AJ DiCintio

Liberals & The Triumph of Reason
April 16, 2009
 

Ever since Frederick Engels announced that he and Karl Marx had discovered "scientific Socialism,” leftists the world over — including American liberals — have plumed themselves on the notion that they base their social, political and economic ideas firmly upon reason and science.

But as Shakespeare’s Hotspur said in response to another kind of pompous bull, talk is cheap. Indeed, with respect to the subject at hand, it is perfectly cheap because liberals have never placed a bit of science that supports the tenets of their ideology squarely on the table.

Actually, the task is impossible. Think, for example, about Jefferson’s "self-evident” notion that humans are "created equal” and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Now, ask yourself this question: Are you aware of any sane text that explains how liberals use the Scientific Method to discover human rights in the stuff that blew out of the Big Bang?

Of course you aren’t because only the mad commit such nonsense to paper. (Thank goodness there are special hospitals to treat those who wildly and unabashedly insist that a right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is as much a demonstrable part of the physical universe as a proton, neutron, electron, or gamma ray.)

Let us dismiss, therefore, assertions about the superior rationality of liberals and concentrate, instead, upon the quality of the belief system accepted by members of the Liberal Church.

What we find is that liberals are not scientific at all, arrogantly believing that they can spin reality from the same empty words, words, words whose power Hotspur so excellently mocked.

Recently, David Brooks illuminated this point in a piece describing scientific research that shows humans make moral judgments not by "reason and deliberation” but as a result of "rapid intuitive decisions [that] involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain.”

Having presented the science, Brooks commented about those at whom its findings take aim, including "the new atheists [read "leftists”] who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.”

How well that observation captures American liberals, whose arrogance in asserting "the purity of their own reasoning” is so madly all-consuming that when frustrated in attempts to "force their religion” on others through the legislative process, they believe it sweet and just to impose their agenda on the public through rulings of the dictatorial high priests they euphemistically call liberal activist judges.

(Attesting to the fact that every arrogant, power loving fraud is, among other contemptible things, a raging hypocrite, every one of the endless laws and judicial decrees passed and issued by "anti-gun” liberals is ultimately enforced by the power of a governmental gun, the most dangerous gun of all.)

This month, the honest, true blue-collar intellectual Camille Paglia (Salon) also took aim at America’s self-anointed avatars of rationality:

"Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power.”

Now, under different circumstances, many of us would argue hotly against the "seems to have become” in the passage above. But since Camille Paglia authored it, we’ll calmly suggest "is” as the accurate verb.

And we’ll remain just as calm as we recommend "liberalati” for this gem that "Hurricane Camille” lovingly directed to her readers: "Don’t get me started on the hermetic bourgeois arrogance of [the] American literati!”

Despite the warnings of thinkers such as Brooks and Paglia, some folks may still be unconvinced of the dangerous arrogance that characterizes the pseudo-scientists who love the high-booted statism preached by the Liberal (or "Progressive”) Church.

For them, this account of what most likely will occur if biologists discover a "religion gene” ought to erase any doubt:

Happy to hear the news, people of faith will ascribe the gene to God’s work.

Excited about the finding, biologists will get working to ascertain when the gene appeared in the human genome as well as to determine how it functions, especially with respect to human survival.

Looking as though they just downed a pint of concentrated hydrochloric acid, liberals will immediately propose a thousand "fully funded” federal programs aimed at undoing a "mistake” made by a "multitasked to distraction” Mother Nature, who, it is clear, "wants humans to create a world of peace, love, and self-actualization entirely through the triumph of reason.”

The last reaction is, of course, presented humorously (except for the part about the half quart of acid). But its intent is to illustrate the fundamental arrogance of liberal ideology:

From one side of their mouths, liberals proclaim that the carbon-based life form Homo sapiens floats helplessly on a blue dot along the edge of one of hundreds of billions of galaxies, all of which fly meaninglessly through the vastness of something into which Mother Nature — having squeezed an unknowable ball with unimaginable force — blasted this purely material universe into being.

From the other side of their mouths, liberals tell us not just that Mother speaks of purpose but that because they understand the language by which she expresses her commandments, they are obliged on earth to make her work their own.

Imputing a purpose to nature.