Tuesday, April 05, 2022

Dreher on "Liberalism"

Dreher rails against an essay which mischaracterized Dreher.  No surprise there.  The essay in question also mischaracterizes Deneen's work on the topic; apparently the authors of that essay are ........well..........stupid.  The alternative?  They have a problem with truth.  I'd buy either explanation.

In the midst of his response are these two succinct grafs:

...Liberalism, it seems to me, only works within a culture in which people broadly share the same fundamental worldview. To sharpen the point, it seems to me that it can only really work within a culture that shares the Biblical (Judeo-Christian, if you prefer) idea of how the cosmos is constructed — and in particular, what human beings are. We are losing, and in some places have definitely lost, that, hence the crisis of liberalism. In the US, the neuralgic points of wokeness exist because the postliberal Left — again, which now controls elite discourse and institutions — conflict directly with what the West, informed by the Bible, believes human beings are.

The woke view of race relations, for example, depends on a reductionist conception of race and identity. The woke view on sex and gender identity depends on the belief that sexual desire is at the core of the human person’s identity, and that maleness and femaleness is entirely plastic, and can be changed via technology and legal fiat. Many Christians (and others) believe this is wrong — not merely morally, but scientifically and metaphysically. And on race, Martin Luther King-style liberalism is indeed a fulfillment of liberalism’s fundamental conception of the human person; what has displaced it is anti-Christian, and illiberal....

Indeed.  That 'how the cosmos is constructed' line, briefly stated, is "right order."  It's based on What Is True, as James Schall, SJ would say, following Thomas Aquinas.

The rejection of truth is so obvious that even Elon Musk sees it.

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