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Our Sentimental Humanitarian Age - Soft liberalism is incapable of confronting the evil in man
The American Spectator ^ | September 8, 2014 | Samuel Gregg

Posted on 09/08/2014 2:07:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

I always thought it would be difficult to imagine a period in which the West would be more adrift than the 1970s. Being a child at the time, I was spared consciousness of most of that miserable decade. Thus far, however, the second decade of the 2000s seems likely to give the 10 years that spawned Watergate, stagflation, the Carter presidency, the Oil Crisis, Idi Amin, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Jim Jones, Pol Pot, the Red Brigades, and the Iranian Revolution (to name just a few of the star attractions) a serious run for its money as a byword for Western decline. ADVERTISEMENT

One everyday sign of this malaise is the fact that much of the West remains, as in the seventies, mired in what’s now called the Long Slump. And persistently unhealthy economies are usually symptomatic of an unwillingness to acknowledge deeper problems. Examples are most Western governments’ reluctance to accept that it’s game-over for the regulatory and welfare state as-we-knew-it, or to do something about the growing cancer of crony-capitalism.

Sometimes, however, an event occurs that highlights the more fundamental crises that bedevil a civilization. The rise of a movement as diabolical as ISIS, for instance, has surely underscored the bankruptcy of what might be called the sentimental humanitarian outlook that dominates so many contemporary shapers of the West’s cultural consensus.

Sentimental humanitarianism has several features. One is the mind-set that reduces evil to structural causes. “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains,” proclaimed Rousseau in his Du contrat social. From this, many concluded that evil would disappearif the right people were put in charge to change the structures.

Sentimental humanitarianism also assumes that all religions are more-or-less the same and, given the right conditions, will vacillate their way towards....

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: evil; isis; liberalism; nationalsecurity

1 posted on 09/08/2014 2:07:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: All
On unfairness and inequity - the Left's call for "social justice":

".....In the end, the sick choice to behead someone — or kidnap people’s daughters, or incarcerate enemies-of-the-revolution in a Gulag, or herd Jews into gas chambers — is a free choice to do evil that can’t be explained away by the fact that others are wealthier than you........"

2 posted on 09/08/2014 2:13:00 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The ultimate in social justice must be something like Paradise, however unimaginable. We’re too busy dreaming in unattainable “perfect world” scenarios. If a global survey were taken on what constitutes a perfect world there would be an impossible amount of disagreement and disparity among participants.


3 posted on 09/08/2014 2:55:45 AM PDT by equaviator (There's nothing like the universe to bring you down to earth.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
The dream of utopia (literally nowhere) has been a dream of man for hundreds of years. The sixties were supposedly the last gasp of the dreamers who thought world brotherhood was just a song away...maybe just a few songs. Lennon's "Imagine" epitomized the naive view of many that if we, the West, just stopped killing and oppressing every brown and black person in the world, things would be wonderful.

The reality is the black and brown people of the world hate us...because they can. Many of them don't want peace..they want to kill us. And Putin proves that it's not just brown people...many white people still like the idea of being a tyrant. Human nature.

4 posted on 09/08/2014 3:46:49 AM PDT by driftless2 (For long term happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: equaviator; driftless2

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=24376

“.........................Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left—by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.

Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them.”


5 posted on 09/08/2014 4:21:50 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The Left is only militant against conservative Christians. It is powerless to confront any other ideology and is especially impotent when faced with murderous Islam. Their heads will roll in the dirt first.


6 posted on 09/08/2014 5:03:50 AM PDT by txrefugee
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Sentimental humanitarianism also assumes that all religions are more-or-less the same

This is the root problem, and why the Left is inherently incapable of resisting Mohammedanism.

7 posted on 09/08/2014 5:18:26 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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To: driftless2
The reality is the black and brown people of the world hate us..

Mohammedans hate us. Don't confuse that with race. Christianity is flourishing in Africa and spreading rapidly in China.

8 posted on 09/08/2014 5:19:50 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas

Sorry...my point was that no matter how much love and good will you expend to certain people, many of them will still hate you and want to do violence to you. I was simply commenting on Lennon’s and other naive lib dreamers belief that simply wishing things were wonderful does not make it so.


9 posted on 09/08/2014 5:25:43 AM PDT by driftless2 (For long term happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=24376

What a brilliant article. Could have been written this morning. Horowitz knows because he has been there.

10 posted on 09/08/2014 5:59:07 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (Joan Rivers -- "giving 'em hell" in heaven.)
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To: driftless2

I agree with freeper St Thomas Aquinas. The reason white people advanced is Christianity, not race. Christianity took root around its Mediterranean center and spread upward and westward, eventually resulting in an entire nation, America, dedicated to Christ by the first European pilgrims to colonize it. The reason the West is now falling back is renunciation of Christianty.


11 posted on 09/08/2014 6:05:28 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (Joan Rivers -- "giving 'em hell" in heaven.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

“Soft liberalism is incapable of confronting the evil in man”


Right conclusion but the wrong reason -
“liberalism” is simply the political expression of the religion of

HUMANISM

which actually REJECTS the “evil in man” and places the blame nearly entirely on environment.

One of their basic tenets is that the nature of man is “basically good”.


12 posted on 09/08/2014 6:08:40 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: driftless2; St_Thomas_Aquinas

God has put a certain libinlaw in my family’s life as a good example of His Truth’s antithesis.

It gives great insight sometimes, to talk with her.

Did you know that people only do evil because they are threatened?

(And just why are the “threateners” acting that way?)


13 posted on 09/08/2014 6:12:30 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Very well put, CW! Thanks for that.


14 posted on 09/08/2014 9:27:57 AM PDT by equaviator (There's nothing like the universe to bring you down to earth.)
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To: MrB

-— It gives great insight sometimes, to talk with her. -—

That’s probably because you’re a good listener. A couple of my moonbat relatives will talk to me because I’ll listen to them. There’s a difference between the ones who want to lecture you, and the one’s who are lost and confused.


15 posted on 09/08/2014 2:27:27 PM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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