In
Confessions of an Ex-Moralist, Joel Marks blithely, even happily, describes his descent from believer in God to atheist "secular moralist" to contented denier of the existence of morality.
It takes very little imagination to imagine a world run by people such as Marks. And, apparently, Marks is a man of little imagination.
When one's own likes and dislikes represent the apex of moral thought, then virtually any monstrous behavior can be justified -- or, rather, doesn't even need to be justified -- as a result.
Marks writes: "For instance, I used to think that animal agriculture was wrong. Now I will call a spade a spade and declare simply that I very much dislike it and want it to stop."
So Marks would like us all to be vegans, apparently, and since he acknowledges no moral truths, there would be no barrier, were he to be in a position of power, to him implementing his dislike in whatever way he deemed most effective.
Marks is so blinkered, he sees his lack of morality as some magic empathy-enhancing condition: "For to argue that people who use animals for food and other purposes are doing something terribly wrong is hardly the way to win them over. That is more likely to elicit their defensive resistance."
Well, that's great Mr. Marks, as long as you are working from a position of weakness. What if you are in a position where their defensive resistance isn't a barrier to you achieving your goals?
He goes on to write "I now acknowledge that I cannot count on either God or morality to back up my personal preferences or clinch the case in any argument. I am simply no longer in the business of trying to derive an
ought from an
is. I must accept that other people sometimes have opposed preferences, even when we are agreed on all the relevant facts and are reasoning correctly."
Has Marks even considered the marriage of this idea with the natural human tendency toward coersion and totalitarianism? It is as if he has never even considered the parallels between his happy amorality and
every single society that has attempted to govern from such a world view?
Does he comprehend what happens when the people in power think like him? "Morality has nothing to do with it." "I very much dislike it and want it to stop." "I desire to influence the world in such a way that my desires have a greater likelihood of being realized."
When a person whose world view and ethics are guided by statements like that has power in his hands, there is nothing to stop him from exercising that power. You can't rely on him to have some innate respect for the rights of others, because in his world view
unalienable rights don't exist! We have numerous edifying recent examples, starting with the USSR, so it is sometimes astounding to me that people like Marks exist, so wrapped in the comforts of a nation that respects his individual rights that he can't even recognize the value of it.
There are existing countries -- North Korea, the Peoples' Republic of China, and numerous other uniformly terrible societies -- where the fact that the leaders desire an outcome is sufficient justification for them to use whatever brutal methods they desire to implement it.
This article appeared in the New York Times -- the same newspaper where Thomas Friedman is allowed to repeatedly wax wistfully about Chinese governmental efficiency and the wonderful things that could be done in the U.S. if only we could be "like China for a day."
By surface observation, people like Marks and Friedman -- the New York Times constituency -- are the epitome of civilized leftism. They've probably never beaten the crap out of someone, kicked a dog, or stolen candy from a baby.
Yet, they are monsters. They blithely endorse a mentality and a mindset that disparages individual rights and liberties, that sets the stage for totalitarian horrors.
They live in a society where they are free to do this, because it was founded on the idea that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
Yet they want to replace that with "I very much dislike it and want it to stop."
Men like this are to be despised and opposed as thoroughly as one would oppose a terrorist with a vest full of explosives, because they, by seeming so reasonable and civilized on the surface, are an even more pernicious threat than the terrorist, whose essential brutality is on display for all to see.
