"Our Post-Moral Confusion"

Melanie Phillips blogs some reflections, Jul. 26, on the latest from Andrew Sullivan and Michael Novak:

.... What has happened in recent decades is that this moral core which upholds social norms and discriminates against values that threaten them has been replaced by a post-modern creed of the left, which has tried to destroy all external authority and moral norms and the institutions that uphold them, and replace them by an individualist, moral free-for-all — the creed which has led to the moral relativism and denial of truth that lie at the core of the anti-war movement.

Where Sullivan is absolutely right is to call Bush a liberal. For in repudiating the corrupted values of both the post-moral left and the reactionary appeasers of the right, Bush has indeed exhibited the classic liberal desire to build a better society, along with the characteristic liberal optimism that such a project can and must succeed.

And this is surely why Bush is so hated by the left. For this hatred wildly exceeds the normal dislike of a political opponent. It is as visceral and obsessive as it is irrational. At root, this is surely because Bush has got under the skin of the post-moral left in a way no true conservative ever would. And this is because he has stolen their own clothes and revealed them to be morally naked. He has exposed the falseness of their own claim to be liberal. He has revealed them instead to be reactionaries, who want both to preserve the despotic and terrorist status quo abroad and to go with the flow of social and moral collapse at home, instead of fighting all these deformities and building a better society....

The neo-cons, the ‘liberals mugged by reality’, are still driven by the progressive desire to build a better world. Bush, with his religious imperative, believes the same thing. They both understand that the post-moral left is doing its damnedest to destroy that world instead and has left a trail of harm, misery, accelerating social breakdown and erosion of human dignity in its wake.

It is authentic liberal values, the bedrock of western democracy and morality, which are under relentless attack from both within and from without. Once, conservatives understood that their mission was to defend such values against an enemy who would destroy them. Now, they so little understand who that enemy is that many of them now march under its banner. That is the crisis of modern conservatism, and the threat to our society.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 07/28/04 07:18:10 AM
Categorized as International & Political.