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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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You can't conserve an idea if you don't conserve a people, that's my argument. Civilization is not an idea, it's a people.

To which the obvious solution is: let the people consist of those who embrace the idea. Which is exactly what the Christian Church did, by the way: "There is no Jew or Greek..."; and also "church fathers", "ancestors in the faith".

To which the obvious solution is: let the people consist of those who embrace the idea.

Or they could just use your belief in the idea for their own interests while superficially "embracing the idea" by quoting the Statue of Liberty or something.

Which is exactly what the Christian Church did, by the way: "There is no Jew or Greek..."; and also "church fathers", "ancestors in the faith".

I am aware of that, which is why I constantly ask Hlynka why he doesn't see Christianity as the intellectual tradition that is cut from the same cloth as progressivism.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus

That synthesis of semitic mysticism and Platonism sounds an awful lot like progressivism...

Progressivism is quite distinctively post-Christian and not post-Islamic or post-Hindu or whatever. There is a reason that post-Christian places like the Netherlands and Sweden are quite progressive whereas India or the Middle East or China identify progressivism even among their secular populations as a western import.

I mean, progressivism is post-Christian, it didn't develop in a vacuum. Or, to quote G.K. Chesterton:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

He was writing over 100 years ago, but progressivism has been around for a while.

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