| Phrea|K |
16 december 2004 15:13 |
Misschien is dit wel een teken dat de strijd tegen de verlichting verloren is.
Citaat:
[size=2]The disappearance of the radical left is a sign that in principle it has reached its attainable goals. While no one admits it, what we see around us is the victory of the Revolution.
Politics today is radically secularist and antiparticularist. It aims to dissolve what is left of traditional society and construct a universal form of human association that will constitute a technically rational system for the equal satisfaction of desire. Religion is to be banished from public life, ethnic and gender distinctions abolished, and a worldwide order established, based on world markets and trans-national bureaucracies, that is to override local differences in the name of human rights, international economic development, and collective security.
Contemporary liberalism expresses and supports that new order. Not all members of our ruling elites adhere to liberalism, and it draws support from outsiders as well. However, our elites determine its content, and it promotes their interests. It sets the terms of discussion, defines what is considered progress, and establishes the general principles of cooperation upon which our elites base their claim to rule.
Supporters of the new order see it as historically and morally necessary, and thus as compulsory regardless of established views and habits. Since modern governments claim to base themselves on consent, the public must be brought to accept it. Managing opinion and keeping perspectives that oppose fundamental public policies out of mainstream discussion have therefore become basic to statecraft.
Genuine opposition comes not from the left but from reactionary and restorationist groups that exclude themselves from respectable politics by rejecting liberalism and the left. Today's dissidents are particularist -- traditionalist, fundamentalist, populist, or nationalist. Beyond that, they are antisecularist and antihedonist. They reject a system of politics that bases social order on human desire, because they reject the view that lies behind it, that men make morality for their own purposes.
Today all things are justified on the grounds that they help men get what they want. Those who recognize an authority superior to human purposes are seen as dangerous bigots who want to oppress others in the name of some sect or arbitrary principle. As a consequence, fundamental political discussion no longer exists. Politics today is divided between an outlook that presents itself as rational and this-worldly, and absolutely dominates public discussion, and a variety of dissident views that speak for goods higher than human desire but are unable to make effective their substantial underlying support. The conflict is never discussed seriously since it is considered resolved; the ruling liberal view is accepted as indisputable, while dissent is considered confused or worse.
The dominant outlook believes itself peculiarly tolerant and all-inclusive. It is not. The error results from a misconception of politics and morality that is essential to liberalism. Liberalism claims to leave religious and moral issues, at least those it identifies as personal, to individual judgment. The theoretical ground for doing so is neutrality as to ultimate commitments. As the Supreme Court has put the matter, "[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992, 505 U.S. 833, 851.
|
Source: conservatism.com (site is momenteel offline, maar via de google cache kun je het artikel nog vinden.
[/size] |
