Scientism's conclusions fail the 'what if...' test

Listening to deep space: a 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope in Guizhou, China.

Imagine someone you know has been studying radio waves and has invented an impressive satellite dish that can pick up every kind of radio wave in existence. You are being shown the instrument by its inventor, and you are impressed by its sophistication and the wealth of information it provides; it essentially covers the world of radio waves. At a certain point you pose the question: “I wonder if there are other kinds of waves out there that aren’t radio waves.”

You then receive the confident answer: “Nope. Nothing but radio waves exist out there.”

You are surprised and interested by this claim.

“How do you know that?” you ask.

“Because we’ve never picked up anything but radio waves on the dish.”

You are a little confused. “But I thought your dish was fashioned precisely to pick up only radio waves.”

“Right.”

“So what if there are other kinds of waves?”

“But we know there aren’t.”

“Because…?”

“Because radio waves are all we detect with our dish.”

At this point the circularity of your friend’s thinking has silenced you, so you begin to talk about the weather.

Something similar can happen with certain supporters of a scientistic view. They will note, rightly, that God, angels, and the human soul cannot be measured or observed by the methods of natural science. They will then say: “Science makes clear that such things don’t exist.” If you ask “How is that?” the answer will often be: “Because if they did exist, we would be able to see or detect them scientifically.” 

If you then reply “But what if there is a whole order of reality that is not material, and therefore cannot be detected by the methods of natural science?” the answer comes back: “No, such an immaterial reality doesn’t exist, because our scientific investigations don’t pick them up.”

Time to talk about the weather.

It is worth noting that the scientistic view is very narrow: if it is true, it leaves us with a much smaller and more boring world than the one presented by the Christian sacramental vision. The Christian vision grants all that Scientism suggests as far as the visible world goes, but it adds infinitely more.

Source

Unexpected outcomes in space research

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)

This image produced from the Webb Space Telescope was issued on January 11, 2023. NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way. A star forming region sweeps across the scene, dominated by hues of purple. Tones of yellow outline the region's irregular shape. Many bright stars dominate the scene, as well as countless smaller stars scattered in the image's background. Distance from Earth: 210,000 light years. Constellation: Tucana.

Astronomers probed this region because the conditions and amount of metals within the Magellanic Cloud resemble those seen in galaxies billions of years ago, during an era in the Universe's history known as 'cosmic noon,' when star formation was at its peak. Some 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were forming stars at a furious rate. The fireworks of star formation happening then still shape the galaxies we see around us today.

Since dust grains in space are composed mostly of metals, scientists expected that there would only be small amounts of dust, and that it would be hard to detect. But this new data from Webb reveals just the opposite.

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'God made you this way' needs care

The rainbow of moral qualities God invites us to exercise

To say to a person with a same-sex attraction “God made you this way” is a statement that distorts the person’s reality and so it's destructive. This was the starting point of a video dialogue featuring Catholic priest Mike Schmitz on the Matt Fradd Show on YouTube. My post picks out the main points discussed and uses some of the language employed in the conversation.

Those with a same-sex attraction can be assured God loves every person unconditionally. But to say “God made you this way” basically it undercuts one of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, namely original sin, which is the recognition that while we're made good we also have the wound left in our will and intellect as a result of our original parents rebelling against God.

The result is that “not everything that I want is the right thing; just because I experience a desire or attraction to something doesn't mean that God wants that for me”. A person cannot say, "I have a desire that is deep-seated or ingrained in me – I've never known not to have this feeling. Therefore, God in His perfect will made me this particular way."

That would mean that sin means nothing. As Matt Fradd points out, to say that because I’m tempted to look at porn, or I have always had an Irish temper, that is who I am and, therefore, I don’t need to move from those characteristics, or challenge any such quality within myself.

There is something positive about taking on board the admonition that goes back at least to Socrates (died 15 February 399 BC): Know yourself. But that knowledge should not lead to acceptance of all weaknesses or failings.

Acceptance of the reality of my situation is okay to the extent of prompting the thought, “What will I do with my characteristics, positive as well as negative? In what way is God calling me to change, or to build on my positive qualities?”

Rather than saying “This is my identity” we need to turn to the wisdom of the people around us and the wisdom of the Ancients to say, “Okay, what is a wise way forward” versus “I accept this, and accepting it means that I act on it.” The latter is so destructive. It lets us say, “God made me this way so I have a justification for anything I do or don’t do”. We don't grow as a person.

Twisting shame into celebration

The better way is to now bring it to the Lord. Often, what's inside us is a cause of shame. So we should not twist that experience of shame into a celebration of ourselves under the rubric of personal identity. Instead, it’s here that we invite the Lord into it, to do something with it, especially to hold me in the midst of it so that I recognize that I'm not identified with my shame.

Think about the move from shame to pride. What I see as my shame I may elevate as my greatest pride, as opposed to: “This doesn't define me. This may be a part of my experience, it's part of my reality, but it doesn't give me my identity.” In this we make the distinction between experience and identity.

When would you say to a friend, “You have had such and such an experience. Therefore, that is how you will be identified from now on”? People who have suffered through an accident refuse to be labelled "disabled" as if that is the main feature of their identity.

One of the more profound examples is of someone who’s been abused. That affects one's whole life. But, even if a friend has never known any relationship that wasn't riddled with vice, they’ve never known anything that wasn't affected by this, you would never encourage them to use that experience to declare that their identity is only that of victim.

Fradd played the devil's advocate:

But isn’t the Christian belief that homosexual acts – note, not homosexual orientation but the performance of sexual acts on a member of the same sex – are sinful, isn't that belief based on a false Puritanical doctrine?

Can you understand, Fr Mike, that acting this way is actually a beautiful thing? I'm acting out of a good part of me, the truest part of me. It's not a response to a trauma I've received. Rather it's when I began engaging in who I truly am when I came out and told people that this is how I've always been and entered into a loving gay relationship that I found a freedom that I've never had before and that's what you're telling me is wrong.

To equate that with these negative experiences you’ve cited such as anger and abuse is the problem. You have not yet said anything about my positive experience that makes sense.

Schmitz:

I would say two things to that. One is there's a difference between relief and freedom. So, yeah, if I spent a large part of my life living under the shame of, like, “I don't want someone to find this out. I have to wrestle with it privately”; or “Yeah, I'm feeling the weight of this matter" and then I go to this place where I've come out, and I'm met with welcome, met with a community. I meet someone who cares about me and knows this about me.”

So many people's stories are that they just can't let those close to them find this out about them. “If the people who claim to love me found this out they wouldn't love me anymore.” Understandably, when someone comes out and they find welcome, and they find people do love them, that's a relief.

But relief is not the same thing as authentic freedom, and relief is not the same thing as true peace. It can feel like peace, and it can feel like freedom to a certain degree, but is it just that you're no longer living in shame – which is not something that the Lord or the Church was asking you to do in the first place?

Rising above personal inclinations

However, Schmitz says that if a person tells him they do feel a deeper freedom by expressing their same-sex orientation he would not argue with them but would wait for that person’s experience to mature.

In exploring what true freedom looks like, Schmitz gives an example: I’m a Catholic priest but say I don't think God exists and after struggling with the issue I'm gonna come out and declare my unbelief. There would be a community online that would really be thrilled if I would do this and would welcome me and would praise me and I would want to kind of come alongside them … to offset the disapproving voices.

So, yeah, there's that sense of relief I would get but it wouldn't mean freedom as I’m newly bound by the views and culture of those I’ve aligned myself to. Also, it would mean that in this battle I've been engaged in there's a welcome release. It’s as if I say to myself, “I’ve made my decision. I'm no longer fighting this thing. I can rest and lay down my arms.”

Secondly and strangely, there’s more freedom when we don’t surrender when we know we are involved in one area of the spiritual battle that envelops every person no matter their situation in life. What the Church is asking of the person contending with same-sex attraction is the same it asks of the unmarried or married person, which is to control one’s inclinations, to resist the temptation of offending against God’s will as to rightful sexual relations. The Old Testament book of Leviticus provides a good example. In Chapter 18, a total of 16 verses condemn various forms of unlawful sexual relations between a man and a woman, and only one relates to homosexuality.

As to the true nature of freedom, take this example: “I been really having a tough time in my marriage over my family duties and kids at home, and this other woman has been very, very attractive to me. I've never felt this way with my wife. I don’t feel free tied to my wife and the demands of my kids. With the family I have to be someone I don’t want to be, but with my new friend I don’t have to be someone else. With her I get to be really who I really am.”

Let's keep in mind the scenarios used above as we turn to the excellent practice of an examined life.

Homosexual orientation: Okay, there's a certain feeling of freedom, a feeling of release or relief because I've given into something that I was battling with, and I’m enjoying the new experience. But the question is does God want me to be unhappy? Looking at Christ’s own life and his teaching I think that sometimes he would rather I be unhappy and faithful now than happy now and wrong. I cannot ignore what the Church has taught from the beginning, no matter what opinion polls tell me about public attitudes. I acknowledge God’s word in Leviticus 18 and Romans 1, to take two examples.

The other woman: If I continue on my desired path, my achievements in giving into the attraction of my female friend are to be damned and to have destroyed my family. Therefore, my natural appetite for immediate gratification must be controlled. I see I will be more free if I rise above my immediate impulses. My full response to the needs of my family will bring me out of myself. I will grow as a person. I will exercise many of the higher qualities that have lain dormant in me because of my self-focused lifestyle. I will acknowledge that “love” is a verb as well as a noun. I know I have to die to myself if I want to be close to Jesus, who says: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.

Some concluding reflections:

The Church affirms the many same-sex relationships that express generosity and patience and so many other uplifting qualities. Some of these relationships can be categorized as deep friendship rather than the outcome of sexual attraction. Cultural prominence afforded dedication of friend to friend is a feature of past ages that has been lost in the present-day culture.

But the difficulty in the eyes of God, as expressed through the Church, is that a genital sexual relationship between those of homosexual orientation, as with any sexual relations outside marriage, is where the love stops and the “me” creeps in.

Those who experience a same-sex attraction should know that Christians can hold these two truths in their hearts at the same time:

1. For the person involved, a same-sex attraction is a very profound part of them and it is to be received and respected.

2. Genital sexual relations outside of the marriage of a woman and a man are seriously wrong because such behaviour is not in accord with the complementary nature of the bodies God gives us. When it comes down to it, God is God and I’m not!

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Recognising spiritual reality helps us grow

Graphic by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

In past eras, people had the mindset whereby they were not masters but participants in the world, that there were more dimensions to the world than the mere material that they could touch and see and exploit. Their understanding of reality was far broader than that within modern "advanced" mentality. This is just one more example of how humankind can lose the thread over time, so that the garment of civilisation falls apart. This has been seen in the collapse of the Roman empire and the ensuing Dark Ages, with the devastating wars after the Reformation, in Marxist states, and in the stultifying impact of Wokeism.

In brief, the worldview of people past and present had and has significance as to the nature of the human person and how we should live.

In a recent post on his Dreher's Diary blog (paywalled), author and cultural observer Rod Dreher delves into value of  worldview that incorporates enchantment, by which he means the world is  "charged with spiritual force and pregnant with ultimate meaning—because of the Incarnation". 

He quotes theologian Hans Boersma, who cites the state of mind of the Church fathers and medieval theologians:

The supernatural was not a distinct or separate realm of being that superimposed itself onto an independent and autonomous realm of nature. Instead, the supernatural was simply the divine means to bring created realities of time and space to their appointed end in Christ. Therefore, created realities participated in the heavenly mystery of Christ as their sacramental reality. Access to truth means sacramental participation in the unfathomable mystery of Christ.

Unlike today, it was a matter of participating in the truth, which meant "to be mastered by it rather than mastering it". That way of living with truth involves being open to the experience of "enchantment".

How the world is “enchanted”, that is, "charged with spiritual force and [...] meaning", is explored in Boersma's book, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving Of A Sacramental Tapestry (2011). 

To pick up on that term, an appreciation of sacramental reality can transform a person's life through the acceptance that God is invisible but can communicate with humans through everything He has enabled in and through us, e.g. food, music, work, family life, friendship, the natural world, our intellectual endeavours.

"Sacramental or Scientistic?" is the title of an article on a website of a Catholic university. The article features some thoughts of the wise on what we call enchantment, which is to be distinguished from pantheism: 

Richard Wagamese (1955–2017) is a beloved writer from Wabaseemoong First Nation (in current-day Canada). His life was transformed by returning to his Ojibwe family and culture after being separated from them for most of his young life. In his final book Embers, he shares meditations, reflections, and prayers that came to him during times of ritual and morning silence. He writes:

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.

Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh (died January 22, 2022) steps into the Christian realm:

If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos. Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, the cloud and the great earth in the bread. . . . The whole cosmos has come together in order to bring to you this piece of bread. Eat it in such a way that you become alive, truly alive. Eat in such a way that the Holy Spirit becomes an energy within you and then the piece of bread that Jesus gives you will stop being a simple idea, or a notion.

The late Christian writer Rachel Held Evans offers this perspective:

This is the purpose of the sacraments, of the Church—to help us see, to point to the bread and wine, the orchids and the food pantries, the post-funeral potlucks and the post-communion dance parties, and say: pay attention, this stuff matters; these things are holy. 

We grow when we recognise that the world is an enchanted place. This can be expressed this way:

The Christian sacramental vision, the true sight given us by God, reveals the world and our path through it as adventurous, dangerous, beautiful, challenging, meaningful, momentous, mysterious, and ultimately all that our hearts ache for.

Apart from the touch of Christ, we are blind. We think we see, but our vision is distorted, and we mistake real things for unreal ones, and false things for true. We need to have our sight healed and restored. Those two blind men who called to Jesus were given a key piece of wisdom: the wisdom to know that they were blind. "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). What a good prayer to make along with those blind men to the Giver of all good gifts: “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

The beauty of the visible world speaks of God’s power and goodness: “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Visible things are signposts and roads that penetrate to invisible realities.

For Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd, "God [is] the hidden force that holds the universe together":

But it’s not just a centripetal force that holds everything in place. There is complexity and beauty to this force. Have you noticed that the spiral pattern is found in everything from a spinning galaxy to tornados to spiral vortex patterns from electron waves? You will find spiral patterns in seashells and pine cones, fiddleheads and flowers. Scientists have determined that this spiral pattern best allows for both growth and stability—two forces that are essential for life. . . . God’s signature imprinted on the universe. 

However, beyond God sustaining us within the universe, God is active in our lives, individually and as a community/society. The scientistic, materialistic and self-absorbed worldview of people in large parts of the world—not everywhere, fortunately—makes it difficult for them, because of their impaired vision, to accept that God shapes and reshapes our lives, drawing us to Him should we accept the invitation. 

We of the "developed" world would do well to take note of the spiritual depth of our forebears and countercultural contemporaries. The Russian novel Laurus (2016), which made quite a splash in the West, aimed to capture the sentiments of 15th Century Russians, and in doing so, brings to life what it means to be alert to God at work in human affairs:

And everyone was surprised at what had happened and they praised God in heaven and His earthly oil lamp, Laurus. 

Or this:

. . . just as people suddenly awaken on a lovely day, see the sun is already high, contemplate its glints fluttering on the floor and the silver of a cobweb in a sunbeam, and weep tears of gratitude. 

Or this: 

O friend, I do not question the necessity of time. We simply need to remember that only the material world needs time. 

The novel has a prologue, which includes this exchange:

So why did you choose medieval history?

It's hard to say... Maybe because historians in the Middle Ages were unlike historians these days. They always look for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events. It's like they didn't notice the direct connection between events. Or didn't attach much significance to it. 

But how can you explain the world without seeing the connections? said Alexandra, surprised.

They were looking above the everyday and seeing higher connections. Besides, time connected all events, even though people didn't consider that connection reliable.

If we are wise, each of us can enjoy the multiple dimensions of our life, our world, not looking for reassurance alone—though spiritual awareness offers that to us—but acknowledging the foundation of reality.  

Ω Delve deeper into the nature of our enchanted existence through the useful website here. 

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Personhood does not depend on size

9-Week Human Embryo. Ed Uthman. CC BY 2.0

People who defend legal abortion often admit that the unborn are technically “human” but claim they are not “persons.” These nebulous arguments can be seductive and are popular with high school and college students who identify as “pro-choice.” However, one of the best answers to these arguments goes like this:

“We only question the personhood of someone we wish to harm.”

Try to think of a time when a human being’s personhood was questioned for a motive other than using, marginalizing, harming, or killing him. From American slavery to the Nazi holocaust, the whole point of questioning the personhood of others is to deny them human rights. It’s a rhetorical (and arbitrary) technique used to exclude rather than include human beings. [Do we want "inclusion" or not?]

Natural law principles forbid killing innocent human beings or treating them as if they weren’t really human, and the simple truth is that all human beings are persons, no exceptions.

Abortion is a human rights issue. Stephen Schwartz is a philosopher who shows, through non-religious reasoning, that none of these differences between born and unborn humans deprives any human being of basic rights. He summarizes his argument with the acronym SLED:

S – Size: A baby in the womb might be tiny, but how big do you have to be to be a person? And who decides? A baby in the womb is the exact size he or she is supposed to be for his or her age. A person’s intrinsic dignity should never be determined by his or her size.

L – Level of Development: Unborn babies can’t think like you or I do, but neither can newborn babies or some adults with disabilities. Feeling pain or perceiving experiences (what is called “sentience”) also doesn’t make us human persons; after all, rats and pigeons are sentient. Our value and our human rights come not from what we can do, but simply from what we are: human beings.

E – Environment: A baby in the womb isn’t born yet, but so what? Our location cannot change our value or who we are.

D – Degree of Dependency: You’ll hear it said, “It can’t live without the mother!” But that’s an argument against abortion! It makes no sense that we consider it despicable to abandon a newborn baby who cannot live without total dependence on another, but justifiable to kill an unborn baby who cannot live without total dependence on another. A civilized society protects those who are weaker and more vulnerable; we don’t authorize their killings.

We shouldn't be fooled or intimidated. The abortion advocates’ murky philosophical discussion of “personhood” is not a noble or nuanced search for what is true about the human person. It’s simply an excuse for one group of humans to dehumanize, oppress, and kill another group of humans. When faced with these arguments, simply ask, “Why does the difference between born and unborn humans matter? Shouldn’t we protect all human beings no matter how different they are from us?”

Ω Adapted from Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues, by Trent Horn and Leila Miller.

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Kids tragic victims of Western culture

Photo: PxHere

Mental health problems among young people in Britain are a public health crisis, says Dr Max Pemberton, who works full-time as a psychiatrist in the National Health Service. This is his assessment of what life means for incredibly high numbers of young people:

An epidemic of mental health problems affecting the young is becoming a full-scale public health emergency, with new data showing that more than a million children needed treatment for serious mental health problems in the past year.

The data also showed a startling increase in the number of under-18s admitted to hospital with serious eating disorders — a jump of 82 per cent in two years.

As an eating disorders specialist, I have seen first hand the increase in the number of patients being referred to my clinic, as well as those increasingly unwell patients for whom hospital admission is now the only option.

 As to the main cause for what he calls "this terribly sad situation" he identifies a lack of parental control and guidance of young people's use of social media:

The first [cause] is the rise of smartphones and social media. According to a survey conducted in 2021, 58 per cent of children aged from eight to 11 have smartphones — and 89 per cent of UK children aged eight to 17 had their own social media profiles.

We all know that images of models and celebrities in adverts are airbrushed in order to sell products, but increasingly this is also now the case for images posted by individuals, some of whom tweak and alter pictures using filtering and editing apps.

This means young children and teens are being bombarded with images that appear to have been taken spontaneously but, in reality, have been manipulated to create impossibly perfect faces and bodies.

No wonder young people feel under increasing pressure to copy these unrealistic images — with the result they are more likely to diet or work out to change their own body shape. In those who are susceptible, often due to underlying psychological and emotional difficulties, this can develop into an eating disorder.

I worked in eating disorders for ten years and many of my young patients told me they'd become obsessed with images they saw online, particularly things such as 'thigh gaps' (a space at the top of the thighs) on people's Instagram accounts.

Yet they entirely failed to realise that only a tiny fraction of the population naturally look like this, and that many of the images had been digitally manipulated.

Young boys need fathers

Eating disorders are not a minor matter. Dr Pemberton highlights heartrending statistics:

 ... [E]ating disorders have the highest mortality of any mental illness, and one in five of those with a disorder will die from it.

That is a horrendous statistic — yet people are having to wait years in order to get the treatment they need. 

Therefore, it is a mark of shame for British society that attention at government level, nor within the public as a whole, is not given to this emergency. Dr Pemberton emphasises that health resources provided are inadequate, with "shamefully long waiting lists for those who need help the most".

It is a scandal that clinicians working in services for the most unwell patients are powerless to do anything except watch as they deteriorate to the extent they need hospital admission.

  Back to the role of parents in this social catastrophe. Dr Pemberton offers advice:

So what can parents do? Find out who your children are following on social media and why; and encourage them to unfollow those people who aren't portraying real bodies positively.

Parents who suspect a child is affected by this disorder should push as hard as they can for referrals to specials services. He suggests getting support from eating disorder organisations such as the British group BEAT.

Finally, there is an excellent book, Getting Better Bite By Bite by Professor Janet Treasure, which can also help.

But the question also arises as to why increasing numbers of children have "underlying psychological and emotional difficulties", to use Dr Pemberton's words, which make them susceptible to unbalanced influence by social media, and thus, to eating disorders.

He goes some way to answering that question in another item in his newspaper column, where he features actor Hugh Jackman's affection for his father, who had recently died. He reports:

Jackman said: 'My mother left when I was eight, so my father raised us. He taught me really great values. A lot of who I am today is because of him.'

I've no doubt that it must have been incredibly painful to lose his father, but I hope he can take some solace in having had such a wonderful relationship. So many other men, unfortunately, cannot say the same.

All too often, families split up and the father drifts off, but the damage caused by this loss of a role model can last for ever.

I'll probably get pilloried for saying it, but after seeing troubled young men for years, my conclusion is that young boys need a father. 

Despite the fashionable antifamily sentiment that Dr Pemberton refers to, hands-on parenting by a male and a female parent are certainly the foundation of a society that is truly protective of its children, providing them, by means of a strong attitude of social solidarity, the resources and safeguards that healthy physical and mental growth demands.

Conversely, it is becoming increasingly plain to see that the so-called progressives of Western society are not the heroes of the era, but are cowards who prefer to militate for soft, culturally virtuous, goals rather than do the heavy lifting of confronting the corporate and political powers over the creation of conditions that support family life, and over the removal of conditions that perpetuate inequality.

To my mind, the economic and social injustice prevalent in US society that should be the progressives' target was made vivid by the scandalous fact that railway workers, who in November had declared strike action over stalled negotiations on pay and conditions, were left after the legislated settlement without any paid sick leave. Any self-respecting social movement should hang its head in shame at that state of affairs existing in the 21st Century.  

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There is no right side of history

Niccolo Macchiavelli ... saw role for political myth-making. Photo PxHere 

"I’m a political progressive. The idea that 'history' is on our side—which we’re sure to hear during this 118th Congress—is a dangerous myth," declares William Deresiewicz in his Free Press article on January 2, 2023.

He makes some good points:

The phrase embodies a specific view of history, the idea that the course of human events—with whatever stops and starts and temporary setbacks—traces an inevitable upward path. The notion dates back to the nineteenth century, if not earlier: to Hegel and Marx, to the liberal or “Whig” historians, to the Progressive movement itself. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

And those on the “wrong side” of history? “History will judge them”—will judge Donald Trump, will judge Bill Barr, will judge Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling, will judge all the bads.

But history does not have sides. It does not take sides. The progressive view of history is not an observation. It’s a theory. It’s a myth that takes its place alongside other, different, historical myths: the belief that history is cyclical; the belief that history represents a long decline from some imagined Golden Age; the belief that we are heading towards apocalypse, or Messiah, or both.

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I have lived long enough to know that history is perfectly capable of slamming into reverse and backing up at 50 miles an hour. It happened with Ronald Reagan. It happened with Vladimir Putin. It happened with Trump.

Yet who’s to say what constitutes “reverse”? Who’s to say where history is headed, even in the long run? To take but one example: In The Great Exception, the historian Jefferson Cowie argues that the New Deal and its progeny—the liberal heyday from FDR to LBJ—was not the norm from which we’ve lamentably swerved. It was itself an anomaly, the result of a unique and unrepeatable confluence of circumstances. The norm, he says, is what preceded and followed it. “It might be more accurate to think of the ‘Reagan revolution,’” Cowie writes, “as the ‘Reagan restoration.’”

As for “history will judge”—the moral side of the progressive myth—it is no less a delusion. “History,” of course, means the future, and “judge” means condemn. But to say that the future will condemn x or y is to assume that the future will look like “us”—that by the time the future rolls around (whenever that may be) everybody will agree with us.

Which means that everybody will agree, full stop. But when has everybody ever agreed? When have there not been “sides”? After all, we are the future to those who came before us. And I can tell you that in the 1980s, the left was just as certain that Reagan and his henchmen would be judged by history. Yet here we are, and half the country still believes he farted rainbows. 

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Why does this matter? First of all, because it makes for complacency. History, in the progressive myth, is a kind of plus factor in political struggle: an invisible force, like something out of physics, that adds its strength to ours. History is on our side—we can’t lose! For decades now, Democrats have been assuring themselves that the coming of a majority-minority America will guarantee a future liberal hegemony. Latinos in particular are supposedly the cavalry that’s riding to the rescue. Well, now it’s beginning to look as if they just might ride in the other direction. As for millennials—a vast electoral cohort that currently skews progressive, and thus the latest leftist messianic hope—people have a funny way of getting more conservative as they get older.

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 The progressive myth of history also makes for arrogance and condescension. I said that the notion of history as a kind of force that blows through human affairs is like something out of physics—but really, it’s like something out of Christianity. It is a secularized version of the Holy Spirit. “History is on our side” is a secularized version of “God is on our side.” “History will judge them” is an update of “God will judge them.” To believe in the Holy Spirit is to believe that it acts through—that it fills—some people but not others. To believe in “history,” in progress as a metaphysical principle, is to believe in the existence of a progressive class: the ones who push history forward, the ones who are filled with the future.

In other words, us. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Which means that we have the right—the duty—to teach others how to live. How to speak, think, eat, spend, make love, raise their children, vote. You know how enraging evangelical preachers can be, how insulting it is to hear them talk about how sinful and benighted the secular are? That is how most people, including a lot of rank-and-file Democrats, feel about the self-anointed progressive class.

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... [T]his is where the bad behavior enters in. As soon as you declare a “crisis,” an “emergency”—another word you hear a lot these days—you give yourself permission to suspend the rules: to bury a story, to suppress dissent, to betray the principles you’re supposed to stand for. History has charged you with a special duty, after all; the future rests upon your shoulders.

No, it hasn’t. No, it doesn’t. Talk of the right side of history is, at bottom, propaganda—an attempt to persuade us that the largest issues have already been decided. 

As the new political season begins, let us not forget that nothing is, in fact, inevitable. The future is open. Let no one presume to foreclose it.

It's a shame that history isn't given much attention by higher education institutions and their clients these days:

'That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach' — Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World;  (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963).

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