A Schism Between Progressives

Reviewing recent literature about the shortfalls of elite education in America, in an article entitled "Becoming a Real Person", David Brooks of the New York Times observed "people in authority no longer feel compelled to define how they think moral, emotional and spiritual growth (progress) happens, beyond a few pablum words that no one could disagree with and a few vague references to community service. The reason they don’t is simple. They don’t think it’s their place, or.....they don’t think they know."  Education is lacking and especially in the moral sphere, according to Mr. Brooks.

So if "people in authority" don't think it is their place to define morality or don't think they know what is moral anymore, what does this say about their fitness to set alternative moral standards for society as Sam Harris, a New York Times best-selling author, prominent atheist, and neuroscientist, and others have argued they should?  To Mr. Harris, per his TED speech "Science can answer moral questions", it is "patently obvious, that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in the notions of human well being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes.  We simply must converge on the answers that we give to the most important questions of human life.  And to do that, we have to admit that these questions have answers"--answers that science can now supply, according to Mr. Harris.  But why would Mr. Harris suggest we need to stamp out individual variability in our own species when it is the very basis of evolutionary biology?  To me, this is not the morality that one would infer from science.

There is a schism in modern progressivism.  But you wouldn't know it from watching mass media.  It is the chief impediment to their "progress".  Progressives have discovered that to destroy is not to create.  It is one thing to displace God.  But it is quite another to replace Him.  To replace His morality, to muster the authority He once wielded in society, to exercise power over life and death and freedom, to concentrate their control over scarce resources, progressives must make themselves gods.  In other words, if progressives would implement controls over what is existential to others (ie. health, the economy, the environment, births), they must make themselves god-like experts.  This requires certitude--certitude, not in an objective divine but in one's human self--fanatical certitude.  But what sort of gods will they be?  This question is the source of their schism.

Will they be stern gods--like the one many deride, the Old Testament God of Israel, who had His people drive and kill those who differed?  At least, that God is not a human and is, many allege, omniscient:  He is not the god of self, by self, and for self.  Perhaps it was the idolatry of human omniscience that made the people of the ancient Levant irreconcilable to God's people?  In America, how can we be reconciled if progressives will not tolerate active faith expressed by majorities in public policy?  Are they advocating extermination?  Is theirs a secular variant of radical Islam?  Do they consider Judeo-Christians to be infidels?  Thankfully, there is a schism between these progressives and other progressives.

Note that, for more than two millennia, our nation, under God, was not indifferent to moral questions nor intolerant of broad divergences.  Laws were generally executed with the moral certainty of Judeo-Christianity.  And the Constitution has not dictated convergence.  If anything, it has enabled the very opinions (ie. a new progressive theocracy) that now threaten its existence.

As they seek to be the source of existential allocations, if not stern gods, will progressives choose to be gods of reason--gods who will educate and lift others until all mankind embraces their enlightened views?  Of course, this assumes that everyone will eventually see their views as enlightened.  Even Israel's God has had difficulty there.  It also assumes that progressives can be patient--as patient as Israel's God who has over centuries mentored man--only to be ousted in modernity.  But their human mortality is a problem:  how does one inculcate a new conscience in a generation or two?  If it took miracles and millennia to form the old conscience, how can human reason inculcate a new one?  And if reason and reflection will not suffice, what sort of force and fanaticism must one resort to so as to inculcate a new human conscience?  Perhaps science has some promising drugs or medicine some promising therapies?  Oh, but we're back to the stern gods.

Thankfully, there are still progressives with less certitude than what is germane to a god--persons too human to determine what is dispensed to others--persons pansophical enough to see that the burnings at Seville, the gassings at Auschwitz, and China's Great Leap Forward (perhaps 30 million deaths) all involved convergence for 'the greater good'.  God bless them for their reticence to be god themselves.  I am hopeful that they can check the ambitions of others--as these seek to be the sole dispensary of what is existential to others.  Once existential allocations are concentrated, we will be at the mercy of the allocators and the tendency will be to a tyranny of one.