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On the Myth of Secular Neutrality
Everything changed for me when American cities were burning in 2020. It wasn’t the burning so much as the hypocrisy of the experts. For months, Americans had been subjected to the unlawful suspension of their civil liberties and we were continually lectured that it was due to “the science,” “expert opinion” and the need to protect poor ol’ grandma. But as soon as there was an opportunity to exploit a tragic death to throw a grenade into race relations, all in support of progressive political interests, the supposed “science” changed and the “experts” were suddenly transformed, like lizard people, into apparatchiks, brazenly working in service to the progressive cause. Magically, racism was declared a greater risk than Covid. So long as your protesting and burning and looting were useful to progressives, the prior suspension of your civil liberties was lifted. Not so much for anyone else.
It wasn’t the George Floyd issue or the Covid issue individually that changed everything for me. It was how the confluence of these two events revealed that, whatever it was the American government was up to, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual welfare of all Americans; nothing to do with science; nothing even to do with the neutral application of real expertise. It became impossible to avoid the conclusion that the so-called expert class — at least the ones with their hands on the levers of Washington power — were neither expert nor particularly scientific. They had flown their actual colors and anyone paying attention could not unsee it. It changed…everything.
Of course, these events were quickly followed by conspicuous non-enforcement for the burning of pro-life clinics, while engaging in over-the-top enforcement directed at such threats as middle-class fathers who showed the temerity to pray at abortion clinics. What’s going on here is not really that the embedded progressives who dominate government really intend to arrest everyone on the other side. They lack the resources. The point is to psychologically condition Americans until they believe that they cannot afford to exercise their civil rights. From Jack Phillips to Donald Trump, the law-fare being run by progressives is less about winning those cases than about publicizing the cases so that other non-progressives will think twice before exercising their own civil rights, or doing anything that has a practical political impact that is negative for progressives.
The reason the left is in such a dither over Elon Musk and X/Twitter is that Elon has somewhat undermined their scheme to inflate the cost of civil rights beyond affordability for regular people. As it happens, the richest man in the world can afford civil rights even at their presently inflated price, and his $44 billion purchase of Twitter covered the costs for millions of others besides. And progressives hate him for it.
Hilary Clinton’s famous remark, referring to millions of Americans as “deplorables”, was not misspoken but was truly reflective of a prevalent view held by the progressive elite regarding much of American society. Since Covid, they have become increasingly open with the extent to which they hold their fellow citizens in contempt. Here we have Nancy Pelosi, in a recent Oxford Union debate with Winston Marshall, explaining how Americans’ commitments to civil rights (“guns” – 2nd amendment, “God”, 1st amendment) “cloud” our receptivity to progressive arguments that she alleges are really in our own best interest.
Just this past week, two geriatric climate fascists snuck into the British library with hammer and chisel and tried to destroy the Magna Carta, one of the most foundational documents for civil rights in all of history. It contains one of the earliest known outlines for establishing the rule of law and individual rights. I myself have had the privilege of gazing into that very display case. There are many other treasures of Western culture on display in that room as well.
The hammer and chisel were needed to break through the glass case which held that invaluable treasure. The natural response to this kind of effrontery is, of course, to be outraged at the old ladies’ stupidity and malevolence. But today,
Mary Harrington, in her inimitable way, reframed the event:
“What if the boomers are accidentally right here, and the best thing in our current political crisis would be breaking the glass to retrieve England’s constitution of last resort”
Ms. Harrington’s reframing hints at a poignant conceptual model for understanding what is actually going on in America’s own political crisis. It goes something like this:
There is a constitution. It enumerates our civil rights.
It is on display and we can look at it. We can admire it. We can even praise it.
But it is a relic of history and we just can’t actually have it.
So the cost of actually exercising any civil rights, those which run afoul of progressive agendas, is being intentionally inflated beyond all affordability. Progressives know exactly what they are doing.
The radical partisanship of the government bureaucracy, brazenly on display in 2020, unmasked the ideal of secular neutrality to reveal only a delusion. There can be no secular neutrality because no such thing exists. Every so-called expert operates within a moral framework of some kind. Whether the framework is right or wrong, there exists, nevertheless, some axiomatic moral assumptions upon which the alleged experts are operating.
I’m afraid that secularism may be many things, but neutral can never be one of them.
The problem, of course, is that placing power into the hands of so-called government experts has always been sold to the public on the very basis of experts being politically and morally neutral. But the Covid tyranny and BLM riots of 2020, followed by the now commonplace and habitual persistence of American prosecutors offering lenience to progressives, while throwing the book at conservatives, has unveiled secular neutrality for the mirage that it actually is.
This past week Holly MathNerd wrote a sharp and trenchant post entitled “The Disappearance of Secularism”. In her post, she ponders the recent and repeated phenomenon of high-profile media personalities making public confessions of their Christian faith. I have pondered the same phenomena in one of my own posts, although my own ruminations were over the preference these high-profile converts have shown for high church manifestations of Christianity rather than, say, non-denomination evangelicalism.
When I saw the title of Holly’s post, I was immediately interested in reading her take. I’m a subscriber of Ms. Mathnerd’s Substack and find I am sympathetic with many, though not all, of her views. Interestingly, she concludes the recent surge of Christian conversions is due to the loss of confidence in secularism as providing any sustainable basis for civil rights.
COVID revealed the truth. I do not have any rights at all. Nor do any of you. What we have are privileges, and they are dependent on one thing only. If, at any time, people with PhD after their name are willing to interpret data in a way that justifies taking our privileges away, then they will be gone…The fundamental axioms of the world I thought I lived in — the things I didn’t question, didn’t doubt, didn’t consider debatable — were all shown to be fiction.
Indeed.
Holly goes on to observe that the lack of any sort of accountability for the harm inflicted by the “experts” on millions of innocents – no one in government has suffered any kind of consequences at all – only confirms for her that we have no rights at all, only privileges.
If there had been any kind of reckoning — Nuremberg 2.0, prosecutions, etc. — then maybe I could have gotten some of my faith in those things back, to some extent. If some redemptive process had occurred, then it might have been possible to integrate the events of COVID into a new normal that wasn’t so horrifying.
I feel compassion for Holly because, though her confidence in secular neutrality has been blown to smithereens, she nevertheless has, so far at least, been unable to find her own way back to a Christian faith. She admits that she would like to, but there are obstacles, she says, that she finds in her way.
I have, myself, done a lot more reading and exploring than I used to, questioning my atheism and trying very hard to talk myself into faith. It didn’t work, but I tried very hard. I know other people, including one friend I’ve discussed this with many times, who have done the same. We’ve all been reading C.S. Lewis and even praying occasionally, hoping someone is listening, though we’ve no reason to believe anyone is doing so.
The reality that she and the rest of us face, of course, is that absent a transcendent basis for rights, the very idea of rights are illusory — a mere ephemeral artifact of whoever happens to hold power in the passing moment. The Marxist analytical lens, that all relationships are nothing more than power dynamics, is actually kind of true if God is not real. The implications for ideals like justice and human rights are dire in the absence of any explicitly transcendent basis for them. I think many of these high-profile Christian conversions are due to a growing realization that the congenial benefits of civil rights that the West has enjoyed are entirely an artifact of Christian ideas.
And some things that should not have been forgotten, were lost. – JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
In the West, we are so accustomed to having Christian assumptions silently inform our thinking about human rights that we forget just how much water Christianity has been carrying for us, lo these thousands of years. (See the meme at the top of this post.) Alas, if God is not real, then rights can never be anything more than contingent privileges, doled out to their friends by capricious experts and self-important bureaucrats.
There is some morbid comical irony in the way that the mask came off the government’s own malevolence at the very same moment they were forcing the rest of us to don masks of our own. It’s bad enough to be mistreated by one’s own government. But one gets the impression that we are also being laughed at.
Western governments have been playing a dangerous game of “let’s pretend” with the myth of secular neutrality for one hundred years at least. In 2020, the secular chickens began coming home to roost.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
- Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings
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The joke is on them. Parliament has revoked it piece by piece over the centuries. Now, it’s only a piece of paper and an idea that might live on somewhere.
I was already there before these events which then were the most solid form of confirmation I could have received. That probably is also why I accepted all of the items on Ryan Cole’s list early in the Covid adventure without personally having any scientific expertise for such.
I have spent long hours considering how this has happened and I have reached the same verdict as presented here. Secular governing is destructive of human dignity.
I pray for Christian revival.
So much excellence here! But, I’m on my way to Ascension Sunday Mass and to sing in the choir for the confirmandi and the Bishop presiding. Back for more after Sunday worship!
Excellent post Keith.
If they are 82 and 85 they are not “boomers”. Can’t these youngsters do math?
Heh
There was a Catholic writer/radio guy I used to listen to from time to time, and one of the phrases he used was, “Cut flowers don’t last.” Our Western Civilization has been enjoying the beauty of the flowers of Christianity for centuries, but has now cut them, expecting that they will still be there to be give beauty and fragrance.
Who’s your bishop, WC?
You are technically correct…the best kind of correct!
Bishop James Golka out of Grand Island Nebraska — a freshly minted bishop ordained at our (large sanctuary to accommodate his friends and family) parish in 2021. I like his gentleness and attentiveness to the love of Christ, although some friends who were very close to our previous, deceased bishop were distressed at the staffing changing he’s made and, I suspect, wish he was a little more orthodox. I can see him growing into a very fine and holy shepherd some day, though. Let us pray.
I read your ruminations on the tendency to “High-Church” conversions on your substack Keith. I’m sure if you shared it in the R> Catholic private group, you’d get some interesting feedback on why that might be from (mostly) Catholics — although anyone can read/join the group. I know I have some thoughts, but I don’t want divert from your excellent post (anymore than I already have).
Back on topic — when Mr. C and I were married in the Church, we received counseling from the priest who would officiate our wedding. We were young, foolish secularists and he reminded us we were committing to raise our children as Catholics and (roughly paraphrasing) we’d be teaching our children something to believe as teaching them nothing wasn’t really an option. He was getting at this “myth of secular neutrality.”
It doesn’t matter if people want there to be a god.
It doesn’t matter if religions are beneficial or not.
It doesn’t matter if our culture was or is based on a belief in a god.
No god exists.
You need to find another reason for the civilizational collapse we are living through. Men are evil and our dominant cultural philosophy no longer respects the rule of law, not because of religion, but because people have been brain washed in government controlled schools, and because we have a media that has been unified in trying to control news and culture.
What we need is a return to the rule of law, a return to understanding the unique form a government we have and how it was formed and maintained for two and a half centuries.
More religion isn’t the answer. Religion can exist or not, it makes little difference except to a few who think they need a crutch in order to be moral. What we need is a return to being intolerant of those who want to control us, whether through environmental terrorism or lies, or through other communist behavioral modifications. We need less government, more capitalism, less regulation, more freedom.
If you want to be religious, that’s your right. That is called freedom. Don’t try to impose your beliefs on me.
If Protestants impose their church, the Catholics will rebel. If Muslims impose their beliefs, a lot of us will die. Relying on religion is not the answer. Freedom is the answer.
But you get to impose your beliefs on others.
Who says freedom is good? Oh, wait! Jesus does: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
When? How?
Jesus also probably would advise us to eat healthy food. What’s your point?
I do? Are you, ahem, imposing that on me?
On this we agree. Although I might also point out that, absent a transcendent definition of evil, every man gets to define “evil” according to passing whim. In some cultures they love their neighbors, in some cultures they eat their neighbors. Who are we to impose on someone else that one is evil and the other is not?
Yes, of course, but why? The rule of law is an imposition on people who may disagree.
My point is that atheists- at least western atheists- invariably act as moral parasites feeding off of the Judeo-Christian moral heritage of the west, or at least some Deist/Platonic moral presuppositions with biblical substrata when they start talking about good and evil. If their viewpoint were true, there can be no good or evil, and your griping about who controls whom is just philosophically inconsistent nonsense. And, no, consistency is not “the hobgoblin of little minds”, it is the basis of logic and rational thought.
Corrections in bold.
Related to this discussion:
The moral western atheists are not parasites – they’re just “piggybacking” on biblical morality, as per the cartoon, and rightly writing it into law. Non-westerners who enshrine comparable morality into their laws are just fine also.
The danger is from the Left, which wants to make their immorality the State Religion, as happened in the French and Bolshevik revolutions, which of course rationalized bloody murder and defined opposition to the State as a form of heresy to be punished. One could argue that laws about “misgendering” and Executive Branch attempts to redefine “man” and “woman” into nothingness are blatant First Amendment violations because they establish “woke-ism” as the State Religion by enforcing religious tenets such as “men and women are the same.”
The actual quote is “a foolish consistency.”
If no God exists, there can be no such thing as good or evil because there is no benchmark standard of morality against which actions may be judged.
What else? Nothing has meaning or purpose.
Because no one was ever moral before Judeo-Christian culture was created? Absurd on its face.
Also absurd on its face. Societies throughout history have had moral codes.
People may wonder why I jump in on this. I don’t care what you say or believe about your ridiculous religions. It’s that so many people insist on insulting people who don’t share their beliefs that is offensive.
Fanatical Muslims have very strong moral codes. Very awful moral codes. Their beliefs don’t seem to make them better people.
I know an awful lot of religious people who have horrendous behavior and thump their bibles and want others to know how virtuous they are while they do awful things in the dark when no one can see.
Right and wrong are not hard to discern and no religion is needed to understand them. I agree that if you invoke magical beings that can punish you in mysterious ways then you can convince some to behave. But that method is neither necessary nor sufficient. Many, many religious societies have been sick and oppressive.
On the other hand, some societies that have replaced religion with a political movement also do horrendously evil things. That they are described as atheist doesn’t mean all atheists are immoral.
Practice your religion, I don’t care. Stop insulting others who don’t share your religion. It is not helpful to anyone.
If morality is a cultural construct, then there was a time before it was constructed when no-one was moral. The fact that the original construction is lost in the mists of time and we are only aware of the most recent refinements of the construction doesn’t change that.
On the other hand, if morality is not a cultural construct but has independent existence then it’s difficult to construct arguments for said existence that can’t also be used to argue for that of God.
Either way, the quoted statement is hardly absurd.
I understand you feel attacked — “insulted.” I’m just not sure why — or where anyone said “all atheists are immoral.”
I question why your characterization of “many, many religious societies” being “sick and oppressive” necessitates a moral equivalency between all religious societies. Do you think Judeo-Christian societies have been “sick and oppressive” as compared to others? Or is there something unique (uniquely humane) concerning the value of all human life that has come out of Judeo-Christian ethics?
I think you lose credibility when you deny the latter.
I doubt very many Christians will deny that many (most) Christians fail to live up to Christian ideals. And I’m sorry if you’ve been wounded by the immoral behavior of Christians in your lifetime. But, those are failures to live up to the demands of Christian ethics — and not because of them.
In fairness, their morality tended to flow from a G-d or gods.