… is not hyperbole when applied to Classical Liberals.
The question to ask whenever a Liberal argues for placing the conditional good of freedom above an objective good like life is, “Freedom to do what?” or “How does allowing this behavior help people cultivate virtue?”
Because it’s too late to grow in virtue when you’re dead.
But wait for it … Here comes the punchline.
Banning an actual death cult violates the NAP, statist! If you don’t let walking bioweapons sneeze in your eyes, the commies win!
In all seriousness, religious liberty was a truce reached between Christian denominations to help people who are in 99% agreement live peaceably together. It’s absurd to extend those terms to death cultists bent on the destruction of Christendom.
This is why Enlightenment thought is a spent force in the West. Liberalism–including Classical Liberalism–is a suicide pact in a world where no one else is playing by the Enlightenment rule book.
For a gripping vision of what that world’s post-future might look like, buy my military thriller Combat Frame XSeed now for just 99 cents!
Hence why Molyneux has become largely irrelevant (though his twitter is still entertaining occasionally). Once I realized this:
"Liberalism–including Classical Liberalism–is a suicide pact in a world where no one else is playing by the Enlightenment rule book."
it was impossible to take the NAP or his UBP seriously.
Molyneux piqued my suspicion when I noticed who he wouldn't have on his show anymore. He's a tenant, and he's learned not to cross the owners of the farm.
His decision to laydown and die, rather than fight youtube was instructive to my spending habits.
Stef giving Vox the dirt shoulder was the first warning sign.
He's hollowed out in the last couple years.
I noticed the same thing. Vox suddenly was persona ng, among others, and his inquiries into various opinions narrowed a bit.
Pardon my asking, but are you referring to the indy publisher Vox Day?
Where, in particular, do you think Molyneux is falling short? I won’t say he’s perfect, but I still have a lot of respect for him and I don’t especially see him backing down.
@Roy F. Moore: Yes.
@Zaklog: He lost me when he threw Nick Fuentes under the bus.
If respecting the free expression clause means we have to pretend Mahometism is a religion, we've messed up.
From this point of view pluralism between Christendom and the pagans does worse than simply failing to promote virtue. It promotes vice, by promoting the lie that the false religions – including the truly evil ones – are morally equivalent to Christianity. This elevates them and degrades us at one fell swoop. Of course, multiculturalism does the same, by equating injustices in Christian Europe with the systematic barbarism of the Aztecs.
Bingo.
Classical Liberalism, I have come to believe, isn't a philosophy of government. It's a preference /within/ a legislative environment. Elevating it beyond that breaks it.
Also funny that Libertarians insist on using the slur "Statist", when they themselves absolutely insist that the State is the only legitimate authority or organization, and that all competitors must be eliminated. They can't defend freedom, because they don't know what it is or how it happened.
*nods* Or what it's for.
Brian
I saw thaectwitter feed and concour with your general conclusion.
However as someone who recently returned from Singapore after many years,I'd be prudent in citing it as a model.
TL;DR the country is run by gammas who've never faced any adversity, tgey hate their citizens and are replacing them via massive immigration.
xavier
The "good" kings of ancient Israel burned down the asherah poles.
On a related note –
https://thelastredoubt.com/right-to-be-rude-vs-sjws/
I've frequented ESR's place for some years now. He's very clever, but also, unfortunately, a case in point that some folks we seem to agree with on some points politically are in the power of the Enemy, spiritually. They are at best casualties and at worse, antagonists. I encourage every Christian here to pray for his soul, and for the souls of the other pagans and atheists in his sphere of influence.
I'm a Linux user at home and teach a course on it at work. I read The Cathedral and the Bazaar for the first time twenty years ago. It's a pity watching the Death Cult eat one respected institution after another. The grand irony of watching ESR watch this is that he's not wrong about what he calls "Gramscian Damage", though he's wrong about what's really going on under the hood. It's worse than Marcuse's "long march through the institutions" and much worse than a Soviet memetic weapon, though arguably these concepts are two sides of the same coin. It's spiritual, but he's blinded himself to that reality by denying the spiritual entirely.
I suppose this ought to remind us that unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. The atheists in the F/OSS tribe have no hope beyond this life, but the F/OSS movement presented hope for making this one better. Now that hope is failing them, because forces against which they have no defense are capturing their movement and locking them out of it. The GOP cannot save us from the Democrat party, or the socialists who are trying so hard to capture it. The Open Source movement cannot save us from bad, proprietary code. The Conservative movement cannot save us from the Left. The libertarians cannot save us from the power of the state. A border wall cannot save us from hostile foreign cultures beamed to us through the air, or from politicians who don't want to build it in the first place. The NRA cannot save us from the gun control movement. The constitution cannot save us from a metastasized federal bureaucracy.
Our only hope is Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. Our only hopes among the institutions are those He has given us: the Church and the family, because our families are the building blocks of the Church.
It's all so clear in retrospect. The ultimate purpose of all the institutions you named–and human civilization itself–is to worship the Lord in spirit and truth.
Anyone who gets that wrong is basically a low-tax Liberal who wants to make money, patronize hookers, and smoke drugs in a high-trust environment.
That's why I remain convinced that the atheists and pagans–but I repeat myself–will either convert, fade to irrelevance, or join the Death Cult.
Out of curiosity, why do you say "atheists and pagans" is repetitive? I tend to agree with you, but I'd be interested to know why you say so.
There are no more real pagans in the West. The Church expunged their original cults and liturgical practices long ago. Any American or Western European claiming to be a pagan now is just an atheist LARPing at tree worship.
TL; DR: No one really believes in Odin anymore.
I see your point. In my estimation, both atheists, who claim to worship nothing, and pagans, who claim to worship old gods, in point of fact worship themselves. As you said, the Church destroyed their cults long ago. They were reinvented out of whole cloth by Victorian edgelords.
On Redoubt's post, and without defending free-speech absolutism, I have some serious questions.
The LOLbertarian argument is: Freedom of speech is an absolute right. Therefore it is necessary to permit those openly committed to destroying the project, group, or project, to join it.
This isn't even Libertarianism taken to a logical extreme. It is unrelated. It's not a flawed argument, it's not even an argument. It's two entirely logically unrelated statements spoken together very quickly so nobody notices.
If free speech is an absolute right, it necessarily follows that any limitation on speech–even limiting the speech of those who oppose free speech–is indefensible tyranny.
The flaw in the argument is that the first premise is false.
The second assertion – Free software projects are morally obligated to admit as contributors outsiders who care more about their politics than the success of the project or the quality of the source code – is basically the logic of unfettered international migration applied to the Open Source Movement. It would make as much sense to admit to Christian fellowship a Mahometan who still prays at Mecca five times a day, and denies the Divinity of Christ. The perfidious scoundrels trying to converge the F/OSS movement, and all too often succeeding, are making good code and lively projects a means to an end, rather than focusing on the code itself, as an end unto itself. But, I do see your point about the non sequitur. Given the falsity of the first assertion, the nonsense of the second, and the non sequitur that presents them as logically connected, the whole assertion is rubbish.