The View From 1776

A recent editorial in the New York Times identifies its editorialists and American liberals with the cause of Islamic jihad.  They, of course, would disagree.  By their lights, they are merely being tolerant.

The Times editorial concludes: “ [Pope Benedict XVI’s speech in Regensburg] is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.”

This was prompted by the Times’s September 13th story in which reporter Ian Fisher wrote:

“[The Pope] began his speech, which ran over half an hour, by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in a conversation with a “learned Persian” on Christianity and Islam — “and the truth of both.”

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the sword by the faith he preached,” the pope quoted the emperor, in a speech to 1,500 students and faculty.

“He went on to say that violent conversion to Islam was contrary to reason and thus “contrary to God’s nature.”

“But the section on Islam made up just three paragraphs of the speech, and he devoted the rest to a long examination of how Western science and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict’s worries.

“This, he said, has closed off the West from a full understanding of reality, making it also impossible to talk with cultures for whom faith is fundamental.”

Let’s note, first, that the Pope was merely reciting facts abundantly documented by almost 1,400 years of history with regard to Islam, and by more than 250 years of history with regard to the atheistic materialism of liberal-socialism.

We don’t have to conjecture about the fact that Mohammed introduced a religion based on conquest, plunder, and enslavement, all justified as the command of Allah.  It is not an assessment based on tenuous inference.  It is what Muslims themselves tell us every day when they justify repeated atrocities ranging from 9/11 to bombings in Madrid and London, and rampaging murder and destruction elsewhere in reaction to the celebrated Danish newspaper cartoons.

Nor do we have to wonder about the motivation of Times editorialists in demanding that the Pope back down from his statements.  Since the rise to prominence of liberalism’s foremost spokesman, John Dewey, at the end of the 19th century, liberals have steadfastly maintained that God is a fiction, that morality therefore is an evolving set of standards limited only by the ability of the socialist ruling elite to impose its views, either via raw power (judicial fiat, failing victory in popular elections), or via manipulation of public opinion.  The latter is the role of socialist propaganda organs such as the New York Times.

Liberalism’s “tolerance” is not what the term originally meant in the British-American political tradition.  John Locke’s well known 1689 “Letter Concerning Toleration” was written after England had twice endured the the Stuart kings’ savage persecution of those who opposed their efforts to displace the Church of England with Roman Catholicism. 

Tolerance, as Locke defined it, was the freedom of individuals from the arbitrary power of political authorities to make them conform to any specific set of religious beliefs.  Every individual should be free to pursue his own conscience, which Locke was confident would in almost all cases mean faith in Christianity of one denomination or another.

Locke’s view was held by the overwhelming majority of Englishmen and Americans.  It was no more than a realistic recognition of conditions in America in 1787, when the Constitution was written.  Some historians say that the United States had more different Christian denominations than any other country.  Tolerance so defined was the sum of the meaning of the First Amendment’s prohibition of Federal legislation aimed at making any religious denomination an established national church.

As in George Owell’s “1984,” Big Brother in the New Deal began a NewSpeak operation to distort the meaning of tolerance.  Taking their cue from John Dewey, liberals redefined toleration to mean that there can be no standards of right or wrong.  College students since the 1930s have been taught that the moral and political traditions of the founding era are crimes against humanity, that scientific socialism points the way to the unimportance of family, faithfulness, sexual continence, hard work, and savings for the future of one’s family.  Liberal social justice is simply taking from people who work and save and giving to those who don’t, in order to reach socialism’s holy grail, income equality.

When a highly visible spokesman for Christian morality like the Pope states the simple truth - that both Islam and socialism are false religions - Times editorialists respond with their abiding faith in filth.

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