The Paragraph Farmer on "The company you keep"

Patrick O'Hannigan of The Paragraph Farmer reflects on peculiar similarities between the worldview of Reasonable liberal elites and blood-thirsty Islamo-fascists. He notices that determinism undergirds their paradigms:

Carson's summary of the Islamist attitude-- wherein morality is imposed and external-- is a recipe for what Noonan would call increased authority, which automatically means bigger government. In Carson's essay, as in Iran and other Islamist fantasy lands, that means government that functions, or at least claims to function, under sharia law.

Because there is no Muslim majority in the United States, the idea that morality must be imposed leads inexorably to the modern American equivalent of sharia law, that progressive palliative called "rule by the judiciary."

This misreading of the human condition -- and that's precisely what it is -- has theological roots. It assaults human dignity by justifying coercion and rejecting the notion of free will. Its family tree includes Karl Marx (Fortunately, Groucho and Harpo Marx had a more profound understanding of human nature).

Carson and Noonan would probably agree with the proposition that responsibility rather than authority is the scaffolding on which free, meaning at least potentially moral, choices depend.

It's an oversimplification, to be sure, but a distinctly useful and capital-C Catholic one. Without free will ("freedom to do as we ought"), there is neither virtue nor vice. Robots can't sin.(emphasis mine)

Isn't it interesting that the equal and opposite manifestations of Nothing center on the same distorted view of the person? Both insist that a strong outside agent determine the thought and behavior of the human person. Thus, both the worshippers of Islamo-fascism and the Dictatorship of Relativism demand from those beyond their ideological borders absolute allegiance to their respective magisteriums. Both effectively deny that people have the capacity, and thus the responsibility, to choose to act in accordance with the Truth.

Meanwhile, Fools insist on taking the Catholic Church's teaching on the free will of the human person seriously. They respect the inherent dignity of the human person and their fundamental right to obey their conscience, even while insisting that this conscience conform with the Truth. Seems the only time I hear Reasonable folk talk about conscience is when they need to defy the Church's opposition to one of their sacred cows. Don't think I've heard any Islamo-fascist use the word conscience at all.

Reducing humanity to objects of others' determination violates their dignity. The Enemy would relish nothing better than the opportunity to commit such violations on us in masse. We should not give him that opportunity. Ever.