The View From 1776

Our thoroughly secularized society explains events and behavior, human nature itself, as the product of the material conditions of living and earning a living, in accord with the Marxian thesis.

In The German Ideology Marx and his colleague Friederick Engels wrote:

As individuals express their life, so they are.  What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce.  The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

Present-day liberals therefore deny the concept of a higher law, of timeless moral truths emanating from God the Creator of the universe.  They fancy themselves capable of restructuring society, and human nature in the process.  Hence the endless stream of new Federal welfare-state programs.  In the liberal view, economic and social problems can be cured only by bountiful application of the most materialistic of all things: money. 

School massacres, of which Virginia Tech is the latest and deadliest example, predictably are thought by liberals to result from a material factor: the availability of firearms.  In liberal theory, make guns unavailable, and you change human nature.

Zero consideration is given to Judeo-Christian teaching that evil exists in the world and that it can be combated only with God’s help.  Zero consideration is given to morality. 

Liberals ignore the inconsistent fact that no massacres occurred prior to the Baby Boomer student anarchism of the late 1960s and 1970s.  Students of that era were so knowledgeable that they told their professors what to teach, and it had to be “relevant.” Relevance turned out to be destroying the historical traditions and moral standards on which the United States was founded.

Note that it was the complete absence of standards, what liberals call “tolerance,” that prevented the Virginia Tech authorities from inquiring into the character of the assassin, even after his behavior and his classroom work had profoundly alarmed some of his teachers and fellow students.  In a good, liberal society of moral relativism, anything goes.  It’s not permitted to question people’s standards or actions (unless, of course, they are conservatives).

The Imus case exemplifies a different sort of inconsistency in liberals’ materialism, as well as their hypocrisy. 

On the one hand, liberal media icons like the New York Times’s Frank Rich and other authors happily and repeatedly appeared on the Imus show.  They raised no objections to Imus’s grossly distasteful remarks, because exposure to his large radio audience did wonders for their careers and their book sales.

On the other hand, when Imus characterized the Rutgers women’s basketball team as prostitutes, liberals had to denounce him.  He was offending the black voting community, which liberals’ regard as their private property.

This is what is known as moral relativism.  With no moral standards, if I like it, it’s OK; if you don’t like it, as the liberals say, “Get used to it!”

Initially Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson focused their condemnation on Mr. Imus and ignored the almost universal use of identical language by black men in describing women.  When that inconsistency was pointed out, rap musicians and record producers quickly defended such language as simply the “reality” of the street.

Liberals in this case ignored the Marxian doctrine that material conditions surrounding people determines their nature and their actions.  Why was everyday language of black men Ok when they uttered it, but altogether unacceptable when Imus used it?

When Bill Cosby denounced such aspects of the prevailing black social culture, he was attacked and ridiculed by liberals, both blacks and whites (see Bill Cosby Collides With the Liberal Establishment).

The only liberal “standard” appears to be materialistic regulation of economic behavior and the absence of all restrictions on hedonism and sexual promiscuity.

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