Defending Free Speech Against the Hard Left and Islam

Geert Wilders is fighting for freedom in Europe and there are two fronts: one is political Islam and the other is the hard Left. He is not a far right or fascist; he is one of the few true liberals left in politics in Europe.

He has an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled: "European Free Speech Under Attack" and this is how it begins:

""The lights are going out all over Europe," British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey famously remarked on the eve of World War I. I am reminded of those words whenever I read about Europeans being dragged into court for so-called hate-speech crimes.

Recently, Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, had to stand trial in Copenhagen because he had criticized Islam. Mr. Hedegaard was acquitted, but only on the technicality that he had not known that his words, expressed in a private conversation, were being taped. Last week in Vienna, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian human-rights activist, was fined €480 for calling the Islamic prophet Muhammad a pedophile because he had consummated his marriage to a nine-year old girl. Meanwhile, my own trial in Amsterdam is dragging on, consuming valuable time that I would rather spend in parliament representing my million-and-a-half voters.

How can all this be possible in supposedly liberal Europe? The Dutch penal code states that anyone who either "publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in any way that incites hatred against a group or people" or "in any way that insults a group of people because of their race, their religion or belief, their hetero- or homosexual inclination or their physical, psychological or mental handicap, will be punished."

Early in 2008, a number of leftist and Islamic organizations took me to court, claiming that by expressing my views on Islam I had deliberately "insulted" and "incited hatred" against Muslims. I argued then, as I will again in my forthcoming book, that Islam is primarily a totalitarian ideology aiming for world domination."

This opinion of his - that Islam is a totalitarian political system disguised as a religion - is certainly an extreme opinion. But it is a reasonable point of view with a lot of actual evidence in its favor. It is not based on fantasy but on horrible violent acts and the historical record. What ought to upset every freedom-loving person is that both Islam and the hard Left both want to shut him down, silence him and prevent an open debate.

Every time the supposed "religion of peace" reacts to some provocation like the burning of a Koran or the publication of a cartoon by murdering, burning and raping, it simply adds support to Wilders' point. And every time he is hauled into court by left wing elitists or receives death threats from outraged Muslims he is proven to be right.

The world thought that the Fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of totalitarianism in Europe. How naive those who thought that look now. Wilders writes:

"My trial is a political trial. It is tragic that after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, political trials in Europe were not cast onto the ash heap of history. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has previously referred to the European Union as the "EUSSR." One of his arguments is that in the EU, as in the former USSR, there is no freedom of speech."

Just as the Greeks were conquered militarily by Rome and yet conquered Rome in language, culture and ideas, so the ideas of Marxism are slowly but surely taking over Western Europe and pushing the ideals of liberty to the curb. The secularist, ruling elites hate Christianity so much that even Communism and Islam - the two greatest threats to European culture in history - do not scare them. Their blind, irrational hatred of reason, science, freedom and the Christianity that created these cultural goods drive them to destroy Europe's freedom in the name of Secularism, Scientism and Socialism.

In the 1930s, two left-wing groups, the Marxists and the Nazis, fought each other but united against the liberal Weimar Republic. Both the International Socialist (the Communists) and the National Socialists (the Nazis) wanted power. But the both hated liberalism and Christianity so much that they united against liberal democracy. History has a way of repeating itself until we learn from it.

Geert Wilders is not right about everything. I disagree with him on some issues. But he is a hero and he is courageous. Those who would kill or silence him reveal themselves to be enemies of mankind in so doing.

Read it all here.

Joe Scarborough Calls on Obama to Apologize for Attacking Bush for Doing Exactly What Obama is Now Doing

Joe Scarborough may be running for the Republicans in the next election. I don't know that but he went after Bush this morning on Morning Joe in a way the Obama worshipers are not used to hearing. Either he is laying the foundation for a run in a Republican Party that has moved to the right since the last time he was in office or else he is the most principled man on television.

Either way, it looks good on him. I found this to be the most entertaining 14 minutes of television I've seen in a long time. Obama attacked Bush and Cheney as un-American subverters of the Constitution and attacked their motives, their character and their commitment to the "most cherished values" of America. Then, in his first week in office he invited in the cameras and made a hugely smug, self-righteous production out of signing an Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. Then he ran into reality, the majority opinion of the American people and the Congress and he found out that giving enemy combatants the constitutional rights of American citizens and putting American citizens at risk in a show trial in New York City was not feasible.

Obama is a radical leftist who tries to pose as a centrist to fool that portion of the people which can be fooled all the time. But this time he got carried away playing to his anti-war, anti-American base. And now he looks like a shallow empty suit.

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The Obama worshipers couldn't stand to listen to 14 minutes of criticism of Obama, but Bush and Cheney had to listen to 8 years of having their character called into question. And Bush has been so magnificent in retirement absolutely refusing to criticize Obama. He has turned the other cheek even though Obama has taken every possible opportunity to bash Bush unfairly and fairly. It is not getting to the point where even if you didn't like Bush's policies, you must be beginning to feel some sympathy for him. If not sympathy for Bush, at least you must be beginning to get a sick feeling every time to old predictable "Bush was evil and caused all our problems" line is trotted out one more time.

Trudeau, Obama and Ignatieff

I have two further thoughts on the previous post on Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

First, having had a quick peek at the Liberal Party platform and having listened to Michael Ignatieff, I would say that if he is elected Prime Minister we will have the second coming of Trudeau. Ignatieff is a welfare state, high tax, big government liberal who would love to undo the progress made in Canada over the past 20 years toward fiscal sanity.

Never in recent memory has an election presented such a sharp contrast in ideology. The Conservatives are basically a moderate, slightly right-of-center party, while the current version of the Liberal Party is slightly to the right of the NDP - very slightly. If the Conservatives do not attain a majority this time, there will likely be a coalition of liberals, socialists and separatists and then the progress of the past two decades will be rolled back and the Sixties will break out all over again. Shudder!

Second, my American readers might want to do some comparisons of Frum's description of Trudeau and Obama. They parallels are almost eerie until you realize that both are products of the same 60s, New Left, postmodern, politically correct intellectual milieu. The question is whether Obama will do as much damage to America as Trudeau did to Canada. One prays that he will not.

Appeaement Never Works: Free Speech is Basic to Western Culture

Western cultural elites do not understand what they are dealing with in radical Islam. They actually think appeasement will bring peace and good will. Appeasement does not work with fanatical, political movements that reject Christianity and Western principles of morality and justice. Appeasement only encourages and emboldens those who already think the West is so weak and hapless that a few good kicks will knock the entire structure down.

Rob Taylor writes in "The West Must Not Trade Free Speech for Islamic 'Good Will'":

In a stunning act of bipartisan moral cowardice, Harry Reid told the world that he’s considering a “probe” into the Florida pastor who burned a copy of the Koran, while Lindsey Graham announced his belief that Americans should give up their First Amendment rights to avoid offending Muslims. The irony that this shameful display happened on a show called “Face the Nation” was lost on the spineless appeasers who lack the dignity to feel ashamed when surrendering to barbarians thousands of miles away. In the wake of savages rioting in Afghanistan, two of our senior lawmakers are advocating the implementation of Shariah-like laws to protect one religious document above all others.

And what would we get in return? The “good will” of the Muslim street? The same “good will” displayed when Palestinians–who live off U.S. aid–danced in the streets after 9/11?

Why should we even want the "good will" of those who believe we are only fit to be their servants? How can rational bargaining with such irrational fanatics ever work? Or have we given up already? Are we merely managing our own decline? In many parts of Europe this is undoubtedly the case, but the US is too young and vigorous to give up now. I have to believe that America can do better than the likes of Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham.

Hopefully the Tea Party will take away Graham's Republican nomination next time around and after 2012 Harry Reid will no longer control the Senate. Will they be replaced by people who will stand up for freedom, justice and peace? Or will servile appeasers continue to multiply? We shall see.

Just to be absolutely clear: I repudiate as distasteful and unnecessary the burning of Korans. If all Reid and Graham said was that they abhor such and action and condemn Terry Jones, I would have no problem with that whatsoever. But when they are ready to take away American liberties and restrict free speech in order to placate violent, extremist, Fascists, then I have more of a problem with them than I do with either Terry Jones or the Islamofascists. Reid and Graham are United States Senators. They, at least, ought to know better.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau: Canada's Worst Prime Minister

David Frum has a tremendous article in today's National Post on the horrible legacy of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, which makes the case that Trudeau was the most destructive prime minister in Canadian history. It is an illuminating piece that shows how Trudeau in many ways embodied the New Left sensibilities of the 60s and led Canada into a brave new world of debt, statism and a break with tradition and culture. He writes:

Canada today is a very successful country. It has suffered less from the global economic crisis than any other major economy.

So Canadians may be tempted to be philosophical about disasters in their own past. Hasn’t all come out right in the end? Of course you could say the same about the invasions of Ghengis Khan.

I don’t draw any personal comparison between Pierre Trudeau and Ghengis Khan, obviously. But I want to stress: Canada’s achievement overcoming Trudeau’s disastrous legacy should not inure Canadians to how disastrous that legacy was.

Three subsequent important prime ministers – Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper – invested their energies cleaning up the wreckage left by Pierre Trudeau. The work has taken almost 30 years. Finally and at long last, nobody speculates any more about Canada defaulting on its debt, or splitting apart, or being isolated from all its major allies.

Yet through most of the adult lives of most people in this room, people in Canada and outside Canada did worry about those things.

And as you enjoy the peace, stability and comparative prosperity of Canada in the 2010s just consider – this is how Canadians felt in the middle 1960s. Now imagine a political leader coming along and out of ignorance and arrogance despoiling all this success. Not because the leader faced some overwhelming crisis where it was hard to see the right answer. But utterly unnecessarily. Out of a clear blue sky. Like a malicious child on the beach stomping on the sand castle somebody else had worked all morning to build.

That was the political record of Pierre Trudeau.

I want to examine the Trudeau record in 3 dimensions: What Trudeau did to the Canadian economy, what Trudeau did to Canada’s standing in the world, and what Trudeau did to Canadian political stability.

I’ll conclude by offering some thoughts about the personal and intellectual traits that animated Trudeau’s destructive career. And I hope you’ll agree with me at the end that Trudeau deserves at least this much credit: There was nothing small-scale or parochial about him. As a political wrecker, he was truly world class.

I hope you take the time to read the whole thing here. It is one of the most substantial pieces of writing I have seen in a daily newspaper in quite some time.

Frum could have, but didn't mention that it was Trudeau who led the process by which abortion on demand was legalized and homosexuality was normalized. Trudeau was a flower child fascist who was willing to trash tradition in order to implement his statist dreams. Canada is a much different and worse-off place because of him.

Marx versus Amos: Two Incompatible Visions of Justice

Christopher Benson asks: "Who is Afraid of Karl Marx?" All sane people who desire justice and peace should fear the ideas of the Romantic Sophist who has inspired a horrible ideology that has led to more deaths and oppression in one century than any other set of ideas one can mention.

Benson has started up a blog discussion of Terry Eagleton's new book Why Marx Was Right, on which I have been commenting in recent posts. Benson quotes me as an example of a Christian who opposes Marx and he quotes Merold Westphal as one who argues in favor of Marx's ideas. Benson claims that I represent the majority viewpoint, a claim I find imprecise and misleading.

While it is true that most Americans (and a smaller majority of Canadians) likely oppose Marxism, the "Ruling Elite" is heavily skewed toward a pro-Marxist stance and their influence is much greater than that of the "Great Unwashed." And many Christians who ought to oppose Marxism have picked up many of his ideas without quite realizing the provenance of those ideas.

Benson quotes Westpahl as saying:

"There is something profoundly biblical in Marx’s critique of modern society. Or, to speak more generally, the hermeneutics of suspicion in the hands of modern atheists is not only a secular theology of original sin; it is also a secular version of the prophetic message. Those who profess to take biblical authority seriously can ignore (or refute) it at their peril.

Some may want to respond: “But we have Amos, so why do we need Marx?” The question is fair and deserves not one but two answers. First, we need Marx as well as Amos, perhaps Marx as a commentary on Amos, because Marx is about us in a way that Amos is not."

I have run into this point of view very frequently both among simple, ordinary people, who have swallowed a certain line and among educated, scholars, who really ought to know better. Some peddle this line knowing it is false as pure propaganda for ideological reasons. I have little to say to them except: "For shame!" But many people parrot this line sincerely thinking it is true and that Marx is just a modern version of Amos. It is those people I wish to address in this post.

Simply put, my thesis is that the ideas of Marx
and those found in Amos are utterly incompatible.
Amos is right, Marx is wrong, and the more you side with
Amos the more of Marx's ideas you will need to give up.

A blog post can only provide an outline of an argument; a book is badly needed on this topic. However, here is a beginning of a rough outline of an argument.

1. Amos is addressing the rich, the rulers, and the society as a whole, while Marx addresses the working class, that is, the poor.

Amos calls on the rich to do do two things: (1) enforce the law - that is justice and (2) share their resources - that is charity. Amos is a conservative insofar as he believes that the law of Moses is sufficient and just needs to be implemented. He looks to the past for his ideals; for Amos the future is not the eschatological Utopia envisioned by Marx but rather the dark and foreboding Day of the LORD. (5:18-20) It is the responsibility of the rich to be charitable and it is the responsibility of the Judges to dispense justice equally to the rich and to the poor. Equality before the law, rather than equality of income is the ideal for Amos. It is the LORD who will bring judgment upon Israel.

Marx, however, addresses not the rich but the workers and he tells them that the law is simply a tool of the oppressors to keep them down and that charity is a joke. He urges them to rise up an revolt against the rulers, overthrow the government, expropriate property, raise taxes and then redistribute the wealth according the principle of "from each according to his ability - to each according to his need." Since someone has to decide who needs what and who can afford what, those who jump on the revolutionary bandwagon relatively early have an advantage in applying for those coveted positions in the new order. Marx preaches that workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains and entices them with visions of a new world in which unicorns bring lollipops from over the rainbow. Once the dictatorship of the proletariat gets power, what could possibly go wrong?

"Proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod
and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt,
and say, 'Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria,
and see the great tumults within her,
and the oppressed in her midst.'
'They do not know how to do right,' declares the LORD.
those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds."
(Amos 3:9-10)

2. Amos calls for the rule of law, which in his context would include property rights rooted in the 8th Commandment, while Marx calls for revolution against the established order, which he views as being based on property rights.

Amos has a high view of the law and sees it as objective, impersonal and knowable. Amos calls Israel back to Torah and assumes that the Law contains the answers to the injustices and economic problems Israel faces. Amos knows that property rights are the chief bulwark of the lower classes against those who would exploit them and he knows that the proper understanding and enforcement of the law is the best hope for the poor.

Marx, on the other hand, sees the law through the lens of class warfare and assumes that it reflects class interest and selfishness. It is a social construct that can easily be dismantled and remade with few negative consequences. For Marx, property rights must be turned into myths that can be discarded and it this hurts the lower classes more than it hurts the wealthy, well, you can't make an omelet with breaking a few eggs.

"Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice (misphat) in the gate;
It may be that the LORD, the God of hosts
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."
(Amos 5:15)

3. Amos discerns a spiritual root of a materialistic problem, while Marx sees religion as part of the problem.

For Amos, there is a natural and direct connection between sexual sin (2:7), hard-heartedness leading to a neglect of charity (4:1) and idolatry (5:25-27). Why? These are all violations of the covenant and the breaking of specific laws in the Law of Moses. To break the law is to rebel against the LORD, the God of the Fathers who delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. All sins against the neighbor (Commandments 5-10) are rooted in sins against God (Commandments 1-4) as the very structure of the Ten Commandments shows us. Idolatry leads to greed and covetousness and then on to stealing and all the other sins against the neighbor.

For Marx, on the other hand, religion is merely the tool of the oppressors, the opiate of the people, a substitute for class warfare and revolution. To tell poor people not to covet the wealth of the rich is anathema to Marx; it is counter-revolutionary - reactionary. He would view Amos' refusal to call for revolution as a typically religious attempt to make the world safe for the status quo which benefits the wealthy and the powerful. He would view Amos' call for charity as too little too late. He would view Amos' concern about sexual sin as irrelevant and bourgeois.

For Amos, morality is embedded in religion and apart from religion there is no basis for justice or compassion. For Marx, morality is independent of religion and the need of the poor is all the basis for justice that is needed. For Amos, justice means obedience to the law, but for Marx the law, like religion, stands in the way of the impatient, insistent on taking what is due to the poor without fancy metaphysical or religious justifications. Need justifies all.

Amos is a prophet of true, purified religion; Marx is the prophet of post-Christian Naturalism.

"I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5:21-24)

Final Thoughts:
I have not been able to do a careful exegetical word study of the terms justice (mishpat) and righteousness (tsedaqah). However, I would submit that the proper meanings of these terms is different from the social ideal of equality of income attained by coerced redistribution of wealth preached by Marxism. It is easy for good-hearted Christian people to read into the text what they think sounds compassionate and fair.

The idea that everyone ought to have what they want and no one should be rich at the expense of the poor is a beguiling concept that sounds absolutely wonderful until you actually try to put it into practice in a fallen world. In this case, a system that takes our fallen natures into account and recognizes the selfishness that characterizes all of us is preferable to a system that redefines sin as income disparity and claims to be able to change human nature and eliminate sin by means of an economic and political system. In this case, aiming lower get higher results, while aiming too high causes a fall into the abyss.

Author of Goldstone Report Admits the Report is Wrong: Israel Did Not Target Civilians Deliberately

In a bombshell op ed piece in the Washington Post the author of the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians in its Operation Cast Lead against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, has now recanted. Mark Russell summarizes this stunning turn of events:

"The author of a UN report on Israel's 2008 Gaza invasion has retracted the explosive accusation that Israel deliberately targeted citizens, reports the New York Times, sending shockwaves through Israel. "Everything we said has proven to be true,” says PM Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for the report to be completely scrapped. “Israel did not intentionally harm civilians. Its institutions and investigative bodies are worthy, while Hamas intentionally fired upon innocent civilians and did not examine anything.” "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document," wrote Goldstone in the Washington Post."

Israel is not guilty of crimes against humanity or war crimes. Were civilians killed? Yes. Was it deliberate? No. Does Israel investigate specific incidents and punish anyone in its armed forces who breaks the rules of civilized warfare? Yes. Was Israel was telling the truth all along? Yes. Do those who were so quick to condemn Israel look bad? Yes.

Goldstone also says in the article that Hamas has utterly failed to investigate any of its own serious incidents of targeting civilians. This is not surprising, seeing as Hamas is a terrorist organization that targets civilians as a cornerstone of its strategy. Was Goldstone naive to think they would cooperate? Yes. Has he admitted the truth? Yes.

Here is Goldstone in the Washington Post:

"Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms."

Wait, he is saying the UN Human Rights Council should condemn these crimes. Does he mean to suggest that it hasn't? No, it has not condemned them. That gives you some idea of how biased the UN is. Goldstone again:

I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.

There is no good reason to trust anything the UN says about Israel. It is dominated by Arab countries and their European colonies and they, with the help of the radical Left in the West, have turned the UN into an anti-Israel and anti-America body. The UN has all sorts of political agendas but they all have one common thread: they are anti-Western. Israel gets the brunt of it because they are considered to be the most vulnerable, but don't think that the West will be spared if it offers Israel up as a blood sacrifice. That is what makes the European subservience to Islamofascism so horribly ironic and pathetic. The best they can be hoped for is to be killed last - not exactly the sort of courage and conviction that made Europe great.

Israel is a democracy. Is it perfect? No, but what country could be perfect in the face of the hatred, fanaticism and prejudice of the militant Islam that drives Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood? We should stand with Israel and pray for peace. But we should be leery of anything coming out of the UN.

The Spider's Web of Deceit That Paralyzes the Spirit

In Richard Reinsch's excellent article on Whittaker Chambers "Still Witnessing: The Enduring Relevance of Whittaker Chambers" he highlights this paragraph from Chambers' autobiography Witness, p. 83.

"What I had been fell from me like dirty rags. The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind—the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul and its birthright in that mystery on which mere knowledge falters and shatters at every step. If I had rejected only Communism, I would have rejected only one political expression of the modern mind, the most logical because the most brutal in enforcing the myth of man’s material perfectibility."

Chambers' is exposing the spiritual roots of the rebellion called "Modernity," which go deeper than the rational, historical, philosophical or political roots.

Today is Whittaker Chambers' Birthday

Aaron Gardner at Redstate has a post on Whittaker Chambers consisting of some excerpts from an essay by Richard Reinsch on Chambers entitled "Still Witnessing: The Enduring Relevance of Whittaker Chambers."

For those who may not be familiar with Chambers' significance, here is the abstract of the Reinsch article:

Whittaker Chambers is best known today as the veteran Soviet spy who became, in William F. Buckley Jr.’s words, “the most important American defector from Communism” when he testified against members of his underground Communist cell in the 1930s. Yet Chambers did more than reject Communism: He revealed a key problem with modern liberalism. In his now-classic autobiography Witness, he argued that Communism ought to be rejected in the name of something other than 20th-century modern liberalism by showing how the two grew out of a common ideology that places unbounded confidence in state power. As he remarked, New Deal acolytes had no principled reason for opposing unlimited state intrusion into the social, economic, and political realms. Herein lies the source of Chambers’ ongoing relevance: While Communism stands discredited, many still accept its fundamental conceit that man makes his own reality and that the government is the solution to all our ills.

Here is a key passage from this essay. It expresses concisely why the sophistry of a Terry Eagleton must be resisted and rejected. Marxism fancies itself to be radical but it is not. It is modern through and through and in being modern it is a rejection of the Christianity that shaped the West prior to the rise of Modernity:

Chambers’ enduring relevance abides in his diagnosis of a West “sick to death” from the philosophical and religious choices it had made in the modern era. Man had too easily concluded that he creates his reality through his own mind and consent. In the 20th century, the horrific consequences for the human person, for liberty, and for civilization itself were the piles of dead bodies sacrificed by the terror regimes in pursuit of a liberationist politics that ended in man organizing the world against man.

The West itself, Chambers feared, was listless at the moment when it most needed strength. Chambers argued that the West’s weakness grew out of its tacit adoption of many of the philosophical errors on which Communism rested. A larger Western conversion, Chambers boldly urged, similar in many respects to his personal conversion would have to be made if Communism and its philosophical underpinnings were to be defeated. The West would have to emerge from its deep-seated materialism, its confusion over the nature of the person and his dignity, and its detached understanding of the free society’s conservative origins. This could happen, Chambers observed, only if the West reengaged the truth about God and man.

Chambers’ diagnosis troubles us today because of the West’s retention of so many of the ideas that shaped Communism. We still remain distant, if not cut off, from the intellectual and religious sources that shaped the West from its beginning. The contemporary West still asserts that reality should be understood through empirical reason alone, that man is merely a highly evolved creature; or, alternatively, it states that liberty is only a useful fiction because history, science, economics, and the state are the real movers carrying man forward.

This diagnosis is exactly the same as that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and John Paul II. The Modern misunderstanding of the nature of God has ruined its concept of man and is the root of all the disasters of the Twentieth century.

Eagleton on Marxist Revolution

In chapter 8 Eagleton considers the following objection to Marxism:

"Marxists are advocates of violent political action. They reject a sensible course of moderate, piecemeal reform and opt instead for the bloodstained chaos of revolution. A small band of insurrectionists will rise up, overthrow the state and impose its will on the majority. This is one of several senses in which Marxism and democracy are at daggers drawn. Because they despise morality as mere ideology, Marxists are not especially troubled by the mayhem their policies would unleash on the population. The end justifies the means however many lives may be lost in the process."

Eagleton's response to this objection basically comes down to this: "Look, it doesn't have to come down to this: we can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way." He argues that some reforms have involved violence while some revolutions have been bloodless so therefore there is no hard and fast distinction between the two. Real change is difficult and sometimes involves violence he claims complacently.

Eagleton claims that "one of the most urgent goals of the international socialist movement has been peace." (185) Without trying to be humorous, he says apparently with a straight face that one of the first acts of the Bolsheviks was to abolish the death penalty! (190) The Marxists, you see, are peace-loving, gentle souls who merely want to work for social justice. They gently urge a transfer of wealth from the pockets of the "rich" to the "people" and are always shocked and dismayed to encounter reactionary resistance. Imagine that! If wars are necessary, it is only because of Capitalist "encirclement" and "savage" reactionary violence. A Marxist is a man who sticks his hand into your pocket and is shocked - shocked I tell you! - when you punch him in the nose. In his mind, the Marxist was not robbing you, he was redistributing the wealth and for you not to cooperate is your condemnation. It is the Marxist's intentions you must consider, you see.

It always comes back to the politics of good intentions trumping all. Having admitted that both Stalin and Mao were "mass murderers on an almost unimaginable scale" (184), Eagleton dismisses the relevance of this fact with a wave of the hand: "Yet very few Marxists today . . . would seek to defend these horrific crimes." (184) Of what relevance is this? The point is that few of the Marxists who cheered the rise of Lenin and Stalin would have approved of such crimes and yet their implementation of or approval of Marxist ideas led to those crimes. And in the case of Mao, having seen what Marxism wrought in Russia, he tried to implement it anyway in China. Who cares if Marxists then thought mass murder would result or if Marxists today are glad it did? What could be less relevant to the question of whether we should support Marxism today? Marxism must be judged morally by its effects, not its good intentions.

Capitalism is much maligned by Marxists because it does not announce its intention to make all people equal and happy. Capitalism does not do so because it knows that this is an impossible dream that only justifies violence and misery. This is not a flaw in Capitalism, but rather its greatest strength. By assessing human nature realistically and not trying to change it fundamentally it is enabled to ask the question of how to design a system that mitigates the weaknesses of human nature and prevents the worst of suffering. By seeking to work with, rather than fundamentally transform, human nature, Capitalism has created a system that has lifted more people out of grinding poverty than any other system in the history of the world so far. It does far more good with its modest intentions than Marxism does with its romantic ideals.

For Marxism, what makes a revolution is that it produces men and women who feel and behave differently from their grandparents. (181) A revolution, as Eagleton defines it, changes human nature. This is precisely what makes Marxism so anti-humanistic and dangerous. It seeks to change human nature and the difficulty (impossibility actually) of this goal frustrates would be reformers, leads to revolution and then frustrates even the revolutionary thus eliciting more and more drastic and violent policies in a vain quest to reach the impossible goal Marxism sets for itself.

The rhetorical approach reminds one of Obama's: two extremes are presented (pacifists and sociopaths) and then Marxist violence is justified because it avoids both extremes. This rhetorical ploy has the effect of making one seem moderate - if the audience does not think too long and hard about it. The truth is that the real choice is between violent coercion which is aimed at restraining the worst excesses of human greed and the violent coercion which has no less of an aim than the total transformation of human nature and the elimination of greed. Put like that, Marxist violence stands exposed as Utopian, extremist and unrealistic. Aiming too high makes for disaster.

Conservatism is not the opposite extreme of Marxism. If the goal of Marxism is to achieve a revolution in which human nature is fundamentally transformed, the goal of Conservatism is not to keep everything exactly the same as it is. To attribute this motive to Conservatism is a Marxist debating ploy and it is dishonest. Rather, Conservatism stands for gradual, managed, incremental, steady change. Neither change nor stability are absolute; we all know that change will come. But will it be bloody convulsions or social evolution? Will it be the Anglo-American kind of slow evolution of parliamentary traditions and the gradual emergence of democracy or will it be the French and Russian descent into chaos and madness in the wild-eyed belief that something better will emerge on the other side?

Responding to Terry Eagleton's "Why Marx Was Right"

If this is the best the Marxists have to offer for apologetics these days, Marxism is in bigger trouble than I thought. Terry Eagleton tries to put some lipstick on a pig but the smell is impossible to cover up. I have a number of things to say about this book and it may take several posts. I will say, however, that I greatly appreciate a serious attempt to defend Marx in such a straightforward manner. This is needed and useful for intelligent debate. And those who claim that Eagleton is the best possible defender of Marxism writing today may well be right. If so, this book gives us something to use as a yardstick in the debate.

Please remember that this is not a formal book review. It is a response to a work of apologetics from a person who is the intended audience for the book. I am a Christian who believes that Marxism is a Christian heresy and incompatible with orthodox and biblical faith. This book seeks to defend Marx and Marxism from the criticism of people like me. My response is that I am even less inclined to be sympathetic to Marx than I was before reading this book. Why? Because of the reasons I will outline below.

Something I Found Shocking
In the Preface we read this rather off the cuff comment:

"I say very little in this book about Marxism as a moral and cultural critique. This is because it is not generally raised as an objection to Marxism, and so does not fit my format. In my view, however, the extraordinarily rich, fertile body of Marxist writing in this vein is reason in itself to align oneself with the Marxist legacy. Alienation, the 'commodification' of social life, a culture of greed, aggression, mindless hedonism and growing nihilism, the steady hemorrhage of meaning and value from human existence; it is hard to find an intelligent discussion of these questions that is not seriously indebted to the Marxist tradition." (xi-xii)

There are several shocking bits here. First, the fact that Eagleton feels so sure that cultural Marxism needs no defense show that he really does exist within a bubble as a late modern, Western academic. Perhaps he ought to get out more. I believe that at least 70% of Americans would disagree with him and a somewhat lower percentage (but still a majority) of Canadians would disagree with him. The university world has been so taken over by left-wingers that it is not reflective of Western society as a whole and this is a major problem facing those of us who would save Western civilization from decay and collapse.

Second, the idea that cultural Marxism is a reason to align oneself with Marxism is interesting in that he clearly believes that the Marxist critique of capitalism, post-colonialism, second wave feminism and the environmental movement are all movements which logically entail Marxism. I think so too and, partly for that reason, reject all four as wrong-headed. Although Eagleton has some harsh things to say about some forms of post-colonialism, clearly thinks that the Marxist version of post-colonialism is not only possible but the best kind. He largely embraces the other three movements in chapter 10.

Third, the final sentence is utterly amazing to me. Marxism is a failed economic philosophy rooted in Romanticism and finally Gnostic in its flight from material reality despite its rhetoric that tries to disguise its anti-material prejudice. Marx fancied himself a materialist and despite Eagleton's manful attempts to turn materialism into a spirituality it can never be more than a pantheism. And pantheism leads to an idolatrous worship of nature and a loss of humanism because man is reduced to a epiphenomenon of nature: a clever ape with no soul. This is the source of late modern nihilism and despair and to think of Marxism as an alternative to this "hemorrhage of meaning and value from human existence" is utterly fanciful.

One gets the impression that Eagleton is taking great pains to distinguish himself from what he would consider "vulgar Marxism" and that he wants to rescue Marx himself from the implications of his own thought. Marx was a failed prophet who tried to fulfill the hopes for progress generated by the Enlightenment in conscious awareness of the limitations of reason to propel human beings forward into Utopia. For Eagleton, like all Marxists, good intentions trump everything else; this is the Gnostic element of his thought. How Marxism works in practice is not as important as the terrific ideals it holds up before our wondering eyes. To be overly worried about its actual effects on actual societies where it has actually been tried is to be guilty of vulgarity. It is to reduce this glorious ideal of leisure, comradeship and individual fulfillment to practical economics and politics. Marxism is a religion for Eagleton and its heaven is in the realm of ideas.

A Brief Review of Michael Horton's "The Gospel Commission"

The Gospel Commission: Recovering God's Strategy for Making Disciples - Michael Horton (Baker, 20110.

Michael Horton has written an outstanding book on the mission of the church that moves us beyond vague and superficial slogans like "missional" and "emergent" to a consideration of Scriptural exegesis, systematic theological thinking and practical application to pressing issues facing the church today.

The book is divided into three parts: "I. The Great Announcement," "II. The Mission Statement," and "III. The Strategic Plan." Don't let the cute titles mislead: the first part is about the nature of the Gospel and the whole book is an exposition of the the Great Commission. Horton rightly presents the Gospel message the church is commissioned to take to the world as an announcement of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus Christ and that the ascended Lord rules from the right hand of the Father. "The Father's decision is irrevocable. Christ's mission is accomplished already, and the spirit will be just as successful in his labors. Therefore the Great Commission cannot fail." (31)

In chapter 2 Horton gives a mini-biblical theology of mission. He focuses on the question of what is the kingdom of God and he begins with the Exodus. He rejects two "Gentile" misunderstandings of the kingdom. The first extreme is the idea of the kingdom as a "purely spiritual reality, equivalent to the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul." (41) Against this Horton points to the Biblical idea of the renewal of all creation as God's ultimate purpose in redemption. The second extreme is the idea of the kingdom as "merely the moral development of the human race toward a world of love, peace and justice." (42) Against this Horton points to the Biblical teaching that it will be God's kingdom descending from heaven, not evolving on earth, that brings about the perfect society.

Horton emphasizes the two comings of Christ; in his first coming Jesus came as suffering servant, but in his second coming he will come as Judge and Lord. The purpose of the church between the two comings is to proclaim the Gospel and gather converts into the salvation that comes through the proclamation of Jesus Christ. The Great Commission is different from the Cultural Mandate, which is rooted in the covenant of creation. The Great Commission is the proclamation of the kingdom, which is the same as the proclamation of the Gospel.

Horton notes that some Evangelicals today are reverting to the tired old liberal Protestant attempt to drive a wedge between Jesus and Paul by claiming that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom (as a human project of social justice) but Paul got the church off track by proclaiming a new religion centered on the person of Jesus. Horton has little difficulty refuting such nonsense by simply reading the Bible comprehensively and carefully. He conclusion is that "The Gospel is the Kingdom and the Kingdom is the Gospel." (79)

I have spent a lot of time on chapter 2 because it is foundational to the book. Part II deals with the actual mission of the church. In chapter 3 he addresses the troubling rise of inclusivism among Evangelicals and the consequent decline of belief in the necessity of preaching the actual Gospel to people so they can be saved. He deals with the arguments for inclusivism made by Brian McLaren and shows that far from being postmodern, they are actually deeply rooted in the Enlightenment itself and are the fruit of late modern theological liberalism. (108f) In chapter 4 he addresses the issue of contextualization and in chapter 5 he examines the goal of disciple-making - the kind of disciple we seek to make. Two false models are dismissed: the self-actualization model and the social justice activist model. These are both forms of accommodation to the culture. The real goal is a matter of being fully incorporated into God's story in Jesus Christ.

In Part III Horton turns to the question of how to fulfill the Great Commission. Not surprisingly, he turns in chapter 6 to an examination of Christ's disciple-making methods as the key. (165f) He discusses preaching, teaching and the sacraments as means of grace and spiritual gifts, personal prayer and evangelism as means of gratitude. In chapter 7, he is very helpful in stressing the centrality of the local church in disciple-making and criticizes para-church organizations for tending to supplant the local church. However, he fails to note that the reason this happens is, in many cases, the failure of local churches to take disciple-making mission seriously. He is fair and accurate in his denunciations of Evangelical enthusiasm, but fails to give adequate consideration to the dead orthodoxy of denominations that occasioned it historically.

Chapter 8 deals with the relationship of evangelism and social justice and is clear-headed and helpful. He is not buying the widespread Evangelical (and Liberal) teaching that the Gospel includes social justice ministry and that therefore feeding the hungry is as much declaring the Gospel as proclaiming forgiveness of sins through Christ's atoning work. He also refuses to accept the idea that the Gospel can be proclaimed without words. I so appreciate all this clarity that I am willing to overlook the sloppy tendency to equate conservative Evangelical support for the Republican Party with liberal Protestant support for the Democratic Party as if both sides in the culture war were equally wrong. One gets the impression at times that Horton is able somehow to hover above the fray and criticize everyone else while he himself suspends judgment. It is one thing to say that the church per se should stay out of partisan politics (a view with which I agree), but it is quite another to say that the individual Christian is free to take either side in the culture wars as a citizen (a view which I regard as incompatible with serious disciplship). Perhaps Horton is not meaning to go as far as I am portraying him as going here; perhaps he is only seeking to emphasize the unique role of the church in proclaiming the Gospel and warning against turning the institutional church into an arm of any political party. On that point we agree.

Chapter 9, "Mission Creep," discusses the perennial temptation of the church to substitute human priorities, ideas and projects for the Great Commission in the mission of the church. Here we see the exegetical fruit of chapter 2 applied with great insight and profit to contemporary ideas of mission on both the left and the right. Brian McLaren's ideas are engaged extensively and the take away point is Horton's demonstration of just how conventional the emergent church approach actually is. There is so little new or original there. Chapter 10, "Until He Comes," deals with the hope that sustains the Christian mission in the world: the hope of Christ's return and Christ's continuing presence by His Spirit all through this age.

In summary, this is a fine book which could be read with profit by anyone interested in working through biblical and theological issues surrounding evangelism, missions and the Great Commission. It is popular rather than scholarly in level and it is written in an engaging style. Adult Sunday School classes and Bible study groups could study it with profit and it belongs in every church library. We are in Michael Horton's debt for producing a work of such biblical and faithful wisdom.

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications Inc. Available at your favorite bookseller or from Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group."