RealClearReligion, huh? New one on me.
I go only slightly beyond Brague in observing that what makes our own society unique, is not its freedom from religion but rather the peculiar nature of the religion upon which our theocracy rests. That is to say, we have an upside-down religion, in which there is no God, but that "Not God" commands an obedience more absolute than God ever required, stipulating everything from the sanctity of antinomian sexual behaviour, down to how we should sort our garbage.
4 comments:
The real reason the left hates religion is that it puts the individual conscience higher than the collective, meaning higher than the state, meaning, in effect, higher than them.
Time was, ethical decisions took place inside one's own skull, and one was ultimately answerable to one's own conscience, and one's God.
But that's unacceptable to the leftists, because it means that people might be prompted by their "conscience" to do unapproved things. Therefore everything must be regulated, and the rules muse be so far-reaching and so dense that individual volition plays no part.
The New Soviet Man is an automaton to be directed by the vanguard of the proletariat. They don't use those words anymore, but is there any doubt that this is how the left really sees things? The war on religion is just one of the more glaring examples.
I love this blog's name, btw.
And that there quote is just full of Sheen.
I was a bit tentative about the blog name at first. When I started out I was merely "philmon" ... which I shamelessly copied from my brother, "jeffmon". Kind of a carribean kind of thing after that dude with the deep voice that used to do the 7-up commercials back in the 80's. Awesome chuckle.
I was trying to come up witha bit catchier name several years ago. I thought mine was a bit dull. I should confess was not familiar with Burke's "cluebat" until just last night reading Gagdad Bob's blog. I picked it up from other blogs, most notably The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller when I used to read that regularly. I thought of it kind of like the proverbial "ugly stick"... as in "it looks like somebody beat him all over with an ugly stick" (thus making him "ugly"). Similarly, a "cluebat", I reasoned, was a stick with which you imparted "a clue" to the person being struck.
I also thought of the metaphor that I often felt like I was standing at the plate while a stream of stupidity was "pitched" at me every day, and I felt obliged to hit those balls back into the field of play -- whereas before I started this blog, I pretty much kept "chased into the shadows" as Morgan put it the other day with my facebook/high school friend ... I just let people spew and I didn't have much to argue back with. I was pretty un-armed with facts and I'm not one to go spouting off on things I know nothing about.
Unlike a whole lot of people in a certain other demographic we know.
Still, I thought the name sounded a little arrogant - and I was hesitant. I am by nature an unassuming kind of guy. But Morgan, in some offline emails, convinced me that it wasn't arrogant and besides he liked the name, and so it stuck.
Ok, I looked it up.
Dude's name was Geoffrey Holder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvdLfyctct8
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