Reality Check 101

I’m not sure what “post-modern” would literally mean but it has become an accepted way to describe the world by which we have allowed ourselves to be victimized.  I say victimized purposefully.

Somehow, our nation has managed to fall prey to the “principled pillages” of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  During that time, it became “groovy” and “in” and even “enlightened” to trash the principles and values that gave Marxist intellectuals and protesters their stage and provided most of them with the resources to rebel without getting hungry.  Almost 200 years of advancement in  industry, technology and law made America a justifiably proud nation and, aside from her enemies, made her the envy of the world.  That first-in-history accomplishment became the new villain for the left.

Those years turned out to be far more transformative than most conservatives ever imagined precisely because the conservative establishment at the time lacked imagination.  They seemed incapable of foreseeing the visceral appeal to base human nature which simplistic mob-pleasing slogans and well-crafted labels could have.  Worse, by the time those slogans and labels began being perpetrated on the next few generations through supposed “higher” educational institutions, conservatives were still unable to effectively meet the challenge.

Thus we have been lured into something called post-modernism.  The culture is well grounded in a suicidal paradigm shift.  The beneficiaries of the often-maligned, seldom-valued and chronically misrepresented Judeo-Christian pre-1960’s era have surrendered to idea that “modern” was “back then” when their parents and grandparents were clueless while they somehow have reached enlightenment.  Now we live after the modern age – and that’s supposed to be good!

So, what does this enlightenment look like?

Character

Probably the most fundamental principle which underlies America’s paradigm shift is a commitment to no commitment.  The new way involves a decided disdain for external or immoveable  standards.  This holds true in politics, the social sciences and to an extent even in the hard sciences.  No matter which discipline it is, truth and reality are moving targets.  Consensus rules.

Even the notion of righteousness suffers mutation.  Judeo-Christian religion, once the bulwark of western civilization, becomes suggestive rather than definitive.  Without it, compulsions (“I was created this way”) or an accepting sub-culture or legal permissiveness or self-fulfillment become one’s personal standard of holiness.

It actually makes perfect sense that if a cultural conscience surrenders the integrity of basic moral standards the rest will follow.  If there is no truth except my truth, what is to say that one political act is less desirable than another one?  If the moral mind is evolutionary, why should any sociological system be more valuable than any other?  If facts can be maneuvered for greatest impact, what is to keep science from being groomed to meet an intellectual elite’s pre-determined purposes?  Think special homosexual rights or radical environmentalism for example.

It follows then that a lack of objectivity is the death of reason.  When irrationality becomes normal, the only way to figure out what is virtuous or even real is to just wait for the next minute to see what happens and then decide how to handle it.  In a nut shell, people become convinced that whatever they feel is truth.  At that point there is no one and nothing left to trust outside of feelings.  We all know how reliable feelings are.

Consequences of the Reasoning

The practical results of this worldview extend to every part of life.  Law becomes nothing more than the will of the most powerful group of opinions.  Ethics turns into a system of very strong suggestions which fuel decisions by simple majority rule.  Obviously, legal systems operate the same way.  Choice becomes supreme and fair becomes the highest good.  Any group of people who can manage to form a strong enough coalition with adequate resources to influence the masses can change the very values and legal structure of a society – all based on nothing more than perceptions and desires.  In effect, the minority coalition strategically targets the public’s emotional vulnerabilities.  Through constant repetition of fantasies generated by their ideological interpretation of reality, they overwhelm normal.

The Precautionary Principle

Contemporary American acceptance of the precautionary principle and minority rule are inevitable outcomes of this paradigm shift. More and more, Americans are falling victim to control by regulatory and judicial fiat imposed by minority special interests who win their victories through alarming prophecies about what might happen (the precautionary principle). This again makes perfect sense.  If there is no firm hold in the here and now, they will have no security for the future.  If there is no outside restraint, no dependable structure, no predictable guide, then the future is indeed a scary prospect – it has to be because any act or demand or cause or behavior or prejudice can be justified.

The Precautionary Principle also ignores the good it eventually usurps.  Put another way, it seeks to avoid risk while devaluing or sacrificing the benefits that are derived from taking chances or solving problems created when courageous people face uncertain circumstances.  Precaution does this because under the new paradigm, nothing can be predicted or depended upon ahead of time.  If there is no normative social structure, no ethic that will not be compromised, no ultimate meaning, chance-taking looks into the future and must realize that stepping out could be either suicidal or pointless or both.  Accepting that, the only sensible thing to do is to invoke precaution in order to avoid the danger – whatever the perceived danger could be.  Simply put, one must stick with the here-and-now by fortifying against some unseen but imagined result.

The fact is that life is built on calculated risk.  But risk does not have to be a leap into complete uncertainty.  Structured moral boundaries and uncompromised social expectations actually free the adventurous to take chances.  In the back of their minds they know that there is always a fall-back point, a position that they can rely on should things “go south”.  They are free to respond to accusations of wrongdoing or carelessness by openly showing loyalty to universal principles which even their detractors acknowledge.

Unintended Consequences

Unintended consequences are results of a course of action or a mindset that no one saw coming or that was dismissed as improbable.  These are the rewards of a sloppy undisciplined approach to decision-making.  They flow from several things – a determination to fulfill an ideological committment, a need to feel justified in a behavior which is normally unacceptable, a disdain for boundaries which demand accountability, the belief that freedom is the same as living impulsively.

Again, within the worldview that nothing is unchangeable or truly true, these excuses for rebellion make perfect sense.  The only problem is that the real world does not work that way.  In the domino effects of real life, words and actions have consequence and no human being can defy a universal principle and prophesy all the outcomes.  As will be illustrated below, falling “dominos” make enduring patterns.

Reality Check in the Present

Our suicidal paradigm shift does not need to continue its deadly march.  It may claim to be reasonable but reason is exactly its worst enemy.  Law and morality are good places to start.  The old saying that you can’t legislate morality is a farce.  The fact is that law is by its very nature a moral entity.  By definition, law dictates rights and wrongs.  It endorses, forbids and makes judgments.  At the same time, public morality depends in large part on being able to exert its standards through the use of law.  The challenge of an enduring legal system is how to embrace its moral nature.  The real question is which ethical system will define it.

There are only two possibilities.  One is to “go with the flow” legislatively/ judicially and figure out each new challenge during each new moment using whatever brains are available to gauge the present evolutionary status of perceptions and popular nuances.  The other possibility is to source righteousness through a trustworthy immovable ethic.  For Americans those stalwart foundations are our founding documents interpreted through the lenses of written context and original intent and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures which have faithfully served all of western civilization.

Legal Reasoning

There are glaring and significant problems with the reasoning and activities of new paradigmers under the law.  To begin with, good law does not mold itself to social trends.  Every society has to have an objective overarching system of truth which powers an enforceable structure.  There must be an anchor which is able to endure and guide people beyond whims and frailties of their fallen human ego,  self-gratification, self-glorification, self-pity and even self-righteousness.  Without such control (no matter which political system it is), anarchy is the only alternative.  Good law then responds to recognized, established, specific need, not developing popular demands.

It is just as true that under a stable system of law, desiring to scrap older political foundations or ethical standards does not create a justification to do so.  Activists argue that since society is changing, so aught our moral guideposts and  the very fabric of how we do law and policy.  But that belief turns reality on its head.  It assumes that the structures by which a people maintain community and civility in order to prosper should contradictorily be driven by the fashions and impulses for which the structures were implemented to control in the first place.  It demands as well that the emotions and drives of some developing sociopolitical waves assume power over the future rather than having the future framed by proven truth and wisdom from the past.

For example, America is home to  hundreds of thousands of substance abusers, the poor are everywhere and the number of criminals continues to grow.  These are all groups of people who exert pressure on society and whose populations force moral/legal responses in real life.  Some of their situations are voluntary, some are not.  Some of their lifestyles are legally, morally and socially neutral; some are destructive.  But none of them are entitled to the privilege of creating new norms simply because their behaviors and circumstances exist or because their population is at a certain census level or because they feel undervalued, discriminated against  or persecuted.  If at some point in the future there grew to be more abusers, users and criminals than there were lovers, workers and law keepers, it could not justify accepting those circumstances as the norm and jettisoning love, charity and law – even if there was a popular cry to do so.

 Precaution

Champions of the new paradigm love to malign the past and make dire forecasts of a future under the status quo.  It is not unusual to hear tales of the old wrongdoings.  Persecution, discrimination and ignorance are weaponized in order to pressure the masses for change in the name of “what if”.  Their purpose is the propagate the idea that post-moderns work by new enlightened evolving social and moral principles.  By carrying forward the guilt of old crimes committed by the ignorant in times past, the present can be convicted into obeying the insightful few.    The only problem is that, once again, reality is being mutated to achieve an agenda.

How is reality being mutated?  If standards are evolutionary, an action in the past cannot violate a law or standard that did not exist at that time it happened and therefore cannot cause guilt upon unrelated people in the present.  To put it another way, a supposed new principle cannot reach back into time in order to bring new guilt based on something that did not exist before.  As the Apostle Paul wrote, without the law (Biblical law in his reference) there is no offense.  Without a stable external ethical standard, nothing is always wrong and nothing has to be considered permanently offensive, past or present.  It is ludicrous then to dissolve an existing principle in favor of vaporous shifting ethical/legal practices simply because others have failed historically or because many may continue to fail presently.  Offenses in the past have no meaning outside of universal standards – the same universality which new paradigmers reject until they need grounds for an injustice.

The reality is that either there are universals or there are not.  No one can  have it both ways and still preserve their integrity.

By using such tactics, post-moderns use the precautionary principle to justify extraordinary protections against events that have never happened but could possibly maybe happen.  The logic (or lack thereof) goes like this:  If the practitioners of the former system could not or would not honor an old less enlightened and less sophisticated ethic, how can the same type of human beings in the present (those who are not part of the post-modern enlightened few) understand the new evolved system.  If the new system is so beyond the grasp of the less insightful, how will claims for new things be justified to and tolerated by these masses?

In light of such a dismal prognosis, the only thing to do is be proactive – step out and begin regulating, legislating and adjudicating before any issues have time to be born and cause trouble.  Past ignorance’s and sins must be preempted – whether they have been atoned for or not.  Such is the precautionary principle in action in the present day.

Consequences

Multiple movements such as the assaults on public religion and natural marriage have not only embraced our nation’s latest paradigm shift, but are using it to unbelievable advantage.  Activists’ claims, demands and legal actions all rest on the shifting sands of evolutionary values.  It relies on a society that is self-absorbed and gains direction by divining “wisdom” from the loudest and/or most influential pressures of the time.

That approach to the future carries with it consequences.  For one thing, at least in a representative republic like the United States, rule by the people through majority consensus is eroded.  In its place grows a rule by minority, the very eventuality our founders specifically tried to guard against.  Activist atheists and homosexual rights groups have managed to maneuver themselves over the years into disproportionately loud and effective political and social movements even though they are small minorities.  So much so that the specific will of the people as expressed in jurisprudence and majority choices has become the victim instead of the overseer.  Through an amazing turn of events, Normal – universal principles (for example chastity, the sacredness of life, the value and contributions of religion) –  now finds itself being challenged to justify itself against Distortion (promiscuity, abortions of convenience, derision toward religion) instead of Distortion being required to demonstrate its universality first!

Civil discrimination is also a natural outcome of the situation.  Atheist and homosexual activists rail hypocritically about purely anecdotal cases of contemptible religionists or workplace and housing discrimination but the movements then expressly lobby to institutionalize those very same offenses against their enemies by trying to quarantine spirituality and forbid the public exercise of the personal conscience by anyone who opposes them.

The most disturbing consequence is a constantly growing spiritual apartheid against anyone who designs their lives within a traditional/conservative Judeo-Christian worldview.  As of this writing, capitulation to delusional claims of homosexual and atheist assaults has become more and more common from community governance to public education to the military to the highest halls of government.  In all of these venues, surrender did not happen because of a change of universals.  The targeted majority have allowed themselves to be put in a situation where they have to bear the weight of defending a maligned Normal against a sometimes vicious Distortion.  They have officially assumed the truth of the new paradigm and thereby made themselves subservient to it.

Those who live their private and public lives in submission to the moral and social principles of that worldview, if they are to remain loyal to God who is their final sovereign, have no authority to fudge life as they live it.  Surely none of them are perfect human beings, but imperfection does not demand surrender to even greater imperfection.  For anyone like that, they become minority-in-position while actually being a majority-in-fact.  They are vilified, marginalized and sometime sacrificed before the alters of such things as political correctness, institutional expediency or the power of deception.

The Bottom Line

There is no way around it.  Our paradigm shift is lethal for our country and for the individuals who live here.  No one, whether nation or person can survive with no ultimate foundation to fortify, mold and guide its future.  Any entity which allows itself to build on a illusionary “system” of moral, social or political shifting sand will not stand.  Death will always result from powerlessness, meaninglessness and purposelessness.