{"id":30765,"date":"2024-06-02T20:07:54","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T00:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=30765"},"modified":"2024-06-03T08:32:32","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T12:32:32","slug":"the-liberal-delusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-liberal-delusion\/","title":{"rendered":"The liberal delusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early 20th<\/sup> Century Malcolm Muggeridge declared that \u201cthe fundamental error of liberalism is its false gospel of automatic and ineluctable progress\u201d. <\/em>I usually agree with Muggeridge, but I think he had this wrong. That isn\u2019t the fundamental<\/em> error of liberalism. The fundamental error is the assumption that man is innately good.<\/p>\n

From this springs the idea that we can progress through our own efforts, that we can build our own utopia, that all our ills spring from things like a poor upbringing, a hostile environment or by class oppression. Once those are sorted out, the earth will be suffused with peace and harmony.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the opposite is the case. The notion that we are good, or at least self-perfectible, leads to tyranny, bloodshed, death and misery. Just look at Stalin\u2019s Soviet Union, Hitler\u2019s Germany, Mao\u2019s China and Pol Pot\u2019s Cambodia. Millions of dead and endless suffering all because of one simple delusion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure many mainline churches have fallen for the same lie. And it is a satanic lie. If we are innately good, we don\u2019t need a Savior. If we don\u2019t need a Savior, Jesus was not who He claimed to be: he couldn\u2019t have died for our sins because He didn\u2019t need to.<\/p>\n

Ten seconds of self-reflection will easily dispel this nonsense and confirm that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. <\/em><\/p>\n

Yet the delusion persists, particularly in the Anglican Church of Canada. I remember overhearing a lady vicar murmur in a break during a TV program Michael Coren used to host before he lost his marbles that \u201cafter all, we are all basically good people, aren\u2019t we?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And here we go again in an article published by the Anglican Journal<\/a>, a mouthpiece of the ACoC, even though it likes to pretend otherwise (my emphasis):<\/p>\n

\"\"What to do? How do we change paths? It\u2019s a tall order, but not an impossibility if we can finally dispense with that perversely erroneous, discredited tenet of Enlightenment philosophy that defines humanity as irredeemably wicked, and instead remember that we are innately good. Born that way.<\/strong> It\u2019s a truth that\u2019s available to each of us through common sense and reflection. It is acknowledged and celebrated in classical Greek philosophy and all the great monotheistic religions. In my careers as a journalist and academic I\u2019ve watched for decades as that ancient moral insight has gained the reinforcement of social-scientific researchers, reluctant though they may be to involve themselves with metaphysics.<\/p>\n

With that truth firmly in mind we might see that nothing less than a new social contract is what\u2019s necessary and appropriate to our post-modern condition: stronger market regulation to reduce the economic and political influence of industrial and commercial monopolies and oligopolies; a new ethic of corporate social responsibility that replaces hypocrisy with genuine commitment; more equitable distribution of wealth to replace the current winner-take-all ethic; and an improved and expanded social safety net perhaps founded on a guaranteed annual income, for starters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early 20th Century Malcolm Muggeridge declared that \u201cthe fundamental error of liberalism is its false gospel of automatic and ineluctable progress\u201d. I usually agree with Muggeridge, but I think he had this wrong. That isn\u2019t the fundamental error … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2191],"class_list":["post-30765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-church-of-canada","tag-liberalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}