Liberalism # 1

A Commentary on Liberalism # 1 - Nov.-Dec. 1999
Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007
…the elements of contemporary liberal culture that befit the social and cultural mores of contemporary liberal intellectuals … the political and social views of the National Public Radio constituency, on abortion, feminism, gay rights, the environment, race and ethnicity in America. L.A. Times, Book Review, “A Peculiar People.”

…the Stalinists did during the Spanish Civil War: killing l2 thousand clergy and religious and destroying many churches.. P. 5 First Things, Aug. Sept. 1998
Anyone who takes the Bible seriously, however, will have to admit that history is not meaningless and the Lord does sometimes operate in the world in ways that, to us ignorant humans, seems pointless or cruel. God has created the world in such a way that our sins can bring about circumstances from which horrible sufferings arise- for us, or for other people. This is one of the persistent themes of the Bible. P. 15 First Things, Aug. 98

“Billy Graham has said of Pope John Paul II, certainly with accuracy, that he will ‘go down in history as the greatest of our modern Popes. He’s the strong conscience of the whole Christian world.’ ….Yet it is my view (Richard John Neuhaus) that Pope John Paul II, in his profound spiritual depth, his prayer life, his enormous intellectual universe, his compassion and sympathy for the oppressed, and above all in his vision of how Christians are supposed to live, is the greatest single Christian leader of the 20th century. When he is gone, he may be viewed, quite simply, as one of the most exemplary figures in all of Christian history. 79, First Things, Aug. –Sept. 98

Many people saw the Great Depression a fit judgment on the gaudy self-indulgence of the 1920’s…
Liberals depicted the 1950’s – which conservatives experienced as a virtual golden age – as a complacent irresponsible retreat from Social Democratic strivings of the New Deal and Fair Deal. In the 60’s, things were turned around. The left reviewed the decade as a heroic revival of conscience while conservatives saw in it a falling away from the moral and political sobriety of the Eisenhower era to adolescence indulgence in moral license and political grandiosity. P. 11 &12, First Things, May, 1999

As was the case when the U.S.A faced off against the Soviet Union. The ultimate question today turns on whether and how man relates to God. “At every point,” observes Whittaker Chambers in Witness, “religion and politics interlace, and must do so more acutely as the conflict between the two great camps of men, those who reject and those who worship God, becomes irrepressible.” Verona : Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, p. 53, First Things, May, 1999

Reagan often said that the writer who most influenced him was Whittaker Chambers. P.84, First Things, May, 1999 what defines the left, says Rorty, is commitment to social justice, and social justice is defined, in turn, by the socialized redistribution of wealth. P.63 F.T. March 99