While I understand the impulse behind the RETVRN movement, I think your post lays out the fundamental flaw. We cannot return to something we don’t even truly understand. Return to the traditional Christianity of centuries ago? Our minds wouldn’t grasp it as they did, our civic sensibilities wouldn’t allow for it.
And our author lays out the elephant in the room, the factor that materially distinguishes our present circumstances from the past: mass immigration. A call to return to traditional Christian theocracy necessarily amounts to a call for ethnic/ideological cleansing, given the huge numbers of people now in every Western country for whom such a regime would be anathema. Either that or secession of very small polities where some degree of cultural homogeny can still be found. And you can bet such small polities will be attacked relentlessly as white supremacist domestic terror hotbeds.
Ultimately, it is difficult to imagine anything positive emerging from the current milieu. The most likely candidate looks to me like Brave New World style transhumanist totalitarianism. But without the travel, soma, and abundant sex. Instead, these aspects of Brave New World will be replaced with simulacra on screens. Perhaps small communities committed to some higher purpose will grow and thrive. But as we’ve seen during Covid, TPTB do not take kindly to groups opting out of their destructive social engineering schemes.
Well, at least they've played that card and we've seen first hand what the technocratic totalitarian world will look like. A little taster to get the ball rolling.
Unfortunately, for "them" it appears that their operation is having the opposite effect and a sizable resistance is forming among those that prefer to maintain basic rights like bodily integrity and other such luxuries.
We'll just have to wait and see if this resistance is sufficient to carve out a new path that doesn't involve permanent lockdowns and mandatory telescreen watching in between booster appointments as the fossil fuel age winds down with no practical replacement in sight.
I have a feeling that we'll be introduced to some surprises in the near future that rewrite the entire narrative much like a reveal in a novel when all appears hopeless.
I think it's a brilliant piece, thank you, even while agreeing (somewhat) with Doctor Hammer's criticisms. I'm tangentially aware of this history through the study of some legal history - specifically western legal history - while in law school, continuing throughout my career lo these last 2.5 decades. There were certainly other, earlier events that I would add in, particularly the growth of a merchant class from as far back as the 1200-1500s. The need for enforcing of promises (the law of contract), the King's courts, the common law, all had a far greater contribution to this than what you've done (again, a gentle criticism - limits of space and thought).
Saying that, I agree with you - you've hit upon a vein here, something important, perhaps even profound.
I'm reminded of a number of other incidents where these things have reared their ugly heads. I was a pilot on a ship off the coast of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY, as acronymized it while on deployment) in 1995 when that all was going to complete shit. Neighbors were murdering neighbors, rape camps were established, attempted genocide was going on, etc. And there were no good guys.
The problem with "sectarian" violence is that it doesn't have any possible check on the destruction of The Other. There is no Secular notion of Mercy that is built into Christianity, at least not in the current times.
I don't know what the answer is, but "keep your powder dry" (i.e. stock up on ammo and necessaries) would seem to be prudent advice (always, under any regime not kindly disposed to Me and Mine).
One other, perhaps saving grace, is that the Iron Laws of Economics will eventually assert themselves. You can only print funny money for so long and rob from future Peter to line the pockets of current Paul before it gives up the ghost. I mean to emphasize the possibility fedgov collapsing - and perhaps some new confederation of states may well be a result.
Our fedgov more resembles the idiots in Brussels and at the UN than it does an honest representative government anymore, so there are many, many ways this can all go.
I don't disagree entirely with Doctor Hammer, perhaps a good way of putting it would be that the Reformation and its aftermath put fuel to the fire of a historical and mental development, but to put fuel to something, that something must exist in the first place. There is also no doubt that bureaucratization, legal developments etc. had many precedents. It also was not the first sectarian or religious war obviously. Still, the specific cocktail at the time, and some of the special features of it all (such as that it was not a conflict along existing ethnic/religious lines, but new ones), have no doubt played a big, even decisive role for Western history. I'm certainly not the first to notice that: Christin (whom I cited here) arrived at it from a legal/administrative perspective, Carl Schmitt from the perspective of the history of ideas; and it's a pretty standard take that Hobbes was reacting to the religious wars, and that his abandoning of the divine right of the king in favor of a secular "contract" idea was born out of this context, establishing a massively influential proto-liberal piece of thought.
And I agree with you: drawing historical parallels can lead to good insights, but at the end of the day, we don't know how all of this will play out. My guess is we all will be hugely surprised in many ways.
The answer will come with the conflict and unfolding resolution between the purveyors of gay pride/worship of blacks (Kneeling Nancy)/feminism vs. Russians-Chinese-Islam-Hinduism, I would think.
Russia kicked out Pussy Riot and associated NGOs. China kicked out (supposedly) 500K Africans from Guangdong, Hindus maintain a racially oriented caste system and used the British to cause a separation with Islam, Islam enslaves the infidel.
I agree with you that we should think historically and contextually.
Something in me struggles to agree with this piece though. I think there are timeless truths. Doesn’t mean they have to be abstract. (To love God and love your neighbour). Yet I agree with you on the ideological abstraction sperg energy that is around at the moment.
I think a consideration of supernatural good and evil would have helped.
I know what you mean, and any sort of historical relativism somehow feels insulting to our minds. Part of it may be because of our own Sperg tendencies, part of it because it's not the whole story. However, having thought about this conundrum for many years now, I have found this tension to be rather productive--forces you to think things through, and to ask yourself: what in my beliefs is universal, and what is just the particular internalized angle of our time? At the end of the day, both angles--universalism and historical relativism--seem worth exploring.
Yes i like to try comprehend both the universal and particular. If you love the truth with your heart then you see this tension is not a bad thing. (As you say its productive) I like to think of a pendulum. It swings left to right, hot to cold etc...but there is always a third element and thats the still/fixed part, which is held in place by someone. Without that, the pendulum cannot swing. (Another way of saying this; life cannot exist without God, we cannot say yes or no without God. God is the truth, and all life depends on truth)
So relativism is a part of life, but I think it’s a mistake (and actually evil) to place it on the altar, so to speak. (Not saying you are doing this)
Perhaps one way of putting it: that which is universal, the hidden, the ting-as-such, is beyond words. So all we can ever hope for is hinting at it, circling around it, implicating it. But this can only be done in the historical context - hence every generation needs to find new ways of doing it, of expressing it. This sort of "hinting" depends on the context.
Yes. I see what you mean. However I do think truth has been revealed historically.
I believe the thing as such can be put into words as the person Jesus Christ. each generation is invited to seek and love truth - and healthy relationships are dynamic/interactive. A healthy relationship keeps the “living word” alive as opposed to the tyranny of the “dead letter” so to speak.
So I am with you all the way up to the point of only being able to hint at truth...as I think it has been revealed and is available to all.
Thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable piece. The part that stood out to me and made me want to jump in was when you mentioned universal truth and then somehow dismissed the concept because from an intellectual perspective this is something that cannot be pinned down and shared by the current smorgasbord of factions and disparate cults made up of scatterbrained monkey people that suffer from historical amnesia.
I disagree. I think that universal truth is in fact the only thing that actually exists. The intellectual ramblings of human beings make everything so complicated by comparison. Just because philosophers throughout history have attempted to mine the depths of their intellects and come up with some kind of clunky social equation that will satisfy the needs of the many doesn't mean that they actually hit the jackpot or even that they got anywhere close to experiencing the oneness of all that is.
And certainly not through the practice of thinking about things. That has never lead to anywhere in particular because by it's nature thinking remains on the surface of life and cannot access the deeper roots from whence the thoughts emerged.
Only through the practice of transcending (and certain drugs) can people access the deeper levels of existence and experience the true nature of life and all that is.
Excellent piece. Thanks. I've long intuited the religious wars were the drivers of the liberal ethos. As you so aptly point out the liberal ethos has been twisting in a dialectic, imo for at least 100 years. The self imploding illiberalism raging against an illiberal turtle, down a never ending dialectic.
In the end the question is where the buck stops? Who is the sovereign? The constitutional strings no longer seem to hold tight the peace. Naked power and collective coercion are used to uphold the latest liberal ethos. In my dreams the political philosophy of Johannes Althusius, local sovereignty, would have taken the day from the pre war era. Alas... we ended up with a Grotius nation state structure.
A good essay but it does not seem to take into account that demographically the Western white man is now a minority and has always been so, and that two thirds of the human population are not Christians.
Furthermore the old order such as it was is now thoroughly dead and incapable of providing the necessary pattern to enable something new to emerge.
The old order (such as it was) essentially destroyed itself via the two world wars, WW2 finished off the process of disintegration/destruction triggered off by WWl The two wars were in effect a spectacular dramatization of a collective fraternal psychosis.
In his 1922 poem The Wasteland T S Eliot described the then situation.
At another level all human beings both individually and collectively are in many stages of psycho-social development both in Western countries (in particular) and in the world altogether.
See for instance the Spiral Dynamics model of such development.
Please also check out this website which (perhaps) provides a comprehensive set of resources to enable/empower the necessary (quite urgent) cultural renewal.
For an English audience, your argument has a few flaws, primarily that the history you cite is very different from that of the English speaking peoples (I assume, since I don't know German history so well.) Fundamentally the issue is that the separation of church and state as two parallel law givers that often cooperate was more deeply entrenched, long before the Reformation. Although even there Henry VIII was a bit of an early adopter of the notion that the king, people and religion are movable parts, not one entity.
In general, it is also worth noting that the Reformation was hardly the first instance of peoples with differing religions living under one secular ruler. Medieval to Renaissance Europe is almost odd in how dominant Catholic Christianity was, although not without many heresies and excommunications. So we ought to be careful when reasoning from the notion that the Reformation brought something new to humanity.
Further, in the English cannon, the liberal system or liberal project is fundamentally a project of Hume and Smith, the latter being specifically the source of the word being used by later legislators in Britain who were referred to as Liberals. (To my understanding; I am about 85% sure there.) Again, this might vary compared to the situation in Germany, but Smith is not only addressing religious differences but also question of speech, what determines proper behavior, slavery and of course all the political economy questions. At the same time the American Revolution and its thinkers were using these ideas as well, hence the Bill of Rights starting out with freedom of religion and speech.
I suppose all that is to say, from the standpoint of the classical liberal from the Scottish and American Enlightenment tradition, one has to ask "What are you talking about? That isn't the history we know." :)
I get it that history is never clear-cut; you could easily tell a different tale than the one I told, especially since it was so broad. Nonetheless, I think it captures something real.
The importance of the Reformation wasn't so much that it led to different religions living under one ruler, but rather the quickness and violence with which it shook and changed so much, and especially that it cut right through cities, villages and even families. Perhaps there's nothing new under the sun, but then again, it was a major development that people reacted to, first with bloodshed, then with legal-administrative innovation, which changed a whole lot.
As for the British angle, ok, but Hume and gang were later, and the whole Reformation/bloodshed/pacification business clearly had an impact on them, too: it shaped the context in which they wrote and thought. I mean, Hobbes was clearly grappling with the implications of all that, while in France no less. I would suggest we should see all that as a larger historical development, which perhaps was bound to happen in some way, Reformation or not, but it clearly was a major catalyst here.
BTW, calling anybody from that time "secular ruler" seems to be a bit of an anachronism :)
Well secular ruler is an anachronism, yes, but only because they weren’t as big on defining things back in the day. There was certainly a known distinction between the king and the church, otherwise phrases like “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” would make little sense in context. The distinction is important, as it highlights the fact that the king was not the font of moral authority, and had in fact to limit his behavior to within the bounds of propriety.
I absolutely agree that the reformation and 30 years war deeply affected Hume and Smith, but that is only a part of the system of liberty, and not an inherently new one historically. These were not entirely new concerns at that time, other people’s and places had dealt with them, including Europeans. In other words, liberalism was not the product merely of a particular set of circumstances in Europe around the 30 years war, but something with roots stretching way back and addressing a very broad range of questions.
Sorry, but your argument is unconvincing. Liberalism is the cause of modern Man's misery. Period.
A society will strictly operate according to the political formula established by its elites. And that political formula will face persistent demands to legitimate its authority. In the case of Liberalism, it will/has inevitably relent[ed] to the ceaseless call for more liberty and equality/neutrality (originating in 'blank slatism') in order to remain authoritative; hence, why the shift always moves Left (the most earnest liberals). Any substitute political formula would face its own legitimacy demands. The inherent problem in all political formulae is that clever [aspiring] elites will always look to subvert or purify the system.
It strikes me as strange that you would describe the modern political shift as being more towards "liberty and equality/neutrality." I would have described it as the exact opposite. When I was a young man you couldn't get put in jail for "hate speech," and didn't have to ask permission from the state to be a barber, for instance.
Your liberty to speak your mind must be curbed so that someone else's liberty can be self-actualized. The further away that that individual's chosen identity is from convention, the more protection required. All in the name of liberty and equality (inclusion).
But that is nonsense. One may as well claim to be maximizing the number of trees by burning down the entire forest so that the ashes will nourish new trees. Just because someone mouths the word liberty does not mean they are using the term properly or even coherently. That is generally the problem with leftists, they just say things without regard to how those things relate to reality. Like calling themselves “liberals”, for instance.
Well, I guess it depends on perspective. For individuals who have certain mutable (i.e., religious/ideological attachments, social/economic status, hedonistic/slothful inclinations, etc.) and/or immutable (i.e., race, gender, sexuality) characteristics there are many system benefits—such as freedoms, rights, privileges and equity. For others, like you and me, not so much.
My most difficult red/black pill moment was coming to terms with the fact that there is a significant portion of the population who are dedicated fanatics, and/or are beneficiaries, of the Progressive Project (Liberalism). And every time I begin to think (wishfully) that the Regime is nearing collapse, I remind myself of this fact—and then I sigh.
Quite. We have to be careful that we don’t take their words as real. For some reason they got away with calling themselves liberals I. The late 1800’s and into the 20th century,, but John Kerry or the Clintons are about as liberal as Thulsa Doom is Christian. Using the word for them is drifting into war is peace territory.
While I understand the impulse behind the RETVRN movement, I think your post lays out the fundamental flaw. We cannot return to something we don’t even truly understand. Return to the traditional Christianity of centuries ago? Our minds wouldn’t grasp it as they did, our civic sensibilities wouldn’t allow for it.
And our author lays out the elephant in the room, the factor that materially distinguishes our present circumstances from the past: mass immigration. A call to return to traditional Christian theocracy necessarily amounts to a call for ethnic/ideological cleansing, given the huge numbers of people now in every Western country for whom such a regime would be anathema. Either that or secession of very small polities where some degree of cultural homogeny can still be found. And you can bet such small polities will be attacked relentlessly as white supremacist domestic terror hotbeds.
Ultimately, it is difficult to imagine anything positive emerging from the current milieu. The most likely candidate looks to me like Brave New World style transhumanist totalitarianism. But without the travel, soma, and abundant sex. Instead, these aspects of Brave New World will be replaced with simulacra on screens. Perhaps small communities committed to some higher purpose will grow and thrive. But as we’ve seen during Covid, TPTB do not take kindly to groups opting out of their destructive social engineering schemes.
Well, at least they've played that card and we've seen first hand what the technocratic totalitarian world will look like. A little taster to get the ball rolling.
Unfortunately, for "them" it appears that their operation is having the opposite effect and a sizable resistance is forming among those that prefer to maintain basic rights like bodily integrity and other such luxuries.
We'll just have to wait and see if this resistance is sufficient to carve out a new path that doesn't involve permanent lockdowns and mandatory telescreen watching in between booster appointments as the fossil fuel age winds down with no practical replacement in sight.
I have a feeling that we'll be introduced to some surprises in the near future that rewrite the entire narrative much like a reveal in a novel when all appears hopeless.
Inspired piece of writing. Thank you
I think it's a brilliant piece, thank you, even while agreeing (somewhat) with Doctor Hammer's criticisms. I'm tangentially aware of this history through the study of some legal history - specifically western legal history - while in law school, continuing throughout my career lo these last 2.5 decades. There were certainly other, earlier events that I would add in, particularly the growth of a merchant class from as far back as the 1200-1500s. The need for enforcing of promises (the law of contract), the King's courts, the common law, all had a far greater contribution to this than what you've done (again, a gentle criticism - limits of space and thought).
Saying that, I agree with you - you've hit upon a vein here, something important, perhaps even profound.
I'm reminded of a number of other incidents where these things have reared their ugly heads. I was a pilot on a ship off the coast of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY, as acronymized it while on deployment) in 1995 when that all was going to complete shit. Neighbors were murdering neighbors, rape camps were established, attempted genocide was going on, etc. And there were no good guys.
The problem with "sectarian" violence is that it doesn't have any possible check on the destruction of The Other. There is no Secular notion of Mercy that is built into Christianity, at least not in the current times.
I don't know what the answer is, but "keep your powder dry" (i.e. stock up on ammo and necessaries) would seem to be prudent advice (always, under any regime not kindly disposed to Me and Mine).
One other, perhaps saving grace, is that the Iron Laws of Economics will eventually assert themselves. You can only print funny money for so long and rob from future Peter to line the pockets of current Paul before it gives up the ghost. I mean to emphasize the possibility fedgov collapsing - and perhaps some new confederation of states may well be a result.
Our fedgov more resembles the idiots in Brussels and at the UN than it does an honest representative government anymore, so there are many, many ways this can all go.
Thanks for the read; I've subscribed as a result.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I don't disagree entirely with Doctor Hammer, perhaps a good way of putting it would be that the Reformation and its aftermath put fuel to the fire of a historical and mental development, but to put fuel to something, that something must exist in the first place. There is also no doubt that bureaucratization, legal developments etc. had many precedents. It also was not the first sectarian or religious war obviously. Still, the specific cocktail at the time, and some of the special features of it all (such as that it was not a conflict along existing ethnic/religious lines, but new ones), have no doubt played a big, even decisive role for Western history. I'm certainly not the first to notice that: Christin (whom I cited here) arrived at it from a legal/administrative perspective, Carl Schmitt from the perspective of the history of ideas; and it's a pretty standard take that Hobbes was reacting to the religious wars, and that his abandoning of the divine right of the king in favor of a secular "contract" idea was born out of this context, establishing a massively influential proto-liberal piece of thought.
And I agree with you: drawing historical parallels can lead to good insights, but at the end of the day, we don't know how all of this will play out. My guess is we all will be hugely surprised in many ways.
The answer will come with the conflict and unfolding resolution between the purveyors of gay pride/worship of blacks (Kneeling Nancy)/feminism vs. Russians-Chinese-Islam-Hinduism, I would think.
Russia kicked out Pussy Riot and associated NGOs. China kicked out (supposedly) 500K Africans from Guangdong, Hindus maintain a racially oriented caste system and used the British to cause a separation with Islam, Islam enslaves the infidel.
Thank you for a very interesting article.
I agree with you that we should think historically and contextually.
Something in me struggles to agree with this piece though. I think there are timeless truths. Doesn’t mean they have to be abstract. (To love God and love your neighbour). Yet I agree with you on the ideological abstraction sperg energy that is around at the moment.
I think a consideration of supernatural good and evil would have helped.
I know what you mean, and any sort of historical relativism somehow feels insulting to our minds. Part of it may be because of our own Sperg tendencies, part of it because it's not the whole story. However, having thought about this conundrum for many years now, I have found this tension to be rather productive--forces you to think things through, and to ask yourself: what in my beliefs is universal, and what is just the particular internalized angle of our time? At the end of the day, both angles--universalism and historical relativism--seem worth exploring.
Yes i like to try comprehend both the universal and particular. If you love the truth with your heart then you see this tension is not a bad thing. (As you say its productive) I like to think of a pendulum. It swings left to right, hot to cold etc...but there is always a third element and thats the still/fixed part, which is held in place by someone. Without that, the pendulum cannot swing. (Another way of saying this; life cannot exist without God, we cannot say yes or no without God. God is the truth, and all life depends on truth)
So relativism is a part of life, but I think it’s a mistake (and actually evil) to place it on the altar, so to speak. (Not saying you are doing this)
Perhaps one way of putting it: that which is universal, the hidden, the ting-as-such, is beyond words. So all we can ever hope for is hinting at it, circling around it, implicating it. But this can only be done in the historical context - hence every generation needs to find new ways of doing it, of expressing it. This sort of "hinting" depends on the context.
Yes. I see what you mean. However I do think truth has been revealed historically.
I believe the thing as such can be put into words as the person Jesus Christ. each generation is invited to seek and love truth - and healthy relationships are dynamic/interactive. A healthy relationship keeps the “living word” alive as opposed to the tyranny of the “dead letter” so to speak.
So I am with you all the way up to the point of only being able to hint at truth...as I think it has been revealed and is available to all.
Thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable piece. The part that stood out to me and made me want to jump in was when you mentioned universal truth and then somehow dismissed the concept because from an intellectual perspective this is something that cannot be pinned down and shared by the current smorgasbord of factions and disparate cults made up of scatterbrained monkey people that suffer from historical amnesia.
I disagree. I think that universal truth is in fact the only thing that actually exists. The intellectual ramblings of human beings make everything so complicated by comparison. Just because philosophers throughout history have attempted to mine the depths of their intellects and come up with some kind of clunky social equation that will satisfy the needs of the many doesn't mean that they actually hit the jackpot or even that they got anywhere close to experiencing the oneness of all that is.
And certainly not through the practice of thinking about things. That has never lead to anywhere in particular because by it's nature thinking remains on the surface of life and cannot access the deeper roots from whence the thoughts emerged.
Only through the practice of transcending (and certain drugs) can people access the deeper levels of existence and experience the true nature of life and all that is.
Christian totalitarianism begat secular totalitarianism.
Ideological abstraction is indeed a cover for simply naming names and groups in power ruining everything.
Excellent piece. Thanks. I've long intuited the religious wars were the drivers of the liberal ethos. As you so aptly point out the liberal ethos has been twisting in a dialectic, imo for at least 100 years. The self imploding illiberalism raging against an illiberal turtle, down a never ending dialectic.
In the end the question is where the buck stops? Who is the sovereign? The constitutional strings no longer seem to hold tight the peace. Naked power and collective coercion are used to uphold the latest liberal ethos. In my dreams the political philosophy of Johannes Althusius, local sovereignty, would have taken the day from the pre war era. Alas... we ended up with a Grotius nation state structure.
Thank you.
A good essay but it does not seem to take into account that demographically the Western white man is now a minority and has always been so, and that two thirds of the human population are not Christians.
Furthermore the old order such as it was is now thoroughly dead and incapable of providing the necessary pattern to enable something new to emerge.
The old order (such as it was) essentially destroyed itself via the two world wars, WW2 finished off the process of disintegration/destruction triggered off by WWl The two wars were in effect a spectacular dramatization of a collective fraternal psychosis.
In his 1922 poem The Wasteland T S Eliot described the then situation.
At another level all human beings both individually and collectively are in many stages of psycho-social development both in Western countries (in particular) and in the world altogether.
See for instance the Spiral Dynamics model of such development.
Please also check out this website which (perhaps) provides a comprehensive set of resources to enable/empower the necessary (quite urgent) cultural renewal.
http://newrepublicoftheheart.org/resources
For an English audience, your argument has a few flaws, primarily that the history you cite is very different from that of the English speaking peoples (I assume, since I don't know German history so well.) Fundamentally the issue is that the separation of church and state as two parallel law givers that often cooperate was more deeply entrenched, long before the Reformation. Although even there Henry VIII was a bit of an early adopter of the notion that the king, people and religion are movable parts, not one entity.
In general, it is also worth noting that the Reformation was hardly the first instance of peoples with differing religions living under one secular ruler. Medieval to Renaissance Europe is almost odd in how dominant Catholic Christianity was, although not without many heresies and excommunications. So we ought to be careful when reasoning from the notion that the Reformation brought something new to humanity.
Further, in the English cannon, the liberal system or liberal project is fundamentally a project of Hume and Smith, the latter being specifically the source of the word being used by later legislators in Britain who were referred to as Liberals. (To my understanding; I am about 85% sure there.) Again, this might vary compared to the situation in Germany, but Smith is not only addressing religious differences but also question of speech, what determines proper behavior, slavery and of course all the political economy questions. At the same time the American Revolution and its thinkers were using these ideas as well, hence the Bill of Rights starting out with freedom of religion and speech.
I suppose all that is to say, from the standpoint of the classical liberal from the Scottish and American Enlightenment tradition, one has to ask "What are you talking about? That isn't the history we know." :)
I get it that history is never clear-cut; you could easily tell a different tale than the one I told, especially since it was so broad. Nonetheless, I think it captures something real.
The importance of the Reformation wasn't so much that it led to different religions living under one ruler, but rather the quickness and violence with which it shook and changed so much, and especially that it cut right through cities, villages and even families. Perhaps there's nothing new under the sun, but then again, it was a major development that people reacted to, first with bloodshed, then with legal-administrative innovation, which changed a whole lot.
As for the British angle, ok, but Hume and gang were later, and the whole Reformation/bloodshed/pacification business clearly had an impact on them, too: it shaped the context in which they wrote and thought. I mean, Hobbes was clearly grappling with the implications of all that, while in France no less. I would suggest we should see all that as a larger historical development, which perhaps was bound to happen in some way, Reformation or not, but it clearly was a major catalyst here.
BTW, calling anybody from that time "secular ruler" seems to be a bit of an anachronism :)
Well secular ruler is an anachronism, yes, but only because they weren’t as big on defining things back in the day. There was certainly a known distinction between the king and the church, otherwise phrases like “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” would make little sense in context. The distinction is important, as it highlights the fact that the king was not the font of moral authority, and had in fact to limit his behavior to within the bounds of propriety.
I absolutely agree that the reformation and 30 years war deeply affected Hume and Smith, but that is only a part of the system of liberty, and not an inherently new one historically. These were not entirely new concerns at that time, other people’s and places had dealt with them, including Europeans. In other words, liberalism was not the product merely of a particular set of circumstances in Europe around the 30 years war, but something with roots stretching way back and addressing a very broad range of questions.
Sorry, but your argument is unconvincing. Liberalism is the cause of modern Man's misery. Period.
A society will strictly operate according to the political formula established by its elites. And that political formula will face persistent demands to legitimate its authority. In the case of Liberalism, it will/has inevitably relent[ed] to the ceaseless call for more liberty and equality/neutrality (originating in 'blank slatism') in order to remain authoritative; hence, why the shift always moves Left (the most earnest liberals). Any substitute political formula would face its own legitimacy demands. The inherent problem in all political formulae is that clever [aspiring] elites will always look to subvert or purify the system.
It strikes me as strange that you would describe the modern political shift as being more towards "liberty and equality/neutrality." I would have described it as the exact opposite. When I was a young man you couldn't get put in jail for "hate speech," and didn't have to ask permission from the state to be a barber, for instance.
Your liberty to speak your mind must be curbed so that someone else's liberty can be self-actualized. The further away that that individual's chosen identity is from convention, the more protection required. All in the name of liberty and equality (inclusion).
But that is nonsense. One may as well claim to be maximizing the number of trees by burning down the entire forest so that the ashes will nourish new trees. Just because someone mouths the word liberty does not mean they are using the term properly or even coherently. That is generally the problem with leftists, they just say things without regard to how those things relate to reality. Like calling themselves “liberals”, for instance.
Well, I guess it depends on perspective. For individuals who have certain mutable (i.e., religious/ideological attachments, social/economic status, hedonistic/slothful inclinations, etc.) and/or immutable (i.e., race, gender, sexuality) characteristics there are many system benefits—such as freedoms, rights, privileges and equity. For others, like you and me, not so much.
My most difficult red/black pill moment was coming to terms with the fact that there is a significant portion of the population who are dedicated fanatics, and/or are beneficiaries, of the Progressive Project (Liberalism). And every time I begin to think (wishfully) that the Regime is nearing collapse, I remind myself of this fact—and then I sigh.
Because they don't live in reality.
They live more and more in a place of invention where whatever they say goes.
And that never ends well for all involved.
Is there any such thing as a good cult?
Quite. We have to be careful that we don’t take their words as real. For some reason they got away with calling themselves liberals I. The late 1800’s and into the 20th century,, but John Kerry or the Clintons are about as liberal as Thulsa Doom is Christian. Using the word for them is drifting into war is peace territory.