On Values (Oct. 9 Tea Party Speech)

Just last Saturday there was the One Nation rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC.  I don’t know how many of you have had the opportunity to see either photos or footage from the rally, but it represented dozens of liberal groups from across the country.  If you did, then you are probably just as disturbed as I am.  What we saw was a glimpse of where our nation is headed if progressives continue to lead this country, as they fundamentally attempt to remake America into an image that freedom-loving folks will find repulsive and unrecognizable.  While ostensibly this rally was about jobs, immigration, racial profiling and other discrimination in the criminal justice system, what you saw was the heart and soul of today’s progressive movement, which consists of public employee unions, illegal immigration advocates, and all manner of brazen socialists masquerading as human rights groups.  And who is throwing in with these groups, even organizing with them, Al Sharpton and the NAACP!  How far we have fallen from the valiant days of the NAACP when it was an organization of the highest ideals. They dishonored Dr. Martin Luther King last week, but Glenn Beck brought honor to Dr. King at the same place just a few weeks ago, with our fellow Tea Party Patriots surrounding him!  And we didn’t trash the mall, but left it in pristine condition because we respect the Mall and we respect America!

Now I want to draw a contrast between those in attendance today, and the progressives out there who now control Washington.  Specifically, I want to focus on values, because values are fundamental to the prosperity of our republic.  Moral wisdom has been passed down through the ages consistent with natural law, connecting with the rationality and experience of all men, regardless of religious tradition. The Declaration of Independence rests on these Laws of Nature when it states that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. This represents reality, because we see that moral truths are timeless, objective, and transcendent. Until modern times, no great thinker ever doubted the rationality of our judgments of truths or values. Yet the modern progressive doesn’t believe that value judgments are really judgments at all, but are sentiments or attitudes that have evolved over thousands of years by the pressure of the environment. To say that something is good is merely to express a subjective feeling. So they have gone about the project of jettisoning traditional values as something subjective, and have attempted to construct a new scheme. Today we call this scheme progressivism, which isn’t progressive at all because it fundamentally misunderstands human nature, arguing that we are nothing more than the products of blind evolution, yet are progressively getting better.

Not surprisingly, progressives believe that morality is relative, and that man is so malleable that he can be politically manipulated to advance a notion of the “common good” that advances the progressive agenda. Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t believe man is infinitely malleable, but believe, as created beings, that morality places limits on what human beings can and should do. Over 2300 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that political life and morality are natural, as opposed to the progressives of that time who felt that political life and morality are entirely man-made.  Conservatives today, in a manner similar to Aristotle, look to experience over theory, which is why we cringe at utopian philosophical schemes that progressives tend to embrace in order to justify their efforts at social engineering.  Conservatives accept the world as it is, and distrust abstract reason that is divorced from experience. Progressives, however, seem to have no problem reshaping a nation’s political life around some attractive but untried scheme under the banner of slogans such as “hope and change.” Experience, along with passion, allows for productive change, while lack of experience along with passion (i.e., “community organizing”), leads to destructive schemes for overhauling society.

Now progressives believe that the moral absolutes espoused by conservatives threaten freedom, but believe their moral relativism guarantees freedom.  You see, to them, one cannot be truly free unless one can create their own set of values. But can this be right? Christian apologist Peter Kreeft argues the contrary. First, the person who demands to create his own values must also allow you to demand your own. Yet if he protests to your system of values, then he demonstrates he does believe in objective values after all. Second, it is obvious that freedom cannot create values, because freedom assumes there is some set of values in the first place. Put more simply, experience teaches us that we are not free to create alternative morals. We cannot make murder, rape, or slavery right, and we cannot make charity and justice wrong. We can no more create new moral values than we can create a new primary color, a new universe, or a new arithmetic. Kreeft brings this point home when he states that if we were as free to create “Thou shalt murder” or “Thou shalt not murder” as we are free to create “Thou shalt play nine innings” or “Thou shalt play only six innings,” then we would feel no more guilty about murder than about playing six innings. Clearly, we are bound to objective moral values that transcend the human condition.

Against the moral relativists, or progressives of his day, who argued that moral standards are merely artificial, conventional, and relative to the political structures of society, Aristotle boldly claimed that the starting point of society is the natural union of male and female, that is, the family.  This builds up into communities, and then to cities.  But Aristotle prefers the local to the national, based on his distrust of faraway centralism and bureaucracy, when nations become too large, unwieldy, and bloated. When we look at our federal government today, we all see what happens when it exceeds its constitutionally limited powers.  Now the progressive idea is that society is simply an arrangement, or a contract amongst individuals.  But on the contrary, Aristotle reminds us that the basic building block is not the individual, but the family.  It doesn’t take a village, as Hillary Clinton says, to raise a child, but a father and a mother.  The children who come from this most natural of unions go on to marry and have children themselves, creating new communities and new cities through the natural unfolding of human society. So “family values” is hardly a modern notion, but is the very definition of conservatism, as Aristotle would have put it.  This is why he would be horrified at the modern progressive tendency to disintegrate the natural family and contrive to make the state take the place of the family.

So given our brief study in contrasts, what is our call to action?  First, it is to educate ourselves on the foundational philosophies and ideals that undergird our country, and the fundamentals of economics.  This means learning about human nature, natural law, and natural rights.  With such an education we can effectively articulate our ideals and values to progressives, and the reasons we know these ideals work in the real world.  And we need to do this in a patient, respectful manner.  Second, be that person in your community who reaches out to help others who cannot help themselves through your time or money so they won’t need to turn to government.  This is far easier said than done, but we can’t ask for smaller government if we aren’t willing to replace whatever it is currently providing.  Let’s demand that our leaders in Washington take less out of our communities so we can put that money and control to work locally in a more efficient and effective manner, because when it goes to Washington, it comes back as mere cents on the dollar, and always with strings attached.  Third, the time has ended for us to be uninvolved in politics, because we now know what happens when we’re not vigilant.  Not that I’m saying to make it your vocation, unless you feel called to it, but be aware and be involved in your local community.  Finally, please support and vote for candidates such as those here today who believe in constitutionally limited government, low taxes, personal responsibility, and will be accountable to your vote. Thank you for having me here today!  May God bless you and may God bless America!

Tagged as: Aristotle, Moral Relativism, One Nation Rally, Progressivism, Tea Party