Posted on 05/16/2005 6:53:07 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The emotions this movement inspired coincided with the one deeply moral political phenomenon that postwar America has experienced--Martin Luther King's civil-rights movement. The Rev. King's multiracial civil-rights marches and their role in overturning de jure and de facto segregation in the U.S. were a political and moral achievement.
In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals. Some have since returned to traditional, private lives; others have become neoconservatives. But many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public-policy issue that has come along in the past 15 years. The result has been liberal fundamentalism.
The Vietnam anti-war movement, the environmental movement, the disarmament and nuclear-freeze movements, the anti-nuclear-power movement, consumerism, the Third World movement, the limits-to-growth movement. These have been the really active faiths in contemporary America. Their adherents attended the anti-war march on Washington in 1970, locking arms and once again singing "We Shall Overcome." They characterized the leader of their own country at the time as demonic. More recently, they have held vigils outside nuclear power plants, singing and holding lighted candles, while their lawyers filed injunctions in friendly courtrooms. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups transformed "the wilderness" into a vast, pantheistic shrine, which they and fellow believers must defend against the depredations of conservative developers. America's Roman Catholic bishops denounced nuclear war and became revered figures in the nuclear-freeze movement (but when they denounce abortion, they are reviled).
Not surprisingly, this evangelical liberalism produced a response. Conservative groups--both secular and religious--were created, and they quite obviously make the political success of their adversaries more difficult. Liberals don't like that.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
This is a fascinating article -- the only problem is that the author's rhetorical structure falls prey to that which it seems he's elucidating. In fact, "most people," by both then and now's standards hovers around the 50 percent mark -- meaning that the only conclusion is that most people don't like various forms of authoritarianism perpetrated upon them -- not that most people have embraced religious fundamentalism.
Of course some people will be attracted to both kinds of fundamentalism. I find them both harmful, when combined with an all-powerful federal government.
The author of the text would do well to remember that it is really big government and authoritarianism that chains people, and not the choice to pursue whatever belief system that one supports.
So true.
Does mandating abortion via the courts make the gov't bigger or smaller?
However, if one's belief system is predicated on intolerant self-righteous moral certitude, they will find a way to establish authoritarian big government so as to crush all opposition.
I.e., what people believe is important, too.
This hits the nail squarely on the head. I work in New York City, the only Conservative in an office full of Liberals. They are the most narrow-minded, mean-spirited, self-aggrandizing, intolerant people I have ever encountered. I can only survive by laughing at them behind their backs (well, sometimes in front of their backs, too). Thanks for the post!
By mandating I really mean legalizing. It MUST be legal and the government branch known as the judicial branch will see that it remains legal. Is that bigger or smaller government? The woman is free from being told by the government not to kill the baby, but everyone else has been denied by the government the right to define their common values, including the right to life of every human being. And last, the child's life is not treated as equal by the government and there is nothing at all "we the people" can do about it. Is that bigger or smaller government?
There is no level on which modern liberals aren't hypocrites.
They say they're "intellectuals," then dismiss logic as unfashionable "linear thinking."
They say they're tolerant, then call for campus speech codes.
They say all truth is a "social construction," then when a society constructs something they don't like -- like the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman -- they holler as if some sacred truth were violated.
They blame conservatives for creating an "Other" to hate, then turn red staters into their "Other."
The list goes on. Basically, they are a silly, unhappy group of people engaged in an incoherent conversation with themselves.
If you're talking about the federal government, I don't think they should have any say, at all. I prefer that this particular issue be decided at the state government level -- and, if I could carve the states into regions, that would be even better.
I'm a minarchist -- so I'm not against government. I'm against, first and foremost, a big, bureaucratic government. People should have the right to define their common beliefs -- but when you have 280 million, and each half is polarized -- there is no common belief system, which, within the framework of a large bureaucracy leads to oppression.
So, technically, considering abortion, at all, on the federal level, makes the federal government larger and I don't support that.
"...intolerant self-righteous moral certitude."
Isn't that relevant to all issue positions? Unless you say you "just don't know or don't care," you are intolerant to another person's viewpoint, you're staking your righteousness on your claim, and you're invoking at least one form of authority (moral or otherwise).
America's Roman Catholic bishops denounced nuclear war and became revered figures in the nuclear-freeze movement (but when they denounce abortion, they are reviled).
_________________________________________________________
Once again the American bishops were out of step with Rome.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1383114/posts#comment?q=1
WASHINGTON - Pope John Paul II gave his blessing to the late President Ronald Reagan's plans to put nuclear missiles across Western Europe, a former U.S. representative at the Vatican said yesterday.
Though European leaders were "weak-kneed" about confronting the Soviet nuclear empire, Reagan won the Pope's support for matching the Communists nuke for nuke along the Iron Curtain, said Jim Nicholson, who served until recently as President Bush's ambassador to the Holy See.
Okay. That seems reasonable. I personally think abortion falls under the federal constittution where it says no state can deprive a citizen of his life without due process of law, but I would settle for the decision to be made locally by state legislatures.
Check it out! Just add a pinch of manic Hillery hysteria - and THAT'S YOU!
One might be wrong. Or mistaken.
There are, after all, unknowns. And the unknowable. An honest person admits to their existence.
The left is certainly filled with "intolerant self-righteous moral certitude." But they are also wrong.
Belief in The Great Pumpkin might constitute a sincere belief system. But it is also wrong.
Sorry -- you're not making any logical sense. You're both criticizing AND invoking authority? You're doing the same thing that the author of the article was doing -- which was attempting to preach one thing, while asserting its opposite.
You can't critique someone on the basis of their "moral certainty," while being "morally certain" about it. I deal in logic -- and there's something wrong there.
Believe me, it takes a long time -- and a lot of psychological work to be able to truly accept the freedom of men.
And each side can believe the other is wrong until the cows come home, but neither has the license to limit their Constitutional rights, as a result.
The author of the text would do well to remember that it is really big government and authoritarianism that chains people, and not the choice to pursue whatever belief system that one supports.
In my estimate, the statement is the reverse of the truth. It is errant belief systems that shackle people and, in turn, lead to the creation of big government and authoritarianism.
Sorry you have to work in an office full of leftists. Want to have some fun with them? Accuse them of "whining"!!
Drive's em nuts. LOL!
Please!!!
Thanks for tip! I'll try it next time one of them opens their mouth. (I think they think I'm kidding.)
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