"The End is Near" - C. S. Lewis

You know the cartoon with the guy in the robe holding a placard that says "The End is Near"? You can view a selection of cartoons of this type here.

Well, here is a quote from C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man in which he sounds just like the guy in the cartoon.

"The practical result of the education in the spirit of "The Green Book"
must be the destruction of the society which accepts it."
(C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p. 27)

Yes, you read that right: C. S. Lewis is saying that any society which educates its young people by debunking the notion of objective value will thereby destroy itself. Lewis argues in this prophetic book that there is such a thing as value (goodness, truth, beauty) in objects themselves totally apart from our subjective evaluations of those objects. What he calls "The Green Book" is a high school English textbook that teaches relativism in the course of teaching English composition. He actually thinks that such books are destroying our culture.

But then, he is an Augustinian who accepts the Platonist-Christian synthesis that dominated the church for well over a millennium until the decline in realist metaphysics and the rise of nominalism in the later part of the high middle ages (Christendom) prepared the way for the rise of Modernity. He believes that the Divine Logos which created the world left the imprint of his rationality upon it and, since we bear the Divine image, we can rationally understand some of the truth about reality and we can discern the good and the beautiful, despite our having fallen into nature and the consequent loss of some of our rational capacity.

Lewis believed that value is not merely subjective. In The Abolition of Man he talked about the Tao, the common core of moral value held in common by Plato, Aristotle, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. The lectures published in this book were delivered to a secular audience so he avoided excessive reliance on terms usually associated with one religious tradition. But he is clearly talking about what the Western tradition has referred to as "natural law." Lewis ends chapter 2 by raising the question as to whether or not traditional morality can be retained by a society that rejects all supernatural bases for it.

Lewis does not answer this question due to the context of his lectures but it is clear that he thinks it cannot - at least not in Europe. Europe has been Christian for two millennia and it has no other soul or religion. It is either Christianity or secularism for Europe and Lewis argues that the relativistic, subjectivist secularism of mid-twentieth century Britain is an insufficient basis for traditional morality.

But to say it is an "insufficient basis" is not strong enough. Lewis is literally predicting the fall of Western civilization if it does not regain its soul, that is, if it does not experience a widespread and profoundly deep revival of the Christian religion in the near future. One senses without difficulty that the hour is much later than when he wrote these words in 1944 and that his prediction is coming true rapidly. A widespread and sincere acceptance of relativism spells the doom of the society that sinks to this state.

When a mild-mannered, Oxford don pulls on the burlap and digs out his "The End is Near" sign, it might be time to sit up and take notice.

A Plea for Religious Tolernance in Iran

If you want to watch a deeply Christian man speaking in the US Senate in a thoroughly Christian way about an issue Christians ought to care deeply about - watch this video. Marco Rubio, US Senator from Florida, is a inspiring model for anyone aspiring to bear a Christian witness into the public square.

This case of Youcef Nadarkhani ought to galvanize world opinion and dominate the news this week. So much that is trivial and ephemeral gets talked about in an endless loop in the media but this is a matter of life and death, rank injustice and oppressive totalitarianism.

Forces within the Iranian government are conspiring to have Youcef Nadarkhani executed for becoming a Christian. It is a moral scandal - and should be recognized by any person or any religion or no religion - that in the twenty-first century a state would presume to bind the conscience of its citizens and strip them of their basic human dignity by passing a law forbidding them on pain of death from choosing which religion, if any, to believe in personally. There is no more inhumane, cruel and intrusive act of a totalitarian regime than the act of inserting a government between an individual and God so as to attempt to bind his conscience in chains. Any state that does this de-legitimizes itself and buys itself the utter contempt of free people and nations everywhere.

Multicultural relativism is a cruel joke. It is a tool of dictators and tyrants. It is anti-human and incompatible with freedom, justice and the natural law. To say that this is Iran's culture and that Islam has different values than us and so we must not judge is to abdicate reason and morality and to lower oneself to the level of thugs and murderers. It is to sacrifice Youcef Nadarkhani on the altar of personal convenience.

The moral basis of this speech is intricately rooted deep in the Christian vision of man made in the image of God and endowed with conscience, reason and the capacity for moral choice. This vision of man has shaped the human rights tradition of the West and without Christian theology undergirding and sustaining it this human rights tradition will collapse. Already there are numerous signs that the collapse is already far advanced. You can see this fact demonstrated by the silence of liberal Protestantism - and politicians shaped by liberal Protestantism - about injustices like this in Muslin countries today. The rejection of the Christian view of man followed by the embrace of multicultural relativism leads inexorably to the silence of those who should speak out and the condoning of murder, tyranny and oppression.

The people of Iran are suffering. Europe frets about its oil supply and is mute, the US pursues its neo-isolationism under Obama and the UN continues it propaganda war against Israel instead of being concerned about genuine human rights abuses in countries like Iran. All this is reprehensible and thank-you to Marco Rubio for speaking out in a reasonable, Christian manner about one of the great issues of our time: the religious liberty of all people rooted in our nature as creatures made in the image of God.



Marco Rubio is an inspiration. May his pleas for justice not fall on deaf ears.

Deep in the Weeds (Or Was That Weed?) with Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau, son of P. E. Trudeau, the father of multiculturalism in Canada, is now a Liberal member of Parliament for a Montreal riding. As one com box wag had it: he got his mother's brains and his father's looks - a double whammy.

Anyway, he got into trouble the other day. The Globe and Mail explains all:

Justin Trudeau has apologized for saying he was “uncomfortable” with the Harper government’s description of so-called honour killings as “barbaric.”

“Perhaps I got tangled in semantic weeds in my comments, particularly in view of the Conservatives' cynicism on these issues,” Mr. Trudeau wrote in an email to The Globe. “I want to make clear that I think the acts described are heinous, barbaric acts that are totally unacceptable in our society.”

OK, a Liberal MP issues a statement to clarify that he thinks that honor killings are "A Very Bad Thing." I know what you are thinking: was this in question? Well, actually it was . . . sort of. Let's let Barbara Kay of the National Post sort this one out:

An updated government information pamphlet for newcomers to Canada, “Discover Canada,” warns against such “barbaric” practices as honour killings, forced marriages and other immoral or criminal practices. Federal Liberal Immigration critic Justin Trudeau yesterday made it known that he is “uncomfortable” with the word “barbaric.” “You could say it’s absolutely unacceptable as a phrase,” says Trudeau, adding that the word could have the effect of making newcomers “defensive.”

Now, I know what you are thinking: "No way! He did not really say that." Well, he says he did but now he says he didn't mean it. I suppose that makes some sort of difference - somehow. As one might imagine, the reaction was, well, shall we say, vigorous. Barbara Kay again:

Reaction from the blogosphere, as well as from Conservatives, to Trudeau’s reflexive political correctness was swift and uncompromising. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney responded that the language in Discover Canada is deliberate and accurate. “There’s nothing more brutal than killing a woman because of some perceived slight to family honour,” Mr. Kenney observed.

Now, you are likely thinking. Why did Mr. Trudeau criticize the Conservative government's pamphlet for potential immigrants in the first place? Was it simply a scuzzy way to curry votes with Muslim voters in his riding? Was it a calculated attempt to appear broad-minded as opposed to those knuckle-dragging Conservatives who believe in absolute right and wrong? Or was it that he thinks killing women is a minor issue compared to horror and trauma inflicted on a potential immigrant father or brother who has already killed a sister or daughter for somehow staining the family honor by using the hurtful term "barbaric" to describe what they did?

I don't think it was any of these. I think was a case of self-contradictory ideology making you say stupid things. Liberals hold simultaneously to two ideological positions: (1) the equality of women and the raging violence being done to them by the white, Western patriarchy, and (2) cultural relativism as expressed in the ideology of multiculturalism. So when they come up against a cultural expression of institutionalized violence against women perpetrated by non-white, non-Western cultures, they either just sit there and blink like a cat staring vacantly into space or they open their mouths and say something really, really stupid.

Of course, we know which thing happened here.

Multiculturalism is a dead idea. It was invented by relativists, implemented by secularists, praised by leftists and buried by terrorists. It is over. But those who still push cultural Marxist-inspired political correctness still parrot it as if it were still 1968. No matter what the calendar says, the 60s will never end for some people. But those people belong in museums, not Parliament.

Multiculturalism and Moral Relativism

European leaders (Merkel, Cameron, Sarkozy) are finally beginning to say out loud what everybody has known for years but were afraid to say in public: the Western idea of multiculturalism has failed. It promised peace and harmony; it has produced hate and suspicion. It promised enlightened interaction between equals; it has produced ghettos. It promised respect for the other; it has produced racism.

Western culture suffered a horrendous blow to its self-confidence and its convictions in the debacle that was the 40 years war in Europe (1914-1945). The supposedly scientific, advanced nations of Western Europe fell upon each other with a barbarism, ferocity and nihilistic bloodlust that convinced much of the European intellectual elite that its own civilization - its religion, its moral ideals, its political institutions and its philosophical foundations - were all a thin veneer of superficial window-dressing covering up rapacity, greed, racism and the will to power, which were the fundamental realities of life.

There was a certain undeniable plausibility to this cynicism because the philosophical, religious, moral and cultural foundations of Europe had been rotting for centuries. Since the 14th century and the rise of nominalism, the worldview of Christian Europe had been declining. From the rise of Cartesian philosophy with its attempt to find new foundations in the autonomous self to the rise of a mechanistic technology that eschews the search for wisdom in its haste to obtain power over nature to the hubris of the Enlightenment with its call to set aside the wisdom of the past and trust man's unaided Reason, (always with a capital R), Europe attempted to rebuild its civilization on a humanistic and materialistic foundation.

So when the postmodern philosophers criticize the Enlightenment worship of Reason, they are right. But because they believed that the Enlightenment was somehow a legitimate or even inevitable development of the Greco-Roman and Christian civilizations which preceded it, the entirely of Western civilization, including Christianity, was implicated along with the Enlightenment.

A multude of diverse voices have warned that a wrong turn was taken at the dawn of the modern age and that the rejection of Christian worldview of the Medieval world must lead to disaster. They included Lewis and Tolkien, Dawson and Butterfield, von Balthasar and Milbank, Elliot and Kirk, Chesterton and Belloc, Newman and MacIntyre, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. They have been largely ignored by the elites of our society.

Europe is dying of old age because she has cut herself off from her Medieval Christian roots. The failure of modernity is not the failure of Western civilization; it is the failure of the Modern rebellion against the Christian West.

Relativism is the standpoint of all civilizations in their dotage. It is not new, nor is it unique to the West. It is the standard default position of any civilization which has cut itself off from its roots from which alone can come renewal. Moral and cultural relativism lies behind the failed policy of multiculturalism and behind that lies moral and cultural rot.

Since the 1960s cultural Marxism has marched through the institutions of the West trumpeting moral relativism, multiculturalism and a self-loathing that is difficult to watch and painful to endure. This is marketed as the sophisticated views of a self-confident culture but the object of the confidence of these confidence men is as ephemeral and unreal as the snake oil they would have hawked in earlier times.

The equivalent of the ancient Sophists hated by Socrates have taken over our universities and taught our young people the slogans and political correctness needed to rise in this kind of decaying society. They exist because those who lead us intellectually have failed us. Modernity is dead as an idea even though the institutions it created live on for a time until the bills come due and fiddler demands his pay.

Multiculturalism is the rotten fruit. Moral relativism is the disease. The tree is Western civilization. How long before the axe is taken to a tree that no longer bears good fruit?

Why Quebec Politicians Need a Course in Logic . . . or How Stupidity Leads to the Dictatorship of Relativism

It really is depressing to read utterly stupid and inane comments like the following one (see last sentence of quotation). Now, if a first year philosophy student said something like this in September, I would be patient, kind and understanding in correcting the obvious howler. But if that same student wrote a statement like this on the final exam in April it would be considered a glaring error and there would be no mercy. Frankly, I would feel like a failure as a professor.

But this comes from an elected official who could potentially (depending on the outcome of the next election) actually be setting public policy on education. And she is echoing the current government of Quebec. So what we have here is a set of ignorant, poorly-educated, arrogant politicians who lack critical thinking skills. It is a travesty, a disaster, an embarassment to the people of Quebec, a real mess.

Listen to Charles Lewis, who writes an excellent column in the National Post entitled: "Public Money is Religious Too" describe the situation:

The argument will soon be made that Montreal’s Loyola High School should not have the right to opt out of a Quebec government-sponsored ethics and religion program, despite a court ruling that said otherwise.

The argument will be made that if the private school takes public money, which it does, then it should follow the public program. Loyola, a Jesuit Catholic school, should have every right to refuse to institute the Quebec program, but only if it stops taking public money. Seem fair on the surface, does it not?

The assumption that many will made is that as a religious school it is somehow outside the public sphere and therefore should be grateful for whatever public support it gets.

On Friday, a court ruled that Loyola had every right to refuse to adopt the program and could teach faith and ethics from a Catholic perspective.

“In these times of respect of fundamental rights, of tolerance, of reasonable accommodations and of multiculturalism, the attitude adopted by the [Education] Department in the current matter is surprising,” Quebec Superior Court Justice Gérard Dugré wrote Friday.

“Canadian democratic society is based on principles recognizing the supremacy of God and the primacy of the law – both of which benefit from constitutional protection.”

Almost immediately, the Quebec government said it would appeal the court’s decision.

Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois, echoing the sentiment of the Liberal government, said: “It is up to parents and the church to transmit faith. Schools must transmit knowledge.

Read it all here.

The curriculum in question, by all accounts, teaches moral and epistemological relativism in a crude and popular form. But Marois thinks this is "knowledge" as opposed to "faith." No it isn't. It is just a form of faith called secularism. To take the leap of faith necessary to dogmatically proclaim the truth of relativism is (1) to take up a faith position, (2) to make a self-contradictory statement and (3) to claim to know that what Christians teach about God is untrue. How exactly does one know that? Is there an empirical experiment that proves it? This is in the same category of vulgar atheism as the USSR cosmonaut radioing back to earth from orbit that there is no God visible in outer space so there, that proves it.

And if everything is relative, then the statement that everything is relative is only relatively true, which means that the statement that some things are not relative is as true as the statement that everything is relative. So to hold this is to hold to a logical contradiction.

To hold that God both exists and does not exist (which is entailed in believing that Buddhism and Christianity are equally true), is to abandon rationality. The government of Quebec has abandoned reason in the name of Science. It makes Monty Python look serious.

Since Quebec has rejected Christianity, the realm of the secular is disappearing in Quebec. The secular is a Christian invention. Christians believe in the secular realm, i.e. that sphere of life in which people of various religious faiths can co-exist and even share some beliefs while being in fundamental disagreement on others.

But "Secularism" is different. That is a non-traditional, modern, religious faith that seeks to base ethics and politics on empirical science and logical reasoning. It is a demonstrably irrational faith because empirical science cannot tell us why we should respect all humans as being of equal value rather than considering one race superior to the other. Science can't tell this because it is not a scientific question; one must look to philosophy and religion for the answers to philosophical and religious questions. Some sort of non-relativistic worldview must underlie any society that wishes to avoid tyranny.

So now the secular is disappearing in Quebec. There is no secular left because without a belief in natural law or some other system of right and wrong, a great void is opening up into which all sorts of irrational philosophies, religions and worldviews are rushing. Secularism (or Scientism) is an irrational faith in which all the historic religions like Christianity and Judaism are considered wrong and untrue - or else redefined in relativistic terms.

What is left is government by whatever elite can grab power and morality determined by polling and sophistic rhetoric. In effect, the will to power is unrestrained by absolute moral truths and the weak just get exploited by the strong. When you see the government imposing by force a relativistic curriculum on Christian schools, you know that you have witnessed the degeneration into tyranny.

If all morality is relative then whatever the government does must be "right" in some sense. Since Hitler was democratically elected and the Holocaust was perfectly legal, then it must be all right. That is where moral relativism leads you and if Pauline Marois and the Charest government can not see that, then they are too poorly educated to be worthy of public office.

Some supposed relativists are really just uninformed folks who are trying to be tolerant so they do allow Christian schools to teach Christian morality. But when the rot of relativism reaches a certain point, tolerance falls by the wayside having served its purpose of undermining the moral order that places limits on the tyranny of the State. Then we have what then Cardinal Ratzinger called at Pope John Paul II's funeral "the dictatorship of relativism." Next comes the raw, unbridled will to power.

To pronounce glibly that relativism is knowledge and that morality is just a matter of faith is so inane and so out of touch with reason that it is unworthy of high school students, let alone the government of 8 million people.

What Does the Liberal Acceptance of Female Genital Mutilation Mean?

Jill Stanek has a good column on "Female Genital Mutilation," which is an extreme and barbaric practice in many streams of Islam designed to deny women sexual pleasure so as to keep them from being tempted by sexual sin. It is painful and it goes against natural law because it mutilates the body God created and called good. Sin, according to Christianity, arises not from the body alone but is a matter of the rational will, which is weakened by original sin and which fails to direct the body in the way that is best for the person. The body itself is not evil.

As Muslims migrate into the lands of the West and become larger and more powerful communities, they bring practices foreign to the Christian-influenced West with them. This particular one ought to be a thing of horror to all civilized people and ought to be rejected out of hand. There is no reason to tolerate it any more than ritual killing of women who were raped or any other evil.

Yet, the weakness of a morally relativistic culture that pretends to find it extremely difficult to say what is right or wrong except when it is asserting its individualistic, hedonistic "rights," makes compromise and appeasement attractive.

Stanek writes:

FGMs are supposed to curb sexual appetite, thereby increasing the odds of virginity until marriage and fidelity afterward. Understandably, FGM often renders sexual intercourse painful.

Also understandably, victims of FGM often suffer from "recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections, cysts, infertility, an increased risk of childbirth complications and newborn deaths, and the need for later surgeries," according to the World Health Organization.

"For example," states WHO, "the FGM procedure that seals or narrows a vaginal opening [infibulation] needs to be cut open later to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth. Sometimes it is stitched again several times, including after childbirth, hence the woman goes through repeated opening and closing procedures, further increasing ... both immediate and long-term risks."

She notes that the response of both doctors and feminists is increasingly limp:

Traditionally, feminists have strongly opposed FGM, along with all of Western civilization.

But in this new age of cultural sensitivity, attempts are being made to bridge the divide, not necessarily end the barbaric practice of FGM.

For instance, there is a call to stop using the offensive term "mutilation" in favor of "female genital cutting" or "female circumcision," both utterly inaccurate.

There is also the recent suggestion by the American Academy of Pediatrics to barter a compromise, recommending that pediatricians offer the gentler, kinder form of FGM, Type 4: pricking, piercing, or incising. In a new policy statement on April 26, AAP recommended:

Some physicians … advocate only pricking or incising the clitoral skin as sufficient to satisfy cultural requirements. This is no more of an alteration than ear piercing. …

[T]he ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is not physically harmful and is much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting. There is reason to believe that offering such a compromise may build trust between hospitals and immigrant communities, save some girls from undergoing disfiguring and life-threatening procedures in their native countries and play a role in the eventual eradication of FGC.

I should note this recommendation is currently illegal in the U.S.

And it is the morally relativistic response to FGM, seeking to ameliorate the practice and not end it.

Physicians offering to inflict this painful and completely unnecessary medical procedure on a female child would legitimize FGM rather than stigmatize it. They would also undermine attempts by mothers to end FGM with their own generation.

What flummoxed me was the response by some feminists like Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, who wrote, "I have to say that I don't really see the problem with the AAP advising doctors to offer a 'ritual nick' in lieu of the more serious forms of female circumcision."

Of all groups I would expect feminists to fight hardest against misogynist practices of all forms at all levels. This is cultural sensitivity run amok.

But these are the same people who endorse abortion, and well over half of those aborted are girls, sometimes because they are girls.

The idea that Feminists are on the side of women becomes more laughable every day. The rhetoric of victimhood and the faux rage are wearing thin. If you can't take a stand against female genital mutilation you are part of the problem not part of the solution. Case closed.

Mark Steyn, that supposed woman-hating, right-winger has a few choice words about female genital mutilation in an article called "Nicking Our Public Discourse." He writes:

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Der Spiegel, an impeccably liberal magazine, summed up the remorseless Islamization of Europe in a recent headline: “How Much Allah Can the Old Continent Bear?” Well, what’s wrong with a little Allah-lite? The AAP thinks you can hop on the sharia express and only ride a couple of stops. In such ostensibly minor concessions, the “ritual nick” we’re performing is on ourselves. Further cuts will follow.

Why is it impossible for liberal politicians to come out and say that certain teachings and practices of Islam are just plain wrong and won't be tolerated here? They certainly don't have any problem saying some aspects of Judaism and Christianity are wrong. What is going on here? Is is really just cultural relativism or something deeper? I think it is the beginning of surrender to a civilization that has been trying to conquer us for 14 centuries. I think it is a capitulation to Islam. I think that they, although they would vociferously deny it, are on the road to submission to Allah and Mohamed.

What else can explain feminists accepting the principle of female genital mutilation in the name of multiculturalism?

So That's It! I Knew There Was Something About Conservatives That is Just Not Right

Turns out that brain function is the reason why some conservatives don't believe in global warming. Yep. A scientist from U. California Berkeley says so. You see, conservatives don't want higher taxes, so they can't see the arguments for the other side. They therefore dismiss the absolutely settled science of global warming. Read all about here.

According to Wikipedia (which I don't consider a reliable source but take this for what it is worth - if true it is just too funny), Lakoff also does not believe in mathematics: "According to Lakoff, even mathematics itself is subjective to the human species and its cultures: thus "any question of math's being inherent in physical reality is moot, since there is no way to know whether or not it is." Well, if that is his view, all right. Just as some drunks are happy drunks, some relativists are happy relativists. But it seems rather inconsistent of him to turn all absolutist, dogmatic and narrow-minded on something like global warming. His relativism seems to go out the window when someone questions the "Truth According the Trendy Liberalism."

"Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that "cognitive" brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says "climate change" is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.

George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics, says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.

Lakoff told CNSNews.com that “metaphors” shape a person's understanding of the world, along with one’s values and political beliefs -- including what they think about global warming.

"It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong," Lakoff said.

"And what they try to do is show that the science is wrong and that the argument is wrong, based on the science. So when it comes back to science, they try to debunk the science," Lakoff said.

On the other hand, he added, liberals' cognitive process allows them to be "open-minded." "Liberals say, 'Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’" Lakoff said."

Personally, I find the truths of mathematics more compelling than the "proof" for global warming. But I guess that is just my conservative cognitive function acting up again.

Is the Sexual Revolution the Source of Moral Relativism?

Matthew Anderson at Mere Orthodoxy has a 5 minute video of philosopher Peter Kreeft in which he suggests that the basic source of moral relativism is sex and that the most important weapon the Church has at its disposal today in John Paul the Great's Theology of the Body. Watch it here.

Matthew isn't sure that he agrees with everything Kreeft is saying here. My take is that, while there are more complex philosophical and historical roots of relativism that need to be explored, Kreeft is right to say that the kind of moral relativism that we see all around us today in popular culture does arise primarily from the sexual revolution of the 1960's. The sexual revolution was the time when the relativistic, amoralism which had been confined to the ivory towers hit the streets.

Will Relativism Cause Modern Civilization to Be Destroyed by Global Warming?

You have to either laugh or cry when observing in the frustration of the ever-so-very-earnest climate alarmists as they emote about how the population just does not believe the scientists and the "experts" who make wild claims about how New York and London will soon be under twenty feet of water and so the Western nations had better fork over hundreds of billions of dollars raised from ordinary, middle-class taxpayers to fund so-called "clean" development in Third World countries.

The idea that the corrupt kleptocrats that run these countries could do anything "clean" is laughable. The money is destined to buy arms (mostly from the West) to fight endless civil wars and to languish in Swiss bank accounts owned by the socialist leaders and their families. Meanwhile, nothing whatsoever will be done actually to help the people of those countries and the effect on global warming will be zero.

So it is very difficult for ordinary people to believe a word coming out of Copenhagen. First they tell us emissions have to be cut by a certain amount to avoid floods, famine and the end of civilization as we know it. Then they tell us that they propose to cut emissions by a quarter of that amount (and just let the disasters roll out?), but we should not worry because a global energy tax is going to fund the handing over of 100 million dollars to Third world governments, many of whom, like Hugo Chavez, hate the West and all it stands for. You can forgive the average person for responding by saying "Huh?" Skepticism about AGW is growing in the US and in many other countries (such as Australia and the UK) as well. From Rasmussen Reports we learn: [my bolding]

"Public skepticism about the officially promoted cause of global warming has reached an all-time high among Americans. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of likely voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends.

Just 34% say climate change is due primarily to human activity, even as President Obama and other world leaders gather at a UN summit to limit the human activity they blame for global warming. Six percent (6%) say there is some other reason for global warming, and 10% are not sure.

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly over the past year. In April 2008, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change."

So it is with interest that I read yesterday in the lefty, Toronto Star, this story lamenting the failure of ordinary people to believe in objective, scientific truth: [my bolding]

LONDON–The leader of the Maldives, an Indian Ocean island nation whose existence is threatened by global warming, was emphatic.

"In all political agreements, you have to be prepared to negotiate," he said in Copenhagen this week. "But physics isn't politics." President Mohamed Nasheed is wrong. These days, everything is politics. And now, amplified by the Internet, anyone, knowledgeable or oblivious, can share his or her view with the entire world.

Not so long ago, the planet's prevailing voices were those of experts – people with years of training to back up what they said. Then came the Internet and that all changed.

Consider the global warming debate: scientists insist they have research in their corner. But public debate has shifted from the provable to the spectacle of argument. And in this age of constant, instantaneous comment has come suspicion of the expert.

"What you have is the (presumption) of expertise by ordinary people who feel their opinions are as valuable as anybody else's," says Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent and author of Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? "Society," he says, "has authorized everybody's opinions."

But, one wants to protest, that is the point. Everybody's opinion is as good as everyone else's. That is the whole point of modern relativism. Are we not modernists?

The Star has been leading the charge for decades on the sexual revolution, arguing that everyone gets to make up his or her own morality - even if other people, like the children, or society as a whole get hurt. No one can say for sure that male and female bodies were intentionally designed for each other. No one can say that divorce is bad and to be avoided in every case possible. No one can say that traditional marriage and family structures are actually better than individualism and promiscuity. What is right for you is not necessarily right for me. There is no such thing as "the family" - only "families."

But, you might protest, AGW has science on its side. Everyone should respect science. But traditional sexual morality has science on its side too and a fat lot of good that has done. Study after study shows that children brought up in homes with their own biological parents do better statistically according to dozens of measures from rates of incarceration, to rates of sexual abuse to rates of mental illness to success in school and so on. With biology, medicine, psychology and sociology all confirming the value and rightness of traditional morality, late modern Western society still feels free to throw it in the garbage and embark on wild-eyed experiments in sexuality and family. So why should it be any different with AGW? After all, lowering emissions and avoiding promiscuity have something important in common: both cramp my individualistic, hedonistic, self-centered lifestyle.

Let us suppose that AGW is completely true and that the science is impeccable. That is a disputable proposition, but for the sake of argument let us suppose it turns out to be true - objectively. Suppose half of Florida, New York and London are destroyed in a few years and most of the US turns into desert or whatever. When we look back at the 20th and early 21st century and try to analyze why Westerners did not act when they should have acted and instead allowed their civilization to be destroyed, we will have to ask if the widespread growth of relativism among the population was not the culprit.

At some point in the 20th century, relativism escaped the ivory tower and became a widespread belief in society - even the new socially-endorsed orthodoxy - which led to the sexual revolution and to many other pernicious effects. But the worst effect it may have had is to destroy once and for all the willingness of the average person to believe in absolute truth when it is against his immediate, short-sighted, self interest to do so. Truth, schmooth. Let's get back to our video games and forget about what those dodgy scientists with their doomsday predictions have to say. And pass the Playboy and a beer. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow the planet warms.

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UPDATE: See this James Delingpole post. I just read it and it says what I've said here and it has a lot of excellent links as well. It is worth a read.