Chapter 8: Politics
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understandingwhosetimesAs usual, this chapter is something of a misnomer. Noebel is really going to be talking about forms of government allegedly espoused by the worldviews. This is another very Islamophobic chapter, though I don't remember how lengthily. It's also going to be a very useful perspective on religious conservativism in America. I suspect this is going to make it nightmareish to deconstruct; we're going to have another Here's David Noebel's Opinions hour where there's nothing to factcheck because there are no facts.
I want to start off in the first paragraph just because it situates Noebel's perspective:
The Christian worldview sees government as an institution established by God (Genesis 9:6; Romans 13) for the primary purpose of promoting justice for its citizens—protecting the innocent from the aggressor and the lawless. Without security, every other function of government (protecting life, liberty, property, reputation, etc.) is meaningless.
As Christians, we recognize government as a sacred institution whose rulers are ministers of God for good (Romans 13). God ordained the State to practice godly justice and commands us to obey its rules and laws.
So, government is a fundamentally Christian institution ordained by God. Jot that down for later.
We expect the state to accomplish limited, God-ordained tasks.
This is a justification for the Republication position that government should be limited. There's really no Biblical reason for that to be the case.
We know that power tends to corrupt, so a government that disperses power is better than one that gathers power into the hands of a few.
The idea that power corrupts is not directly from the Bible, although you can certainly use the Bible to support it if you want to, as you can many things. So this principle is not actually based on the Bible, in contrast to Noebel's ONLY WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS thing.
As Christians, we should welcome opportunities to participate in government with the goal of influencing the State to conform to God's will for it as a social institution (Proverbs 11:11).
If you're not familiar, Christian homeschool parents and teachers in Christian schools used to, and probably still do, tell children that their generation is going to be the one to "take back the culture for Christ" by going into high positions in government and other important institutions. Summit Ministries, the company that published this text, was established precisely for this purpose. It's meant to train homeschoolers to do this.
The Christian worldview does not single out any one form of government as acceptable, although a constitutional form is more likely to conform to biblical principles and respond to its citizens than are less democratic forms.
What a coincidence that the form of government that Noebel sees America as having is the one that "conforms to Biblical principles". Also, if this is the case you should support things like undoing gerrymandering. Also also, you really need to explain and defend that more, not just brush past it.
One significant aspect of the United States' government that conforms to biblical ideals is the division of power into three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—along with its system of checks and balances. The three-branch model was patterned after Isaiah 33:22: "For the Lord is our judge [judicial], the Lord is our lawgiver [legislative], the Lord is our king [executive]."
I thought this was a ridiculous conspiracy-esque argument. When I googled it, though, there were lots of results! But none cited a historical source for the idea that Isaiah 33:22 was indeed the inspiration for the founding fathers' ideas of government, and all were from super Christian websites. So I'm very suspicious of this. I mean, using this argument does "the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" mean that the government should provide universal basic income? You could just as well argue that. Why this one single verse?
Perhaps the Christian concept our founding fathers best understood was the Christian understanding that although we are created in God's image, we nevertheless have a fallen, sinful nature. Because they understood these opposing aspects of our nature, the founding fathers tailored a government suited to our rightful place in God's creative order.
I find it interesting that the argument is always "we have to do what the founding fathers would have wanted" and yet, for example, conservative never argue that we need to roll back things like corporations being treated as individuals, which are certainly not original to the constitution and which I don't suppose the founding fathers could even have imagined. It's always their vision of what the founding fathers intended, which DOES actually involve change, just disguised.
The knowledge that human rights are based on an unchanging, eternal Source is crucial in our understanding of politics. If our rights were not tied inextricably to God's character, then they would be arbitrarily assigned according to the whims of each passing generation or political party—rights are "unalienable" only because they are based on God's unchanging character.
Only for conservatives is "we're not allowed to update our laws as our ideas of justice change" an advantage.
Therefore, human rights do not originate with human government, but with God Himself, who ordains governments to secure these rights.
Remember this for later.
He quotes the founding fathers some more, talking about how they were Christians. Yes, Noebel. We know.
Christians see justice as the principal reason for the state's existence. The Christian view of justice is founded on a belief in God as the absolute guarantor of our unalienable rights. Thus, promoting justice becomes more important than any other aspect of government.
Interesting. So you support the Black Lives Matter movement?
Government, therefore, has limited responsibility. The state must never assume the responsibilities of other institutions, including those of church and family.
Ah. So this is really more justification for "government shouldn't do things I don't want it to".
Because government is an institution of justice, not of grace, community, or creativity, it should not interfere with freedom of religion,
I agree! Don't you think it's great that schools can't force non-Christian children to pray Christian prayers during school now? And isn't it awful that governments in Europe are passing anti-hijab laws and interfering with Muslim women's freedom of religion?
attempt to dispense grace through tax-funded handouts,
Ooooh, here's my opportunity to use it: But Psalms 23 says "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." And Matthew 6:26 says "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?". So shouldn't we give tax-funded handouts to citizens to provide for their needs, since God is the Provider?
control family size,
I agree, so abortion and birth control should be legal and freely available. If it isn't, the government is attempting to control family size by forcing people to have children.
interfere in the raising of children (including their education)
Right, so don't you think that parents should be allowed to let their transgender children medically transition when it's right for them?
or control the economy.
But putting checks and balances on the economy would be a form of acknowledging and controlling for human selfishness and sin, and that's Biblical according to you.
I know I'm trolling here, but it's also all just as plausible as Noebel's perspective, and I hope I've demonstrated that the Christian right's precepts are not the only way to read the Bible. There is, again, interpretation happening. The possibility of human error is not eliminated.
Human governments almost always wind up overstepping their God-ordained role.
What's getting me about this god-ordained stuff is nowhere in the Bible does it SAY all this outright. It's all interpretation. Which is human and subjective. Which is exactly what Noebel thinks is bad about humanist government. I won't belabor this any longer, but he talks a lot about this, and it just has no basis more solid than "this is what I personally interpret the Bible to say".
Today, some worldviews (such as Secular Humanism, Marxism, and to a lesser extent Postmodernism) advocate global government to serve as the ultimate political and economic authority to advance humanity's evolution. If they prevail in their movement toward "a new world order"" and a complete abandonment of God, we may well experience the coming of the Anti-Christ.
Just for the record, "The existence of the European Union and the United Nations are signs that the Antichrist is coming soon" is a real belief I was really raised with. I remember when the euro came in, a lot of people were convinced it was a sign that the end times were close.
This belief in our perfectibility, which Colson calls "the most subtle and dangerous delusion of our times,"'' is evident today in the widespread denial of individual responsibility.
I'm pulling this out because it's an interesting one and he talks for some time about the fact that individual responsibility is being denied in Modern Culture.
Individual responsibility, and the lack thereof, is a constant topic of debate in leftist circles, because in America (and possibly other countries but I can't speak for other countries' politics) we are obsessively preoccupied with individual responsibility in our politics. As soon as you hear about any issue at all, we all immediately think "what personal action can I take as a private individual right now to counteract this bad thing?" It's a hard impulse to shake. But obviously, the fact of the matter is that global, society-wide problems can't be fixed with uncoordinated individual efforts, so it's not useful. This is the context in which leftism tends to be most preoccupied with dismantling individual responsibility.
But this isn't what Noebel means at all. What Noebel means is "if you're poor or you commit crimes or you have an addiction, you need to accept that that's your individual failing and structural factors don't contribute to it." I know this because when we did this chapter we talked a lot about that kind of thing. This argument, by the way, is very heavily racialized -- in practice, a lot of the people it's leveraged against are Black or sometimes Latine (as was generally the case where I lived at the time because of the demographics of the city).
Infringements on human rights by governments based on the sovereignty or whim of those in power speak eloquently of the need for a transcendent law that is impartial to all.
Abuse of power doesn't happen because the law lacks a solid foundation. It happens because a person wants to abuse power, and because the system lacks adequate checks to prevent abuse. Abuse of power would still happen under a Christian government, because it happens in churches all the time.
We also understand our God-given obligation to respect, obey, and participate in governments that serve His will (Romans 13:1-2). Our obedience minimizes the need for increased governmental authority.
"If we obey God, we need less government" is a weird take.
We are required to obey God even when our reform efforts through political channels fail. If the system of government remains unjust, we may be required to engage in civil disobedience in order to remain obedient to God.
This from the same group of people who thought Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand for the pledge was a crime against America. What he actually means is "you know that lady who wouldn't bake a wedding cake for a same-gender couple? That should be you."
An example of the proper time for disobedience recently arose when the American government (through its public health services) advised churches to amend their attitude toward homosexuality. The Bible clearly dictates the proper Christian response to homosexuality (see Romans 1 and Jude 1), and the church must stand firm in her commitment to obey God's commands even when they conflict with the State's.
Told you.
Okay, we're into Islam now. Noebel immediately starts by trotting out jihad again. Like, this is the first sentence:
One of the most controversial aspects of Islam is the concept of jihad, or "holy war."
What the fuck does that even have to do with politics or government, you toad? This is literally all he covers in the introduction (it's two paragraphs) and he doesn't link it at all to government. So lazy, so transparent.
Islam, as with Christianity, is a worldview with the vision to encompass the entire world. Whereas Christians hold to the Great Commission—the call to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20) and proclaim the ministry of reconciliation to the whole world (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)—Muslims hold to the call of global Islam, a goal accomplished if need be through the force of jihad.
Note how he contrasts allegedly peaceful Christianity with allegedly warlike Islam, with no acknowledgement of either religion's complex and changing history with evangelism and tolerance, and with absolutely no acknowledgement of the often-violent history of Christian imperialism.
Zaki Badawi speaks to the reality that many Muslims exist with minority status in non-Muslim countries. While it is a struggle some Muslims have always faced, it is not a satisfactory situation in their eyes.
This is so funny bc fundies can't even handle living in a country where they're the largest religious group and where Christianity as a whole is far and away the largest religious force because they think oppression is not being allowed to force other people to participate in your religion.
This reflects the historical fact that Muslims, from the start, lived under their own law. Muslim theologians naturally produced a theology with this in view—it is a theology of the majority. Being a minority was not seriously considered or even contemplated.
Okay, that historically cannot have been the case, because Islam cannot have spread so fast that it was never, not ever, a minority in any area that theology was being developed in. It would have to have become the majority the instant that Muhammad (peace be upon him) recieved his revelations and instantly become the majority in any place that Muslims traveled. That's just not a plausible story?
Muslim minorities in Western countries often place themselves in positions where they seek to govern themselves under Shari'ah law, while simultaneously maintaining citizenship in their respective countries. To this end, many Muslims seek advancement in politics, education, and law, all with the hope of being better able to make their case. Typically they seek to implement Shari'ah in regard to education and family law, seeing Islamic law —in addition to being an obligation for Muslims—as superior to other law systems.
David, darling, you're projecting your own values onto Muslims here. This is what you think they're doing because it's what your crowd does all the time. You literally just had an entire spiel about how it's what Christians should do.
Additionally, these Muslims seek to squelch any and all public criticisms of their faith.
So speaketh the man who thinks teaching evolution in schools is dangerously anti-Christian.
In our current politically correct culture, Muslims sometimes join hands with the political Left in opposing traditional Western values.
Yes yes yes we know you're racist.
Currently this situation is a reality in Canada and Australia. The Muslim population in Canada has gained a significant voice regarding the implementation of Shari'ah within their communities. In Australia, Christian apologists are regularly hassled in courts, sometimes being forced into silence regarding their critique of Islam. Recent court decisions are very troubling in this regard. While Muslims may continue their critique of the Christian faith, standing alongside the political and anti-Christian leftist movements, Christians in turn are threatened with loss of income or home as Muslims sway the courts to rule in their favor.
No citations given for any of this. Not one. Australia and Canada are both Christian-majority countries (although more narrowly than the USA, especially Australia). About 2.6% of Australians are Muslim, and 3% of Canadians. That doesn't at all line up with this idea that Muslims are somehow exerting dangerous levels of control over Australian and Canadian courts and harassing Christians out of house and home. What Noebel is probably obliquely referring to here is some sort of history of cases where anti-Muslim hate speech by a Christian was penalized.
A bunch of stuff that basically boils down to "Muslims want everyone else to become Muslim which is bad because they're supposed to be Christian!!!" Some mention of historical taxes that non-Muslims have been forced to pay in Muslim countries, and a conspicuous lack of mention of, example, taxation imposed upon Jewish Europeans. Basically anything you can accuse Muslims of historically having done to oppress people around them, Christians have also done, because it's not about anything inherent in Islam, it's about the broader historical fact that majority religious groups can sometimes be very aggressive towards minority religious groups, and that religion is often used as a tool of imperialism. That's not a story Noebel wants to tell, because he wants to show that Christianity is the best religion out there, and he just can't do that by telling the true and unvarnished history of Christianity.
Because Muslims have often been at war, to finance such activities the non-Muslims who dare to remain in Muslim lands are fleeced to finance Muslim aggression (or, more rarely, defense).
No discussion of how this is literally how America works.
You know what? I'm not even going to go into the very lengthy section on jihad. I've talked about all this before, and he's not bringing up anything new. It's just the same Islamophobic hypocrisy he's been engaging in before now, and it's not worth it. Also, it has nothing to do with politics or government.
What I do want to address is that Noebel claims that Muslims see people's refusal to convert to Islam or to practice Islamic culture as aggressive. He doesn't even make note of how this is actually true of fundamentalist Christians. He says that Muslims want the whole world to be governed by Islamic theocracy, and never engages with the fact that he was advocating for Christian theocracy a few pages ago. Remember those bits I kept pulling out about how he says that government should be Christian? This is why. Because he sees the same values in Muslims (whether or not they exist; probably depends on the community) and sees them as bad.
I'm also going to present, unedited, his view of the Crusades, which he's finally brought up.
The Crusades of the Middle Ages are a questionable blot on institutional Christianity. The Crusades began as a response to Muslim aggression. Muslim armies had moved north, taken Jerusalem, and made several incursions into the Christian Byzantine Empire. Eastern Christians called on Western Christians for aid in the face of Muslim aggression. The later Spanish crusades, with the aim of driving Muslim armies from Spain, were intended to take back land and free those captive to Muslim intruders.
However, there was a very unfortunate disorganization in the Crusader movement that led some to rush off to war without proper training and strategy. The resultant tragedies included many Crusaders wasting their efforts and their lives as well as the lives of others. This is particularly
apparent in the Fourth Crusade, where the grand vision of recapturing Muslim-conquered lands mutated into the sack of the Eastern Christian capital of Constantinople. Another misfortune was the so-called Children's Crusade through which many children were drowned in the Mediterranean Sea or sold into slavery in North Africa.
This is a really blatant whitewash of history and I don't think I can adequately address all the issues with it. Christian atrocities are brushed over as a lack of "proper training and strategy". They're a "questionable blot on institutional Christianity" as though they reflect nothing of Christian nationalism. What's really getting me here is that he sees the only "tragedies" as those which impacted Christian lives -- the sack of Constantinople where Christians lived, the death and enslavement of Christian children in the Children's Crusades. Loss of Muslim lives doesn't matter to him. Because he barely even sees Muslims as human.
Onto Secular Humanism.
Secular Humanists embrace democracy as the most acceptable form of government. [...] However, the Humanist conception of democracy differs significantly from more commonly held attitudes. For Secular Humanists, democracy extends far beyond the realm of government.
Note the weasely "more commonly held attitudes". He means his community's attitudes.
Liberalism is a political tradition based on a secular ethic and a high degree of government control. Specific policies include moral issues such as a woman's right to an abortion and promotion of same-sex marriage, as well as equality issues like equal rights for women, redistribution of wealth to help the poor, heavy regulation of business, and affirmative action.
Note promotion of same-sex marriage.
Basically Noebel says that secular humanists say that humans can control their own evolution and that government is a tool to do this. That's not how evolution works. He quotes a quote he's used for about three chapters running, and says "Humanists believe we are evolving animals", which he's also used for about three chapters running. The man is out of material.
"Affirmative action" means giving certain preferences to "under-represented' groups, such as when a government building project is required to hire a certain number of minority-owned sub-contractors, or when a university policy requires a certain percentage of minority students must be accepted each year, regardless of the students ability to perform on a college level.
No, not "regardless of the students' ability to perform on a college level". College admissions are extremely competitive; affirmative action in college admissions demands that you set a certain chunk aside for high-performing students in that group. You still get to filter among the applicants from that group. The way he puts it implies that there are no, for example, high-performing Black students.
Humans, according to Secular Humanists, are the highest form of evolved animals, yet we are still just one among many aspects of the world's single ecosystem.
Noebel acts like "Earth is a single ecosystem" is some sort of weird crunchy humanist talking point, but it's just ecological reality. It's not rhetoric. The planet is a closed system and things that affect one part eventually affect it all.
He also talks about how Humanists think we should live in one world community, but he says this should be a single-government state. He doesn't quote anti-statism and anarchist stuff, which are pretty significant forces of their own in leftist circles. I think single world government as a concept is a bit outdated now, isn't it? But then, this book is 20 years old.
A lot of the rest is basically stuff he's said before that boils down to "Humanists think we should be tolerant, yet they are intolerant of me!" There's a bit where he talks about how humanists tend to be socialists and tend to support social democracy.
Secular Humanist politics, biology, economics, ethics, and law are linked to the belief that human beings are the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder
Not how evolution works.
A Secular Humanist world government is problematic for Christians. In the United States alone, such a world government would seek to eradicate Christian symbols and content from the public square by removing the Ten Commandments from public schools, removing "under God" from the nation's Pledge of Allegiance, replacing Christian ethics with values clarification, replacing divine law with legal positivism, replacing the celebration of Christmas with winter holiday, standardizing sex education and alternative lifestyles into the public school curriculum, and disregarding references in the Declaration of Independence to God-given rights.
Lots to unpack here. Firstly, that's a lot of assumptions you're making. Secondly -- you see how fundamentalists think religious freedom (for Christians) is the right to impose their religion on others? All of the things he claims Secular Humanist world government would eliminate are intentional impositions of Christianity onto non-Christians. You could still be a Christian under this government; no one is stopping you or forcing you not to talk about it. They're just removing your ability to make other people practice your religion whether they want to or not. That's "religious oppression" for Christian fundamentalists.
Somehow, Noebel sees the Secular Humanist vision as a path away from "individual liberty", which he says can only be achieved through Christianity. And yet his own conception of what a Christian society looks like is to forcibly impose it upon others. So where does the individual liberty come in? It's liberty only for Christians.
Throughout this book, on one hand Noebel is angry at Muslims for allegedly having the evangelistic values he says Christianity has. Then he's angry at secularists for not having the evangelistic values he says Chrisianity has. You can't really have it both ways, my guy.
On to Marxism.
He starts off with some basic facts -- that Marxists tend to conceptualize government systems as built on economics, etc. Immediately, we run into some weird phrasing.
Thus, Marxists see a democratic state or republic, especially in a capitalist economic system, as undesirable. According to Engels, "The modem state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine.'"
Noebel thinks this means "democracy bad", and not "states bad".
Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie uses the state to oppress the proletariat. In socialism, the opposite is true—the proletariat operates as the powerful authoritarian. In this sense, Marxists use the term "dictatorship of the proletariat."
He phrases this very intentionally to suggest that, in Marxism, the proletariat will oppress the bourgeoisie. But that's not how Marxism works; the point is to eliminate the existence of the bourgeoisie, by destroying the system that makes it possible for them to exist. So using the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" (a real term, but there are many synonyms) here is very much intended to scaremonger. He continues to use the word "dictatorship" on its own throughout this section.
Now, an additional issue is that Noebel doesn't understand anti-statism. Although he notes that the ultimate Marxist goal is a lack of states, his summary list of Marxism says that their ideal form of government is "Statism (communist world government)". That's not true; the ideal Marxist form of government is, well, anarchism really. Of course Marxism is pretty diverse, and there are authoritarian communists all over the shop, but if we're talking in pure terms of Marx's own vision, the utopian end result is supposed to be a stateless society. It's enormously remiss that he doesn't discuss anarchism as a political philosophy at all in a chapter on Marxist politics. To me, this is more proof that he doesn't understand the ideologies he's talking about in the slightest.
Whoever expects that socialism will be achieved without social revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat is not a socialist. Dictatorship is state power, based directly upon force.
See how this is scaremongering? He quotes a lot of Lenin about this, which is fine for specifically Marxism-Leninism. But the problem is that he just refers to it as "Marxism" about half the time, and there are many different forms of Marxism (acknowledging diversity in the worldviews is not at all his strong point).
He harps on this for a while, and then talks some more about how Marxists really want a one-government world. Again, generally not true.
And of course, naturally:
The political and military history of Marxism from the October Revolution of 1917 to the Tiananmen Square student uprising of 1989 is one of the most ruthless, efficient killing machines the world has ever witnessed. The death toll of this "scientific socialism" experiment has exceeded the 100 million mark, according to University of Hawaii professor R. J. Rummel, author of Death By Government. Rummel summarizes the period by saying it is "as though our species has been devastated by a modem Black Plague."
This needs nuance that's missing. I personally agree that killing in the name of socialism or communism is indefensible, and authoritarian communist states have been deadly for many people in the country, especially ethnic and religious minorities. But how many people have died in the name of capitalism? What about all the workers who were killed during the Industrial Revolution? How many people died in India and China because the British really wanted tea and opium and spices? How many innocent people in southwest Asia and South America because the United States intentionally destabilized their governments for economic reasons? What about all the MILLIONS of Indigenous people who have died and are dying as a result of settler colonialism??
And what about the Marxism that's just...university professors bickering about interpretation of texts? What about the Marxism of my local mutual aid society, who spend most of their energy giving food and shelter to the large population of poor and houseless people?
Point is, this is a very one-sided telling of a complex story. If you want to talk about the political and military history of Marxism, you have to include all these things, and you also have to talk about the political and military history of capitalism and/or at least of the United States (since Noebel is writing from an American perspective).
While the film portrays Senator George McCarthy as wrong for seeking to "out" Communists, the facts came to light in the 1990s that McCarthy was on the right track! After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Secret Service archives were opened to the public, where researchers found evidence that over 340 Communist spies and sympathizers had indeed infiltrated a number of State Department positions in the U.S. government during the Cold war.*
We are so far right here that "McCarthy was good actually" is a position the author holds. Here's his source -- the only place this particular document from a 2000 column I can't find more information about survives, as far as I can tell. I'll...just let you read it and draw your own conclusions.
And that's the note on which we end the section! Communist spies were real threats and Joseph McCarthy was an American hero, folks. Wise words from the man who thought the Beatles were an agent of the Soviet Union meant to seduce young people into communism. On to Cosmic Humanism.
Cosmic Humanists are also held to really want a one-world-government situation. This is apparently Noebel's secular bugbear. I admit that it was trendy in the 80s-00s scifi situation, so I guess it was also trendy in utopian political spaces at the time. Nevertheless, I think it would be more useful to have provided an overview of alternate proposed government or political systems, rather than just going "everyone except us thinks there should be a single world government and it's going to bring about the Antichrist". (Which actually is weird because surely the Antichrist's time is preordained, so it would be a sign, not a cause. You probably couldn't prevent the coming of the Antichrist by delaying world government. My fundie brain finds that idea rather blasphemous -- if God has decided it's the end times, what are you going to do about it? Do you know better than God?)
Basically there's two ideas in the Cosmic Humanism section:
Humans are on the brink of an unprecedented social evolution.
One world government.
These ideas are essentially the same as the ones in the Secular Humanism section but with spiritual instead of physical evolution. This makes it slightly more tolerable in that, like, the evolution is a metaphor so I don't have to bang the NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS hammer so often.
However, what the Cosmic Humanists are actually talking about is not a one-world-government situation but a stateless world in which each individual governs themself. In other words, anarchism again. Noebel doesn't address this, proving that again he has no way of conceptualizing a world without states and borders. He thinks that means one single government, instead of no government.
See, he says this:
Since Cosmic Humanists think in terms of understanding the world as a whole instead of the parts, the next pattern to emerge is global civilization, a unity that will demand a one-world government.
But Cosmic Humanists describe it like this:
Thus in Cosmic Humanist terms, world government is self-government. Centralized national governments will not be necessary. Each individual will be autonomous, deciding what is right for him or her without reference to institutional limits.
See? This is a world where authority doesn't exist. So it's completely inaccurate to describe it as one world government.
The dangerous potential for such a system of individual autonomy, however, is that it will disintegrate into anarchy. Cosmic Humanists, however, emphasize the concept of community as having the capacity to overcome the dangers of anarchy.
This, I think, is the issue. Noebel is not aware of the differences between the colloquial concept of anarchy (dangerous chaos) versus the political concept of it (anti-authority).
One aspect of personal freedom that the Cosmic Humanist worldview discourages is in the area of faith and traditional religion. Former United Nations Assistant Secretary General Robert Miller says, "Religions must actively cooperate to bring to unprecedented heights a better understanding of the mysteries of life and of our place in the universe. 'My religion, right or wrong,' . . . must be abandoned forever in the Planetary Age."
This attitude toward religion stems from the understanding that some religions, such as Christianity and Islam, are incompatible with the Humanist belief that we are evolving toward our own godhood. Christianity will always threaten the New Age emphasis on higher consciousness and hence must be stifled. In the New World Order you may follow your inclinations only as long as they are not found in obedience to Jesus Christ.
What's actually being discouraged here is religious nationalism. The idea is you can hold any belief as long as you don't say that it has to be the only belief anyone can hold. Christianity is compatible with this! You can be a Christian and say that other religions are also okay. But you can't be a fundamentalist Christian, and for Noebel that's the only real Christianity. This kind of bait and switch is CONSTANTLY happening in these discussions in fundamentalist circles. They frantically claim that religious freedom is being STAMPED OUT because THE LEFT tolerates ANYTHING EXCEPT CHRISTIANITY, but the people they're talking about are fine with Christianity if it's not treated as the only religion. And that's unacceptable. Noebel believes that freedom is found in the ability to oppress people who don't believe the same things you do.
I also don't like how he bundles Islam in here as though he's genuinely concerned about Muslim freedom of religion, when he spends his whole time talking about how bad and dangerous Islam is. He acts like secularism is a threat to Christianity and Islam, but he has no interest in building solidarity with Muslims at all.
Anyway, as usual, the Cosmic Humanist section is short. I wonder why he even bothers. Onto Postmodernism, which I suspect will be dreadful because a framework developed for cultural criticism is not a lens through which the question "what form of government is best?" tends to be asked a lot.
He starts off by talking about the fact that there is no one Postmodern politics and that Postmodernists hold a wide range of political positions. So why are we talking about them again?
He DOES say that Postmodernists tend to be varying degrees of leftists. That's fine, and is roughly true, but then he talks about Foucault specifically for like three paragraphs, which I don't find in any way helpful for generalizing Postmodern politics as a whole because Foucault was just one (influential) theorist.
For Postmodernists, politics is not centered around political parties, Utopian visions, or an ultimate telos; rather, it is a tool of experimentation that involves a radical critique of the existing systems of power in a society, the identification of oppressed groups, and the remedy for bringing those identified groups out of oppression to achieve a sense of social justice.
A "sense" of social justice, you will note. I find it bewildering that he sees "bring oppressed groups out of oppression" as not an ultimate telos. It's like he's invested in portraying social justice movements as arbitrary and politically aimless? Also, while I agree that most leftists would roughly agree with that description, I don't think these characteristics are inherent to Postmodernism. I mean, most Marxists would also agree.
And then there's like another six paragraphs about Foucault. Is this a biography? It feels like Noebel couldn't generalize enough about Postmodernists so he just focused on one in hopes that would pass muster. It doesn't, though.
Foucault claims to have been in "most of the squares on the political checkerboard," and along with most of Postmodemism's founders, they played their game on the far left of the political game board!
I'm just showing you this for the scare exclamation mark. Noebel doesn't use many of these but he always employs them when the statement is supposed to be a SHOCKING revelation. "Postmodernists are leftists" is not shocking or honestly even that interesting. Most humanities and social science academics tend to be at least left-ish.
He then talks AGAIN about the origins of postmodernism. We know, Noebel! You've mentioned it at least three times!
The sexual and feminist revolutions that began in the sixties were intent on correcting the wrongs perpetuated by Western culture, especially the "puritanical" United States." What was wrong was identified as white, European, male, heterosexual, and Judeo Christian.
STOP SAYING JUDEO-CHRISTIAN WHEN YOU MEAN CHRISTIAN.
Also, he's quoting almost entirely for this whole section from a single article by Barbara Epstein, which he quotes so extensively throughout both this section and the book as a whole that I assumed it was a book. This man cannot even be bothered to read a book about Postmodernism. His main source is an ARTICLE.
This is the section in which he really drills down on how "identity politics" are bad. He talks a lot about how identity politics centers around groups "perceived as victims of social injustice", and uses "allegedly" type language a lot, clearly signalling that he thinks these claims are bullshit.
Likewise, homosexuals were viewed as having been oppressed by a heterosexual majority who had forced their puritanical sexual mores onto society. The strategic theory marketed the homosexual lifestyle as normal, moral, healthy through television sitcoms about likeable homosexual characters, gay-themed movies, and public education that introduced very young children to appealing homosexual families.
Note the "think of the children" rhetoric woven into this. My partner says "where is this utopian media" and "i wish i'd watched sitcoms with likeable gay characters and not rampant homophobia". Same.
Similarly, Postmodernists claim that white Europeans had dominated people of color for hundreds of years. The strategic theory claimed blacks and other minorities suffered an unfair disadvantage in admission to higher education. The concept of affirmative action was developed to guarantee minorities access to higher education, often at the expense of more qualified white applicants. In this way, years of minority subservience to white oppression is remedied and social justice is affirmed.
"at the expense of more qualified white applicants". Uh-huh. Source?
Postmodernists have mastered the manipulation of language to such an extent that what used to be considered shameful, immoral, or bad behavior is now heralded as progressive. Postmodernists have succeeded in gaining public acceptance of the following:
Believing in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage is a mark of backwardness, while favoring legalization of same-sex marriage is a mark of broadmindedness.
This is referred to later as a "word game". I don't like the word backward, but "you're more tolerant if you are willing to let people have equal access to marriage" isn't a word game. It's just how tolerance works.
Expressing belief in a male Christ is a mark of bigotry, while preferring the female Christ (Christa) is a mark of discernment.
I'M SORRY BUT I'M LAUGHING SO HARD. CHRISTA??? I've literally NEVER IN MY LIFE heard of this before!! Noebel! Where are you getting this one!!!! Nobody I've ever met thinks Jesus wasn't a dude if they think he existed but I'm going to start a church specifically founded on this principle, actually, and we're going to find Noebel's church building and we're going to pass out leaflets right outside.
Campaigning for abstinence education is restrictive, while promoting "free love" and revolution is a mark of liberation.
It's not "free love", it's "teaching children about how their bodies work" and "harm reduction".
Not allowing children to be taught about the homosexual lifestyle is a throwback to religious narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and the ultimate negative label, "intolerant," while teaching students to embrace homosexuality as a healthy lifestyle is a mark of inclusion and tolerance.
Again....yeah, that's how tolerance works. You see his only tool re: queer people is "think of the children!!! oh!! the children!!!!" It's really founded on the idea that queer people tempt children who would otherwise be good little straight cis kids into queerness simply by existing openly.
Postmodernists long for a time when all of society's ills and abuses will be eliminated and social justice will prevail.
This is so sad. Don't you? It's probably never going to be possible, but wouldn't it be nice? Isn't it worth working towards? Shoot for the moon etc etc.
The Postmodern understanding of social justice revolves around the "other." Derrida's phrase "the singularity of the Other" and Rorty's term "otherness" refer to those who are marginalized by society—the poor, unemployed, migrants, Hispanics, blacks, women, gays and lesbians.'
See, if you actually wanted to explain Postmodern politics well, you'd have introduced the idea of the Other a lot earlier and discussed it in a lot more depth. But he really only gives a single paragraph about it, compared to his ten paragraphs about Foucault's personal beliefs.
This is equivalent to the Marxist idea that virtue resides only among the oppressed and forms the foundation for identity politics.
It's not that virtue resides only in the oppressed, although I think it's very easy for leftists to go that way (it's bad, but often hard to resist). It's that...like...when people are oppressed, working towards their liberty is virtuous? I don't think that should be controversial. It's as simple a principle as "you should give medicine to sick people". If people are hurting, it's moral to help them.
He also quotes this book: Alan Sears and Craig Osteen, The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing The Principal Threat To Religious Freedom Today. So, uh. (Incidentally my favorite one-star review of this book on Amazon just says "not gay enough".)
Postmodernists approve homosexuality along with polymorphous perversity and sexuality of any kind.
"Perversity". Mhm. I wish I could show this to everyone involved in queer infighting. The Christian right, trust me, does not see us as separate entities some of whom are more deserving of rights than others. It sees us all as "perversities". (Also, "polymorphous perversity" is actually apparently a Freudian term meaning "a generalized sexual desire that can be excited and gratified in many ways, normal in young children but unusual in adults." It really doesn't make much sense here, and it doesn't seem to be used much in human sexuality research today.)
He also only dedicates one paragraph to socialism, again compared to ten paragraphs on Foucault's personal politics.
You really need to see this Pop Culture Connection, though:
Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (a 1991 film starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman)—Postmodern references abound in this retelling of a classic tale. According to cultural commentator Gene Veith, the movie "presents the medieval outlaw as suffering posttraumatic stress syndrome from the Crusades. Accompanied by his merry band of multicultural homeless victims, he and the feminist Maid Marian oppose the Sheriff of Nottingham's multinational corporation and save Sherwood Forest's environment." Notice, too, the theme of social justice as Robin seeks to right the wrongs of society by taking from the rich
oppressor (the Sheriff of Nottingham) and giving to the poor peasants.*
Can't get over this. Just can't get over it. I mean, first of all, the last sentence. Oh, notice the theme of social justice in this movie (aka the entire basic idea upon which Robin Hood's folklore is built). It's not new??? And it's because it's based on Christian principles!As my partner put it, "people in 1450: hey. it seems unbiblical to collect riches while poor people starve. wouldn't it be cool if someone righteously disobeyed the state in service of godliness and being a decent person." And then this idea that Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves is a serious postmodernist text meant to propound social justice rhetoric and not like. A pulpy summer action flick. GOD. Incredible.
And that's the last thing in the chapter. So let's recap. He spends this chapter railing about how Islam is dangerous for reasons unrelated to politics and then talking about the idea of a one-government world. He doesn't discuss anything remotely useful about the alternate political systems that have been proposed; he just goes over concepts he personally finds horrifying.
So what's the real purpose of this chapter? Well, mainly to convince you that alternatives to what we have now are scary, dangerous threats that will strip your religious liberty and leave you at risk of oppression. Marxism is going to take your personal property and kill you because you make $60,000 a year at the office (never discussing the fact that you, the reader, are probably proletariat, not bourgeois, by most Marxist analyses). Postmoderists are going to take your job because you're presumably a straight white Christian and probably a man (a weird assumption because fundie schools, like all coed schools, are about 50-50) and they're going to give it to a Black lesbian who is totally unqualified. (Interesting that there's no scaremongering about trans people, by the way -- apparently we were not yet even on Noebel's radar).
It's about creating a sense of threat, a sense that the entire outside world is against you and that the fundamentalist Christian right is the only people who will actually protect your rights. It's not about educating you or making you better at apologetics, because none of this would actually make any sense to an outsider. It's about reinforcing the sense that you're only safe Inside. Even when that's at variance with the facts.
