Posted on 08/24/2014 1:44:13 PM PDT by ReformationFan
This year the movie God Is Not Dead preyed on every Christian parent’s fear of sending a child off to college only to have their family’s faith and values undermined by an atheist college professor espousing some form of moral relativism. The movie hinges on a certain cliché, but the cliché is a cliché because many of us took a class with “that professor.” He might not have been so over-the-top, but his prejudices were evident.
The American university tends to be fairly hostile to the conservative movement. One of the core tenets of conservatism is the Judeo-Christian teaching that humans are fallen creatures. Moral right and wrong are objective categories, and human nature tends toward the wrong in absence of coercion. God-given social structures, e.g., family, community, and government, help restrain wickedness.
Progressivism, on the other hand, tends to view the human spirit as intrinsically good. For some progressives, “good” becomes a relative term defined by the individual. The only “bad” is to infringe on another person’s ability to express their own version of “good.”
It is no secret that most university professors are progressives, and over the last forty years, universities have replaced real virtues with tolerance and diversity. The prevailing spirit of progressivism has led to many forms of insanity on college campuses. Yale’s Sex Week is perhaps the most notorious example of how American universities celebrate the demise of tradition, but moral relativism permeates every college classroom.
Many conservatives blame left-leaning professors for this rise in moral relativism. Certainly a liberal faculty will promote progressive values, but the battle for conservatism was lost long before these students ever met their first college professor. In my experience, freshmen arrive on campus as moral relativists.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaquilareport.com ...
Nisbet’s 1988 ‘The Present Age’ begins with a look at the what Nisbet regarded as a major change in American government, the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson.
This is something that Glenn Beck has been popularizing recently but I seriously doubt that Beck has ever heard of Nisbet much less read him.
Central heating, wash and wear clothing, out of season produce, soft socks, light bulbs, the internet, self cleaning ovens....
WHAT a load of horse manure.Progressivism, on the other hand, tends to view the human spirit as intrinsically good. For some progressives, “good” becomes a relative term defined by the individual. The only “bad” is to infringe on another person’s ability to express their own version of “good.”
From Wikipedia:
I don't see anywhere that humans are intrinsically good. I also see ONE person's definition of "progressivism.”Progressivism is a broad political philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advances in science, technology, economic development, and social organization can improve the human condition . . .
HORSE puckey.
I wouldn’t suggest taking dictionary, let alone Wikipedia, definitions of political terms too seriously. If you consult Safire’s New Political Dictionary, for instance, you will learn that the meaning of “liberal” was changed - essentially inverted - in the 1920s. And anyone who considers the matter realistically will realize that the term “progressive” has undergone a similar metamorphosis. After all, one of the few powers the Constitution explicitly grants to Congress isTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveriesAnd yet the modern “progressive” systematically looks for reasons to regress from the use of fossil fuels upon which modern electric power and cars and trucks depend.
It doesn't really matter WHAT it is.
Medically, it's wonderful to progress. However, we can't live forever. SOMEthing has to end our lives. Perhaps it boils down to quality of life.
Educationally, financially, there are so many way to express ideas about "progress" there.
It's been KIND of an interesting discussion, don't you think? NOTHING will be solved here, as usual, but we do get to express ourselves.
Try thriftbooks.com
Mrs. AV
Many books for 3.99 or less + free shipping always. Used books of course, but they are helping keep the used bookstores in business.
There is a reason wikipedia is considered a suspect source in scholarly circles.
The definition it gives of “Progressivism” is the one self-proclaimed “Progressives” (later “liberals”, now “Progressives” again) used to sell their ideas, rather than a dispassionate description of the movement’s views. (Hardly surprising considering the dominant political views of wikipedians.)
If, however, you look at the program of the American left from the time it called itself “Progressive” near the turn of the twentieth century to the present when it is starting to use the name again, having exhausted the benefit they got from stealing the name “liberal”, one of its fundamental premises is the denial of the Fall. Man is either fundamentally good or a tabula rasa. The moral-relativist strain of progressivism favors the former, the more totalitarian sort, the latter.
Actually, there are no other systems of faith which explain the problem or present the solution in the way Christianity does.
Christianity tells us that without God, we are intrinsically evil and lost. Not even potentially good. And that we can’t lift a finger to save ourselves. Nothing we do can help in our salvation, not at all, even to the smallest extent.
This is why I use my blog to bring their history to the surface, to make it easier to find with a simple search.
Progressivism is a specific ideology, but nobody is reading the progressives’ own history, so historical facts get supplanted by modern opinions. When there are no real facts on the table, any topic can be tabula rasa. Look at what the progressives have done to the Founders, first by starting with simply not teaching them anymore.
It does matter what progressivism is, because if there ever came to be enough conservatives who could cite chapter, page, etc., of all the evil things these people have written, today’s progressives would have a very big problem on their hands.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
I certainly appreciate that concept. It shouldn’t be hard to find these things, but you certainly know that “the media” isn’t about to help anyone find the inconvenient truths you are putting together.
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