As the West's moral malaise accelerates, fueled without question by a public disinterest in religious principle and the eternal accountability it provides, the entirely predictable consequences of discontent, fanaticism, and violence continue to manifest.
In response, public officials from Western nations scramble to try to offer some kind of legislative remedy, communal guidance, or cultural pep talk that typically amount to symbolic gestures at best. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but their efforts are ultimately ineffective attempts to contain forces that are far more spiritual than anyone in the West is comfortable talking about these days.
America's Founders weren't, of course. It all seemed relatively elementary to them. George Washington explained that "national morality" would never prevail "in exclusion of religious principle." Remove religious principle that provides an objective standard of accountability beyond man's own passions, and "morality" suddenly becomes a subjective, eye-of-the-beholder exercise.
And pray tell, what becomes of a civilization like the West, if truth is self-determined rather than self-evident? Washington's successor John Adams told us.
We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
The West's bold experiment in human freedom becomes a recipe for anarchy and misery without the binding agency of internal morality spawned from learned religious principle. No law, no constitution can stop the impending demise.
Those are the kinds of truths that our civilization needs to awaken to. With each passing act of extremism, chaos, and catastrophe, I hope in vain that it might happen.
Instead, Westerners from Europe to the Americas are treated to responses like this:
God help us all. At a time when a return to traditionalist understandings of political philosophy, be it Edmund Burke, Frederic Bastiat, or even George Washington, is so paramount, we get: "If your neighbor goes to church they might become a terrorist."
In the last several months alone we've seen godless radicals:
Murder a healthcare CEO in cold blood and then be turned into a folk hero.
Murder two young Israeli diplomats in cold blood after they attended a banquet.
Murder a Minnesota State Representative and her husband in cold blood in their own home.
Firebomb car dealerships with reckless disregard for the potential of human injury or death.
Firebomb elderly Jewish demonstrators engaged in a civil display.
Example after example of godless extremism, and the experts and authorities say, "Look out for people who say boys are boys and girls are girls."
In case you are still whistling past the graveyard, let me reiterate what all thinking people should know by now: this is how a civilization dies.
Only God can save us now, but I'm pretty sure we're too over Him to ask.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
