The Coming Dark Age of the Left?
Parallels between the American left and pre-renaissance Islam?
Could it be?
Work with me, here.
Sisyphus over at Nihilist in Golf Pants quotes from “The Civilization of the Middle Ages” by Norman Cantor.
Cantor notes:
The speculative thinkers of the Islamic world were independent men who made their living as physicians, civil servants, lawyers, or professional teachers. Their peculiar social background meant, on the one hand, that these speculative thinkers could afford to be especially bold, since they were not inhibited by having to worry immediately about the compatibility of reason and revelation or about whether they would lose their jobs for preaching heresy. On the other hand, there was a grave threat to the long-range development of Islamic philosophy in this separation between the religious and intellectual leadership.
Now - look at life on the Left today. The days of the left's great achievers - the Hubert Humphreys and John F. Kennedys and Walter Mondales - are long past; I doubt JFK would be accepted in the Democrat party of today. Too overtly Catholic, doncha know.
I'm not the first to note the left apes all the broad characteristics of an orthodox, fundamentalist religion; it has incontrovertible dogma in which people have unshakeable faith; its central tenets require immense leaps of faith that defy reason; its jihadi wing punishes apostasy with the kind of brutality reserved for traitors.
And the party is run by the orthodox fringe; the Nancy Pelosis, MoveOn.Orgs, Democrat Underground, Air America, and the fringiest of all, the Daily Kos. They fear - and attack without mercy If they feel threatened by thought that is outside the canon...
Well, let's go back to Cantor:
fundamentalists and mystics felt that the traditional religion was actually in danger of subversion by the speculative thinkers and if they could obtain the cooperation of the state, they would simply silence the expression of rational thought. This is, in fact, what began to happen in the latter part of the eleventh century, and after 1200 scientific thought in the Islamic world was dead.
Sort of like any thought in the Democratic party that departs from the orthodoxy of the fringe-become-mainstream.
This unfortunate development offers an illuminating contrast with the course of speculative thought in the Christian world. Because all the important philosophical work in high-medieval Europe was carried on in educational institutions that were subject to ecclesiastical authorities and because all the important western philosophers were at least in a nominal sense churchmen, the western thinkers were at first more conscious of the painful conflict between reason and revelation, and they moved more slowly than did the Arabic writers, but their work was, on the whole, protected from destruction at the hands of fanatics precisely because it was carried out under church auspices.
I report the parallels. You decide.
Posted by Mitch at
August 16, 2005 12:23 PM
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Interesting thesis.
I think you are applying too many principles to the current American Left. If the aboriginal American Left was represented by Dewey and Mills (and earlier by the Methodists and the Quakers) they were completely overridden by the Marxists in the early-middle part of this century. The American Left today is marked not so much by bold intellectual advances as it is by moral vanity, Euro-worhip, and above a all a deadening conformitism. They parallel the inquisition rather than the Enlightenment.
And BTW there is still something wrong with your blog installation. When I try to preview I get the error:
"An error occurred:
Can't call method "ip" on an undefined value at plugins/shprshr.pl line 10."
Posted by: Terry at August 17, 2005 01:58 AMMitch, the contemporary "left" is the decayed remains of a number of very murderous gnostic "civil theologies" which cropped up from the enlightenment on. You have rightly observed the "religious" character, but there is much more!
Try these:
by Voegelin, Eric ---
Collected Works, Volume 5: Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of Politics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Collected works, Vol 26: History of Political Ideas Vol VIII, Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man
Collected Works, vol 28: What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings (here see especially an essay entitled, "The Eclipse of Reality" )
If you can't access the collected works:
The New Science of Politics
Science, Politics and Gnosticism
( both also included in volume 5 listed above, but usually available in their original U of C editions as well at good college libraries or at Amazon etc)
Posted by: ttyler5 at August 17, 2005 04:57 AMPS, sorry, forgot the link to the U of Missouri Press, where the collecetd works are published.
Take a look at the links to the volumes, you'll get a general idea of the story from the content descriptions.
http://www.umsystem.edu/upress/voegelin/voegelin.htm
Posted by: ttyler5 at August 17, 2005 05:02 AMPPS -- Hey, just remembered, the volume 26 listed above, Crisis and the apocalypse of Man, was also previoulsy published as:
From Enlightenment to Revolution, edited by John Hallowell
I know this book is in many good college libraries.
Anyway, good luck, check it out!
Posted by: ttyler5 at August 17, 2005 05:17 AMMitch, sorry in advance for the shameless plug at the end of this comment!
I have a much simpler explanation for the demise of the party and I enlisted the help of Cindy Sheehan and Marlon Perkins to explain how the incideous poison of the North American Barking Moonbat has infected the Democratic Party! The Moonbat is the reason why the party is nearer to extinction.
Posted by: Mr Bob at August 17, 2005 01:23 PMsee my yesterday's post, brought to you by Mutual Of Omaha
Pot, Kettle, Black
Three names:
Posted by: Bill Haverberg at August 17, 2005 01:41 PMGeneral Shinseki
Arlen Specter
Dennis Hastert
I'm stretching to find Shinseki's relevance.
Hastert and Spector are hardly exiles.
Posted by: mitch at August 17, 2005 03:26 PMThanks!!! furniture Very nice site.I enjoy being here.
Posted by: furniture at July 7, 2006 09:24 AM