The Tyranny of Equality

Part 5: Progressive Inclinations

Much to the chagrin of Progressives there are those who still cling to “guns or religion” and they vote for people of like mind.  Thus, not as much progress has been made in the legislative arena as they would have hoped.  To compensate for the lack of law and enforcement of their particular equality agenda Progressives have turned to social enforcement, that is, Political Correctness.  We all know how that works:  say, text, post, believe, or do the “wrong” thing and you’ll be excoriated in social media, lose or be demoted in your job, ostracized by family and friends, boycotted, lose an election, etc.  The politically correct police exact a high price for violating progressive orthodoxy.  The sphere of Personally Liberty becomes smaller and smaller as it is subjugated to the tyranny of particular equality.

One must wonder how a philosophical system based partly on Skepticism and Relativism can be so ruthlessly committed to enforcing its agenda.  The answer is really quite simple.  Although they may reject the idea of a universal Good and the Natural Law that does not mean that it doesn’t exist or that human nature, including progressive human nature, does not share the same inclination that Thomas Aquinas articulated and this essay outlined earlier.  Three inclinations in particular I believe help to explain why progressive approach their agenda with a zealotry that is commensurate with the religious fanaticism.

(1) To seek the good, including the highest good, which is eternal happiness with God.

Father Alexander Schmemann, an American Orthodox priest, wrote regarding man’s identification: 

“Homo sapiens”, “homo faber”…yes, but first of all, “homo adorans”. 

His contention was that central to man’s being is that he is a worshipper.  Within man there is an intuition or inclination that there is something greater than himself.  This inclination is at the heart of religious experience and commands man’s greatest commitment.  Progressives, regardless of their adherence to materialism, naturally seek something that “transcends” the finiteness and temporality of the self.  This they find in their quest to establish an equitable society even at the price of liberty.

(2) To live in community with others.

Progressives (and all humans beings) find their transcendence in “community with others.”  It is the same inclination that leads the Muslim to adhere to the Ummah or the Christian, the Church.  It is in the collective, the society and the state, that Progressivism finds her raison d'etre, her reason for being.  And although there is usually no heaven for the progressive, there can be some satisfaction in the hope that humankind will evolve, through careful governmental planning, into a just and particularly equal society.

These two inclinations are described by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the Brothers Karamozov in the passage known as The Grand Inquisitor.  In the section I quote below he writes about the Mysteries of the Three Temptation of Christ in the wilderness in which the Lord rejects the temptations offered by Satan:

“…Thy tempter's offer contained another great world-mystery. By accepting the "bread," Thou wouldst have satisfied and answered a universal craving, a ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every individual human being, lurking in the breast of collective mankind, that most perplexing problem--"whom or what shall we worship?" There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of times….”

…Thou couldst accept the glaive of Caesar Thyself; why didst Thou reject the offer? By accepting from the powerful spirit his third offer Thou would have realized every aspiration man seeketh for himself on earth; man would have found a constant object for worship; one to deliver his conscience up to, and one that should unite all together into one common and harmonious ant-hill; for an innate necessity for universal union constitutes the third and final affliction of mankind. Humanity as a whole has ever aspired to unite itself universally. Many were, the great nations with great histories, but the greater they were, the more unhappy they felt, as they felt the stronger necessity of a universal union among men.”

It is the inclination and aspiration to unite humanity in a utopic Egalitarian state that is the Progressive’s “constant object of worship” and it is this that they” deliver their conscience up to.”  Progressives disdain traditional religious practices while faithfully adhering to their own secular religion.  They are confident in the superiority of their progressive religion while mocking as foolish those who faithfully cling to the Judeo-Christian tradition.   Faith is not foreign to those of us who still adhere to the latter tradition. One is left to wonder what justification the Progressive has for their faith and confidence in theirs?   How can an ideology that has its ethical roots in Skepticism and Relativism be so intolerant towards those who do not share the same view of life?  How can Progressivism be so confident that Science can faithfully fulfill the promise of Progress when it delivers the wonders of technology with one hand and weapons of mass destruction in the other?  How can the Progressive claim that her right to Choice trumps Life when Science, the foundation of Progressivism’s confidence, tells her that choice and free will is no more than delusion foisted upon her by her genes?

My goal here is not to share in the mockery and intolerance of the Left—there is already enough of that to go around.  I do not need to get the upper hand in this debate so that I can subjugate or make second-class citizens out of any fellow Americans who might disagree with me.  What I do want to stop is the egregious efforts of Progressives to limit my Liberty and I will respectfully do the same for them.

Next: A Libertarian Christian's Perspective