Restoring Civilization: We Can't MAGA Unless We MAMA

They can sense information technology. They tin can feel it. Something is seriously wrong in our civilisation, and many people know it. This is why despite the relatively good economic times, most Americans polled say our country is on the "incorrect rail." Yet many are like a gravely sick man who knows he'southward not well but can't precisely identify his ailment. Virtually oft, Americans take only a vague sense of cultural angst, or they "self-diagnose" wrongly.

Years ago I had a cursory "state of the nation" discussion with a very fine, older country gentleman. While no philosopher, he did offer the following diagnosis. Struggling for words and gesticulating a bit, he said, "There's … there's no morality."

Nigh believe morality is important both personally and nationally. We more often than not agree that an immoral human treads a dangerous path; of form, it'southward too for two immoral men, five, 53 or ane,053 — or a whole nation-full.

Echoing many Founders, George Washington noted that "morality is a necessary spring of popular government." The famous apocryphal saying goes, "America is smashing because America is good, and if she e'er ceases to be proficient, she will terminate to be great." For sure, we can't MAGA unless we MAMA — Make America Moral Once again.

Yet if immorality is the diagnosis and restoring morality the cure, we must know what this thing called "morality" is. Ah, that's where agreement tin can stop.

Talk to near people today — especially the people who written report people, sociologists and anthropologists — and they'll "identify morality with social lawmaking," as Sociology Guide puts it. They'll substantially say what sociologists Durkheim and Sumner do, "that things are expert or bad if they are so considered by society or public opinion," the site continues. "Durkheim stated that we do not disapprove of an activeness because it is a crime but information technology is a crime considering we disapprove of it." Yet true or not, would the majority actually view an action as a crime, in the all-important moral sense, if they came to believe it was true?

Consider a human I knew who in one case proclaimed, "Murder isn't wrong; it'due south merely that society says it is." Clearly, "public opinion" isn't swaying him much.

Notwithstanding how do you argue with him? Disallowment reference to something outside of man (i.e., God) dictating murder's "immorality," you lot're left with a hitting reality:

Society is all in that location is to say anything.

So "Human is the measure of all things," as Greek philosopher Protagoras put information technology.

Yet acceptance of the "society says" thesis presents a trouble: Now y'all must convince others to equate "public opinion" with credible, binding "morality." This is more often than not fruitless considering, frankly, information technology's stupid.

Human's opinion is simply that — opinion. If the term "morality" is essentially synonymous, it's a risible redundancy. If we're interim as slick marketers, trying to drag "opinion" via assignment of an impressive-sounding title, it'due south false advertising. Then if that is all nosotros're really talking about — "opinion" or "societal considerations" — let's driblet the pretense and just say what nosotros hateful:

We sentient organic robots (soulless entities comprising chemicals and water) accept preferences for how others should behave (subject field to change with or without observe). No, we tin't phone call these tastes "morality" — merely, hey, we can punish the heck out of y'all for defying our collective volition (meet North Korea et al.).

To cement the point, consider my patent explanation. Who or what determines what this thing we phone call morality is?

Only two possibilities exist: Either man or something outside of him does. If the latter, something vastly superior and inerrant (i.eastward., God), then we really can say morality exists, autonomously from man. Information technology'southward real. Yet what are the man-as-measure out implications?

Well, imagine the vast majority of the world loved chocolate only hated vanilla. Would this make vanilla "wrong" or "evil"? It's just a thing of preference, of whatever flavour works for yous.

Okay, but is it whatsoever more than logical proverb murder is "bad" or "wrong"if we simply do then because the vast majority of the earth prefers we not impale others in a manner the vast majority considers "unjust"? If it's all merely consensus "opinion," information technology then occupies the same category as flavors: preference.

This is the affair's stark reality, boiled down. Information technology'south why serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's darkness-enabling mental attitude was, as his father related in a 1996 interview (video beneath; relevant portion at forty:26), "If information technology [life] all happens naturalistically, what's the need for a God? Can't I set my own rules?" It's why occultist Aleister Crowley, branded "the wickedest human being in the world," succinctly stated, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" (Preference Über Alles 101).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgw0x0TxRO8

This perspective engenders what's often chosen "moral relativism," the notion that "Truth" (absolute past definition) is illusion and what'due south called "morality" changes with the time and people. Simply saying all is preference is actually moral nihilism, the belief that "morality" (properly understood) doesn't actually exist — because, again, "opinion" isn't morality.

Of course, few think matters through as thoroughly equally a Dahmer or Crowley. (In fact, a possible reason sociopaths may possess to a higher place-average intelligence is that they're smart enough to grasp the "morality" question's two possibilities — either morality exists as something divinely-authored, something transcendent, or in that location is no morality — but draw the incorrect conclusion.) Yet moral relativism/nihilism has swept Western culture. And hell has followed with it.

How relativistic/nihilistic are we? A Barna Group study found that in 2002 already, about Americans did not believe in (absolute) Truth, in morality; in fact, but six percent of teens did. Thus are they nearly likely to base what one time were called "moral decisions" on … await for it …feelings. Surprise, surprise.

Such prevailing philosophical/moral rot collapses civilization. For anything tin can be justified. Rape, impale, steal, violate the Constitution equally a gauge, commit vote fraud? Why not? Who's to say it's wrong? Don't impose values on me, dude.

To analogize information technology, imagine nosotros fell victim to "dietary relativism/nihilism" and fancied the rules of nutrition nonexistent. With but sense of taste left to govern dietary choices, almost would indulge junk food; nutritional disorder would reign and health deteriorate. Moreover, considering one man's poison another'due south pleasure, we might sample those pretty red berries the birds gobble down. Hey, if it tastes good, eat it.

This reflects what's befalling our "If it feels good, do information technology" Western civilization. Because the rules of any system non-real or irrelevant brings motility toward disorder — and a point where those who tin can impose their preferences restore order, a tyrannical one.

Having said this, discussing "Truth" and God evokes complaints, as the morally relativistic/nihilistic earth view influences even many conservatives, and secularists notice faith-oriented talk unsettling.

So allow'due south focus hither on non faith merely fact. Every bit to this and the world's Dahmers, Crowleys and the murder-skeptic man I knew, call them names, but don't call them illogical. Within their universe of "data" — that "God doesn't be" and thus only organic robots can exist the measure — they're correct: Murder's status isn't "wrong," just "unpreferred."

Annotation that moral principles cannot exist proven scientifically any more than God's existence; you can't see a moral nether a microscope or a principle in a Petri dish. Science only tells us what nosotros tin do, non what nosotros should. Finding guidance on "should" necessitates transcending the physical and venturing into the metaphysical. It requires, pure logic informs, taking a bound of faith.

Something else non a thing of organized religion but fact is human's psychology: People operate by sure principles. Like information technology or not, believing as Dahmer did (when young) nearly God leads to believing every bit he did near morality. "If human is all at that place is to brand up rules, why can't I just brand up my own?"

As I put it in 2013, "Simply as people wouldn't abide by the 'laws' of physics if they didn't believe they existed (the idea of jumping off a edifice and flying sounds similar fun), and there weren't obvious and firsthand consequences for their violation (splat!), they won't be likely to abide past morality if they believe its laws don't exist."

Of form, this rarely leads to series killing. But it e'er — at population level — leads to serial immorality. This is an immutable rule of man.

So how should we combat our time's moral relativism/nihilism? Showtime, realize that from the Greek philosophers to the early on/medieval Christians to the Founding Fathers, Western civilization was not forged past relativists/nihilists. It won't exist maintained past them, either. "If information technology feels good, do information technology" yields a healthy gild even less than "If it tastes good, consume it" does a healthy body.

Thus, i needn't have religion to sympathise that conventionalities in Truth is utilitarian. As George Washington warned, "Reason and experience both forbid the states to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Second, know that moral relativism/nihilism's entreatment is that it's the ultimate get-out-of-sin free card. Afterward all, my sins can't exist sins if there are no such things as sins, only "lifestyle choices." Yet too know that nosotros can take this seemingly eternal but illusory absolution — or we tin have culture. Nosotros tin't have both.

So human action as if Truth exists; seek it, speak information technology, love it, for it will set you costless. Realize likewise that relativism is juvenile pseudo-philosophy. For if everything were relative, what yous believed would be relative, too, and thus meaningless. And then let'due south talk about what's meaningful.

The culling? Well, it was expressed nicely past an quondam New Yorker cartoon. It featured the Devil addressing a large group of arrivals in Hell and saying, reassuringly, "You'll notice at that place's no correct or incorrect here. Just what works for yous."

Information technology's an alluring idea — and a powerful one. It creates Hell on Earth, too.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

(This article is the 2d in a series on exposing modern (liberal) lies, explaining the disordered leftist mind and restoring civilization. The showtime is here. The "American't" essay, which illustrates our issues, is here.)