Re: Human Rights- A Challenge for the Forum
Posted: April 28th, 2018, 10:35 am
Burke credits Christianity for its role in the refinement of civil manners. I think it did an excellent job of making men obedient and docile. The spiritual and physical methodologies of the the Inquisitions against Jews, Protestants, and Deists, the physical torture in this world and the threat of eternal torture in the next, is a very effective means of imposing order. The Protestant Reformation helped overcome the hierarchical power of the Catholic Church and was a step toward the freedom of the individual, but rather than freeing man it led to novel forms of inescapable spiritual tyranny.
Chivalry created a warrior class that when combined with Christianity produced Christian soldiers willing to do battle against all heretical enemies, including Christians of other sects. The holy war between Catholics and Protestants was not resolved by “Christian love” of “the religion of peace” or “gentle-mannered men”. It was only with the advent of modern philosophy and science, the introduction of the notion of tolerance through the writings of Francis Bacon, the displacement of the Earth as the center of the ordered universe by Copernicus and Galileo, the audacity of Descartes to put the authority of the thinking self above the authority of the Church, and the the natural rights philosophy of Hobbes and Locke that broke the stranglehold of Christianity. Christianity created servants, the Enlightenment freed human beings from this form of slavery which extended to every aspect of their lives, public and private.
Burke’s “natural aristocracy” was nothing more than a defense to conserve the status quo produced and maintained by power politics. Those in power are not superior either by nature or habituation. The best do not naturally rise to the top as long as they are suppressed by those in power. The closest we have gotten to a natural aristocracy in Burke’s time and our own was, in my opinion, with the American founders. They, however, were distrustful of the ideology of rule by a natural aristocracy. They devised a system of checks and balances designed to limits the powers of any group or individual. There are checks and balances not only between governing and legislative bodies but on governing and legislative bodies via the will of the people. History, contrary to Burke’s high flung rhetoric, makes it clear that governance by wise and incorruptible rulers is an exceedingly rare and short-lived occurrence. The people must have a voice if their interests are to be protected.
Dachshund:
Chivalry created a warrior class that when combined with Christianity produced Christian soldiers willing to do battle against all heretical enemies, including Christians of other sects. The holy war between Catholics and Protestants was not resolved by “Christian love” of “the religion of peace” or “gentle-mannered men”. It was only with the advent of modern philosophy and science, the introduction of the notion of tolerance through the writings of Francis Bacon, the displacement of the Earth as the center of the ordered universe by Copernicus and Galileo, the audacity of Descartes to put the authority of the thinking self above the authority of the Church, and the the natural rights philosophy of Hobbes and Locke that broke the stranglehold of Christianity. Christianity created servants, the Enlightenment freed human beings from this form of slavery which extended to every aspect of their lives, public and private.
Burke’s “natural aristocracy” was nothing more than a defense to conserve the status quo produced and maintained by power politics. Those in power are not superior either by nature or habituation. The best do not naturally rise to the top as long as they are suppressed by those in power. The closest we have gotten to a natural aristocracy in Burke’s time and our own was, in my opinion, with the American founders. They, however, were distrustful of the ideology of rule by a natural aristocracy. They devised a system of checks and balances designed to limits the powers of any group or individual. There are checks and balances not only between governing and legislative bodies but on governing and legislative bodies via the will of the people. History, contrary to Burke’s high flung rhetoric, makes it clear that governance by wise and incorruptible rulers is an exceedingly rare and short-lived occurrence. The people must have a voice if their interests are to be protected.
Dachshund:
Substitute Sharia law for “reverential Christian traditions” and perhaps you will hear just how pernicious this idea is. The only difference is that Christianity itself has been been made moderate, civilized, and well behaved by philosophy and science. But its cruelty, hatred, fanaticism, and desire to wage holy wars have not been eliminated. We may agree that we have entered a phase of decline, but those who I would identify as leading culprits you have made clear you would look to as those who in whom we must put our trust if we are to be saved. It is identity politics that fails to identify itself as such. Evangelicalism has been willing to turn its back on what until quite recently it identified as some of its core beliefs in its unflinching support of Trump and autocratic rule. The politically powerful Christian Right is impatient to usher in the apocalypse and so supports Israel with Jerusalem as its capital so that prophesy can be fulfilled.In short, unless the West today, comes to understand the absurd folly that the the human rights movement entails and appreciate the urgent need that now exists for it to firmly re-embrace its reverential Christian traditions, I predict that it will simply sink further into the phase of decline that it has already entered; and that it has indeed entered a phase of decline is an undisputed fact.