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.
*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…..
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!
LQC-
That’s a female.
Sad, isn’t it?
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).
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.
Margaret: “I did not recognize you” God
“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.
This story is almost certainly apocryphal, but according to it Napoleon told the Vatican Secretary of State that he intended to destroy the Church. The Secretary of State did not bat an eye but merely said that if the clergy with all their misdeeds over eighteen centuries could not destroy the Church, what made Napoleon think he could succeed?