I find it difficult not to see the Western nations disintegrating before our eyes. The most significant institutions that have characterized America and Britain for the last five centuries, giving these countries their internal coherence and stability—the Bible, public religion, the independent national state, and the traditional family—are not merely under assault. They have been, at least since World War II, in precipitous decline.As strongly worded as that is on first face, I think it's appropriate. When I reflect on the 'bake the cake' court cases, or the lawsuits brought against groups like The Little Sisters of the Poor, or the Senate confirmation hearings in which membership in the Knights of Columbus is treated as a problem -- well, "anti-religious, anti-traditionalist, universalist" sounds more or less correct.
In the United States, for example, some 40 percent of children are today born outside of marriage. The overall fertility rate has fallen to 1.76 children per woman. American children for the most part receive twelve years of public schooling that is scrubbed clean of God and Scripture. And it is now possible to lose one’s livelihood or even to be prosecuted for maintaining traditional Christian or Jewish views on various subjects.
Add to this the fact that the principal project of European and American political elites for decades now has been the establishment of a “liberal international order” whose aim is to export American norms and values to other nations, and you have a stunning picture of what the United States has become—a picture that in certain respects resembles that of Napoleonic France: an ideologically anti-religious, anti-traditionalist universalist power seeking to bring its version of the Enlightenment to the nations of the world, if necessary by force.
Given the strenuous objections I feel myself, too, how much stronger must those objections be among those against whom force has been used to effect this agenda. These people are completely convinced of the rightness of their cause, and that their opponents are motivated by simple racism or xenophobia or hatred of some similar sort. They do not see, and do not understand, how their project is experienced by those who are experiencing this project as finding their faith, traditions, and nations under assault.
I raised my children, the oldest now nearly 40, to live in a post-Christian world, because it seemed clear to me, having just graduated from an elite, secular, fairly conservative college, that there would be no going back.
ReplyDeleteSome things have changed more quickly, others more slowly, but I have at no point decided I was wrong in my estimate. Believers will be fighting rearguard action as long as I can see into the future.
I'm inclined to agree with you, until I reflect on how universal the belief you describe has been for each aging generation for thousands of years. The powers that be are never truly happy with really devout subjects and their unruly individual consciences. This is a bias that has been displayed, in the Christian world at least, all the way back to the Crucifixion.
ReplyDeleteWell, there are similarities going back in history.....the Romans also attempted to export their amorality, although with much less enthusiasm than the US.
ReplyDeleteThe US uses foreign aid money to enforce its homosexuality-approval and abortion-mania; the recipient can refuse the money OR subscribe to "US values." The US also exports porn (whether in fashions or cinema) which even Putin notices with disapproval.
Solzhenitsyn, Kirk, Burke, and (in its saner days, Rome) agree: the family is the building block of civilization, and the Judaeo-Christian tradition is the foundation of all (licit) law.
Hm mmmmmm.
Yes, it's enlightening (heh) to read about, say, the reign of Henry VIII. Margaret George's The Autobiography of Henry VIII has a number of scenes, attitudes, consequences that feel very familiar - and not just surrounding Henry's unhappiness with Thomas More's "unruly individual conscience."
ReplyDeleteI do think, though, that the extent to which much of society, the Establishment, the elite, whatever we want to call them no longer even pay lip service to religion - in fact, is adamantly opposed to it - is more extreme. Although, again, Napoleonic France is an historical forerunner.
On the third hand, with regard to a rearguard action, the cited article talks of English restoration of 1689 and of the American restoration of 1787, so there is historical hope in that regard as well.
This was a very helpful article to me and the earlier one it cites was equally valuable. They clarified a lot of what I "sort of feel" about political philosophies. The importance of historical empiricism (aka, evolution or trial and error) is one I've run across before and find convincing. I also appreciate the author's defense of religion and of the nation state. His view of conservative democracy is of something very messy and overwhelmingly humble. Quite CS Lewis. Thanks, Grim.
My pleasure. Thank you for coming by to read and comment on it. I always appreciate reading your opinions.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome - and my pleasure.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good thing that religions are being persecuted. It is about time people realized what a True Test by Fire means when it comes to faith, and not just pastors pretending to a holy office by oppressing the congregation and squeezing them out of 50 luxury cars.
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