Steyn: Secular Humanism Dooms West

In his fabulous book, "America Alone: The End of the World as we know it", gives him opinion of whether a society based on secular humanism can survive the Islamist virus:

Pre-modern Islam beats post-modern Christianity. In 2006, a dozen intellectuals published a manifesto against Islamism and in defense of "secular values for all." The signatories included Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian; Irshad Manji, the Canadian writer; and Salman Rushdie, the British novelist. All three are brave figures and important allies in the campaign against the Islamist tide. But they're making a mistake: secular humanism is an insufficient rallying cry. As another Canadian, Kathy Shaidle, wrote in response: "It is secularism itself which is part of the problem, not the solution, since secularism is precisely what created the Euro spiritual/moral vacuum into which Islamism has rushed headlong."

This is point is also emphasised by Ravi Zacharias many a time in his numerous lectures and talks:

I'll say this as kindly as I can: the last 22 years of my life have been spent in the West. The equal amount in the beginning was spent in the East. And Western civilisation is being rocked to its foundations because Western man does not know the point of reference for the value system that he wants to espouse right now. See the Middle East still espouses Islam: there is some transcedent leverage to the culture. We in modern times are daring the lines in the West and we actually think we can survive without the espousing of a Moral Law. History cries out against the experiment.

Here's a more abstract contrarian view from Nick Gillespie at Reason:

With the collapse of socialism as a viable alternative social system (as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in a great interview in the November Reason), it only makes sense that conservatives and libertarians would start to line up on different sides of the barricades that surround the battleground of individual choice and autonomy. Why? In part, because the libertarian doesn't fear change or blindly respect "established authority" the way conservatives tend to.

More fundamentally, though, it's because, pace Goldberg, libertarians do believe devoutly in something. They believe, writes Hayek, that "to live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal [libertarian] neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits."

Goldberg sniffs that such a world leads to--horrors!--"individualized, designer cultures" as opposed to, one presumes, mandated mass cultures that are forced on people whether they like it or not (substitute "religion" for "culture" to get a sense of whether more choice in human affairs is a good thing). He even quotes G.K. Chesterton ripping off Dostoevsky: "Chesterton pointed out that when a man stops believing in God, he won't believe in nothing, he'll believe in anything" and then neatly underscores his own flight from such a rigid, old-style world by adding, "God isn't necessarily the issue here." What a personalized reading of Chesterton.

So which position can assure West's ability to endure and survive? Well, from Gillespie et al. we should infer that, "reason will come riding on a horse" and save the day. The problem is that if Reason is riding the horse, who or what is the horse? Theists such as Steyn, Zacharias and Shaidle (and C.S. Lewis) answer that the horse is the Judeo-Christian God. His Moral Law is, pace Gillespie et al., the brighest light for the post-Christian world.

Christians and the Middle East

Two good pieces of reading:

1. Robert Spencer gives us an update on Abdul Rahman and the jihadist attempt to have him repatriated to Afghanistan to a death sentence.
2. Tom Bethell @ Spectator on Middle East demographics and the waning Christian presence there and the weaking influence of Judeo-Christian values on Western Society.
   

Chesterton: Uncandid Candid Friends

G.K. Chesterton in his book "Orthodoxy" (1908) on uncandid candid friends:

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back - his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly...what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens...A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is...what I have suggested: he is an uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor, for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it...

The personification of the uncandid candid friend changes over time, as do the characters traiterous to their own nation. Yet, their forked tongues and fake sympathy do not.

The global Left (with a few notable exceptions) are the uncandid candid friends of today. They pronounce our defeat in Iraq and wanting a retreat, not because of their care and concern for the soldiers on the ground, but because of their joy in seeing the US and its allies defeated.

Everytime I read Chesterton, I hang on his profound paradoxical statements, his ability to pierce complexity with his sharp tongue and the enduring lessons he teaches.

Steyn: Secular Humanism Dooms West

In his fabulous book, "America Alone: The End of the World as we know it", gives him opinion of whether a society based on secular humanism can survive the Islamist virus:

Pre-modern Islam beats post-modern Christianity. In 2006, a dozen intellectuals published a manifesto against Islamism and in defense of "secular values for all." The signatories included Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian; Irshad Manji, the Canadian writer; and Salman Rushdie, the British novelist. All three are brave figures and important allies in the campaign against the Islamist tide. But they're making a mistake: secular humanism is an insufficient rallying cry. As another Canadian, Kathy Shaidle, wrote in response: "It is secularism itself which is part of the problem, not the solution, since secularism is precisely what created the Euro spiritual/moral vacuum into which Islamism has rushed headlong."

This is point is also emphasised by Ravi Zacharias many a time in his numerous lectures and talks:

I'll say this as kindly as I can: the last 22 years of my life have been spent in the West. The equal amount in the beginning was spent in the East. And Western civilisation is being rocked to its foundations because Western man does not know the point of reference for the value system that he wants to espouse right now. See the Middle East still espouses Islam: there is some transcedent leverage to the culture. We in modern times are daring the lines in the West and we actually think we can survive without the espousing of a Moral Law. History cries out against the experiment.

Here's a more abstract contrarian view from Nick Gillespie at Reason:

With the collapse of socialism as a viable alternative social system (as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in a great interview in the November Reason), it only makes sense that conservatives and libertarians would start to line up on different sides of the barricades that surround the battleground of individual choice and autonomy. Why? In part, because the libertarian doesn't fear change or blindly respect "established authority" the way conservatives tend to.

More fundamentally, though, it's because, pace Goldberg, libertarians do believe devoutly in something. They believe, writes Hayek, that "to live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal [libertarian] neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits."

Goldberg sniffs that such a world leads to--horrors!--"individualized, designer cultures" as opposed to, one presumes, mandated mass cultures that are forced on people whether they like it or not (substitute "religion" for "culture" to get a sense of whether more choice in human affairs is a good thing). He even quotes G.K. Chesterton ripping off Dostoevsky: "Chesterton pointed out that when a man stops believing in God, he won't believe in nothing, he'll believe in anything" and then neatly underscores his own flight from such a rigid, old-style world by adding, "God isn't necessarily the issue here." What a personalized reading of Chesterton.

So which position can assure West's ability to endure and survive? Well, from Gillespie et al. we should infer that, "reason will come riding on a horse" and save the day. The problem is that if Reason is riding the horse, who or what is the horse? Theists such as Steyn, Zacharias and Shaidle (and C.S. Lewis) answer that the horse is the Judeo-Christian God. His Moral Law is, pace Gillespie et al., the brighest light for the post-Christian world.

Christians and the Middle East

Two good pieces of reading:

1. Robert Spencer gives us an update on Abdul Rahman and the jihadist attempt to have him repatriated to Afghanistan to a death sentence.
2. Tom Bethell @ Spectator on Middle East demographics and the waning Christian presence there and the weaking influence of Judeo-Christian values on Western Society.
   

Chesterton: Uncandid Candid Friends

G.K. Chesterton in his book "Orthodoxy" (1908) on uncandid candid friends:

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back - his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly...what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens...A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is...what I have suggested: he is an uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor, for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it...

The personification of the uncandid candid friend changes over time, as do the characters traiterous to their own nation. Yet, their forked tongues and fake sympathy do not.

The global Left (with a few notable exceptions) are the uncandid candid friends of today. They pronounce our defeat in Iraq and wanting a retreat, not because of their care and concern for the soldiers on the ground, but because of their joy in seeing the US and its allies defeated.

Everytime I read Chesterton, I hang on his profound paradoxical statements, his ability to pierce complexity with his sharp tongue and the enduring lessons he teaches.