Rush Limbaugh was speculating today about the causes of anti-American sentiment in disaffected young people like the NYC hatchet jihadi. He attributes the anti-Americanism to leftist ideas and historical ignorance endemic to our schools. I think this is correct to some extent.
However, the jihadis and other violent anti-American Americans are extreme outliers. The vast majority of people on the Left are not nearly so hostile to American institutions and culture, though they tend to hold grievances against this country and its political system and culture that conservatives do not. Limbaugh makes the typical culturally tone-deaf conservative error of attributing to anti-Americanism that which could better be attributed to cynicism and ignorance.
The USA is a political, economic and cultural wonder, but you need some history to appreciate this fact and our schools no longer teach it. If you don’t know much history, facile cynicism and the tendentious explanations of people who really don’t like the country become plausible. It’s difficult for someone who understands the origins of this country’s institutions and traditions to become a jihadi. It’s even more difficult to become a jihadi if you also understand the intellectually convoluted roots of modern Islamism.
Well, that is why I write historical fiction. To try and teach history painlessly and for readers to have a good time doing so.
I’m off in the morning, to a stint at the Texas Book Festival. One of the author associations I belong to has a booth on the grounds as an exhibitor.
I do what I can.
Ignorance and squish liberality cum socialism can’t be ignored, I agree. One shouldn’t, however, neglect good old greed as a motive by disaffected groups to consciously motivate the aforementioned ignorants and squish. The quick, tried and true routes, violence, war, and terrorism as well as civil disobedience (hello Ferguson community organizers) are used to gain power, wealth and influence when what they have to offer in the legit marketplace is of little value.
On the small scale they are thugs, pirates, and highwaymen. On the large scale Nazis and jihadists.
Ignorance is a factor, yes, and a form of magical thinking that desperately needs to believe that all good things would happen if everyone just believed in the right things.
But, running underneath it all, is the deep guilt and self-hatred of people who truly believe that only some form of evil could have produced so much for some while others have so little.
You can see it in the entire progressive ideology, it is one of the fundamental beliefs underlying the form of deep ecology that views humans as a cancerous growth on the earth, and it is currently on display in the recent rash of converts to radical Islam by western youths from middle to upper class backgrounds.
The guilt, and subsequent self-hatred, stems from the moral inversion that has as infected western culture, among others, from the time of our most primitive beginnings. It is the fundamentally flawed belief that the individual is no more than a component of the group, and that life on earth should be directed by the visions, dreams, and delusions of men and women who claim to have been in direct contact with supernatural beings.
It is the belief that life on earth is somehow less than a future life revealed in dreams and visions that at the very heart of so much human misery down through the ages. It is the endless, and utterly futile, search for heaven, or utopia, that condemns so many to an existence here that seems like hell on earth.
” the deep guilt and self-hatred of people who truly believe that only some form of evil could have produced so much for some while others have so little.”
It’s ironic that a successful culture creates so many of these types. I’m guessing that much of it comes from having too much time on their hands (due to the successful culture) and not using that time (as Jon discusses in this post) to learn as much as one can about what makes and what made the world tick. Learning for knowledge requires too much discipline for too many folks and the habit never is too seldom developed. Learning “to get a job” just doesn’t cut it.
” the individual is no more than a component of the group,”
“Maintain or create personal Liberty” is the prime directive.
“The guilt, and subsequent self-hatred, stems from the moral inversion that has as infected western culture, among others, from the time of our most primitive beginnings. It is the fundamentally flawed belief that the individual is no more than a component of the group, and that life on earth should be directed by the visions, dreams, and delusions of men and women who claim to have been in direct contact with supernatural beings.
It is the belief that life on earth is somehow less than a future life revealed in dreams and visions that at the very heart of so much human misery down through the ages. It is the endless, and utterly futile, search for heaven, or utopia, that condemns so many to an existence here that seems like hell on earth.”
I was solidly with you until you went of this progressive critique of religion in the West. The history of the our culture is the story of how the natural individual rights upon which it is built were God given and this culture operates only if the moral values of the Judeo-Christian faith are operational. The notion that it was based on some sort of theocratic structure operating to suppress humanity with guilt is inconsistent with those natural rights. Such a system could never have resulted in the operation of individual free will to collectively result in a culture that values and rewards individual effort.
The progressives assert that the human condition, even in such a system where the give and take under a rule of law based on natural rights, will never produce equality of outcome, perfect justice before human administered law, perfect internal harmony or universal happiness. No duh, it is a world /culture inhabited by imperfect people. The point they miss is that our system gives us the best chance on a good outcome because it is based on incentives for people to serve others in order to advance themselves through voluntary agreement. They don’t buy that, imposing an arrogant assumption that an enlightened, nominally altruistic intellectual ruling class may and ought to intervene using the power of government to improve the outcome to suit their collective vision of “progress”. That vision of top down control is exactly the notion that spawned the development of the concepts that lead to our revolution in response to the centralized statism represented by the monarchy (power by blood) combined with a captured state religion.
The Judeo-Christian faith in no way fundamentally hostile to liberty (as opposed to license) and in fact provided an essential basis for its operation in a complex society. It can be distorted and employed to justify destroying individual sovereignty, but that is necessarily in direct conflict with its essence of individual value, free will and creativity granted us by our Creator and operationalized by the New Covenant. Progressives like to do this just as kings and corrupt church leaders did and continue to do. Just as Western Civilization is corruptible regardless of its basic truths, so the Church is not a museum for saints, it is a hospital for imperfect people and it will not be perfected by them. There is no justifiable self-hatred based on moral inversion. There is salvation and sanctification that we can not know in any other way. This is the basis for seriously addressing our individual errors and moving forward to try again without self-hatred. The truth of Christianity is that each individual has the capacity for direct contact and relationship with God. We do not require any priesthood or other religious elite to serve as an intermediator. That doesn’t mean we suddenly become infallible in knowing what God knows, so we have the Bible and community with other believers to help us sort it out.
I write all of this because I found your words concerning self-hatred and subordination of the individual to religious human hierarchy so foreign to my life as a Christian. The hope of heaven has quite the opposite effect than what you imply. Christian purpose it to live out the moral principle of the faith which necessarily empower the individual to improve his own lot in this life while necessarily improving the lot of others. This requires mutually agreed upon interaction. It is still a world were evil will have power to do great harm. God and Christianity are not the source of misery down through the ages, that is universal in all cultures and times. God and Christianity have the potential to mitigate that suffering as witnessed in this culture since its founding. When those influences are marginalized, as I see happening in my lifetime, we shall see how well it works out in comparison. You may justly criticize other faith beliefs because they all lack the appreciation of the relationship between God and individuals and an answer to the problem of suffering. They provide no clear endorsement of how individual choice can be the basis of a culture that mitigates evil through voluntary interactions based on a moral code that recognized individual human worth.
Ayn does not have all of the essential elements of the truth because she couldn’t see the foundation upon which the operation of natural rights must rest. Self-interest is destructive if it is selfishness narrowly defined. Much of the cynicism we see based on the revisionist formulations of our history are to a significant degree based on this same deletion of the net positive role than Christianity played in the founding and operation of our culture. I recommend America Imagine the World without Her, both the book and the movie.
Mike
“The history of the our culture is the story of how the natural individual rights upon which it is built were God given and this culture operates only if the moral values of the Judeo-Christian faith are operational.”
I’m agnostic and I agree with you on Judeo-Christian ethics. The faith is probably necessary but, like immunization, there is a “herd immunity” factor in which, if the majority believes, even doubters like me are protected from the hostility to ethics that is so much a part of leftist philosophy. The hostility to religion is part of the hostility to absolute values of any kind.
If you interpreted my comment as some kind of calumny against Christianity, I’m afraid you have missed the point completely. While there are plenty of historical issues with the practice of any religious establishment, Christianity included, it is no accident that the reformation, and it’s emphasis on personal salvation, led to the ideas of individual rights and human dignity.
Instead of telling me to read a book, perhaps you should consider why my criticism of claims of supernatural direction, which undergird every cult and theocracy in history, disturb you so, and cause you to reject out of hand an idea which is much broader than your personal relligious affiliation.
From time immemorial, autocracy has been legitimized by claims of either the god hood of the ruler, or the divine right of the sovereign to rule without the consent of the subject people.
When the doctrine of the rights of man overturned that claim, the aristocratic order that had ruled the world for millennia began to collapse. When that same theory of rights undermined, and finally overthrew, the various totalitarian ideologies that inherited the mantle of autocracies’ justification, the current era began.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the forces of progressive collectivism have joined with the forces of theocratic islamofascism to threaten the rights of citizens to live their own lives free of endless interference and threat.
The Mystics of spirit and the Mystics of muscle are natural allies, especially when they are opposed by those who declare the individual as being the repository of all rights, and the possessor of a unique dignity of the human person that may not be violated.
Look around the world and ask yourself, who presents the threat to you and your family—those of us who have a healthy suspicion of supernatural claims of justification, but zealously respect your right to your own personal beliefs, or those who claim to be justified, either by God or their own vision of utopia, in ordering you to submit to their vision upon pain of death?
I think you know the answer as well as I do. I suggest you save your indignation for those who actually believe your life belongs to their God, or their collective vision.
You’re going to need it.
The exchange in the comments and the point of the article opens a question that perhaps it is time to consider if the raising of our children should be separated from the State and government.
A complete Separation of School and State on First Amendment Grounds.
No further Constitutional requirements.
The immediate purpose accomplished of course is to not raise our children in the cult of Statism and Anti Western Civilization that permeates academia, but there is an older matter at work, that is the separation of Church and State contracted Constitutionally by the First Amendment. For our schools have always been Religious in nature, but the mainstream Protestant religion has lost God and hence their way.
Which means politely ignoring that our schools were always violating the First Amendment cannot be ignored any longer. When it was benevolent Catholics and others could insist on their parochial schools, now that they are so fanatical and destructive it is time to insist the basic political contract be enforced.
Or we are doomed to endless Holy Wars not just from without but from within.
There is no need in the modern era if ever there was to put the resources of the State behind education. There is nothing in the Constitution mandating it, and a correct reading of the First Amendment that did not wink at the Yankee schoolhouse teaching mainstream Protestantism however diluted ignored it for the vast uneducated hordes of the early industrial age. This system is not just archaic, it is unconstitutional and it is time to stand against it on First Amendment Grounds.
Or we are doomed to endless Holy Wars. For that is of course what our struggle is, one side has simply dispensed with God altogether but not the vision of his anointed.
Time to part our children peacefully from each other before they are parted by war.
“When the doctrine of the rights of man overturned that claim, the aristocratic order that had ruled the world for millennia began to collapse.”
The French Revolution opened the door to all the evils that afflict us today. The aristocratic order was actually pretty benign. There was no concept of citizen armies or conscription. When Wellington was asked why the British soldiers enlisted, he answered “For the drink.” He was wrong but the point was that they enlisted. Napoleon’s armies were conscripts. That was new in history.
I am agnostic and am nowhere near arrogant enough to be an atheist, which I consider another religion.
MikeK,
While I appreciate your comments in general, and in this case, I disagree regarding the benign nature of aristocratic rule. Around the world, aristocratic oligarchies were savagely violent against anyone who questioned their right to rule, and stifled many creative people who might have improved the lot of the common citizen.
The obvious proof of this is the sudden onslaught of changes that occurred in the US when the aristocracy was nullified, and their control of land and capital replaced by a more open system. Why do you suppose the nobility adopted such an hostile and contemptuous attitude towards those engaged in trade? They perceived early on that independently creative people could amass wealth and political power in opposition to the privileges of the nobility.
I do agree that the French revolution was a disaster. One need look no further than “egalite'” for the fundamental reason why it failed so badly.
What you, or anyone, believes in terms of faith is a matter of indifference to me. I judge actions as to whether they threaten me or not. If there is, however, a school of thought which demands it’s adherents enforce uniformity of thought and belief on everyone else, then that ideology becomes a direct threat to all I hold dear, and I will oppose it, and it’s disciples, to the bitter end.
I was raised as a Catholic, and raised my children in the Church and in their schools, as I was raised. And I told them the same thing mr mother told me—“You will decide what you believe as you get older, but get the education being offered, and you can figure the rest out later.”
I revere Pope John Paul 2 for his courage in standing against the most ferocious tyranny in history and saying, in very clear language, that it was illegitimate, not for some esoteric economic theories, but because it violated the sacred dignity of the individual person in everything it said and did.
The future will be made by the creative energy and moral courage of those who will not accept being ruled, either by some secular ideology, or by some fanatical theology.
As it is the place my children and grandchildren will live after I’m gone, I am compelled to use whatever meager resources I have to ensure it is a future spent in the sunlit uplands a great man once mentioned, and not in the abyss of darkness he warned against.
After all, everyone needs a hobby when they retire…
“I disagree regarding the benign nature of aristocratic rule. Around the world, aristocratic oligarchies were savagely violent against anyone who questioned their right to rule, and stifled many creative people who might have improved the lot of the common citizen.”
The French Revolution was the first regime I am aware of that included thought control among the citizens. Much of this was a matter of technological progress since the printing press had been invented. We are in much worse shape now, as the Nazi and Communist governments showed us. Now we have the IRS and various government organizations, like the EPA and even the Milwaukee District Attorney, to attack those who disagree.
Louis XIV was unable to compel citizens to act in private as he wished. The English kings were positively benign after the Magna Carta, which in fact applied to nobility, not the common man. The right to be let alone persisted a long time until technology and ideology combined to enable a tyranny unimagined by the tyrants of old. Had Lavoisier not been a tax farmer, it is likely that even he would have survived the French Revolution. His wife did and worked to maintain his memory.
Woodrow Wilson was probably the first American Fascist and he used the technology of the time to compel obedience. Harding and Coolidge were an interregnum before Roosevelt reimposed the control and the fascism. Nixon, for all his paranoia, did not impose anything like the regime we labor under today. I dare say that, if Obama were white, we would have much less to fear. There seems to be an anger and desire for vengeance among the pigmented members of the Democrat coalition.
The interesting irony, which I have pointed out to one of my daughters who leans left politically, is that the darker members of the Negro race tend to be the conservatives. Look at Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, Ben Carson and many others, including Condaleeza Rice. They are dark. The light complected Negroes have tended to lord it over darker members and this seems to continue to this day. I have a theory about it involving a resentment at being considered brothers of their darker fellows.
Darn all those cynics; worse than Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, Al Gore, Michael Mann,”¦ Why they are much worse than the people who actually do all the vile things at which those terrible cynics shrug.
“Now we have the IRS and various government organizations, like the EPA and even the Milwaukee District Attorney, to attack those who disagree”
The American people have spent a century building the bureaucracy of tyranny. They will now be governed by it.
On conscription: The early Roman army was based on a compulsory levy from adult male citizens that was held at the start of each campaigning season. (I could multiply my examples.)
On the benignity of aristocracy: Thirty Year’s War. Justinian. Caesar. Genghis Khan. Eighty Years’ War (Dutch rebellion).
“The French Revolution was the first regime I am aware of that included thought control among the citizens.” Maybe. it’s not as if religious states from Pharaoh to Phillip of Spain didn’t try to tell their subjects exactly what to think. I can honestly say I have no idea what life would have been for dissenters in India, China, or Japan prior to the French Revolution. What I know of how those societies treated dissenters after 1800 make me gloomy.
VeryRetired, you are correct. I am terribly afraid of those messianic libertarians with their crackpot beliefs about human nature and economics. So far In service of their unprovable delusions they only prosecute ministers, photographers, and bakers, but they will travel the same road their atheistic socialist comrades tread.
Eris,
It’s not one or the other. There are many more excessively cynical people around than there are people who are hostile to this country. Cynicism is like confidence: you need some but too much gets in the way of understanding. Our elegant ideological arguments bounce off the heads of people who just know that the fix is always in, that it’s all about who has the cash, that you can’t fight city hall, etc. They are sometimes right, which reinforces their cynicism, but they lack the education and experience to see the important exceptions when ideas matter a great deal, that some ideas are better than others and that there are times when fighting city hall is the most practical strategy.
If you think you’re going to give the jaded propaganda of has been lefty professors to children and the children won’t learn [core function of teaching is impart learning] you’re missing the last 50 years.
That’s all the happened. The Left marched into the Universities from the 30’s and from the 60s into the entire school system, and now is making it’s way into our entire society.
It’s not cynicism it’s auto-genocidal conditioning.
@Eris,
Lead, Follow or stop complaining.
“The American people have spent a century building the bureaucracy of tyranny. They will now be governed by it.”
They didn’t know, all their leadership betrayed them, betrayal isn’t by the way anything new in History. None of this is new except to Americans.
Including the precious technology. What was new is that the Enlightenment taught us foolishly to worship reason and knowledge as if they were replacement gods and religion, instead of just tools like our hands and voice-boxes.
Lead, Follow or stop complaining.
” The early Roman army was based on a compulsory levy from adult male citizens”
That’s interesting. I have read several books about Roman life but missed that.
I still think conscription was limited by the ability to identify who was who until the French Revolution which I believe was the first to be interested in the thoughts of its citizens.
“it’s not as if religious states from Pharaoh to Phillip of Spain didn’t try to tell their subjects exactly what to think.”
I agree they wanted to tell people but the question is whether they knew. In France, for example, most of the population did not speak French until the Revolution.
“In service of their unprovable delusions they only prosecute ministers, photographers, and bakers”
Libertarians are doing this ? I don’t think so.
It would be incorrect to label the Roman Army during the Republic as a conscript army. The Roman Army was the entirety of the citizens of Rome. The best modern analogies are Switzerland and Israel, although they allow certain categories to opt out. During the Empire, the Army became professionalized and non-Roman.
Certainly the prototype of modern thought control is the Spanish Inquisition (which nobody expects). Of course they were less efficient than their modern imitators due to the poor communications and travel conditions of the time. Nonetheless, the Inquisition did succeed in turning Spain into an intellectual backwater. So, persistence does have some effect.
“Nonetheless, the Inquisition did succeed in turning Spain into an intellectual backwater. So, persistence does have some effect.”
Pretty good example but the Inquisition has been over rated for effectiveness. Catholic sources dismiss some of the myths. For example:
Spain was in many ways quite different from the rest of Europe. Conquered by Muslim jihad in the eighth century, the Iberian peninsula had been a place of near constant warfare. Because borders between Muslim and Christian kingdoms shifted rapidly over the centuries, it was in most rulers’ interest to practice a fair degree of tolerance for other religions. The ability of Muslims, Christians, and Jews to live together, called convivencia by the Spanish, was a rarity in the Middle Ages. Indeed, Spain was the most diverse and tolerant place in medieval Europe. England expelled all of its Jews in 1290. France did the same in 1306. Yet in Spain Jews thrived at every level of society.
The controversy seemed to be about Jews that had converted, some voluntarily, and the old aristocracy which resented their power. Many were Spanish officials.
As for the Jews, they were immune to the Inquisition. Remember, the purpose of an inquisition was to find and correct the lost sheep of Christ’s flock. It had no jurisdiction over other flocks. Those who get their history from Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I will perhaps be surprised to learn that all of those Jews enduring various tortures in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition are nothing more than a product of Brooks’s fertile imagination. Spain’s Jews had nothing to fear from the Spanish Inquisition.
I’m sure that’s controversial for many but the Spanish Inquisition has been vastly exaggerated in literature.
The real backwater status was a result of Phillip wasting the revenues from the New World on religious wars. Especially in the Netherlands. Spain was poor by the end of his long life.
I’m not a libertarian, but the idea that they are responsible for the pic nonsense referred to above is ridiculous. The Pogrom currently underway against the bakers et al is a purely progressive politically correct campaign to force not only compliance with SSM, but silence anyone who dares to disagree or become involved in the activity.
The danger of zealotry when it is for increased state powers is the irresistible lure of using the power of the law to enforce one’s beliefs as the only acceptable beliefs anyone may have.
This was the repressive nature of the theocratic aristocracies I referred to earlier, and is one of the several impulses that led the French into the abyss of The Terror.
Acton was right, you see.
Veryretired,
You made a completely generalized statement concerning religions, I did not notice any qualifications that would admit any net positive value to any organized faith with a belief in a perfected afterlife. I doubt I am the only one who read it that way. I never expressed indignation and feel none. I did acknowledge that other faiths, which lack the essential attributes of God contained in the Judeo-Christian tradition can not be a basis for individual liberty, “You may justly criticize other faith beliefs because they all lack the appreciation of the relationship between God and individuals and an answer to the problem of suffering. They provide no clear endorsement of how individual choice can be the basis of a culture that mitigates evil through voluntary interactions based on a moral code that recognized individual human worth.”
Understanding your intent based on your subsequent post, I agree with your point that religions such as Islam that is fundamentally based on conquest by violence and imposition of a theocracy rooted in a dehumanizing set of highly restricted and contradictory standards is a major thread to Western Civilization. You did specifically pointed out infection of Western Culture by religious beliefs. As far as I know the Judeo-Christian tradition has been the dominant influence for over 1500 ears and that period defines for most people what we know as Western Civilization. I am sure we received valuable concepts and cultural values from the earlier Roman and Greek civilizations, but almost none of that stems from their religious traditions. Am I missing something here?
My greatest concern stemmed from the apparent similarity of your comments to those made by many progressives directed specifically toward Judeo-Christian based faiths. Some across the political and ideological spectrum have this opinion of Christianity to a lesser degree. My intent was to distinguish the Judeo-Christian tradition from other religions who may rightly be criticized along the lines you chose. I do not deny that there are episodes in this tradition where we have strayed from or misapplied the fundamental and distinguishing truths of this tradition in consequence of our human fallibility. You points about the Reformation I’m completely in agreement with.
MikeK,
I appreciate your comments and share your belief that there must be a moral values consensus based on mutual value and worth of each individual and which places a moral responsibility on each individual for the consequences of their actions. That is not to say unanimity, but sufficient so that actions are generally measured by this value set. I believe that the Judeo-Christian faith tradition is the only major faith tradition that fundamentally supports this requirement for a culture based on liberty. You are quite right to assert that this does not require religious conformity for such a culture to persist so long as there is some minimum acceptance of the moral system created and energized by such faith.
Mike
A lot of people do not realize that the French Aristocracy was divided in the Revolution and many supported the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” but they were over whelmed once the Terror began. The old aristocracies were not as monolithic as the modern bureaucracies and leftist philosophies are.
A good source for this is Schama’s book Citizens which is a huge history of the Revolution. My review of it is here . Another book, “Peasants into Frenchmen by Weber is kind of interesting but got too heavy for me to finish.
Earlier nations and empires were driven by ethics very different from those of the Christian era. Slavery was only one feature of all ancient civilizations. Athens was vicious in the hands of the democrats while the aristocracy, with the exception of “the Thirty Tyrants,” were far more benign by the standards of the day.
I’ve done quite a bit of reading about medieval Europe and the middle east, as well as China, and the societies were not very well controlled by the rulers.
I guess I should add that Christian Europe in the religious wars was not a benign place but the fighting was mostly among professional armies. It still laid waste to the land and millions died of disease and starvation. Cities were lethal places, for example, not because of crime or the rulers but because of disease. From the fall of Rome until the 1859 Great Exhibition, public toilets were unknown in England. Thomas A Crapper, of course, is famous as the inventor of flush toilets although there were a few before him. The Romans, however had water closets in 200 BC.
“Lead, Follow or stop complaining.”
I do lead by example. For most people, that’s not enough. They want a man on horseback.
“Libertarians are doing this ? I don’t think so.”
It doesn’t matter who is doing it. Libertarians wanted it, willed it, approved it, voted for it, cheer’d it on (e.g., marriage “equality”) knowing that the power to prosecute dissenters would not be given to libertarians (only some of whom would repeal anti-discrimination laws and many of whom are militant atheists) but to a state libertarians say they despise (unless they’re “liberal-tarians”) and fear.
It’s too late now to claim the perfect ideology of libertarianism would forbid such practices, and that therefore they remain pure.That’s like socialists claiming communism isn’t what they wanted. Doesn’t matter. The experiment has been run: socialism in real life is a disaster even while it endures pure and perfect in its adherents’ minds.
The repression of every baker, photographer, minister, and there will be more dissenters who are prosecuted, bullied, importuned, reviled, or persecuted can be laid at the feet of libertarians who claim “Your rights end where mine begin.” In practice this claim becomes “Your rights end where the state enforces mine.”
Words won’t change my mind. Deeds will. Show me the Reason Foundation has committed as much resources to repealing anti-discrimination legislation as it did for homosexual marriage. Show me mass demonstrations by libertarians in favor of religious freedom. Hasn’t happened. Won’t happen.
Libertarians are the fellow travelers and stalking horses of the Left who justify every Leftist assault on humanity by shrieking “freedom” or “equality” thereby making it easier for the tyrants to rule as libertarians cheer the new tyrannical “equality.” Because libertarianism (a crackpot ideology) like its sister socialism (another crackpot ideology) inevitably leads to tyranny.
First of all no Libertarian wants to prosecute any butcher, baker, or candlestick maker for adhering to their personal beliefs while running their business. You are a bit confused. Libertarians are against state coercion over private property or enterprise. There is no Libertarian belief that seeks to have the state restrict some individual rights to protect others. See this link.
Or this about striking down the most restrictive measures of Voters Rights Act.
They would argue that a free market with real competition allowed to operate on it’s own with no government regulations protecting one group over another will will sort out the optimal business practices. If some business owners are legitimately discriminating against some group, then a competitor that can service that group will eventually emerge to replace the bad actors. When there is no state coercing and picking winners and losers, all groups have a chance.
Second of all, there is no Committee of International Libertarianism that is mandating specific policies or doctrines. Most distrust institutions which is whey they’re so disorganized. Reason.org doesn’t speak for all Libertarians, and, in fact, it probably speaks for few. It does seem that they get a lot of press advocating gay rights, drug legalization, and secularism. These issues get attention from Big Media.
However, there are many others who see no inconsistency between religion and liberty as in 2 Conrinthians 17-18
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord
Or Galatians 5:1
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage
Please see the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mi who believe an equal emphasis on individual virtue as well as individual liberty is necessary. Religions (the good ones) build and encourage virtue. Freedom requires the exercise of virtue on behalf of citizens. Virtuous citizens ensure trust that markets, communities, nations, etc will function without state coercion or counterproductive regulation.
“Freedom requires the exercise of virtue on behalf of citizens. Virtuous citizens ensure trust that markets, communities, nations, etc will function without state coercion or counterproductive regulation.”
Can not argue with that. Well said.
Mike