Well, I think this is an Ethics Alarms record, and not a good one: this Comment of the Day, by prolific commenter Pennagain, is more than a month old. I have no defense, only a possible explanation: the subject of the comment is an unpleasant one, and was more than a little tangential to the main post. It was prompted by a commenter’s reference to comic Eddie Murphy’s anti-gay rants that would have pretty surely ended his career had he been rising in the social media mob-dominated environment of today rather than the still largely-closeted 80’s. That would have been a shame, because Murphy is–was?–a great talent when he wasn’t being a complete jerk, which, unfortunately, was far too often.
What reminded me that I had whiffed after more than a month? An article about Murphy’s “Delirious” was published today in “The Advocate.” So this is timely despite my ineptitude.
Moral luck.
I apologize to Pennagain. This wasn’t just a well-written ethics comment, but an important, educational and disturbing one. Maybe it can spark some discussion anew.
Here, very late, is Pennagain’s Comment of the Day, on the post,Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/25/2018: Thuggery, Double Standards And Hypocrisy…Actually, I Could Use This Title EVERY Morning:
For the rest of you, respectfully, please understand that Eddie Murphy IS indeed unwelcome by queers everywhere. His so-called “humor,” brought to San Francisco in the mid-80s at the height of the AIDS crisis, was a no comedy show at all. It was a diatribe against gay white men in particular … but also a scarcely disguised order-from-On-High for black women (at that time finding partners in the big gay dance clubs) to get back in line behind black men … all based on perverted facts and misrepresentations – such as ‘if you go out dancing with a (gay) man, you will die a horrible death; you can never have children if you touch one of those (^!>?!)’ and assuring all black men in the audience that no black man in history had ever been, or ever could be queerhomofag, etc. The rant was preached to black audiences as gospel (Murphy was then at the height of his popularity; his every word came straight from the pulpit) and — god help them all, they believed him. His lies spread to the Hispanic/Latino community as well.
The results were apparent shortly after Murphy began his stint in the city. They are still tragically with us. The public health outreach had started to be effective across the board (including black communities) just before Murphy’s regrettable visit. Immediately afterward, AIDS/HIV education shut down wherever black people congregated: churches, groups, school speakers, distribution guidelines, and most disastrously, with many black physicians. Eddie Murphy said black men could not be gay, therefore could not get AIDS, therefore could not infect their partners (male or female … By extension meaning black children were safe from the “gay plague.” This is what happened:
Historically:
By the mid-80s “African-Americans surpassed Whites in the number of new HIV infections —a trend that continues to this day. Blacks, who account for about 14 percent of the total U.S. population, represent nearly one-half of the estimated 50,000 new HIV cases that occur every year, and about 500,000 of the almost 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS overall.Latest:
New HIV Diagnoses in the United States for the Most-Affected Subpopulations, 2016
This chart shows new HIV diagnoses in the United States in 2016 for the most-affected subpopulations. Black male to male sexual contact = 10,223; Hispanic/Latino male to male sexual contact = 7,425; white male to male sexual contact = 7,390; black heterosexual women = 4,189; black heterosexual men = 1,926; white heterosexual women = 1,032; Hispanic/Latina heterosexual women = 1,025.I worked on the world’s primary AIDS care unit (Ward 5A, San Francisco General Hospital) for ten years. All of us in health care not only saw it in the increase of new patients, but heard about it from their own mouths – how they came to believe they were invulnerable, why they couldn’t speak up about being gay, why they feared exposure to family and friends more than they feared dying … many were already near death when they came to us as Patient John (or Jane!) Doe, refusing to identify themselves.
No, Murphy is not responsible for anyone dying. People decide to believe and to act on those beliefs. But he was the most direct influence on the black communities throughout the Bay Area at the time – and his filthy lies have continued to contaminate both black and Hispanic. He IS unforgivable as far as I am concerned, not because he preached what he did, but because he knew better, because he could have — if any one person could have, at that time — saved so many hundreds, thousands even, from losing their precious lives. All those black lives that mattered.
Ethics Alarms 
Excellent commentary. I am glad Jack reposted this as a cotd. I must have missed it originally.
Thank you. This was both powerful and enlightening.
Jack wrote: “This wasn’t just a well-written ethics comment, but an important, educational and disturbing one. Maybe it can spark some discussion anew.”
What is meant by ‘discussion’ is simply non-critical acceptance of homosexuality and sexual deviation generally, and the shutting down of any viewpoint that undertakes more in-depth critical positions.
Fact: there is no critical position allowed. To oppose is to be more of a deviant than the deviants!
While Eddie Murphy is really really disgusting and seems extremely non-funny, I suppose the issue here is that people have an immediate and visceral reaction to the idea of homosexual sex and the really bizarre social behaviors that develop in that community and life-style. The whole culture is bizarre.
I was in a small town called Tuluá (Colombia) not long ago and was surprised that they had a gay-pride event. All these freak-like men and women dressed up in feathered costumes, with country and rural people (Tuluá is more a pueblo than a city) looking on and unable to make sense of it. These are phenomena that spread from the urban centers.
I spoke with a policeman who said though he was hired to be there to ‘guard the peace’ he, himself, would not ever bring his own children to such an event. And of course this tells a great deal. This is all very new and naughty in a semi-rural and non-urban place like Tuluá, but day by day I see here the increasing influence of The Americanopolis. What you do *up there* spreads *down here*, and you think you are being somehow virtuous and cutting edge supporting this deviancy. It is liberal revolutionary activity and one of the principle areas is through sexuality.
Such that to take any level of stand against it, to speak critically about it, is forbidden today.
But when people are uncomfortable they often ‘joke’ quite inappropriately, just as I watched people *joking* about these feathered freakies prancing in their undergarments as I watched the event. The cultural commissars tell them on the TV and in the media that they must accept and then encourage, essentially, the teaching and display of these perversions, because this is made to seem normal and even sort of charming. Democratic! But the social cost is large indeed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA4vGPBA9cU&t=226s]
Alizia
I think you are casting too wide of a net here. I too find displays of open displays of eroticism wholly inappropriate be they homosexual or heterosexual. However, what one does in private is not my concern.
You describe homosexuality as deviant but could we not say heterosexual behavior involving master slave relationships, multiple partners, or myriad other things people do in the sanctity of their bedrooms is equally deviant?
I do believe gay pride parades that feature people displaying odd sexual attire does not further their cause to be treated as human beings. I would say the same thing if I witnessed a parade of heterosexuals marching and displaying their unique fetishes. I would prefer gay pride parades demonstrate how we are the same in many ways.
Homosexuality is not a byproduct of American culture; the Americanopolis you describe. It is ubiquitous globally. What you are seeing is merely that which had been repressed for so long by the culture and the laws of the area.
As long as humans obtain physical and emotional gratification from sexual activities and not simply copulate for reproductive purposes, people will find that which gives them the greatest satisfaction therefore what you find deviant is normal to them and what you do they may find deviant. Skydivers seek thrills by jumping out of planes and I find that crazy but I am not going to criticize them because I scuba dive with sharks. To each his/her own.
Chris Marschner writes: However, what one does in private is not my concern.
But this is where a good portion of the problem is found. In the video I (discreetly) included above it shows an activist teaching children in a public setting.
To make a long story shorter this is what is going on in our culture(s) and this is what is strongly objected to.
I think that in the first minute of that video the face of one little boy tells everything. I am not sure how to put it. To me it is shocking. You see his mind and his being open to what is *seen* and what is being presented to him, and you also seeing him absorbing it as a taught value. This is how culture is made and how values are inculcated. And this is how homosexual activism proceeds. It is insidious.
More of what I think and why I express it is included in a post to Sue.
Activists for any sexual conduct, including the good ol’ fashioned way, shouldn’t be teaching children in a public setting. The kind of sex doesn’t matter. You’re bootstrapping. If consenting homosexual relations are ethical and socially acceptable to the unbiased, and they are, the matter of what gay individuals do in addition to that conduct does not change the assessment of the conduct, unless the conduct in some way is a catalyst or a cause in itself. In the case you cite, the problem is that the people are jerks, not that they are gay. And being gay doesn’t make someone a jerk. The jerk to non-jerk ratio appears to be unrelated to gender preference, though hard figures are lacking.
Jack writes: Activists for any sexual conduct, including the good ol’ fashioned way, shouldn’t be teaching children in a public setting. The kind of sex doesn’t matter. You’re bootstrapping. If consenting homosexual relations are ethical and socially acceptable to the unbiased, and they are, the matter of what gay individuals do in addition to that conduct does not change the assessment of the conduct, unless the conduct in some way is a catalyst or a cause in itself. In the case you cite, the problem is that the people are jerks, not that they are gay. And being gay doesn’t make someone a jerk. The jerk to non-jerk ration appears to be unrelated to gender preference, though hard figures are lacking.
We would, as in the other debate on this issue months ago, encounter the same group of arguments and counter-arguments. But what is important here, now, is that you understand that I completely understand your argument and it is entirely sound in a legalistic context.
So, with that said, what I suggest is that in our society (societies) now and today we are dealing with a far more problematic issue: the issue of values as distinct from legalistic constructs. The base of the so-called ‘culture wars’ takes place within value-questions and value-designations.
You have your various ways to avoid those questions nearly completely. But by doing so you do not, in my view, really see well and profoundly the cultural struggles that are going on.
Therefor, in taking issue with your assertions, I would have to begin by confronting your statement about the teaching of children in a public setting. I think that children definitely should be taught, and they should receive moral, ethical and cultural values that are sound. But how to arrive at that — at what is ‘sound’? To bring that up as a question is to march directly into the arena of the Culture Wars. You stand on one side (anti-religious, anti-philosophical, and legalistic) whereas *we* stand on another side defining values. Are arguments are not specifically ‘legalistic’ which, in my view, you confound with the ethical. Our arguments take into consideration many other issues and questions. (But I do recognize, and accept, that you dismiss those concerns for a host of different reasons. You simply wipe them off the board. They have no weight or importance for you. And I think, personally, that for this reason you are very short-sighted).
The ‘kind of sex’ that is taught in public and in any setting does indeed matter. It matters very much. And the issue of sexuality is of high importance. Except not for you. Or perhaps you only believe that no one has any *right* to make any definitive statement about it? But it is here that you will, in my view, reveal not only short-sightedness but also lack of proper grounding philosophically. I fully admit that these are problematic arenas. Yet they exist and they are really the core of the debate about values. These issues are at the center of the Cultural Wars and the issues of the culture wars are revealing themselves, more and more, in the present social and cultural conflicts.
If consenting homosexual relations are ethical and socially acceptable to the unbiased, and they are, the matter of what gay individuals do in addition to that conduct does not change the assessment of the conduct, unless the conduct in some way is a catalyst or a cause in itself.
I propose that in contradistinction to your assertion that there is really no ‘unbiased’ position. Your argument hinges on that. I say that a ‘properly prepared individual’ when he or she confronts the issue of sexual aberration, must have a foundation to which he or she refers. That is, a structure of belief. You and people who think like you do not structure an ‘unbiased’ viewpoint, that is a fallacy. Rather they incorporate an entire set of biases into their assertions and declarations, just as you routinely do. But I do not take issue with your constructs as such. Within the terms that you define I see your position as having integrity. It is that I notice a great deal that you exclude (and refuse to consider, for various reasons).
Homosexuality and other forms of sexual deviancy are part of a cultural phenomenon that is linked to *liberal extremism*. But I recognize that you do not accept the link that I recognize between these unfettered expressions and what I have unflatteringly referred to as ‘hyper-liberalism’. But the issue can be studied. And talked about.
“The jerk to non-jerk ration appears to be unrelated to gender preference, though hard figures are lacking.
THERE is wisdom for the ages! For ‘gender preference,’ you could substitute football player, or public CPA, or Judge, or stay at home mom. Human nature.
Subjective data would indicate this is not the case for politicians, progressives, or alt right adherents (at least the vocal ones); jerk seems to help in the political realm.
Aliza
I cannot connect to the link provided. With that said, I have serious reservations about third parties inculcating beliefs and ideologies into children. Most children and young adults lack the necessary information to challenge that which activists communicate to them. If parents want to communicate such values that is their business.
Now, let me elaborate a bit. I would and do have a problem with people trying to indoctrinate the very young irrespective of the issue. That would include:
Global warming
Human sexuality
Socialism v capitalism
Systemic racism
Gun control
Trump, et al
HRC, et al
And many other topics
Now, I said indoctrination not education. I have no problem having age appropriate lessons on the above provided it was balanced and objective. As for human sexuality one does not need to describe or go into graphic detail regarding individual fetishes to educate a child that it is not unusual or wrong for some to develop strong emotional bonds with same sex persons. What can be objectively taught is that without strong emotional ties sexual relationships can create significant long term negative consequences that can overwhelm any short term feelings. There is clinical and cultural data to support that statement.
(I put the link within those square parentheses for reasons of discretion. Copy the link and not the parentheses and then paste it.)
If you have reservations about ‘third parties’ having an influence on the young (and on anyone) you will, according to my view, understand what I mean when I use the term ‘sophistry’ in contradistinction to ‘dialectical’. Advertising, certain uses of rhetorical forms, certain forms of persuasion and also open seduction: these are aspects of sophistry. To confront that, a dialectical mind is required. It is philosophical in essence.
And it is this sort of mind that is being, through various means and processes, undermined in our culture. Zoltar the Magnificent often has referred to the ‘dumbing down’ of America. I link this with processes of decadence that operate on all levels. It is a question, quite directly, of education and inculcation of value.
You see that, and I notice that you do, but I also notice that you don’t seem to take it as far as you *should*. I take it farther. And so does the movement that I am a part of.
Most children and young adults lack the necessary information to challenge that which activists communicate to them. If parents want to communicate such values that is their business.
I apologize for again taking this beyond the immediate issue and into larger domains of concern. Allow me to say that we live in a world in which you-as-individual have lost the right to oppose what *activists* (persuaders, advertisers, marketers, propagandists) have selected as material to impose into the mental structure of children (and culture).
That is where the issue is! And it is a far larger issue than you seem to let on. I am feeling like Cassandra all over again … 😉
I am using the dialectical method; thesis, antithesis then synthesis.
If we begin from a theological perspective the issue of promiscuse homosexuality and heterosexuality is generally proscribed in non pagan religions. The antithesis is all sexual behavior is acceptable. I find that the positive values of duality of parentage overcome the issues of the genders of the two parents.
I believe the sexual liberation theology has been a detriment to family structures in general insofar as sexual behavior as it has created an undesired effect of creating a multigenerational underclass that remains mired in poverty because immediate sexual gratification overcomes long term gains lost when one incapable of caring for oneself is required to also care for the expected outcomes of unprotected sexual activity.
I understand what you are saying. And thanks for your comments. I have expressed my concerns above and in other posts.
Chris Marschner wrote: You describe homosexuality as deviant but could we not say heterosexual behavior involving master slave relationships, multiple partners, or myriad other things people do in the sanctity of their bedrooms is equally deviant?
I make efforts to explain myself and why I tend to stay on a topic until I feel I have really explored it. I know that my writing on this topic offends Pennagain and others here and I just have to accept that. My purpose is not, not ever, to offend anyone or to hurt their feelings, but is to get to the bottom of what is going on in our present. This is very difficult.
The only way I have to answer your question is to turn it into other questions. Those questions have to do with the use of sexuality, with the expression of it, and these are existential and also spiritual and religious questions. Or philosophical questions if you prefer. I speak from the perspective of Christianity and a Pauline conception of sexuality. I suppose there is a corresponding ‘Platonic’ position that is equally coherent, and in any case neo-Platonism has influenced Christianity tremendously. So, with that said, I definitely recognize ‘deviance’ as a category. The purpose of sexuality, within the natural order, is that of reproduction. And if there is a ‘sanctity’ (the world you used) I also suggest that such exists within a proper relationship to sexual expression.
So the answer to your question is of course yes. And that is really the crux of the issue. Because when one looks back in time one notices that at a certain point in our (Occidental) history certain intellectuals and activists chose the road of ‘liberating’ sexuality. In more recent history you could start with Nietzsche and his ‘transvaluation of values’. But then there are figures such as DH Lawrence who carried the mission forward. If in our present we have out-of-control sexual issues (the porn phenomenon is a world-level conflagration and is a disease and a pathology), there has to be a causal factor. I suggest that when one investigates the causal factor one discovers, at the base, a rebellion against authority which is, in the final analysis, a rebellion against the authority of the Self. And abuse of sexuality is the primary tool of self-seduction and rebellion. You will notice that I am making value-judgments at every point! I am making statements based on specific decisions, declarations in fact. This I know, and this I accept.
Homosexuality is not a byproduct of American culture; the Americanopolis you describe. It is ubiquitous globally. What you are seeing is merely that which had been repressed for so long by the culture and the laws of the area.
The marketing of homosexuality is very much an American *contribution*, as it were, to the world-level conflagration that revolves around desire, seduction and the inculcation of such within the social body. The American film, its industry and its progression from a visual narration to one involving a profoundly sexualized undressing of Man (the anthropological man and woman I mean), and the end result in pornographic display and its vast destructiveness, is deeply tied up with the same motives that propelled American industries. There is a causal link which is blatant!
The marketing of sexuality, the marketing of the female body, the seduction of the mind and the spirit by playing into deeply psychological motivations, and the use of these as *tools* to manipulate people as consumers but also as political citizens — these are things that need to be looked into and yet who is capable of doing it? Who does it? They are huge issues, and they have to do with fundamental human problems, and in essence the managerial elite, the business-class elite, cannot allow a close examination because their structures depend on these factors.
I am interested in defining — redefining in fact — what ‘conservatism’ means. I do not regard the American conservative as much of a conservative at all. They seem to me to be the right-leaning faction of American Progressivism. In order to recover conservatism a very detailed intellectual undertaking is necessary, and one that has the courage and fortitude to confront deeply rooted social conventions. We either do this, or we don’t. We either confront The Present and its trajectory, or we don’t. We either exercise our freedom, or we don’t. But we don’t get anywhere if we merely stay stuck in the current of culture and history. I am speaking of counter-current.
America has to be confronted! (The Occident needs to be confronted). Don’t you see? What *it* has become, and what has inserted itself and substantially undermined *it* — this is a causal question and involves a) research and b) decisiveness and incisiveness — has to be looked at. But it has to be *seen* first. And one has to have courage to look! It really is a spiritual question. It begins at the inner level. (Well, it either does or it doesn’t!)
Years ago, I encountered a blog dedicated to the discussion of ethics. But ethics in the context of current events and also within Americanism. I took it as a challenge. I feel I have to defend myself at every turn for what is simply seriousness and dedication to the essence(s) of the problem(s).
So be it …
_________________________
Another perspective, and another avenue to *opening up the conversation to thoughtful examination*:
https://www.conservapedia.com/Ex-homosexuals#Testimony_of_Charlene_Cothran
I always appreciate Pennagain & while I’m not directly disagreeing with the main point here – that Murphy was unhelpful or even responsible for indoctrination of the separation of AIDS from the black community, I’d like to add another aspect. And I admit being a fan of Murphy’s older stuff, being (part) black, and being an HIV/AIDS educator and flaming bisexual adds to my opinion.
Gay activists worked hard in the mid-eighties to unlink HIV to particularly white gay males. By this time the Kinsey institute (whose research included male pedophiles “masturbating” infants) produced research by Alan Bell that depicted homosexuality as “deep-seated” & therefore inherent. This politicization of homosexuality was inconvenienced by the AIDS crisis. It was at this point gay activists sought to blame anyone but gay men for the crisis – including Haitians, Africans, and African Americans. Understandably black folks didn’t appreciate being thrown under the bus on the issue and many in black communities began to feel hostile to gays who were increasingly gaining more political power than blacks at the time.
It never bodes well when minorities fight over scraps.
Progressive activists then sought to eliminate phrases like “high risk group” because it was political to do so. Rotello noted “If AIDS is not a gay disease why should gay men examine the ecological reasons their community was so devastated.” In 1987 Masters & Johnson proclaimed in the book Crisis: Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of Aids that the virus was spreading among other populations, however by then it was clear it was still (at the time) mostly gay white males who contracted the illness. This denial of the primary source of cases watered down severely needed research for gays including redistributing funding to a “heterosexual AIDS crisis” that didn’t exist.
Eddie Murphy’s influence in black communities regarding HIV and gays I believe in part was also a means of protection for a community not only still dealing with racism, but being essentially blamed by white academics, gay activists, and politically biased researchers – for what was at the time an essentially gay behavioral issue. Obviously much has changed and indeed the black community’s refusal to admit all the “down-low” sexual activity of especially black men has come to do great damage to their own. But I will not accept that Murphy’s humor wasn’t on the pulse of what many in the black community felt, and to dismiss this is to only see part of the truth.
Very enlightening Mrs. Q. As always..
Being just a casual observer and being neither black nor gay, I can’t help thinking Eddie Murphy simply reflected the attitude of the black community (and the black church, but maybe I repeat myself) with his virulent anti-homosexual ranting. I find the fragile but omnipresent macho-ness of black male culture (and Hispanic culture as well) an insuperable barrier to those cultures dealing rationally with homosexuality, which is of course, perfectly well represented in their populations. You never know, maybe Eddie’s gay? He’s an actor. He may be a closeted gay and putting up a smoke screen, tons of children and all. The best defense is a good offense.
I’m sorry that you are being forbidden to express your views.
I know it’s a foolish pipe dream, but I can envisage some time in the future where there might be halls set up, where those who share your views can preach them openly, without fear of arrest, as they can in other countries.
It might be going to ridiculous extremes, but I can even imagine legislators, and judges, openly and without fear of imprisonment, being able to express similar views, even on radio stations and tv channels.
This is in response to Alizia, yes? If not, I have no idea what you’re referring to.
Nice little smear, Sue. Ironically, you simply reinforce Alizia’s point: you are not allowed to dissent. She is allowed to describe reality, whether you like it or not. And reality is that views progressives dislike are being suppressed.
Are you even self aware enough to see that? YOU are the reason she feels supressed. You made fun of her point of view, in a way you would have resented had it been done to you. YOU have not only failed the Golden Rule, but Kant. On an ethics blog.
Good Job.
Sue Dunim writes: I’m sorry that you are being forbidden to express your views …
It is unlikely that you understand my opposition and reaction and, of course, I understand this and I do not blame you. It is also true — I have to say it — that I often write less to the specifics of an ethical question and more to what I understand to be the larger issues. I try to express in what I write what I understand to be *the larger issues* and, often, do not feel that people understand what I am on about. (Or they simply do not agree).
I feel often in a quandary. On one hand I don’t wish to upset anyone or say anything that offends or hurts any other person. Yet I understand the age we live in to be one that is suspended (stretched uncomfortably) between what I term sophistry and dialectic. In my view a large portion of liberal social value and attitude is deeply bound up in sophistic argument, false anthropological constructs, and myself like numerous others have begun to take issue with this *liberal construct*. This is going to be a very serious issue as the movement that I am a part of gains momentum. The liberal construct, if the truth be told, really is built on a semi-moralistic argument. It is that such beliefs and understandings are morally superior. That is the reason that when they condemn one it is always through shaming & blaming, hardly ever through dialectical argument.
To unravel the liberal construct (the mind-frame that dominates our present) requires a serious and demanding philosophical effort. And that is why I would use the term ‘sophistry’ and ‘sophistical’ to describe it as a belief system, and one that is enforced through psychological manipulation. These sophistries have penetrated very far into the mind, the academic world, and into cultural attitude.
Part of this liberal construct and new value system that has taken shape in the Postwar, and definitely in the post-Sixties, is deeply bound up in sexual issues. That is why I refer often to E Michael Jones and his work in this area. Therefor, in my view, to understand our era one must understand how this has come about and why.
In my view, which I am not ashamed to state because I desire to oppose liberal sophistries with conservative dialectics, very probing questions have to be asked about the current liberal-sexual trends. And because I am simultaneously interested in Occidental culture and Occidental revival (the restoration of Western civilization and European culture) I place this endeavor — that of asking questions about and probing the use of sexuality in destructive social processes — within important dialectical concerns.
If I am guilty of in a certain way expanding the conversation beyond the established goal post of limited ethical concern, I stand guilty. But I do wish to offer an explanation of why this is.
The court accepts your guilty plea, and sentences you to its rising.
Seriously good explanatory post there.
The liberal construct as you put it is based on objective fact and reason though. What we call the Enlightenment.
Ah ha! There you have it. You are telling it like it is and being honest. I appreciate this.
And I have the capability too of accepting and dealing with your obvious *snark*. But let us get the things out on the table. You are very right to notice that one aspect of what we are seeing in a right-leaning, reactionary, and even ultra-right and traditionalist movement that is now developing against Hyper-Liberalism is that the hyper-liberalist is in many senses the carrier-forward of ‘the Enlightenment’.
And in your lexicon of meanings, this is obvious, simply to say ‘enlightenment’ is all you need to say. Because people will, somehow, grasp what you are saying. But to have a more in-depth understanding of things, of events, or cultural and civilizational processes, of the structure of our own minds and the metaphysical grounding of hyper-liberalism — the logical outcome of the Enlightenment some say — one must make an effort to understand this huge shift in ideas, in metaphysical definition, which has affected all areas of life.
So, once again! as service to my community of peers I submit Basil Willey’s Seventeenth Century Background: https://archive.org/details/seventeenthcentuwill
If we do not understand in some detail this shift from one metaphysical system to another, and if we do not understand how this ‘enlightenment’ so-called has a darker side and leads, just as we now witness, to the destruction of the human being and the destruction of the possibility of valuation, then we are not really intellectual actors in our world but rather passive and determined victims of processes we do not understand.
As to the other side — what you obliquely refer to and which is logically posited by referring to this absolute ‘Enlightenment’ — is quite definitely and beyond any doubt at all the intellectual platform in ideation that recognizes Divinity, a natural order, a cosmic order if you will, and the possibility of universal valuation based in articulation of Metaphysics.
Remember, our entire world (the Occident and our civilization) has arisen out of this world of ideation, metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, and its various religious forms. So, let us consciously establish that a significant element in hyper-liberalism and its radicalism is to propound and to inculcate an atheistic world-view and an atheistic society. However, to come to be able to *see* how this is being carried out — its insidiousness — requires careful examination. And many will not take the time.
And let me further suggest, as I have suggested, that the so-called ‘sexual liberation movement’ is that — a movement to get out from under ethical and moral restraints — but is also the vanguard of a movement directed to the destruction of a) the religious viewpoint, b) the solidity of a religiously-oriented culture carried out through c) the restructuring of educational systems in our cultures to render such belief as a form of social sickness.
The implications are vast indeed.
One of the more amazing (but interesting) things, for me, is to observe how so-called ‘conservatives’ do not have enough base in intellectual history, nor very much background or interest in philosophical definition, to demonstrate a grasp on significant aspects of *what is going on in our present*. It’s like they want to be *nice* and being *nice* renders them incapable to be incisive. But what is required, in our bizarre present, is incisiveness, and not just to bend — or break — as the assault against Higher Metaphysics is carried on. It is now becoming institutionalized and the inculcation of radical values is now being forwarded and advanced through sophisticated corporate strategy. This is what I refer to as the Americanopolis: an insidious marriage between governing and managerial interests who have no value-system, no philosophy, no real ideology except that of sophistry. And therefor when they define ‘the citizen’ they define not an active intellectual participant, but rather a passive recipient of the pseudo-ideology of business. The *philosophy of globalization* needs to be better understood as arising out of the Managerial Revolution.
Therefor, we will now insert intellectual managers into the universities to train the children in the *proper* way to view all things. But note that I use the larger term of ‘metaphysics’ because, ultimately, it is counter-metaphysical assertions that stand behind the actions and activities of hyper-liberal activists! I will defend this idea anywhere and against anyone and anytime!
This is not to say — not by any means! — that the ‘religious viewpoint’ or any specific (and for example Christian) religious tenet must be accepted without thought. This is in fact an error that arose in scholasticism similar to that of hyper-liberal radical suppression of contrary views. The religious cultures are also hot-houses of mistaken views, or perhaps partial views (that is how I see it). And yet there, in those communities, you will find people who are genuinely attempting to defend crucial values against an overwhelming onslaught. That onslaught, I am beginning to understand, is deeply rooted in an anti-metaphysics and is propelled forward by a *mindless* sector of society. One can employ the Platonic model of a part or parts of the body that rebel against *the head* and the mind (the intellect and intellectus) and drive society toward ….
…well, I suggest you answer that question! Where are things tending? One has to look at the dystopian models in order to project from this point now where things are tending. But this of course requires a desire to see, and the capacity to assign values.
I suggest then not only looking back in (intellectual) time to understand what ‘Enlightenment’ and Enlightenment-values mean, and why a rebellion was mounted against scholasticism (it is essentially this), but also that one be willing to look at what is going on in the religious communities among those who attempt, with the means at their disposals, to defend themselves against the onslaught. Here is just one interesting example:
Here is another:
Congrats on the COTD, Penn!