You can see it any day. Whether it’s late-night pundits, ladies of “The View,” CBS’s long-standing “60 Minutes,” anything on PBS, or one of the so-called “objective news reports” on network TV, there are more battles taking place today in America than wars taking place around the world. Opposing sides in the endless culture clash take aim at each other in sometimes amusing but often disturbing verbal battles. But all the media madness is merely an illustration of a much greater struggle in which the nation has been engaged for more than a century — a conflict of greater consequence than the war on terrorism, and the stakes are vastly higher. It’s a war over basic values, and the decades-old challenge to Western ideals and our inherited customs and beliefs. At its core today’s culture debate is a contest of wills between those who believe in moral absolutes and established social standards and those who do not. For those who hold traditional values, the adversaries are not aliens; they’re mostly home-grown. They are likely friends and neighbors, the teachers of our children, men and women who live just down the block, or those who hold responsible positions in business and government. As the red and blue maps demonstrate very well in the elections every four years, Americans are of two minds about so many things. On one side are those who believe in the traditional values of faith, family, hard work, self restraint, and freedom from the intrusion of government. On the other side, judging by polls and media reports, are those who favor expanding the size of government, social programs administered by experts and funded by increased taxes, along with restraints on business, entrepreneurship, and public expressions of religious beliefs. One side believes in eternal truths and a God who does not change, while many on the other side favor man-made political solutions and values that are subject to revision. The measure of this cultural divide is not just the polarization of voters, but the intensity of the verbal battles between the representatives of these two sides in almost every arena of public discourse. The debates are hardly civil. Society is split over the most basic beliefs. Fashion, music, entertainment, living arrangements, sexual behaviors, child-bearing, education, housing, transportation, and how best to deal with the weak, aged, poor, disabled, and the unborn. Each is a battlefield in the dispute over core values. But more troubling is the degree to which, in both politics and morals, millions of Americans are able to believe the most basic philosophical fallacy, that two contradictory statements can both be true at the same time. When poll respondents were asked about their core beliefs in a 1992 survey by the Barna Group, researchers found that two-thirds of American adults believe “there is no such thing as absolute truth.” They also believe “different people can define truth in conflicting ways and still be correct.” Among 18 to 25 year-olds nearly three-quarters agreed, and the pattern has only accelerated over the past thirty years. To hold such views is philosophically indefensible, defying basic mathematical and ethical laws. Some would argue that such changes are a relatively new phenomenon — something born out of the free-thinking Sixties. And while it’s true the culture wars of the late-20th and early 21st centuries have made a profound impact on the security and well-being of the nation, the threat actually comes from ideas that flourished in Europe more than two centuries ago. The Clash of Worldviews
The period known as the European Enlightenment has done more to change traditional beliefs in the West than any movement of the last 500 years. The thinking of that age is exemplified in the writings of French and English intellectuals of the 17th and 18th centuries. Writers such as Locke, Hume, Bentham, and Mill in England, and Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot in France, helped give rise to a radical new doctrine, which, while tantalizing in its novelty, was a rebellion against the historic moral and ethical foundations of Western civilization. The “enlightenment” and “freedom” the revolutionary thinkers promised was based on defiance of law and custom, and a challenge to authority of every kind. The popular movement they spawned led to a demand for liberation from social, cultural, and moral restraints. It brought open rebellion against kings and rulers, and especially the authority of the Christian church. The Enlightenment introduced a “social contract” that superseded biblical teachings about love, duty, honor, and trust, and led to the French Revolution of 1789 and the “Reign of Terror.” But, as their ideas crossed the Atlantic, enlightenment thinking would ultimately become the fundamental belief system of 20th-century idealism and the liberal values of the political left in this country, and continues in many fragmented iterations today. The philosophies of the English and French enlightenment changed Europe, and influenced the thinking of American patriots like Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams as well. The focus on natural rights and human dignity provided the rhetoric for their rejection of the tyranny of British rule. But even as the founders were attracted to this language of “liberation” and the underlying humanism it entailed, men of faith like Adams and Washington were suspicious of the idealism and irreligion that came with the new ideas. To understand the impact of these competing ideas, they need to be seen in their “worldview” context. In its simplest form a worldview is the intellectual matrix that helps to give shape and substance to our understanding of life, behavior, and everyday events. Progressives generally have little regard for traditional values, which they see as repressive, with the imposition of archaic rules and values. They are nevertheless attracted to causes and movements of all kinds. Whether it’s the environment, endangered species, women’s issues or gay rights, the struggle for “liberation” has become for them the focus of the moral universe. Their causes become the tangible expression of the progressives’ worldview. Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet “Common Sense” was a best seller in colonial America that helped spur the break with England, was a free-thinker and deist. He subscribed whole-heartedly to the enlightenment ideology, and his major work, The Rights of Man, published after the war in 1792 challenged traditional religious beliefs and attacked the conservatism of the esteemed British philosopher Edmund Burke, who had condemned the French Revolution. Those views, however, were rejected by the patriots, forcing Paine to leave America and return to England. Later he fled to France where he served briefly in the revolutionary council. Then, after being imprisoned by the French on the charge of being an intellectual and an aristocrat, Paine returned once again to America where he died penniless, in 1802. The Enduring Challenge But Paine’s unhappy end was not the end of the controversy. As the 18th century witnessed the flowering of democratic ideals, the 19th would witness an unending succession of new philosophies and movements to challenge the endurance and resolve of the new nation. The increasingly hostile debates of those years would become the root of controversies that continue to this day. Many of the arguments we see in today’s headlines — whether in politics, in higher education and the elite universities, or in the world of business — all trace their roots to those long-standing sources of discord. All but one of America’s ivy-league universities — including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Bryn Mawr, and Amherst — were founded as religious institutions, in the conviction that a moral education built on a diligent study of the holy scriptures was essential for the development of character and leadership. To be properly educated, the founders believed, was to be versed in the moral heritage of our culture and the values that make civilization possible. But over the years, the spirit of Rousseau and the Enlightenment made inroads into American thought, and over the past two centuries Christian principles have been systematically stripped from the curriculum in each of those great institutions. American universities, with few exceptions, have become hotbeds of anti-American sentiment. In the name of tolerance, diversity, and other nostrums of the political left, Christian virtues and Western values have been systematically banished. Some have suggested a spiritual revival is brewing, here and abroad. As globalist thinking has shifted our moral and ethical sensibilities much farther to the left, there seems little hope of transformation without divine intervention. There’s at least a chance. But what is most needed is for men and women of principle to insure that our historic ideals — beliefs that have protected and extended our values to the world and offered physical and emotional well-being to people of all races and creeds — are protected, defended, and extended despite the risks. We have the resources to change the course of history — it has happened before — but we will need knowledge, concern, compassion, diligence, and spiritual maturity to work in every way possible — as God provides opportunities and endurance — to keep this magnificent experiment in democracy alive, morally and ethically well-informed, and thriving. That is the enduring challenge. — Jim Nelson Black
You can see it any day. Whether it’s late-night pundits, ladies of “The View,” CBS’s long-standing “60 Minutes,” anything on PBS, or one of the so-called “objective news reports” on network TV, there are more battles taking place today in America than wars taking place around the world. Opposing sides in the endless culture clash take aim at each other in sometimes amusing but often disturbing verbal battles. But all the media madness is merely an illustration of a much greater struggle in which the nation has been engaged for more than a century — a conflict of greater consequence than the war on terrorism, and the stakes are vastly higher. It’s a war over basic values, and the decades-old challenge to Western ideals and our inherited customs and beliefs. At its core today’s culture debate is a contest of wills between those who believe in moral absolutes and established social standards and those who do not. For those who hold traditional values, the adversaries are not aliens; they’re mostly home-grown. They are likely friends and neighbors, the teachers of our children, men and women who live just down the block, or those who hold responsible positions in business and government. As the red and blue maps demonstrate very well in the elections every four years, Americans are of two minds about so many things. On one side are those who believe in the traditional values of faith, family, hard work, self restraint, and freedom from the intrusion of government. On the other side, judging by polls and media reports, are those who favor expanding the size of government, social programs administered by experts and funded by increased taxes, along with restraints on business, entrepreneurship, and public expressions of religious beliefs. One side believes in eternal truths and a God who does not change, while many on the other side favor man-made political solutions and values that are subject to revision. The measure of this cultural divide is not just the polarization of voters, but the intensity of the verbal battles between the representatives of these two sides in almost every arena of public discourse. The debates are hardly civil. Society is split over the most basic beliefs. Fashion, music, entertainment, living arrangements, sexual behaviors, child-bearing, education, housing, transportation, and how best to deal with the weak, aged, poor, disabled, and the unborn. Each is a battlefield in the dispute over core values. But more troubling is the degree to which, in both politics and morals, millions of Americans are able to believe the most basic philosophical fallacy, that two contradictory statements can both be true at the same time. When poll respondents were asked about their core beliefs in a 1992 survey by the Barna Group, researchers found that two-thirds of American adults believe “there is no such thing as absolute truth.” They also believe “different people can define truth in conflicting ways and still be correct.” Among 18 to 25 year-olds nearly three-quarters agreed, and the pattern has only accelerated over the past thirty years. To hold such views is philosophically indefensible, defying basic mathematical and ethical laws. Some would argue that such changes are a relatively new phenomenon — something born out of the free-thinking Sixties. And while it’s true the culture wars of the late-20th and early 21st centuries have made a profound impact on the security and well-being of the nation, the threat actually comes from ideas that flourished in Europe more than two centuries ago. The Clash of Worldviews
The period known as the European Enlightenment has done more to change traditional beliefs in the West than any movement of the last 500 years. The thinking of that age is exemplified in the writings of French and English intellectuals of the 17th and 18th centuries. Writers such as Locke, Hume, Bentham, and Mill in England, and Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot in France, helped give rise to a radical new doctrine, which, while tantalizing in its novelty, was a rebellion against the historic moral and ethical foundations of Western civilization. The “enlightenment” and “freedom” the revolutionary thinkers promised was based on defiance of law and custom, and a challenge to authority of every kind. The popular movement they spawned led to a demand for liberation from social, cultural, and moral restraints. It brought open rebellion against kings and rulers, and especially the authority of the Christian church. The Enlightenment introduced a “social contract” that superseded biblical teachings about love, duty, honor, and trust, and led to the French Revolution of 1789 and the “Reign of Terror.” But, as their ideas crossed the Atlantic, enlightenment thinking would ultimately become the fundamental belief system of 20th-century idealism and the liberal values of the political left in this country, and continues in many fragmented iterations today. The philosophies of the English and French enlightenment changed Europe, and influenced the thinking of American patriots like Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams as well. The focus on natural rights and human dignity provided the rhetoric for their rejection of the tyranny of British rule. But even as the founders were attracted to this language of “liberation” and the underlying humanism it entailed, men of faith like Adams and Washington were suspicious of the idealism and irreligion that came with the new ideas. To understand the impact of these competing ideas, they need to be seen in their “worldview” context. In its simplest form a worldview is the intellectual matrix that helps to give shape and substance to our understanding of life, behavior, and everyday events. Progressives generally have little regard for traditional values, which they see as repressive, with the imposition of archaic rules and values. They are nevertheless attracted to causes and movements of all kinds. Whether it’s the environment, endangered species, women’s issues or gay rights, the struggle for “liberation” has become for them the focus of the moral universe. Their causes become the tangible expression of the progressives’ worldview. Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet “Common Sense” was a best seller in colonial America that helped spur the break with England, was a free-thinker and deist. He subscribed whole-heartedly to the enlightenment ideology, and his major work, The Rights of Man, published after the war in 1792 challenged traditional religious beliefs and attacked the conservatism of the esteemed British philosopher Edmund Burke, who had condemned the French Revolution. Those views, however, were rejected by the patriots, forcing Paine to leave America and return to England. Later he fled to France where he served briefly in the revolutionary council. Then, after being imprisoned by the French on the charge of being an intellectual and an aristocrat, Paine returned once again to America where he died penniless, in 1802. The Enduring Challenge But Paine’s unhappy end was not the end of the controversy. As the 18th century witnessed the flowering of democratic ideals, the 19th would witness an unending succession of new philosophies and movements to challenge the endurance and resolve of the new nation. The increasingly hostile debates of those years would become the root of controversies that continue to this day. Many of the arguments we see in today’s headlines — whether in politics, in higher education and the elite universities, or in the world of business — all trace their roots to those long-standing sources of discord. All but one of America’s ivy-league universities — including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Bryn Mawr, and Amherst — were founded as religious institutions, in the conviction that a moral education built on a diligent study of the holy scriptures was essential for the development of character and leadership. To be properly educated, the founders believed, was to be versed in the moral heritage of our culture and the values that make civilization possible. But over the years, the spirit of Rousseau and the Enlightenment made inroads into American thought, and over the past two centuries Christian principles have been systematically stripped from the curriculum in each of those great institutions. American universities, with few exceptions, have become hotbeds of anti-American sentiment. In the name of tolerance, diversity, and other nostrums of the political left, Christian virtues and Western values have been systematically banished. Some have suggested a spiritual revival is brewing, here and abroad. As globalist thinking has shifted our moral and ethical sensibilities much farther to the left, there seems little hope of transformation without divine intervention. There’s at least a chance. But what is most needed is for men and women of principle to insure that our historic ideals — beliefs that have protected and extended our values to the world and offered physical and emotional well-being to people of all races and creeds — are protected, defended, and extended despite the risks. We have the resources to change the course of history — it has happened before — but we will need knowledge, concern, compassion, diligence, and spiritual maturity to work in every way possible — as God provides opportunities and endurance — to keep this magnificent experiment in democracy alive, morally and ethically well-informed, and thriving. That is the enduring challenge. — Jim Nelson Black
The Controversy of Ideas
“The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals. … We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, 'brethren!' Be careful, teachers!"
“The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals. … We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, 'brethren!' Be careful, teachers!"