Posted by fschmidt on
URL: https://coalpha.arkian.net/What-is-Liberalism-or-a-history-of-Western-thought-tp6188106.html

Liberalism is our enemy and it is important to understand one's enemy.  Unfortunately, some traditionalists who have good values misunderstand liberalism.  To understand liberalism, one must look at the history of Western thought.

Judaism can be best understood by reading the Old Testament.  The God of the Old Testament is simply the God of the Jews.  This God isn't really much of a God for anyone else, and as such, this God is a tribal/community God.  The tribal thinking that was standard at this time (the time of the Old Testament) is quite alien for the modern Western mind.  Tribal loyalty was very strong and most thought was about what is best for one's tribe.  No one worried about humanity in general, neither about how they lived nor what they believed.

The Ancient Greeks arose in this tribal tradition.  The Athenians were highly intellectual and were interested in truth.  The Sophists were great thinkers who thought of many ways of viewing the world.  The dominant view was relativistic as expressed by Protagoras who said that man is the measure of all things.  This view fits with the tribal view where each tribe holds their own beliefs and values.  Plato rejected this view and advocated absolute universal objective truth as embodied by his concept of the universal form.  It is doubtful that Socrates shared Plato's view, based on Xenophon's writings about Socrates.  It is more likely that Plato simply put his words in Socrates' mouth since Socrates was respected and died for his beliefs.  Plato was an excellent writer and his views became dominant and were spread through Alexander's conquests to a large area.

Jesus appears to have primarily been a Jewish reformer.  Modern Christianity was essentially founded by Paul.  The relationship between Paul and Jesus is remarkably similar to the relationship between Plato and Socrates.  Just as Plato used Socrates as a vehicle for expressing his beliefs and took advantage of the respect that Socrates had as a martyr, so did Paul use Jesus as a vehicle for expressing his beliefs and took advantage of the respect that Jesus had as a martyr.  Paul developed his version of Christianity in the most Greek part of the Roman Empire, and that was the part most heavily influenced by the beliefs of Plato.  So Paul fused the Jewish idea of one God with the Platonic idea of absolute universal truth to create one absolute universal God. And this is the core of Christianity.

It is common in history that once a civilization becomes successful, the respect for the Gods of that civilization declines.  Once the people are wealthy and sated, they feel little need to make personal sacrifice for their Gods, their community, or anyone else.  This happened in both Athens and Rome.  It also happened in our culture, and we call this liberalism.  Liberalism is Christianity minus God.  The liberals still retain Plato's ideas of the absolute and universal, and they retain the Jewish ideas about moralizing.  But while Christians place God at the center of absolute universal truth and morality, liberals place people in this position.  In order to remove God, they have reassigned the characteristics of God to people.  Liberals are as evangelical as any Christian because they have faith in their beliefs and since they take their beliefs to be absolute and universal, they want to spread these beliefs to everyone.  Christians have humility because they place themselves below God and so the only truth that they are sure of is the belief in God himself, all other truths being only certain in the mind of God.  But liberals have no humility and believe that they are the ultimate authority on all questions of truth and morality for all of mankind.  This is why liberals are so intolerant.  This is also why liberals are such advocates of powerful central governments, because this allows their liberal truths and morals to be forced down the throats of large populations.

Some modern liberal philosophers call themselves "relativists".  Liberals are fond of misusing terms, and this is yet another example.  The liberal "relativists" say that because truth and morality are relative and subjective, no one point of view is superior to another in an objective sense.  And then they use this to attack all truths and morals that differ from their own.  (Note that liberals get quite indignant when their truths or morals are violated, but then consistency has never been strong point for liberals.)  Of course the fallacy here is that a real relativist (like me) doesn't believe there is an "objective sense" to begin with.  The statement that all beliefs are equal is, in itself, and absolutist/universal/objective statement, and as such contradicts relativism.

As a relativist, I am quite passionate about my beliefs and morals, but, as a relativist, I have no desire to impose my views on all of humanity.  All I want is a community that shares my values so that I, and my descendants, can live happily there.  The greatest enemy to my goal is clearly liberalism.