I wrote this thread on another forum. I thought you guys might like it:
Social liberalism, to my mind, is a social and spiritual disease. It is utterly repulsive in every way. It has no redeeming qualities. It is disgusting. [This is, of course, to say nothing about social liberals. An idealogy can be utterly and irredeemably flawed, wrong and disgusting. Idealogues, however, are not, at least, not this side of eternity.]
Before I go any further, let me briefly define my terms:
By "social liberalism," I understand the general ideaology or set of idealogies which lead to the acceptance of such doctrines as:
1. Homosexual conduct is morally permissible. It's not an unholy crime against nature which cries out to heaven for vengeance. In fact, it should receive State sponsorship (read: "gay marriage").
2. Abortion is morally permissible. It's not the murder of an unborn child. It' not an unholy crime against nature which cries out to heaven for vengeance. In fact, it should receive State sponsorship.
3. Contraceptives are morally permissible. It's also not a crime against nature. In fact, they should receive State sponsorship.
4. The death penalty, paradoxically, is generally wrong and should be administered only when there is no other option. It's OK to kill babies if the mother doesn't want them around, but it's generally WRONG to kill convicted violent criminals! It's WRONG to kill those who threaten society and who undermine the public safety and peace! :eyebrow:
5. A corollary to 4: [censored version of expletive deleted] the police. Law enforcement is practically one of the few things that should have less state sponsorship. Policemen bad. Criminals good.
6. Sex change operations are something other than genital mutilation and plastic surgery. In fact, it should probably receive State funding too! (Unlike those evil policemen. How dare they insist on preserving law and order!?)
7. YOU MUST HAVE SEX! Regardless of whether you can support children or not, regardless of whether you are married or even plan on ever becoming married or not, and regardless of whether it would even be dangerous for you to bear children. YOU MUST HAVE SEX! :madmad:
I could go on. But I think you understand the kind of thing that I mean. I think that you understand the kind of people that I mean. Such a doctrine, of course, would be comic, if only nobody took it seriously. This plague of the human mind, this unholy disease of the human spirit, however, is the veritable credo of the modern Western world.
And what is the demonic germ of these doctrines? What is the underlying supposition which so utterly poisons the human mind that it leads those whom it infects to "call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter" (Isaiah 5:20)?
Atheism: the virtual rejection of the very notion of God.
To which you'll answer: "But...there are many theistic social liberals." And I'll agree that there are such people nominally.
The underlying premise of social liberalism is that man is pure self-creation. It takes its start from the modern project, initially expressed in Descartes, of making man a master over nature. It presupposes a violent dualistic divorce between nature and freedom. Man is will. Man is choice. Man is self-creation. He is nothing other than what he chooses to be. In short? The underlying presupposition of social liberalism is that man is God.
And if man is God, then God is not God. If man alone creates himself in his own image and likeness, and if he sees the work of his hands, and that it is good, because he made it, then man is God. God is not God.
Thus does Social Liberalism, in its perverted madness, cry out into the ears of the deceived masses: "CONSENT! FREE CHOICE!"
Because if man is God, a deity of self-creation and free choice, then ultimately, that's all that matters. In fact, in this light, the State and political society start to become something of an embarassment for social liberalism. After all, if man is a God of free choice and self-creation, then how can there be something superior to Him? How can there be something prior to Him? How can there be a higher authority to which he is subject?
Enter bourgeois liberalism and the breakdown of Western society. If man is God, then the State rules only by this man-God's consent and permission. Political society becomes nothing other than a mere contract, nothing but a collective general consent. Nietzsche's words were simply symptomatic of his age, of a movement that had already long been started and was simply reaching its natural progression: "God is dead, and we have killed him!" And thus does Jean-Paul Sartre tell us that there is no God, and this is the very premise of existential philosophy. There is no God, and therefore all things are possible. Whatever man chooses is the good: because he nothing but freedom, nothing but self-creation. There is no nature. There is no God. There is nothing good apart from our choice.
But Descartes had already said as much: what the moderns are seeking is the mastery of man over nature. And how greatly has nature since been mastered in social liberal thought? So greatly has it been mastered that it has ceased to exist.
But if you are a theist, you can believe none of this. If you are a theist, then you must believe that God is God, and man is not God. Man is not pure self-creation. He is a part of the created order, he is a part of nature, and nature is good. Why? Because God made it.
"And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good" (Genesis 1:31).
As Plotinus tells us in one of his tracts in the Enneads: if the created universe could speak to us, she would tell us: "God made me! Because of that, I am beautiful and good!"
If you are a theist, then you must admit that the entire created order is a theophany. It is a continual reflection and image of God's goodness. It is finitely lovable, because He is infinitely lovable. It is finitely good, because He is infinitely good.It is finitely beautiful, because He is infinitely beautiful.
If you are a theist, then you must oppose the social liberalism at every turn.
It says that man is God. It says that man is nothing other than self-creation. The theist, in turn, must say:
"Nay. God created man in His image and likeness."
The social liberal will deny that there is such a thing as nature, and certainly a nature of man. And even if there were a nature of man, so what? The theist, in turn, must say:
"Nay, for God created us, and all that God has created is good. Human nature is good."
And so on for all of the doctrines of social liberalism. It all relies on the assumption that there is no nature and there is no God. It all presupposes that man is God.
If man is not God, and God is God, then social liberalism is false. Abortion is murder. Sodomy is an unholy crime against nature. Contraceptives are wrong. Sex changes operations are nothing more than genital mutilation. Political society is good and public safety and order is to be valued, and criminals are to be considered guilty and bad if they offend against her.
If God is God, then man has an intrinsic dignity and worth, because he is made in God's image and likeness, because He has been created by God. But if that's true, then man's freedom has natural limits, and not all things are permissible. There is such a thing as a natural law.
"Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee" (Jeremiah 1:5).
Topic of discussion:
Are atheism and social liberalism mutually consistent?
