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Politics As Public Morality (Again)

 I think it’s weird and stupid that Christian morality is the only one people are somehow allowed to be frightened of. The nature of government authority is coercive. That’s how governments work. Christianity isn’t special in its possibility to be terrifying. In fact, I will happily argue that full-blown Christendom was objectively the best thing to happen to humanity, ever.

People are so soft that they’ll act like the Salem Witch Trials will break out because some Republican happened to say that it might be wrong to murder your own children.

I just think it would be more honest if people said the truth: they don’t mind government telling everyone what to do, as long as all the coercion happens to people they don’t like.

Maximum freedom doesn’t work; we know that. We rely as much on social conventions and social mores as we do on government. That’s why Sam Harris ends up looking so foolish: it’s what an avowed unbeliever looks like when he grew up in a Christian culture. If you don’t believe all that stuff, fine. No one’s forcing you to go anywhere or do anything. But the debt is there. Force compels, but truth compels even harder.

I should probably take the blame for today’s progressives; if you look at it, they’re just Puritans who don’t believe in Jesus. Then again, that is way more terrifying: religious zeal without Jesus to balance it out. I’ll see your Inquisition, and raise you a French Revolution, and Communism.

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