Atheists and humanists are in a panic because conservatives, liberals, patriots, and populists on the whole grasp the foundational argument that the fundamental liberties and rights of men are natural in origin, referenced in the Declaration of Independence as the “Laws of Nature,” “their Creator,” and “Nature’s God,” and therefore not manmade.
In this view, which is objectively demonstrable (see Abraham Maslow), man, through reason and evidence, determines and recognizes the liberties and rights inherent in our species.
For example, women were not “given the right to vote.” That language obscures the principle on which that right was determined and recognized. Women, like men, have a natural right to participate in political society and social life on the principle that freedom requires that any decision made that affects women and men demands from society the recognition of their right to participate in the formation of that decision. A free society recognizes that right. An unfree society doesn’t.
The argument living and breathing in the establishment of the American Republic is reduced in the progressive worldview to “Christian nationalism.” Prepare to hear this term ad nauseam this election season.
At the same time, these same progressives seek comradeship with the paradigm of clerical fascism in our age, namely Islam, which has no capacity to consider or tolerate the separation of church and state intrinsic to the rational Christian worldview. Islam has no workable model of human rights.
Indeed, while the West circulated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Islamic world rejected it an instead produced the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted in 1990 by the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which attempts to reconcile the universality of human rights with Sharia. Predictably, it begins with “All human beings from one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah….” That’s (a) from Article I. (b) is “All human beings are Allah’s subjects….”
Article 10: “Islam is the religion of true unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of pressure on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to force him to change his religion to another religion or to atheism.” Read that again if you need to. It means that you are prohibited from attempting to persuade Muslims to leave their religion or religion altogether.
Contradiction and double standard reflect the authoritarian and illiberal personality of progressive ideology. They mean to deny the natural law and put liberties and rights under the control of the administrative apparatus and experts who run the technocracy.
You see this clearly in speech codes. Progressives force you to speak in way that manufactures a false consciousness about gender, race, and a myriad of other things. Speech codes are features of unfree societies. The value of inclusivity reflects the spirit of Article 10 of the Cairo Declaration. There is a deeply felt need to prohibit criticism of any ideology progressives favor: Islam, gender ideology, critical race theory, etc.
Understand that while governments cannot give you your rights—only recognize those rights determined by reason and facts—the government can suppress your rights. This is what lies behind the argument denying that our rights are natural and prior to the state. Reducing liberties and rights to the state misconceives the point of rights, which is what states are obliged to respect. You cannot be free if your freedom exists at the pleasure of the state—because this means that you exist at the pleasure of the state.
Progressivism projects the totalitarian desire of corporate statism, i.e., the material interests progressives represent. The most important thing you can do this election season is reject the illiberalism of the modern left and vote for the candidates that approximate democratic-republicanism. The most important thing we can do long term is push progressive ideology to the margins and restore the Enlightenment values of classical liberalism and secular humanism.
freedom and reason 