Jed Babbin of Human Events has a really interesting review of a book by Dr. Herb London. London is president of the Hudson Institute and clearly states in America’s Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion that secularism is the enemy of the basic elements of our society, what Alexis de Tocqueville called the “social contract.”
Some of the more poignant items from the review include:
- The antithesis of secularism -- civitas -- was a word,” …frequently used by the Roman writers to express the condition of a Roman citizen, as distinguished from that of other persons not Roman citizens,” according to Smith’s “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.”
- London explains it in terms more useful to us. He quotes Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell’s definition, “that spontaneous willingness to obey the law, to respect the rights of others, to forgo enrichment at the expense of the public weal.”
- To the secularist, civitas -- and its first cousin, patriotism -- are to be scorned in favor of man’s immediate needs and self-defined values. The secularist believes that man’s first duty is always to himself. The phrase “duty, honor, country” so deeply valued among our warriors, means nothing to the secularist.
The moral foundation cannot be established without a defined standard. Subjective morality can only lead to chaos. I'm not sure the founders of our own John William Pope Civitas Institute had this conflict in mind at our beginning but the could not have been more on target.
How wide spread is secularism in North Carolina anyway? I'm glad you asked. Monday's News and Observer has an article detailing the growth of "congregations" of secularists and atheists in Raleigh.
