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The Left, the Right, and the Wrong Side of History
The New American ^ | 29 May 2012 | Selwyn Duke

Posted on 05/29/2012 12:10:32 PM PDT by Paladins Prayer

It’s always amusing when secularists speak of traditionalists being on the “wrong side of history.” We heard this recently after the vote in North Carolina upholding marriage; liberals said that the state was on the wrong side of history.

Now, these people are circling around something that is absolutely true, and it's only charitable to help them understand exactly what it is. What they really mean is that traditionalists are on the wrong side of fashionable trends, and the polls on marriage certainly bear this out. But as G.K. Chesterton said, “A fallacy doesn’t cease to be a fallacy because it becomes a fashion,” and one fallacy secularists have fallen victim to is that they actually grasp history.

History isn’t merely what has happened in the United States during the last century, which has certainly seen the seemingly inexorable advance of moral and intellectual decay — or, as some people like to call it, “progressivism” — through our institutions and social fabric. History isn’t that same time period in the whole of the West or even the world; it is, rather, the story of Man from the very beginning of recorded time.

Now, history is invaluable because it actually is the record of a grand series of social experiments. Through it we can learn what works and what doesn’t, what stood the test of time in the laboratory of life and hence is timeless, and what are merely old mistakes masquerading as new ideas. But as with science, we cannot learn from it if we, so to speak, lose our data. This is what some call forgetting history but actually is a failure to learn it in the first place. It also could be called progressive education.

(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: conservatives; culture; history; homosexualagenda; liberals; moralabsolutes; selwynduke
This is a nice smackdown of progressivism.
1 posted on 05/29/2012 12:10:41 PM PDT by Paladins Prayer
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To: Paladins Prayer

On more then one occasion I have had some left-winger try to claim that I was ‘radical’ during a debate on homosexuality and ‘gay marriage’ and even that I was so radical that I lose all credibility. To which I laugh of course and instantly remind them that it is them who are proposing ideas that go against the values of every generation before us and that in fact makes them the radical and not me. I am defending the positions of our grandparents and our Founders while they are arguing that every generation before us were evil bigots. It is the progressive movement that is radical and hates our grandparents and our Founders.


2 posted on 05/29/2012 12:33:26 PM PDT by TheBigIf
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To: Paladins Prayer

One thing progressives seem to be unaware of is entropy.


3 posted on 05/29/2012 12:34:53 PM PDT by Da Bilge Troll (Defeatism is not a winning strategy!)
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To: TheBigIf

What is their response to that argument?

I would also tell them both JFK and MLK Jr. believed marriage was between a man and woman. Are those leftist icons now “bigots”?


4 posted on 05/29/2012 2:26:09 PM PDT by ReformationFan
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To: Paladins Prayer

Yes, Duke’s writing is quite good.


5 posted on 05/29/2012 2:54:39 PM PDT by ReformationFan
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks Paladins Prayer.
...as G.K. Chesterton said, "A fallacy doesn't cease to be a fallacy because it becomes a fashion," and one fallacy secularists have fallen victim to is that they actually grasp history.

6 posted on 06/01/2012 2:58:41 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FReepathon 2Q time -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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