-By Thomas E. Brewton
New York Times editorialists equate morality with pagan environmental worship, doing so in the name of an abstraction called “the planet.”
In a New York Times editorial of March 10, 2007, titled Evangelical Environmentalism, the editors wrote, in part:
Whether or not you agree with [the conservative Christian wing of the Republican Party] about, say, homosexuality and abortion — and we emphatically do not — it is antiquated to limit the definition of morality to the way humans behave among humans.
Those days have been over ever since it became apparent that humans — busy thinking only about their own lives — had the power to destroy huge numbers of species, whole landscapes of habitat and, in fact, the balance of life on earth. The greatest moral issue of our time is our responsibility to the planet and to all its inhabitants.
Defining morality as “the way humans behave among humans” is, of course, the Judeo-Christian foundation of Western civilization. Civilization itself is a word meaning the rules of civility and lawful conduct within a city (Latin, civitas).
For Progressivist citizens of the world, such a definition is too limiting. Times editorialists need the universalism, the abstraction, of the Socialist Internationals. They want the stirring rhetoric of a Karl Marx exhorting the “workers of the world” to rise up and overthrow civilization.
History’s greatest and most savage atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of a universal abstraction identified as “humanity.” The Soviet Union and Red China liquidated tens of millions of dissidents in the name of those universal “ideals” that are so dear to the hearts of liberal-Progressives.
Today’s environmentalism, embodied in Al Gore’s global warming swindle, if implemented will, in like manner, deliver a smashing blow to the future prospects of the world’s poorest and most populous nations. Economically developed nations will be compelled to curtail production of almost all currently existing industries, throwing tens of million of people into the unemployed ranks.
But for the theoreticians of liberal-Progressivism at the New York Times editorial board, invincibly convinced of their political correctness, such matters pale in comparison to advancing the internationalism of Gnostic socialism.
Their obsession can be traced to the 19th century version articulated by Auguste Comte in his Religion of Humanity.
In Chapter VI of A General View of Positivism, he wrote:
Such a center we find in the great conception of Humanity, towards which every aspect of Positivism naturally converges. By it the conception of God will be entirely superseded, and a synthesis be formed, more complete and permanent than that provisionally established by the old religions….Towards Humanity, who is for us the only true Great Being, we, the conscious elements of whom she is composed, shall henceforth direct every aspect of our life, individual or collective. Our thoughts will be devoted to the knowledge of Humanity, our affections to her love, our actions to her service….
Thus Positivism becomes, in the true sense of the word, a Religion; the only religion which is real and complete; destined therefore to replace all imperfect and provisional systems resting on the primitive basis of theology….
Science acquires a position of unparalleled importance, as the sole means through which we come to know the nature and condition of this great Being [Humanity], the worship of whom should be the distinctive feature of our whole life….
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Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 http://www.thomasbrewton.com/
Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Thomas E. Brewton