The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog

The 20th century saw a little-understood but radical transformation of political and legal philosophy in the United States. From the Founding until the 20th century, the political philosophy of John Locke was highly influential, especially what I call the Lockean twins of Christian natural law and classical liberalism. The two provided checks and balances on each other, with the societal ideals of virtue and freedom as guiding stars. This system had its flaws, as with any human innovation, but resulted in tremendous social and economic growth in the United States, making it the most prosperous and thriving nation in history. The natural law or common sense approach which sought the good was attacked and eroded in the postmodern 20th century, with a complete non-democratic overhaul of legal philosophy and interpretation in the 1960s that replaced common sense natural law and "the good" with radical viewpoint neutrality. Today, secular liberalism unchecked by natural law has mo...

 (Cross-posted at Medium ) We are starting a period of descent from the exalted heights of peak Western Civilization. Andrew Potter’s  On Decline gives a rationalist’s perspective on civilization and decline with a conflicted attitude toward the West’s great civilizing force, Christianity. He wants the kind of civilization made possible only by Christianity, but without the religion itself. I call this conflict the Rationalist’s Conundrum. Voltaire recognized the problem. It’s what animated Nietzsche’s madman, and what made one of Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov. I picked up a copy of Andrew Potter’s book because the title was catchy and a feeling of decline is sort of in the air around us. As Roger Scruton quipped in in  Culture Counts  (2007), “Announcing its own demise has been … an enduring mark of Western civilization.” Putting aside Spengler, Toynbee, Carrol Quigley, Mancur Olson, and many others, the most recent conversation on decline was kicked off by Tyle...