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| Monroe County |
Only the Thought Police mattered.
George Orwell, 1984
I recently re-read Orwell's 1984 to gain insight into the Thought Police of today.
The new custodians of the Ministry of Love are filled with hatred. Orwell helps me see this, providing a lens through which to view the New Intolerance.
I am among the orthodox religious, and we are being excoriated, in a country where supposedly we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Ironically, secular-progressivism has all the marks of a new, alternative religion, with its many mindless acolytes. (See, e.g., "Wokeness and the New Religious Establishment," by James M. Patterson.) .
The new custodians of the Ministry of Love are filled with hatred. Orwell helps me see this, providing a lens through which to view the New Intolerance.
I am among the orthodox religious, and we are being excoriated, in a country where supposedly we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Ironically, secular-progressivism has all the marks of a new, alternative religion, with its many mindless acolytes. (See, e.g., "Wokeness and the New Religious Establishment," by James M. Patterson.) .
Side-by-side with Orwell I am reading Mary Eberstadt's It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies. Eberstadt writes:
"Belligerent secularism, not religious traditionalism, is the true heir to Puritanism today.
It is standard-bearers within the progressive-secular alliance, not religious traditionalists, who now enforce dogma on the wider society, who police cultural precincts for heretics, and who shun and shame dissenters. They are the guardians of what has become a secularist substitute faith, concerning the sexual revolution and its perceived moral imperatives. And like the Puritanism of yesteryear, today’s secular version does not tolerate nonconformism. Practicing Christians who refuse to cave are on the front lines of the new intolerance today." (p. 17)
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See my recent book Deconstructing Progressive Christianity.