[upchuck]

Thanks for the post Poke.

Thanks especially for posting the entire article and not unnecessarily excerpting it.

-snip-

[Billthedrill]

Whoa, Poke, that was a column and a half! Worth the wait, IMHO.

What Timothy Garton Ash calls ‘the Enlightenment’ has degenerated under its present trustees into a doomsday cult with all the coerciveness of the old state religion and none of the eternal truths.

It's actually Enlightenment Lite - all the frippery of that wonderful period and none of the substance. Most Enlightenment philosophers - particularly the French - felt that an appreciation of God need not be mediated by a clerical social class; their latterday wannabes have dispensed with God altogether. It's sort of a different thing.

Where the Enlightenment held for a limited government accountable to the people, its latterday keepers - particularly the French - opt for a stifling, overbearing bureaucracy accountable to no one. Where the Enlightenment decried the divine right of kings to govern, its latterday keepers opt for the divine right of self-proclaimed intellectuals to do so. Where the Enlightenment attempted to dispense with social class as a measure of a man's worth its latterday keepers are doing their very best to construct new ones - race, gender, sexual preference - to be man's measure.

This may be somebody's idea of Enlightenment, but it isn't mine.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

I’m not an absolutist in these matters. I’m a red stater when it comes to God and guns, but I like European art-house movies where Juliette Binoche or Isabelle Huppert take their kit off. It’s a question of balance.

Preach it, Brother Steyn! PREACH it -- ! :)

[Renfield]

Bump for later bookmark or copy.

There are times when I think I was born a century, or two centuries, too late. But then reality gives me a good shaking, and I recollect all the things I would have missed had I been born then Mark Steyn's columns are one of those great blessings of our modern age.

[foreverfree]

bump

[knighthawk]

Ping

[blueknight]

Thanks for the post.

Steyn is the best writer out there IMHO.

[moonhawk]

An "AIN'T IT GREAT HE'S BACK?" Bump.

Thanks, Pokey.

[beaversmom]

Ping. Hey TX--this is a good one.

[alfa6]

Way Cool Steyn Bump

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[RBroadfoot]

"What Timothy Garton Ash calls ‘the Enlightenment’ has degenerated under its present trustees into a doomsday cult with all the coerciveness of the old state religion and none of the eternal truths."

Mark Steyn is a genius of pithy prose.

[Tribune7]

bump

[hattend]

BTTT

I would love to see more people write this way. Start the backlash against the secular onslaught.

[spodefly]

BTTT

[Defiant]

Thanks, Pokey. Excellent stuff.

[redgolum]

Styen is one of the few clear thinkers out there.

[UnklGene]

Thank you, Pokey. I was starting to shrivel-up and take on a grinch appearance without a Steyn refresher; I hope he's back for good!

[Ciexyz]

Another good one from Steyn.

[goldstategop]

Jesusland Bump!

[Forgiven_Sinner]

"Europeans need to ally with blue staters and Canadians and so forth and draw a cordon bleu, as John Kerry would say, around George W. Bush’s Jesusland, throttling it in its manger. "

It takes quite a bit to make me laugh out loud, but this did it.

The guy who said Europe was a defender of the Enlightenment is completely off track. Europe is currently following the philosophy of Marx and Nietzsche, not Newton or Pascal.

The danger is not their self extinction, but that in their desperation to fend off the Muslim invasion they turn to another Hitler. That is what I expect to happen.