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Quote of the Day: The Truth and the Sacred Are Irrelevant
“As the cultural revolution has progressed, everything that was once honored has become a matter of public indifference. And as this has happened, every traditional constraint has been lost. At first, it was thought that the result would be only license and abandon. And indeed, this is a fine description of what Enlightenment liberalism looked like one generation after its triumph. At this time, one could win praise and honor for daring acts of transgression—for evading military service, for sexual profligacy and adventurism, for drug use, for blasphemy or an obscenity, for desecration of the sabbath, and so on. But by the second generation, this too has dissipated, and little is to be gained by violating the old norms with acts that are by now commonplace. No one is left who will be impressed by them.” – Yoram Hazony
As I am reading Hazony’s new book, Conservatism: a Rediscovery, I’ve been fascinated to learn so much about the origins of the decadence of our traditional values. This particular quotation struck me, because he points to the lure of “reason” to the Progressive agenda, and the disdain for tradition and a belief in G-d. Although the Progressives point with pride to their use of reason for constructing their view of the world, they neglect to realize that reason, by itself, can lead people in a multitude of directions; reason is no guarantee that people will reach agreement on a strategy, because every person will define his or her own understanding of a “reasoned” approach. Thus, we find ourselves in a confusing and unconstrained time, where everyone is free to decide for himself what is true.
The dangers of this viewpoint are many. First, this type of reason is not based in any sacred truth or tradition, so it meanders to find an opinion that suits the person whose reasoning is at stake. Since G-d is not the basis for reason, the possibilities for understanding depend on the reasoner (who adopts the role of a god). And although that person may try to frame his conclusions on reason, they actually are based on preferences and biases. Their foundation cannot be attributed to traditional understanding or to truth. When everyone is permitted to do his own reasoning, tradition is discarded and held in disdain, and the results are predictable—or one could say, unpredictable.
We are now living in a time of chaos and confusion, and truth and the sacred are irrelevant.
Published in Group Writing
I’m sure you know his thinking much better than I do. I wonder if it’s a matter of priorities (which, of course, can be significant). Hazony is concerned with the lack of constraint and how dangerous it is to conservatism. So I can see where his emphasis might be on demonstrating constraint, instead of focusing on the importance of freedom. I don’t think he believes that freedom is not important, but unrestrained freedom can be detrimental. I found this quote gfrom a reviewer interesting:
That is to say: no one can have actual personal freedom in a world where all seek only their own welfare and pleasure. In the absence of a culture of self-constraint there will be only disorder and disaster. In such a world no one is free; none can escape the societal devastation wrought by the unconstrained lives of others.
So he may very well emphasize constraint over freedom. Interesting!
Moehler, in his interview with Hazony, makes a statement, that, paraphrased, was essentially that Locke’s naturalist ideas regarding human understanding undercut religion entirely. Moehler came across as very hostile to Locke. Given that Locke’s formulation on government formed one of the bases for the American Founding, it seems that Moehler is also hostile to the founding. He appeared to share Hazony’s discomfiture over the Enlightenment nature of the Declaration, relying as it does on Reason.
What I know about Hazony is gleaned from his podcasts with Peter Robinson and Albert Moehler. In both he seems to me to diss the American Founding. Too much Enlightenment. He criticizes Lincoln with faint praise. He doesn’t like Lincoln’s obsession with “All Men are created equal” (All men are not equal?). He seems to support only Religion and Tradition, and open discussions in a rabbinical approach, to arrive at Truth.
How is it that he can be a National Conservative and diss the Founding of the Nation of which he is a citizen?
I can’t shake the impression that he thinks he is intellectually booted and spurred, and I am agnorantly bridled and saddled, and he thinks he has a right to ride me. Deplorable though I am, I don’t like that. He has definitely alienated me.
The 1960s at least had the virtue of novelty and revolutionary thrills. But once promiscuity and various perversions started becoming commonplace, once the previous generation demonstrated a lack of deep conviction and resistance and once decadence was mainstreamed, the buzzkill was enormous. It is the difference between getting stoned before sex with an exuberant hippie chick after defying the government at an anti-war rally in 1968 and sexually sharing AIDS or hepatitis in a crack house in Portland in 2022.
The revolutionaries failed to bring about a new Eden based entirely on self-indulgence (shocker!) but they did large;y succeed in draining faith and hope in traditional spiritual channels as a source of meaning. And killing faith and hope may have been the underlying drive for it all. The enemy does that.
The weird entitlement mentality regarding sexual gratification, the child-like need for “safe spaces” and uniformly shared, unchallenging thoughts combined with an appetite for apocalyptic visions of the future and blanket rejection of child-making are symptoms of a culture of despair, like one long depressing morning-after.
The word “conservative” may need to take some time off because the ideas and values to which it refers are novel and revolutionary in the present dominant climate. Somebody needs to coin a new word that means “anti-stupid”, “pro-human” and “pro-proven values.”
I think we watched two different videos! I viewed the Uncommon Knowledge video, and I have no idea where or how you reached your conclusions. I think you are confusing the original founding with the way it began to be distorted in the 1960’s. The founding was based on the traditional, nationalism and religion. Hazony argues to reinstate religion as essential to fight against neo-Marxism (essentially a religion). Peter directly asked him if he approved the founding, and he said he did, without exception. He also pointed out that Lincoln’s call for equality was a statement made for the time of the civil war–did you miss that? He admired Lincoln.
I’m not looking to talk you out of your point of view; I’m not really a “fan-girl” of Hazony. But I would suggest you listen and watch more carefully when you choose to make conclusions about a man’s philosophy. Hazony was clear, yet nuanced when he had to be. Quite frankly, I think something else might have been an issue for you, since all your criticisms aren’t backed up by the video or the book.
The highest discoveries of Science resound with the glories of God. Consider that String Theory, per Leonard Susskind, tells us that the odds of our universe existing as it is are 1 in 10 to the 500th Power: In other words, the entire Universe is a miracle. It can’t really exist, but it does. And it is material. Penzias, one of the discoverers of the Cosmic Background radiation opined that Genesis was the best description of his findings. The fine tuning of the Universe is such that atheistic scientists fall back on the Anthropic Principle (we wouldn’t be here to observe the Universe if it didn’t allow for our emergence) which, accurately paraphrased (yet no self respecting scientist would say it this way) that the Universe was made for Man, not Man for the Universe. Atheism is scientifically untenable.
I agree. But we don’t use only our knowledge of science to reach an understanding of life and the universe. Again, Hazony is discouraging us from relying on extremes as the only way to see the world or make decisions. Nowhere did I see him criticize science at all; he discouraged people from relying only on the rational and disregarding, for example, religion (which is not always “rational).
A few relevant quotes from the great G. K. Chesterton:
“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.”
“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”
I was referring to Nanocelt’s comment: “Perhaps there is some truth to the charge that Evangelicals ARE hostile to the American Founding”
It comes as a surprise to me too. None of my Evangelical friends are hostile to the founding.
It’s not like the founders walked on water.
It was very much the intention of many/most Enlightenment thinkers to make religion obsolete. Jonathan Edwards was very much aware of Enlightenment thinking. In point of fact, he demolished and superseded Hume’s whole basis of reasoning in his essay “On the Nature of True Virtue.” Hume prevailed based on PR and popularity and subsequent events and developments, and hardly anyone reads Jonathan Edwards any longer.
Edwards began with the manifest human capacity to appreciate beauty, and extended that to an ability to appreciate beauty in morality and hence Truth. He anticipated Keats (Truth is Beauty, Beauty, Truth) and fully explicated that identity. He stepped around Hutchison’s innate moral sense, but didn’t discard or belittle it as Adam Smith did (with malice aforethought) while substituting an artificial and sophomoric contrivance for it (the ‘invisible hand”). He explicated from a naturalistic perspective, while making the case for wholeness and the sacred natural order, in my view about as well as it can be made. Andrew Klavan echos Edwards’ approach in his book, The Truth and Beauty
Hazony manifests hostility to the American Founding when he objects to Lincoln’s view of the Constitution as the silver frame around the Declaration, the Apple of Gold–all men are created equal–the AXIOMS of the Declaration. They are correct.
He also to me seems quite hostile to reason, not just unwilling to base everything on it. What Hazony doesn’t understand is that Reason (mathematical logic) has PROVEN that human consciousness is Transcendent (see Godel’s Incompleteness theorems). The highest achievements of Reason actually fundamentally support Hazony’s reliance on religion and tradition. Why is he hostile to what confirms his understanding? Scientists and philosophers of course don’t understand that either, so Hazony is not alone, by any means.
We’ve been over all this, and I’m choosing not to debate you on this any longer. We clearly have different interpretations of Hazony’s intentions, and we haven’t reached any agreement at this time. So I’m choosing to withdraw from this part of the discussion.
Hazony allowed that Lincoln had an Old Testament quality to his rhetoric, and that Lincoln was good for his time, but that was about it, the way I heard it. In my view, Lincoln understood ancient and modern and timeless truths that were correct when he spoke them and correct today and for all time. Hazony wouldn’t go that far.
Regarding his affinity for kingship: He founded the Edmund Burke Foundation. Burke was a loyal subject of the British monarch, and had no intention of being anything else. Yes, Burke got the American Revolution about right and the French Revolution about right. But his history includes vindictively persecuting a British official who served in India, not for a political season, but for decades, like a bulldog that simply wouldn’t let go, and for specious and unfounded reasons. American Conservatives seem terribly infatuated with Burke. Perhaps I’m a little too libertarian (which I don’t consider myself to be, but maybe I’m wrong).
In my view, Conservatives such as Hazony, Continetti, Yuval Levin, and others, seem to fit Chesterton’s dictum that the aim of Progressives is to assure that mistakes continue to be made, while the aim of Conservatives is to assure that those mistakes are never corrected.
I’ll give you one example: For me, the passage of the 16th Amendment was disastrous for the Federalist Republic (which forbade such direct taxes) set up by the Founders, as it strongly tilted the balance of power toward the Federal Government (and gave us Leviathan) and away from the States. A Progressive Income tax was a plank in the Communist Manifesto. I favor a repeal of that Amendment, with a return to a ban on direct taxes. Which “Conservative” today would support that? I suggest that none would.
🙋 Of course, whether I would be considered a conservative is questionable. Direct election of Senators has to go, too.
Amen!
We have no idea how much voter fraud has gone on in the large Democrat controlled cities in the close Senate races in past elections.
Good on ya’ Susan. It’s inexcusable–or at the very least just plain rude–when someone with an agenda hijacks a thread, particularly when that person is hostile to and hasn’t even read the topic at hand. Scrolling past the comments in question is a reasonable response, as was yours just not to engage. I do hope the discussion can return to the excellent topic you provided.