All You Need is Agape: Ch. IV - The Folly of Liberal Humanism

If there is one word that can sum up Modern Day Liberalism it is Love.
Their credo must be the famous Beatles song All You Need is Love.
Their basis for everything is compassion and loving each other, which often includes silencing or ridiculing anything remotely un-loving.
I must say that many Liberals don't seem "loving" to me at all, but when you think of the Hippie Movement as the epitome of Modern Day Liberalism, it's a downright overload of love!

I was brought up a Hippie-Hater and more-or-less remains one. This comes from two thoughts:
An old fashioned and downright retro concept of what makes a man. Men don't "love"; they protect, they provide, they may even be charitable and kind, but they don't love. Loving is for wimps.
The second thought comes directly from my last chapter: that annoying issue of reality.

In reality, love simply can't be the answer to everything.
When a terrorist executes and infidel, the correct response from an American soldier is not to love the terrorist as some misunderstood victim, but to kill him before he kills an innocent person.
World leaders have made this mistake: being kind, loving, and open-minded to what they perceived as misunderstood minorities; their "love" merely paved an easy and clear road for evil to do the most unloving things.
Look at British PM Neville Chamberlain's love towards Nazi Germany, and see what that brought on Poland, France, and Britain itself.

Sorry, but I side with Churchill before I'll side with the Beatles: some people just don't want to love and won't respond correctly to love.
Not understanding this brings about epidemics of anti-love.

This "All You Need is Love" attitude comes from Liberal Humanism, the germ that Modern Day Liberalism, or Neo-Liberalism comes from.
Humanism is a broad umbrella term for any ideology that claims to support and champion human dignity.
Liberal Humanism is a distinct version of this that believes that Human Beings are constantly progressing towards improvement and even perfection. Old inhibitions and habits are road-blocks on this road and must be torn down for Human Beings to progress to a better world.

On an individual basis, this is kind of true (hint: this is kind of the point of this blog).
Individuals can easily and certainly let go of old ties and become better persons: drug-attics can go sober; gangsters can go legit.

But in a broader sense, Liberal Humanism is perhaps the biggest folly of mankind, certainly of the past century.
It ignores the unshakable truth of human beings: we are Fallen, and hence live in a Fallen World.
Some progress is obviously necessary: thank God we got rid of slavery and dealt with racism to the point that now we can have an African American as President.
But look at how long this progress took, even after the Civil War and Emancipation. There was a lot of hatred still left in this country, and loving those racists wasn't going to accomplish anything.

In simple language, the mistake of Liberal Humanism is to believe that because you have seemingly progressed beyond your primitive nature, you can trust that others will do so also.
Liberal Humanists often sum up their folly by proudly saying, "If the whole world was like me, it would be a perfect place."

Really?

I have no doubt that such people are completely loving individuals.
I know some personally; they are quite vocal about love being the their sole motivation in life.
But let's imagine an entire world where people think like that; the "loving" person would trust others to be as open minded and loving as he is.
But what happens when two people fall in love with the same person?
Liberal Humanism often overlooks the close relationship between Love and Hatred.
A whole world of loving people won't be a perfect place, because pure uninhibited love will sooner or later clash with somebody else's pure uninhibited love.
The most radical of Liberal Humanists will say they promote a world where they won't care; maybe a three-some can be arranged! After all, monogamy is one of those old conservative inhibitions that they abolished for the sake of progress.

But I'm telling you this and you must believe me: that is a deceit; human beings are geared that way.
Yes, some three-way relationships would occur in this Liberal Humanist utopia; but Liberal Humanist don't understand that Pride, Greed, and Jealousy are inherent parts of the human psyche, and can't be erased by this conviction of a loving person being an evolved person.

It would be chaos: crimes of passion will occur and because Liberal Humanism abolishes inhibitions of old, all the lovers won't know what to do about it.
They'll form tribes, supporting their own ideas of how to deal with those non-lovers that somehow still exist.
This is where Fascism and mob-rule comes from. Some tribes will join forces and gain more and more power.
They may even gain control and then dictate how to love one another.

Any attempt to make a Liberal Humanist utopia would turn into a dictatorship.
Think I'm crazy?
All of the world's dictatorships rose from promises of progress.
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Barack...I kid! I kid!

Joking aside, now it's time to approach something troubling for this Hippie-Hating Christian: if there is one word that defines the New Testament of the Bible, it is the same as the Hippie creed: Love.

Open up any epistle, and you'll find the word "Love" all over the place.
Love this; love that; love you; love me; love God; God loves; love the poor; love the rich; love your enemies; love your friends; love freedom; love Government.
Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love.
It riddles the New Testament and much of the Gospels as well.

Were Jesus and His first followers...gasp!...hippies?

Well they certainly weren't Country Club blue-blood Republicans discussing their recent profit over a game of golf.
But, come on, neither were they doing drugs, practicing free sex and going to concerts.

You could say they were hippies in the context of their time, without saying they are compatible with 20th Century hippies.
But even then, it goes to prove that Jesus' message wasn't a worldly political one that all governments must follow to the T.
Yes, Jesus attacked the elite of the time, namely the Pharisees. But He didn't seem to care about the real government they lived under: the Roman Empire.

Hence I have always tended to believe that Jesus' message was for personal souls, not for the business of this Fallen World.

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. (Ephesians 6: 12)

But still, this constant emphasis on the word "Love" in the latter parts of the Bible casts doubt on this belief.
Of course, my Bible says "love"; others say "charity".
It turns out that both are less than perfect translations of the originally written word.