Friday, March 08, 2013

Kalb Speaks: The inhumanity of secularism

James Kalb, the intellectually intrepid author of The Tyranny of Liberalism writes in the Catholic World Report on the wages of technology and technocratic thinking and what they hath wrought:
Everybody who matters is a secularist today, and the situation has far-reaching implications. One is that educated and well-placed people now believe that the institutions on which social order is based should be technically expert, economically rational, morally nonjudgmental, and universal in their reach. So the world should be ordered comprehensively by global markets and expert regulatory bureaucracies, together with subsidiary institutions such as universities, think tanks, media organizations, and various NGOs that serve or try to influence government and business. That, it is thought, is the uniquely rational way of organizing society, and whatever threatens it, or attempts to limit it or introduce other authorities, is irrational, disruptive, and a threat to humanity.

... Anything else would violate the vision of the secular development of the human world into an ordered and beneficent cosmos. That, it is thought, would be the triumph of chaos, irrationality, and violence. The problem is that the society aimed at has no room for man as he is. It treats him as fundamentally a careerist and consumer, with no natural particularities, and no higher aspiration or destiny than the perfection of the system that enables him and his fellows to get what they want. Any qualities that go beyond that are disruptive, and must be eradicated or neutralized by confining them to a purely private sphere where they won’t influence anything. 
For that reason it has no place for the attachments that have always formed human life and to which we have always given our deepest loyalties: family, religion, specific community, particular people and culture, ultimate truth.
Read the rest here.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

In other words, the god of secularism is government, as long as the "right" side controls that government.

Jeffrey Helix said...

I came across your blog when this post showed up immediately on a google search I did:

http://vereloqui.blogspot.com/2008/06/of-pandas-and-people-fallacy.html

Very nuanced, and very well-reasoned.

You've just earned yourself a new set of followers. :-)

Martin Cothran said...

Jeffrey,

Gee. I forgot I wrote that. Thanks.

KyCobb said...

IOW, the Catholic Church wants to be the tyrant, and keep people from getting what they want.

Lee said...

How dare the Catholic Church do that! That's a job for government!

KyCobb said...

Lee,

At least the government represents the will of the people who elected it. No-one elected the Catholic Church to decide how we non-catholics should live our lives.

Lee said...

> At least the government represents the will of the people who elected it.

In theory. In practice, we have many bureaucrats and judges who are not elected and for all practical purposes are utterly unaccountable, but who nevertheless make sweeping decisions regarding our lives.

Whereas, any church is answerable to the congregation, their purse strings, and of course their publicity.

Lee said...

And I notice a funny thing about liberals. It's all about the will of the people, until the people's will differs from the liberals' will. Then it's all about the Constitution and the protection of basic human rights, and as interpreted by liberals.

Lee said...

Martin,

> One is that educated and well-placed people now believe that the institutions on which social order is based should be technically expert, economically rational, morally nonjudgmental, and universal in their reach.

In modern parlance, "technically expert" is a phrase used to drape a paucity of actual knowledge. They don't know the ramifications of their policies, but the point is to wield the power, not what it's doing.

"Economically rational" is a phrase used to drape a paucity of freedom. It might be rational for the technocrats to let some people starve, as, e.g., the commissars vs. the kulaks in the Ukraine. You can't make a nice rational omelet without, you know, breaking eggs.

"Morally nonjudgmental" is a phrase used to drape an implicit demand to knuckle under and accept the moral wisdom of those in charge. Say something less than adulatory about one of the more or less favored groups, and on the morally-judgmental scale they go from zero to "You miserable bigot!" in less time than it takes to tie your earth-friendly show laces.

We're supposed to be in awe to the technocrats. The technocrats brought us the housing bubble. They not only established Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but persist in propping it up so they can continue to make the same mistakes. They have brought us high unemployment rates. Time and again, they have brought us loser corporations to bail out, one after the next.

We're getting worse government but we're paying much more for it.

I'm in awe of them alright.