were antithetical to liberalism. This is an interesting but longer discussion so DM me if you'd like to continue so we don't keep clogging up this post :)
'The US has always had a gyrating balance between Christianity, national tradition, and liberal rationality. We sacrifice one leg of that stool for the benefit of the other two at our extreme peril.'
Good point. The issue with national tradition is that it requires a degree of movement towards cultural homogeneity, even within the multicultural 'melting pot' of America with its grand experiment which stood the test of time for so long, before beginning to fail. Multiculturalism 2.0 insists upon almost no adoption of common custom and value. Cosmopolitans don't realise how the seemingly trivial and simultaneously vital can be for fostering social cohesion. In the UK, it's not uncommon for people to keep hens for fresh eggs. At the same time, no Brit would embark upon such a plan, without first promising their neighbours a ready supply of lush and golden eggs. Romanian families, not familiar with this small nicety of neighbourly etiquette quickly find themselves the recipients of noise complaints, and that's before one considers the baleful influence of competition over shared parking, as well as the belligerence likely to be encouraged by weekend long renditions of loud Eastern European rap music...
Besides, White Western population often fare far better with incoming migrant population than migrant population with other migrant populations. If our Western media was more honest, we would see more than the occasional instance of open warfare between competing gangs of young men of differing ethnicities, only aired because the police response. Value pluralism is not a natural concept. It's unique to the West (or almost), and needs to be imparted.
I agree national tradition requires cultural assimilation, but I don't think that's nearly as under threat as many claim, at least in the US. The US has assimilated mass immigration waves in the past when as much as 15% of Americans were foreign-born in the early 20th century. We're currently nearing that level again, but today we're generally more tolerant, so our "assimilation limit" should be even higher. The first generation rarely fully assimilates, but the second and third generally do. The US also benefits from a selection effect due to the difficulty in making it into the country in the first place, especially if the immigrant isn't from the western hemisphere.
It depends. Australia had developed a highly successful model of high immigration with their post-WW2 Populate or Perish policy. However, since the early 2000s it began to erode the safeguards for blue collar labour protections, and as a consequence they've started to see the beginnings of what's been happening everywhere else in the advanced economies of the West.
Basically you can run high levels of immigration, so long as it's of the market dominant variety. Historian Niall Ferguson looked into the history of America and found four instances where the rate of foreign-born citizenship rose above 14% of the population. It wasn't the only factor. Each period also required a cyclical major economic downturn. But the response was entirely predictable. Populist movements sprung up and the Overton Window shifted Right. In each previous case the Populists lost, but only because more conventional mainstream politicians decided the threat from populism was too great and decided to enact severe immigration restrictions for a generation or more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLEGafuEd4&t=14s
It's also worth noting that virtually in every country in Western Europe, including known 'Right'-leaning hotbeds like Sweden, attitudes towards immigration have soured.
Importing scientists, computer programmers, writers, journalists and doctors is a good thing. This is because the percentage of the population which has the cognitive abilities for a given role, as well as all of the various psychological traits, along with the specific desire to select into a specific range of highly demanding disciplines (where the individual will likely spend seven years plus, in education) is actually quite rare- especially when those at the right tail of the cognitive spectrum have a plethora of choice.
If, however, you are in the 50% who are basically unsuitable for higher education, or the 70% who are unlikely to derive any economic benefit from higher education, then the situation is entirely different. Imported labour competition is directly against your economic interest, likely to reduce your living standards and expose you to problems like labour insecurity and rentier economics.
The other thing about the better form of immigration is that foreign-born citizens from better educational backgrounds, higher up the SES spectrum with lower ingroup preference, tend to self-sort along the basis of interest and socioeconomics, naturally integrating into existing communities. Lower SES migrants self-sort along ethnic and cultural lines. This inevitably means community displacement. High Openness To New Experience individuals (including myself) will think this is wonderful, but what they miss is that it also tends to wipe out the incredibly rich and diverse history and culture of pre-existing unique communities. Of course, the people move, and generally to nice middle class neighbourhoods, but the shared history and soul of location is amputated. Of course, gentrification was also about economics, but it was mainly about culture and the loss of unique identity.
The long and the short of it is that some immigration is incredibly good, whilst other types are absolutely disastrous. Central to our thinking should be the understanding that for most people unfortunate to be born into the unlucky portion of the genetic lottery, there should be a route to an occupation which equals or exceeds the earnings of 95% of graduates for the first ten years of their post-education careers, provided they are willing to undertake work which is unpleasant and/or work hard in physically or technically demanding roles. A degree is supposed to be investment over the course of an entire career, not a pay-off obtainable for most within the first few years of graduating. Otherwise, we've unwittingly constructed a cognitive hegemony and have instituted technocratic feudalism, in which only the children of the Elect can prosper.
I have been looking at the dichotomies of our Western Culture through the lens of a Christian worldview (in what I believe to be the proper pursuit) for almost 50 years, having been captured by its holistic solutions to my personal mess (which was a life of being an itinerant hippie, dealing with serious issues with guilt over the death of a baby in my teens through alcohol and drug abuse) Redemption looks pretty good from that hole.
The last decade or so has brought great changes to Western Culture, with every step taking us some distance away from the foundation of Christian biblically-based thinking. The new evangelists of Woke Liberalism chipped away at that foundation with, strangely enough, no interest in delineating their idea of a replacement. Having been in the construction trades for 40+ years, I know what happens to a structure without a foundation.
Given that the Woke Worldview is a departure from rationality, I was convinced from the start that it cannot last very long. Watching in horror as the steadfast institutes of civilization were overrun with this madness, I saw the Centres of Politics, Education (first higher, then lower), Justice, Media, and Healthcare, among others, take on these new ideas on how to create the Perfect Enlightenment Society and apply them to their purview. Even some corners of Mainline Christianity fell to these new ideas, notably without regard to the clarity of our supposed objective source of truth in the Bible. I knew from the start that totalitarian methods would be needed to move it forward in any significant capacity.
If it is true that, as you say, it is starting to crack, it is a reasonably good sign. I am hesitant, though. With all the necessary building blocks of Society compromised, who is going to look after the great swell of victims of the fall from both sides of the debate? The mistrust permeating through the culture due to the soft totalitarianism of the institutes mentioned above, disqualifies them from the task. What can we do?
The only institute that remains, though battered and bruised, is the Essential Christian Church. Members will be found in most congregations, some with higher percentages and some with lower. In the mature expression of a biblical worldview, those Christians are able to subsume their own lives for the greater purpose of the Kingdom of God and engage in the common good. They have learned to serve their generation by the Will of God, regardless of who it is who needs their ministry. They have been volunteering in that capacity for years. (about 2000, to be exact)They have earned the limited tax exemption given to their organizations, giving $5 to $8 back to the community for every $1 they get, according to many demographic studies.
The hesitation in my response is the question of whether the Church is ready to respond as I believe it must. I also have lost all hope in the institutes of our lives. Once I believed in them to provide much-needed social change. I no longer can see them in that capacity. All my sources of hope have dried up except One, and He is enough. He is fully capable of creating something new out of this mess. He is able to make the Church ready.
In the words of Isaiah, the prophet, “Here I am, Lord. Send me."
“This, in turn, suggests a new moral to be taken from the failure of liberalism and secularism alone: That only a religious alternative could withstand wokeness.”
I have given up my association with multiple Buddhist organizations recently because they could not withstand wokeness and/or Covidian nonsense. I have never been involved in a Christian organization, but I have seen that much or even most of Christianity has also failed to withstand modern insanity. That phenomenon goes unmentioned in this otherwise well done article.
At the same time, I have been finding much inspiration from Christian sources since my departure from my Buddhist organizations, from people like CS Lewis, Jonathan Pageau, and Paul Kingsnorth. I’ve also been working my way through the Bible for the first time in my life (I’m 42). Nonetheless, I’m hesitant to join a church because, although I now see much beauty, truth, and wisdom in the Christian tradition, the mind viruses are everywhere. They seem to take over every institution of any significant size. There does not seem to be any refuge from the madness other than in diffuse and decentralized online spaces like Substack, and in the writings of the religious saints and sages of the distant past.
David, I love these reflections. As a life-long Christian, and an aspiring intellectual for the last decade, you indeed find that there is no institution that perfectly preserves true spiritual vitality. It is diffuse and decentralized; in great thinkers and writers; and in the saints and sages - to quote you.
This is why I embrace the projects of conservatism and Christian humanism. A Christian affiliation doesn't enable Christian institutions to stand against liberal and modernist trends. Only a conservative affiliation helps there. And Christianity must engage in the hard work of understanding, not only its own Scriptures, but the world and human nature in all their complexity. Only that good work can deliver us from mind viruses. You may enjoy my two recent podcasts, both of which encourage the diffuse and decentralized approach to the Christian life. Here's one of them: https://open.substack.com/pub/joelcarini/p/make-sermons-short-again?r=k9yk0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
Interesting. I’ll give your podcasts a listen. The Buddhist tradition to which I’ve been connected has a long history of being apolitical. The founders of the tradition were forest monks who resolutely refused to state political opinions. They discussed only matters related to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths - the cause of suffering and the path leading to its cessation. But even this tradition has gone woke and supported medical tyranny. The monks are now regurgitating mainstream narratives as if they contain deep spiritual wisdom. It’s nuts!
So I now think there’s wisdom in religious communities being quite deliberate and straightforward about their political orientation. Trying to be apolitical in the current environment is just an invitation to be consumed by all the mind viruses going around. As the saying goes, you can’t stay neutral on a moving train.
A good apologetic for the doctrine of sin as believed by biblical Christians. We are all King Midas in reverse. Everything we touch turns to dust.
Enjoyed the thoughts.
I hope you read this recent Douthat piece, which strikes me as a sort of companion to what you're saying here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/opinion/leftists-happy-coates-haidt.html
Douthat tapped into a sense I have that we're living in a moment that I call, with only some hyperbole, "the failure of all ideas." By which I mean, there's no idea to be all that optimistic or excited about. Maybe it's an addendum to what Douthat has been describing as "decadence."
So yes, liberalism has failed. But also, per the "end of history" argument, its political alternatives have failed. Douthat's observation on the death of Marxist optimism is something I've been thinking about the last few years but haven't seen many people call out: they don't seem to believe, as the Bolsheviks did, that their ideas will bring about a beautiful new man and a beautiful new society. They mainly just observe that capitalism has in some sense failed to deliver on its promise. Which is admittedly at least somewhat true if we're living amidst the failure of all ideas.
Techno-optimism has also failed, and that's probably the one that hits closest to home for me, as someone who, as a kid, was inclined to fantasize about the wonders technology would bring within my lifetime. Maybe AI will be different, but to this point not only has technology failed to continue delivering the sort of productivity benefits that it did in the mid-20th century, but consumer computing technology has also plateaued, a trend that started in the 00s but was obvious to all in the 2010s. And it turns out the capstone of the PC revolution, the smartphone, might just be a mental poison that is making our kids anxious and depressed. Maybe our adults too.
I have this feeling that, when those ideologies were ascendant, if you saw a fellow Christian apostatize to become a Marxist or a fascist, there might be a part of you that wondered if they were on to something. Perhaps this was the way of the future and your ideas were hopelessly old-fashioned. Perhaps we really could build that better world by setting old-fashioned ideas aside. But the secular alternatives are so hopeless now that there is no temptation. Liberal theologies have also failed to deliver on their promise and made clear to all that they are sinking sand.
At this point, we're left with Christ, or the abyss of nihilism.
I enjoyed reading the Douthat piece - thanks for the recommendation! I think you're right, though for every individual person, it takes particular life events to see through the false promises of, for example, technology. Belief in technology seems the most enduring on a secular right, and I'm not entirely persuaded of the complete techno-pessimism of which I was persuaded several years ago. However, I do think the main stories and narratives are coming crashing down. Admittedly, it's happened before, so new secular stories may arise. Our offer of Christ has to do the work to show its connection to these cultural events, the moral foundations of society and so on. Maybe we can persuade that that is the way, and not the next secular story.
>it takes particular life events to see through the false promises of, for example, technology
This is probably true. I think I'm a few years older than you, and for me, a formative experience was witnessing the hyper-improvement in personal computing technology -- including game consoles, mobile phones and the Internet itself -- from childhood memories in the late 1980s through the maturity of the smartphone circa 2010. My father was a PC enthusiast, and it's still incredible to look back at the improvement that happened in 10 years' time from the 486 in 1989 to the Pentium III launched in 1999. It's a striking contrast to the relative lack of improvement in the past 10-15 years.
But for someone a decade or two older than me, maybe they were astonished by the progress of rocketry after watching the moon landing, imagining cities on the moon and then, to Mars. Their equivalent of the 2010+ stagnation of consumer computing was the 1980+ stagnation of the space shuttle program. Maybe today's kids will be thinking this in 20 years' time about the stagnation of AI.
As for techno-pessimism, I think it's a good prediction that technology will continue to improve for a long time to come, and it will have unforeseen benefits and consequences. I'm not so pessimistic as to deny that. But the rate of improvement will probably continue to decelerate, i.e. the second derivative is negative. And even as the "world of bits" has slowed outside of one domain (AI), non-computing technologies are progressing even more slowly.
The problems with arguments from usefulness is that it is hard to see how something being useful has any impact on whether or not it is true. There are plenty of scientific antirealists out there who deny any connection between usefulness and truth. Ptolemaic astronomy was very useful.
My reply would be that we've already had decades of Christians arguing for Christianity's truth - but most people object to Christianity, especially today, on the grounds that it is bad: homophobic, exclusive, dogmatic, etc.
People believing that Christianity is good does wonders for their willingness to talk about the further question of whether it is true.
Also, the fact that there scientific antirealists does not disprove a connection between usefulness and truth; it only shows that some people are not persuaded by the argument from utility to truth. But Christ says, "You will know them by their fruits." The goodness of the fruit of Christian discipleship is the primary evidence of its truth.
I didn't want to bring it up, but I lean pretty strongly to antirealism, mostly because I lean pretty strongly towards idealism, so its me you have to convince that truth and usefulness are necessarily connected! In fact, some truths are actively harmful. As for how Christianity is seen by its enemies, how exactly are its critics wrong? We have dogmas, we exclude not Christians, and we prohibit homosexual acts as contrary to nature. By the definition of homophobia, exclusive and dogmatic, we seem to qualify, do we not?
But do you see why I think it's necessary to persuade people that Christianity is good? Even if inferring from goodness to truth is fallacious, people do make that inference often, and Jesus encourages it.
On the latter points, I would try to argue that having dogmas is not the same as dogmatism, excluding non-Christians is not exclusive - because anyone can become a Christian, and upholding a traditional sexual ethic is not homophobic. The last point has been the burden of posts on same-sex attraction: https://joelcarini.substack.com/t/sexuality
Yes, I agree that it is important to make people think Christianity is good, Pascal makes the point that we ought to make people want Christianity to be true and then proving to them that it is. My issue is that our adversaries do not understand what good means. They disagree with you on what homophobia means. I have read your posts on sex related stuff, and my own opinion is that homosexual orientation is real, but it is also a mental illness that we ought to try and cure. Unfortunately, no progress has yet been made in fixing this mental illness yet, and Christians who suffer that burden have to live without being able to have normal married lives until a cure is developed. Any action on their unnatural desires would be adultery, but just having them, as long as they are not indulged, is not.
But Ptolemaic astronomy was not as useful as what we got later from Copernicus and Kepler. So, relative usefulness does have a connection to what is true in this example.
Actually, there is very little difference in terms of predictive power between geocentric and heliocentric models. The Greeks, and before them the Babylonians, were very good at predicting the positions of stars and planets. When Copernicus introduced his heliocentric system it was actually worse than the geocentric model because he clung to circular orbits! If you add enough epicycles you can approximate reality as close as you like! The problem is that epicycles are unnecessarily complicated, not that they cannot do the job of predicting where planets will appear in the sky.
You are implicitly defining "useful" in a way that excludes true explanations. If one model explains why something happens and also predicts what will happen, while a second model predicts what will happen but fails to explain why, you are defining them to be equally "useful." Apparently, understanding lies outside of usefulness, which is highly debatable.
In any case, Kepler's model lends itself to understanding, in such a way that is coherent across all calculations involving gravity, not just for astronomical bodies. How can that be explained except by noting that it better corresponds to truth?
After answering that question, reconsider your original statement, "... it is hard to see how something being useful has any impact on whether or not it is true." Kepler's model: more true, more useful.
That is a wider use of useful than I am used to. I first encountered philosophy of science from instrumentalists, so I have a tendency to speak in their terminology. If you extend useful to better explanation, that is a much more defensible position and reminds me of the position of Stephen Toulmin in "Foresight and Understanding" the best case for scientific realism I have ever read.
There are still some serious philosophical issues with scientific realism which bother me, though, but I am not sure that is something that can be easily discussed in a comments section!
Where I’m currently hung up after reengaging with Christianity is the exclusivity. If God really is Being itself, how can something/someone that unfathomable tie the salvation of finite creatures to a specific religion, in a world where it isn’t even guaranteed that finite creature will be able to learn of it, understand it, and/or overcome the cultural/psychological barriers to adopting it?
Steve, I agree that’s a big big deal. I would just point out that there are two distinct issues there. After all, there are some Christians who are universalists: they believe that salvation comes only through Christ, but that *all* people will be saved through Christ without regard to knowledge of or belief in him.
On the second point, which is really about the justice of God, I highly recommend the end of CS Lewis’s book The Last Battle. There, a figure who had been following the equivalent of Islam finds out, in the end, that he had actually been pursuing the true God. There is a principle in the Bible that we will be judged in accordance with what we know, and that is a comfort to me on that topic.
The other question is really about the particularity of Jesus himself. Why didn’t God just create a universal religion based on a morality that everyone knows? Why tie religion to one particular Jewish man in the first century?
There, I think there is actually a beauty in particularity. Every human is a particular, contingent individual, and God chose to redeem humanity through a particular human being. Or so Christianity teaches. Personally, I find that a beautiful and persuasive claim, but certainly one to wrestle with.
Thank you Joel this was an amazing response and I will be chewing on it
Glad to hear, Steve! I'm encouraged. I'm with Jordan Peterson on this point: Don't claim to believe something you don't believe. Put this stuff to the test. No need to leave your reason at the door.
Reading Joel’s response, I understand the question😀
I don’t understand your question.
I feel like I barely survived the seduction of secular liberalism almost exactly in time to watch it start to flounder as the dominant cultural modality.
Exactly, right! Though I do wonder, on the ground with today’s teenagers, if wokeness has been more effective at seducing or if liberalism was. The moral fervor of wokeness has great seductive power.
This just another kind of special pleading by another flavor of liberalism: Christianity. If you accept universalism in any form, then liberalism will remain. Identity is the only morality and for Whites the only viable identity is 'White' not 'Christian'. For over thousand years Christianity convinced Whites to kill one another and destroy indigenous White cultural patrimony across Europe. Even as Whites are continually under cultural and physical attack, all 'Christians' can think about is expanding the market for their faith.
The author writes identifies two kinds of liberalism; classical liberalism (libertarianism) and a "cultural liberalism" that promised freedom and prosperity for all people regardless of skin color, political affiliation, religious beliefs, or sexual identity.
Cultural liberalism does NOT promise prosperity for all. It promises *respect* for all, regardless of your station in life; prosperity is off the table for most of the lower orders.
Both of these liberalisms are ultimately right wing in that they serve the interests of elites. For classical liberalism it is the Capitalist Elite and for cultural elite it is the Mandarins.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-mandarins-and-capitalists
Left out is New Deal liberalism, which was about prosperity for all. The other two liberalisms as well as conservatives are arrayed against this type, as it would command the allegiance of a large majority.