The eclipse of reason in the west | MelaniePhillips.com

The Enlightenment is consuming its own progeny.

Source: The eclipse of reason in the west | MelaniePhillips.com

"Historical statues are being toppled in America; snarling, violent anti-fascists mirror the behaviour they are supposedly against; Britain’s Conservative Government is to enforce hate-speech guidelines which are as contestable as they are subjective.

"As we watch western societies buckling under the bizarre combination of an apparently extreme concern to protect other people’s feelings with an extreme attempt to suppress other people’s opinions, many of us feel utter bewilderment. How can so many people who are ostensibly devoted to reason and freedom be behaving so irrationally and oppressively?"

Britain's Melanie Phillips often has perceptive and cogent commentary on current events. This excellent essay is a fine – though sobering, even scary – example. Sadly, this analysis seems all too on-target:

"The Enlightenment is consuming its own progeny. In the west, the culture of reason is dying, brought down by a loss of faith in progress and in the rationality that underpinned it. The replacement of objective truth by subjective experience has caused science itself to turn into a branch of unreason, underpinning the loss of rational discourse as evidence is hijacked by ideology."

The irony – or part of the irony, at least – is that it is the Left that believes they are on the side of "reason," of "science." But as Ms Phillips' essay makes all too clear, they are mistaken... even deluded. And it is weakening our ability to resist enemies both within and without:

"Not only is the west loosening its own grip on reason and modernity, but it is also failing to hold the line against those who are waging an explicit war against them from without. Instead of fighting off the encroachment of Islamic obscurantism — part of the Islamist onslaught aimed at conquering the free world for Islam — the west is embracing it as if it has a cultural death wish."

Indeed, it appears that at least some in the West actually do!

"In part, this is the misguided realpolitik of appeasement; but more deeply, it is once again the complete loss of moral and cultural bearings through multiculturalism and ‘victim culture’, along with the acting out of collective western guilt as an act of expiation to bring about peace on earth – as a result of which truth and justice are turned on their heads."

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