{"id":361,"date":"2009-09-05T13:25:03","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T13:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-ii.html"},"modified":"2009-09-05T13:25:03","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T13:25:03","slug":"a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"A Pagan Take on Conservatism’s Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part II."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Second Tragic Flaw<\/b>     <\/span>
Most conservatives
\nhave realized that the integral Old Order can never be re-established, and many would not want to now if they could.  Modernity’s material advantages are too great.  Instead they sing the praises of ‘traditional religion’ in today’s world as providing
\nsociety’s needed moral ballast. 
\n<\/span>This religion is the scriptural transcendental monopolistic masculine monotheistic religion that initially generated the cultural crisis conservatives were trying to resolve.   This religion was to counteract secular
\nmodernity’s own tendency itself to degenerate into nihilism.<\/p>\n

Nihilism is the belief that the universe is meaningless, no values are intrinsically better than any others, and power, by default, is the only reliable arbiter of differences.
        <\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\nIn making their case, conservative arguments in favor of religion utilized
\nmodernity’s rational, evidence-based thinking rather than arguments rooted in
\nmythos<\/i>, in understanding the meaning IN<\/i> life, the intrinsic value and meaning of things.  <\/span>They adopted the style of reasoning
\nthat characterized the secular modernity they distrusted, trying to defend against
\nmodernity’s amoral implications by using its strongest tools against it.  <\/span>Bad things happen <\/i>if a society becomes irreligious,
\ntherefore society should be religious became a major conservative argument for religion.    <\/span>    <\/span><\/p>\n

I want to make a small backtrack for a
\ncouple of paragraphs. to explain why this was an important and disastrous move.       <\/span>

Modern Reason<\/font><\/b><\/font>   <\/font><\/b><\/font>    <\/span>
Beginning
\nat least with the Enlightenment, growing numbers of political and religious
\nthinkers adopted modern reason and evidence as their primary means for accessing knowledge.  <\/span>They chose to accept only evidence that could be observed, weighed, and
\nmeasured.  <\/span>Inner realities were to
\nbe defended by evidence of the external senses and instrumental reasoning<\/a>.       <\/span><\/p>\n

This attitude spilled over into
\nreligion reasoning.  <\/span>The Bible was
\ntrue and science could supposedly be used in its defense.        
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

This tactic opened defenders of Western religion to serious problems as
\nscience developed.  <\/span>How could
\npeople continue to believe when the evidence and reason both spoke increasingly
\nstrongly against any literal understanding of scripture?   Some fell away, other increasingly argued commitment and will could trump reason and evidence.    
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, the conservative appeal to instrumental reason and empirical
\nevidence to win a point about the importance pf religion dealing with inner
\nmeaning was endorsing the narrowing of thinking that has undermined traditional
\nWestern religion in so many eyes. 
\n<\/span>With every slash of the sword of reason and brick of evidence thrown
\nagainst their opponents, they cut and bruised themselves, whether they hit
\ntheir target or not.         <\/span><\/p>\n

Most people do not
\nadhere to a religion simply because they think it’s a good idea.  <\/span>They adhere because they think it
\naccesses some aspect of truth and meaning better than any other approach they
\nknow. Yet this conservative argument was only a pragmatic one.  <\/span>Religion may or may not be true, but
\nit’s socially advantageous. 
\n<\/span>However, that argument does not work very well at the personal level.
\nTry accepting social peace as a reason to believe during a wrenching personal
\ncrisis or when on your death bed.      <\/span><\/p>\n

When religion was freed from mythos
\nand linked to instrumental reason and empirical evidence, both of which then
\nundermined scriptural religion, the only path left open within traditional
\nscriptural monopolistic monotheism was the path of Commitment and Will:  <\/span>I make my commitment, and that’s
\nthat.  <\/span>I rely on my will to
\novercome temptation.  <\/span>End of
\ndiscussion.     <\/p>\n

 <\/span>When conservatism continued to support the central role of traditional
\nreligion after so many believers had made this final fateful move, I think conservatism
\nopened itself up to becoming its opposite.  <\/span>Commitment and Will trumping reason and evidence are and
\nalways have been the territory of fanatics and utopians.  <\/span>They undermine the respect for established
\nways of life and humility before a world we will never understand that had been
\ntraditional hallmarks of conservative thought.      <\/span><\/p>\n

But one more step speeded up this
\ndegeneration in our day, to make what calls itself conservatism a philosophy of
\nnihilism.        <\/span><\/p>\n

The Southern
\nConnection<\/b>        <\/span>
Conservatism is
\nalways culturally specific regarding the mores, customs, and habits it defends.   <\/span>Conservatism always reflects its roots.  After World War Two Northern
\nconservatives increasingly embraced their Southern conservative brethren without fully
\nappreciating that they came from different cultures. Both Northern and Southern
\nconservatives appeared to dislike ‘big government,’ both emphasized the
\nimportance of scripturally based monopolistic transcendental masculine monotheism, and both had a
\nstrong racist element, but they looked at these issues from very different
\nperspectives.  <\/span>But the similarities
\nwere more superficial than the differences.      <\/span><\/p>\n

Northern culture had never rejected
\nthe principles underlying our Declaration of Independence,  <\/span>They saw themselves as defending them.  <\/span>However, major Southern leaders, such
\nas John C. Calhoun<\/a>  and Alexander
\nStephens<\/a>,  explicitly did.  Southern opposition to national government did not grow from a belief in
\nlocal control or that government received its power from delegation by the
\npeople, it grew from a belief that after the Civil War they were a conquered
\nprovince, and so could only control things locally.  <\/span>Therefore they wanted Washington to stay out.  <\/span>Given access to Washington’s halls of
\npower, they had no compunction about centralizing power farther than ever
\nbefore.         <\/span><\/p>\n

This explains why
\n‘conservatives’ in power under Bush rode roughshod over traditional principles
\nof American government, and now are shrilly exaggerating them once out of
\npower.  <\/span>It is hypocrisy from an
\nAmerican perspective, but not from a Southern one. <\/span>Conservatives regarding
\nnational government when out of power, when given national power Southern
\nRepublican politicians were radicals with regard to the country as a
\nwhole because they did not really share Northern values about constitutional government..  <\/span><\/p>\n

More troubling yet, Dixies’s conservatives honored a culture that had deliberately turned its back
\non the Enlightenment, in order to embrace a literalist Biblical religion they
\ninterpreted as justifying slavery.  This led to a difference between Southern and Northern Christianity that we see reflected today in the splits within Baptist churches. 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

As I understand it, both northern and Southern Protestantism accepted the need to commit to Jesus, but the South, especially many Southern Baptists, included a commitment to the inerrancy of scripture.  Dixie had been  strongly shaped by a belief the Bible was literally true and
\nthat commitment and will trumped evidence and reason on religious issues.  <\/span>Therefore their approach to the Bible
\nreplaced the principles of the American Revolution as the basic myth underlying
\ntheir society.  <\/p>\n

<\/span>Crucially, the demands on commitment and will overriding reason and evidence increase dramatically when a specific interpretation of scripture is added to to a personal commitment to Jesus as your savior.         
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Devotion to will and commitment trumping reason and evidence in religion spilled over
\ninto politics, undermining any real conservatism they might have had.   <\/span>By identifying itself with the
\nSouth, and incorporating Southern leaders into its ranks, American conservatism
\nwas turning itself inside out even more quickly than might otherwise have been
\nthe case.        <\/p>\n

<\/span>I think that there are
\nso few real conservatives in today’s “conservative” movement of
\nradical utopians supports the basic accuracy of my analysis.  <\/span>It is not conservative any more, but
\nemerged from out of the internal weaknesses and contradictions within
\nconservatism.  <\/span>And these weaknesses
\nare often religiously based in their commitment to monopolistic scriptural
\nmonotheism as the only truly acceptable religion for America.     <\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/b>   <\/b>   
\n<\/span>
Conservatism contributed to the rise of Western nihilism because first,
\nit confused an appreciation of why religion is important with the monopolistic
\nclaims of a religion emphasizing only a slice of spiritual reality, excluding
\nthe feminine and the immanent,. 
\n<\/span>Such an approach could never carry the weight American conservatism
\nplaced on it.  <\/span>Second,
\nconservatives accepted the Western model of knowledge as solely that which is
\nbased on scientific standards and when that failed to reinforce traditional
\nreligion, fell back on pragmatic arguments for religion’s utility.  <\/span>This led them to supporting those
\nparticularly in the South who argued for the power of Will and Commitment to
\novercome doubts raised by evidence and reason.  <\/span>When these people entered the political arena, conservatives
\nfound themselves in close alliance with a politics of Will and Commitment.        <\/span><\/p>\n

I
\nthink this problem is almost entirely the result of considering religion and
\nmeaning in terms of a transcendental God removed from the world.  <\/span>When the Sacred is immanent, these
\nproblems wither away except for the fact that people intoxicated by power will
\nstill act in hideous ways.  A conservatism that embraced a rich and diverse spiritual reality, one both Immanent and Transcendent, with the Sacred Feminine as equally important to the Sacred Masculine, would ironically be in a far better <\/i>position to make its case against secular modernity.        <\/span>      <\/span><\/p>\n

I will
\nsoon post an analysis of liberalism and how it also changes its appearance when
\nviewed from a Pagan perspective that recognizes Sacred Immanence and 
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Second Tragic Flaw     Most conservatives have realized that the integral Old Order can never be re-established, and many would not want to now if they could.  Modernity’s material advantages are too great.  Instead they sing the praises of ‘traditional religion’ in today’s world as providing society’s needed moral ballast.  This religion is the scriptural…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pagan-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA Pagan Take on Conservatism's Contribution to Modern Irrationality. 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