This (the quote) is why I wonder if we are past the point of being heard in the public square until something dreadful happens.

AMDG

James Kalb writes for Crisis Magazine. In his latest column, How Long Will Secular Liberalism Endure?, he strikes a long-term hopeful note:

Secular liberalism makes maximum equal satisfaction its highest good. That principle is what gives it popular appeal, but it means ever-greater demands on public resources, since people require more and more to be satisfied, and it also means ever-less discipline, loyalty, and public spirit to support the system, since it undermines ideals of love and sacrifice.

Secular liberalism lacks a grounded principle of authority, and its aspiration to universal satisfaction makes it adverse to widespread use of threats and force. As a result, its basic method for maintaining control is a system of payoffs, propaganda, and ever-more comprehensive regulation. That method has mostly been rather successful. Material benefits have been funded through the extraordinary productivity of capitalist economies in a technological age, propaganda facilitated by alliance with the mass media and the expertise and training industry (otherwise known as the educational system), and regulation made effective by a comparatively high degree of bureaucratic discipline and efficiency.

None of those resources are infinite or everlasting. ...

So it seems that during the coming decades it will be increasingly difficult for secular liberalism to maintain itself among the people as a minimally satisfying system of practice and belief. Still, historical change is generally slow, and liberalism has been very effective at weakening its competitors, so it is likely to be with us in an ever-less appealing and successful form for some time to come. The best analogy to the period we may have before us is therefore the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union.

It is particularly infuriating to have our opponents insist that the increasing evils which are clearly the result of their policy are really due to the other things they cite. So infuriating.

If only people wouldn't keep sabotaging the efforts to build a better future ...

So, the question is, what are we to do? Do we keep trying to be heard, or do we expend our energy on something else? The answer for me is something else, but I'm not sure it's the answer for everyone--you specifically, Maclin, probably ought to be still writing about it.

This morning's reading from the office of readings by John Chrysostom really gets to me every year. I'm pretty sure that what I am supposed to be doing has to do with this.

http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/977/Don_t_Adorn_the_Church_but_Ignore_the_Poor_John_Chrysostom.html

AMDG

That's funny. but for me that's exactly it. If I were to write about this stuff, it would be purely complaining. I don't think I could make any contribution that would make a difference. That is probably not the case for you. Of course sometimes you have to do what you're given to do whether it makes a difference or not. But what I wrote wouldn't have any value in itself.

I don't know that I have anything of much value to add. There aren't many people who read what I write and 90% of you probably agree with me already. And really, this book seems to be the last word, as far as analyzing the phenomenon is concerned. I'm about halfway through it now. Toward the end he apparently has some suggestions for counter-efforts, which will be interesting.

Let us know what he think the counter-efforts should be, Maclin. That would be of some help I'm sure.

oh good!

Sorry! Is the quote that bad? It won't be the *only* thing I write about.