There is no such thing as progress in human nature. The human race begins again with each new generation, indeed, with each new life. There are cultures and political structures and times that are better or worse, of course. We take for granted that the political society of democratic capitalism is among the best ever created by man; such freedom, wealth, ease and technology are unprecedented in human history.

The question at hand is whether it is inevitable, and therefore right, that social democracy devolve into the guardian and enforcer of universal subjectivism, wherein the state only sees fit to intervene in the subjectivism of its members when they look to a moral authority higher than the state itself. This is the so-called “dictatorship of relativism.” (see Novak in the NYT)

This dictatorship of relativism is the point where Marxist atheistism and Western wealth and libertinism dovetail perfectly to form the greatest long-term challenge to the survival of democracy. We started writing on this matter at the very beginning of this year and have dones so subsequently as well. Admittedly, we have been a few decades late to the game. Now we witness the election of Benedict XVI. Something must be up if even we have caught on.

Maybe there are pendulums that do swing back as well as forth. After all, in the Renaissance too they discovered that human nature is not infinitely malleable, that the Protean Man of Pico della Mirandola was merely a myth. Maybe that’s what is going on in our times too. We think that is what is happening, by the way.

We recommend a couple of pieces this morning. For fun, there’s Jonah Goldberg in NRO. Excerpt:

As the Vatican’s chief defender of theological doctrine, it’s no surprise he’s already being condemned as a “traditionalist” and a “hardliner.” Of course, if some of the modernizers had their way, a new pontiff would be announced with the declaration, “We got pope!” Or maybe “The pizzy is in the hizzy!” Then Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake would bump and grind a bit before His Holiness rolled out in a newly pimped-out Pope-mobile.

For a personal and amusing recollection and for some serious thought, we recommend George Neumayr in the American Spectator:

In every age but particularly in modern times a worldly elite, full of self-love and non serviam subjectivism, clangs the gates of hell against the Church, demanding that the Church serve the false philosophies and desires of sinful men instead of the changeless will of Jesus Christ. But the gates of hell have not prevailed. Ratzinger made enemies, inside and outside the Church, because as doctrinal head of it he was determined to vindicate the Church’s authoritative account of reality which recognizes God’s intellect and will, not man’s, as the source of all truth. He saw that submission to the world’s philosophy would mean taking Catholicism out of Catholicism, reducing it to Christianity without Christ that serves neither God nor man as it spirals into paralyzing doubt.

History will move out along the line Pope Benedict XVI has already marked: Will God be the measure of morality and culture, or will the desires of men be? The culture wars to come turn on this question. We have already seen the consequences of the “dictatorship of relativism”: not civilization but barbarism as humans discover that once they reject the authority of God — ignoring his intentions for the human nature he designed and the established order he created — they soon find themselves living under the pitiless and arbitrary authority of men who see no restraining truths above them.

Pope Benedict XVI, as did his namesakes, faces a dark age of Western paganism that now goes by the name of modern liberalism, and he will use a lucid orthodoxy to drive out its many shadows.

We have written of the incomparable value and importance of the humanist impulse, particularly in the context of what we see as a possible Reformation in Islam. But, if there is a God, the logical conclusion of humanism cannot be atheism or secularism. It’s really as simple as that.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 at 7:16 am and is filed under General, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.