Christus Natus Est

Born that man no more may die

Wishing everyone a most merry and blessed Christmas. May the peace and joy of Christ be with all of you.

MWK

Shoes and the "Enlightenment"

In November of this year, a video from al Qaeda surfaced, with a message directed at the president-elect of the United States. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the terrorist outfit, delivered a speech in which he denigrated Mr. Obama, using terms that must be considered even by the basest as ignominious and disgraceful. Al-Zawahiri, who called the president-elect a “house slave,” also threatened him and the country he is about to lead with a message designed to provoke fear and violence.

About a month later, the current president, George W. Bush, while visiting Iraq for the final time as the commander-in-chief of the US, stood by as a vociferous journalist assaulted the American head of state with his shoes. The significance, which may easily be lost on a westerner, is quite severe, as hitting someone with a shoe is counted among the highest of insults.

These two incidents share in common a very dire philosophical under-pinning, that is, the egregious and patent disrespect for authority that permeates the post-modern world. The source is, of course, the so-called “Enlightenment,” and the attitude of anti-clericalism that was so inherent in it. This idea further developed in the minds of people like Locke and Hobbes, who put authority at the whims of the mob rather than in the minds of the just. This of course led to such disasters as the massacres of the French Revolution and the depositions of monarchy across Europe.

It seems that (especially in America) modernity has been founded upon the questioning of authority to such a degree that disrespect for proper authority is not only allowed but even encouraged. It is a worrisome and discomfiting trend to see authority increasingly mocked, derided, and even attacked in the name of progress and freedom. This is not to say that authorities are necessarily inviolable or infallible, but that the seat which each respectively occupies ought to be given due respect absolutely. It is frightening to countenance a world without authority, and it looks like such a world is not far off.