Friday, March 29, AD 2024 2:48am

Quotes Suitable for Framing: John Gray

Despite everything, liberals cannot help thinking of history as a story of redemption. That is why they cannot help seeing Putin and Xi Jinping, Orbán and Salvini as reverting to the past. A future that contains hyper-modern tsars, technocratic emperors and intelligent demagogues is unthinkable. So facts are ignored or denied, and truth sacrificed for the sake of securing a consoling meaning in events. While post-truth populism has become one of the clichés of the age, a more defining feature of our time is the rise of post-truth liberalism.

It would be foolish to expect liberals to admit that their faith has been falsified. They would have to accept that they do not understand the present—an impossible demand, when they have seen themselves for so long as the intellectual vanguard of humankind. Whether secular or religious, myths are not refuted. Instead they fade and vanish from the scene, together with the people who embody them.

John Gray, The Rise of Post Truth Liberalism (September 4, 2018)

Go here to read the rest.  Whenever any group constantly prates about how they are on the right side of History, you may take that as a sure sign that they do not have a clue about the past, the present, and, most assuredly, the future.

 

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Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 7:36am

*sigh* History is a story of redemption…but everybody has to accept it. And then keep LIVING by it. We don’t get a One Big Save…..

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 7:46am

I took one look at that effeminate androgenous person with those words to the right and was filled with great anger. This is not politically correct, but I can understand how Phinehas felt in Numbers 25:6-9, and how Mattathias felt in 1st Maccabees 2:19-28. Molon Labe, baby! Molon labe!

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 7:56am

LQC-
That’s a female.

Sad, isn’t it?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 8:05am

One thing I didn’t care for about Barack Obama is that he’s the sort of person who thinks in terms of ‘the right side of history’ in an unironic and unreflective way. Liberals fancy themselves the ‘brights’, then traffick in silly caricatures of the world around them. (Alt-right types tend to fancy themselves the ‘smart fraction’, then traffic in crude genetic determinism).

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 8:06am

Dearest Foxfier, I have no idea what “it” is, but if either Phinehas or Mattathias saw “it,” the reaction of neither would be changed from what Biblical history tells us. Lord Jesus Christ, please have mercy on that poor lost soul. Forgive him / her because he / she knowns not what he / she does. And help me not to be so angry. Thank you. Amen.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 3:26pm

Margaret: “I did not recognize you” God

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Tuesday, September 4, AD 2018 4:34pm

“The Wrong Side of History” argument. Pffft. Typical Left-Wing Preening-in-the-Mirror. Of “History.”

The Catholic Church was virtually dead in France after the French Revolution—and then came Napoleon, who, it seemed, would have eradicated it for good.

But “History” is a quirky thing.

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