Guest post by G. Shane Morris
The progressive project is pure utopianism. You won’t understand anything or anyone on the left until you grasp this.
The progressive worldview centers on the idea of inevitable moral evolution toward an ever-receding mirage of a perfect world where transcendent constraints are gone and human will reigns supreme. This is why appeals to tradition, history, revealed truth, biology, and even logic fall on deaf ears, because these are precisely the constraints we must overcome! This is why “it’s 2017!” is considered a valid and compelling argument. And this is why positions progressives commonly held when my four-year-old daughter was born are now treated like medieval barbarism. The progressive eschaton will be so perfect, we don’t even possess the categories yet to comprehend its perfection. So every year, we must elevate our moral consciousness to a new level.
Conservatives often fail to understand progressives, because they think of them as their opposites. They’re not. Progressives aren’t trying to bring our society into closer alignment with an unchanging moral standard that merely differs from the conservative moral standard. They are actively changing the moral standard itself from day to day. And as long as there are constraints holding the human will back from complete conquest over nature, there will be an endless supply of new causes du jour to take up and advance under the cry that no one except a barbarian from last year would oppose them.Edit: Thanks to Ben Carmack for this outstanding comment:
“It was the late great Joe Sobran who used to ask liberals–rhetorically–“In what kind of society would you be a conservative, one contented with the status quo?” The question was rhetorical because there was no answer to it. Liberals don’t know when the progress will stop. They don’t know what kind of society would make them conservatives.
They only want more and more, and it will never be enough.”
this post appeared originally at patheos and is here reublished by permission of the author
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About the Author / Kuyperian
Why Abraham Kuyper?
Abraham Kuyper was a 19th century theological and political figure. His interests were broad. He was not merely satisfied with the intellectualization of ideas, but also the implementation of ideas. He was known as the “theologian of the people.” His time as a pastor gave him a unique sense of the needs of the people. Kuyper defended a localist vision. He knew that significant change did not begin at the top, but at the local level. Further, he opposed the vicious totalitarian tendencies of his culture. He even began his own political party as a way of combating these dangerous threats. Thus, in more ways than one, Kuyper represents a moral libertarian vision; a vision which is also compatible with traditional conservatism.
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