By Selwyn Duke

Perhaps some of you have seen the document
titled, “Manifesto: Together facing a new totalitarianism,” which is
being disseminated widely on the Web. Originally published in the
Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, of Mohammed cartoon fame,
it’s a vow to resist Islamism signed by 12 individuals hailed as “brave
intellectuals.” I read it, and while I have no idea whether or not the
signatories are brave, their musings certainly illustrate why modern
intellectuals are sorely lacking in intellectualism.

The proclamation’s primary flaw is evident in the first two sentences:

“After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world
now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers,
journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious
totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and
secular values for all [emphasis mine].”

 

Our first move should not be to judge their values, but to ask
what they are. After all, the ideologies they implicitly condemn
involve secular values. (It’s interesting to note that while they
mention both Naziism and fascism, they would cite only Stalinism, not communism.
Is it because they believe it has not been overcome? Or is there
another reason?) As for Stalinism, the decidedly more Christian United
States condemned it as godless. Yet, I don’t know of anyone at the time
who proclaimed the goal to be one of religious values for all.

Nor would I have supported such an aim.

My point is not that religious values are necessarily bad, that
secular values are necessarily bad, or even that they’re necessarily
different. It is that “secular” and “religious” are not creeds but
categories. As such, they tell us nothing about quality, only type. 

It’s much like announcing that you want drugs for all; drugs can
be legal or illegal, can cure or corrupt. Thus, if no specificity is
forthcoming, I’ll have to do some profiling to discern what is being
peddled. Is the purveyor Pfizer or the Cali Cartel?

As far as these brave intellectuals go, they’re more Pablo Escobar than Pablo Alvaro.
They have not only imbibed the Kool-Aid of the West’s secular academy
but also mixed it, making me wonder. Of what secular values do they
speak? Are they the ones whose ascendancy seems nigh? After all, to wax
Churchillian, from Saskatchewan to Stockholm, an iron curtain has been
dropped across the tongue, with hate speech laws muzzling mouths like
burkas cover women. Increasingly in the West, people are being punished
– and sometimes even imprisoned – by secular authorities for
criticizing homosexuality, using politically incorrect terms, engaging
in frank discussion about legitimate group differences, or even just
expressing pro-life or creationist beliefs. So since these brave
intellectuals also vowed to fight “totalitarianism” and “obscurantism”
(the resistance to the increase and spread of knowledge) and said that
“we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people,”
I wonder if they will oppose the secular values that contravene these
very goals.

If you think my stridency a bit disproportionate, understand
that the manifesto and its authors represent the very philosophy that
imperiled us in the first place, the one that even now is tearing down
the walls of western civilization. They state,

“We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting
that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to
equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for
cultures and traditions.”

The above sentence contains a serious philosophical
contradiction. The “cultural relativism” the writers bemoan is a
corollary of “moral relativism,” and both are corollaries of the
secularism they extol.

Let’s start from the top. Secularism involves the idea that
there is no God and, therefore, no moral Truth (something above man
that determines right and wrong). This makes man the author of
morality, reducing it to a reflection of consensus opinion, which makes
morals relative (for a more comprehensive explanation, read my piece The Nature of Right and Wrong).
Now, if values are a product of opinion, it cannot rightly be said that
some are better than others; the most we can say is some find favor
with us while others don’t. If this is the case, it follows that the
different values espoused by different cultures cannot render one
superior to another, just different in terms of “tastes.” And this
position, my friends, is cultural relativism.

The secularism of these “intellectuals” is a philosophy that
collapses upon itself. Its adherents would use it as a rallying cry to
fight jihad, seemingly oblivious to the fact that its relativism draws
a moral equivalence between militants and missionaries. It is the very
spiritual disease that has made us see everything as shades of gray,
blinding us to darkness and light so that we neither defend the latter
nor fight the former. How likely is it that you’ll recognize evil after
embracing a philosophy stating it doesn’t exist? And why would you
fight what you don’t recognize?

Moreover, secularism’s relativism has blinded scores of
millions of westerners to the superiority of their own culture and to
the threat posed by the introduction of incongruous and hostile
cultural elements. At the same time, motivated by its antipathy for the
West’s formative faith, Christianity, it has demonized the West to a
point where many consider it the bane of man. And why would you take
pains to preserve that which you think worthless if not destructive?

To anyone protesting my indictment of secularism, I will point
out that it isn’t authentic Christians who created the “Hey, hey, ho,
ho, western culture’s gotta go” mentality. No, that’s the handiwork of
secularists in colleges, the media, popular culture and leftist
organizations.

Make no mistake, this manifesto is as ideologically and
philosophically chauvinistic as any jihadist screed. And if you took
the document and replaced “secular” and “secularism” with “Christian”
and “Christianity,” something similar is exactly what you’d be accused
of.

Lest I be misunderstood, I wouldn’t shrink from condemning the
Dark Faith, but I also don’t relish the prospect of helping one dragon
swallow another and grow bigger and more menacing through digestion.

And that’s the point. I write this for those in my camp, my
traditional brethren who share my concern for our civilization. Know
that these people are not our friends. Sure, we may use them when
possible to fight the Dark Faith, as warfare makes even stranger
bedfellows than politics. After all, anyone who remembers WWII knows it
wouldn’t be the first time we allied ourselves with leftists to fight a
common enemy. But never forget that while they may puff up their chests
at times and mouth some fashionable platitudes about combating tyranny,
they are still Islam’s fifth column in our midst. Their Dark Philosophy
has more in common with the Dark Faith than with anything we hold dear;
for instance, both endeavor to destroy Christianity and the West. Of
course, one difference is that the secularists’ suicidal tendencies
aren’t as rational as the Islamists’, as they don’t believe in an
afterlife, and, even if they did, among secular women it’s virtually
impossible to find 72 virgins.

Another commonality they share is that both stifle dissent
contradicting their world view in nations under their dominion,
punishing those who speak against their dogma. Another difference is
that the Islamists don’t yet have us under their dominion; the
secularists do. They are the ones stilling our tongues.

In case you’re still unconvinced about the secularists’
tyrannical nature and facilitation of Islamism, I’ll make one more
point. When Canadian Mark Harding
(and there have been other such victims) was punished for criticizing
Islam, how could his plight have been best characterized?

It was secular authorities punishing Christian dissent in deference to Islamist sensitivities.

Need I say more?   

It’s ironic that while the manifesto’s writers ask that a
“critical spirit” be “exercised” against all “dogmas,” they also make
that call for “secular values for all.” My response is to quote G.K.
Chesterton:

“In truth, there are only two kinds of people, those who accept
dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.”

I have no interest in secular dogmas. I will never expend one
solitary drop of blood, sweat or ink, at home or abroad, to make the
world safe for them. My battles concern two things secularists fancy
antiquated notions. That is, I fight for good and against evil, nothing
more, nothing less.

You know, after suffering the vacuous musings of this deficient
dozen, I know why Jesus didn’t choose twelve scholars. No, only the
fools of modernity elevate intellectuals above wise men.