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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
July 17, 2005
Three paths
Tony Blair was sufficiently emboldened by recent events to say unusual things this last week, in the British House of Commons. On Wednesday, he said his government would introduce measures to deport radical imams, to prevent them from spreading their "evil and extreme ideology", their "perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam" (Mr. Blair's words). On Monday he had said, plainly, "Just using the normal processes of law will not be enough." While I seldom fully agree with Mr. Blair, I have great respect for him as a politician. This is not only for his courage, shown by repeatedly acting in the face of huge political opposition. It is also because, like his companion-in-arms, George W. Bush, he is deeper than most politicians. He can assimilate unfashionable ideas that others cannot. This remark about the limitations of "law" is a good example, for Mr. Blair was going beyond the simple slogans with which most public thought is conducted. The fact Messrs. Bush and Blair are both sincere, practising, fairly orthodox Christian believers, helps account for this: for most of our politicians today are, if they have any religion, merely religious for show; and thus morally unprincipled. Messrs Bush and Blair are among the few who give evidence of being themselves influenced by Christian belief -- or more generally, by something deeper than self-interest. Yet both have, in my view, got as far as their capacities will take them. They wish to lead, they have the solemn responsibility of leadership, and neither is glib. But they have acquired the blinkers of political office, and cease to look ahead. Before us today, there is a choice of, essentially, three directions in which to take Western societies. One is through return to Christian teaching, to the ideas upon which European and then American societies were built over nearly two thousand years. Another is through pure legalism, in whatever direction moral relativism, and various abstract and absolutist conceptions of "tolerance" and "rights" happen to lead us. This is where we've been going for the last couple of generations. The third is to embrace the Sharia code for law and society, offered by Islam. We cannot mix and match between these three, for each claims universality. Of these three, much the worst is our present, "secular" direction. It has the breath of plausibility about it, appears to offer continuity from the older "value system", but lacking any spiritual or intellectual centring in the idea of God, it degenerates quickly into a contest for power between rival social factions, each making claims that are necessarily arbitrary and sophistical, because self-referential. The law courts gradually assume absolute power, as the referee between these "rights claimants". The people who control the courts become, by increments, tyrants with totalitarian aspirations. It is the road our governments have consistently chosen for Canada, and only a minority of Canadians object. It is the road Europe selected in its faltering new constitution, which purposely ignores the continent's Christian heritage, dispenses with much established democratic accountability, and centralizes decision-making in trans-European bureaucratic commissions and courts. It is what many Democrats, and not a few Republicans are struggling towards in the United States, by constantly expanding the power of the American judiciary, and the scope of their interpretive authority. The end in view is murky in each case, not so much because it cannot be seen, but because it cannot be admitted. This is to eliminate what remains of Christian or any other moral authority in society, and finally eliminate religion itself, especially Catholic Christianity. This was in fact the project of the French Enlightenment from its beginnings, and that "Enlightenment party" in the West has gradually evolved into the "progressive movements" of today, still advancing the front line of what is, in the last analysis, the French Revolution. Few of my readers will feel the need for arguments against the Islamic system of Sharia law. This is unfortunate, because the arguments may be needed in due course. Christianity has the ability to answer the claims of Islam, and nearly 14 centuries of experience in holding it back; "progressive secular humanism" has neither experience nor premises with which to argue against anything at all. It claims to be founded on "pure reason", but no such thing is available to man. This, anyway, is how I look upon things. We must return, not merely in religion, but in politics, to an explicitly Christian social structure, and legal regime, or move ever more confidently towards disaster. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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