Toaster strudel alliance takes on drugs, atheists and liberalism

[jstrodel]

The definition of what is radical varies from which possition one has.

so what is a radical for you?

and can you prove that "a subtantial part" of the atheists are radicals?

A radical is someone who exists outside of the established political system. This is not necessarily bad per se, obviously all political systems are created by people that were at one point outsiders. But when you consider the American political system (I can't say I know about Europe and wouldn't know what to say about colonialism and islamo-fascism, issues that people should care about but not what I am talking about).

To some degree, Ron Paul is a radical, because his views exist outside of the mainstream of the political culture. But I am not going to try and link libertarianism with radicalism, as I think it is a much more modest proposal and admire Ron Paul in a lot of ways. I would say that many right libertarians are radicals though when you start talking about anarcho-capitalism and ideological libertarianism that embodies the same sort of theoretical mindset that is tolerate of sweeping claims that are dependent on a hyper-individualistic epistemology that, like the atheist culture that produced it, will almost deify reason and reduce tradition to superstition.

I would see this sort of radicalism in someone like Ayn Rand, who proclaimed that selfishness was a virtue. I think it is the way that atheists think because of their approach to learning and verification. There are many objectivist athiests who I would consider to be radicals, although they are politically to the right. I do not know how many atheists subscribe to objectivism, there are many of them, or how many other atheists have this sort of ideological radicalism that I see as a dangerous way to view the world.

Some atheists are very prominent influences on the conservative movement, such as George Will and Milton Friedman, but they do not descend into this sort of ideological frenzy and say things like "selfishness is a virtue".

The history of left wing atheism is much more instructive as to an extremely destructive form of left wing radicalism. The French Revolution brought in a political wave of radicalism and violence. In the 19th century you saw the socialist thinkers like Marx influenced by Hegel's bastardized version of Christinianity, anarchists like Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin,. There was widespread rejection of Christianity and acceptance of the left wing atheism, epitomized in thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and the widespread union of Nietzschean criticisms of morality and ethics with left wing politics (for a modern day example of this, look at the legal philosopher and Nietzsche scholar Brian Leiter, who does the rankings for philosophy programs in the US). The left flourished in the universities, alongside atheism and agnosticism. Marx himself came out of the European intellectual tradition of atheism and the methods of the academy. Scientific socialism was a defining movement of the 19th century, and became an international revolutionary movement with the fusion of Marxism with Leninism in Russia and with Maoism in China.

In the 20th century, you saw the establishment of Communism around the world as violent revolutionary movements pushed hard to create totilitarian societies based on the European atheist intellectual tradition. They taught that science proved that atheism was true. In America you saw a powerful union movement (which I would say that I admire, in many ways) and a civil rights movement as well as a feminist movement. All of these brought positive contributions, and the influence of the unbroken stream of leftist intellectualism, going back to Marx, Hegel and Nietzsche was unbroken. For an example of this, look at publications like The Nation.

The difference between the academic atheism and the left wing movement was that the left relied on a massive amount of political propaganda to advance its goals. It was not at all a movement aimed at persuading only university professors of the merits of its goals, but a movement of destroying the cultural heritage of Western Christianity and replacing it with liberalism. Popular music and the arts were filled with leftist propaganda and atheist, consider musicians like Pete Seegar, the counterculture of the 1960's, the punk movement with musicians like The Clash and the Dead Kennedy embracing Marxist or left wing views. The goal was mass indoctrination of youth culture with leftist and atheist views.

In the 20th century, the left gained momentum in American higher education. Leftists filled the universities up. Many became disillusioned with the Soviet Union after more and more bad reports surfaced. Thinkers like Howard Zinn, (who wrote a play called Marx in Soho and The Peoples History of the United States) advanced radical, anti-American critiques of the American system, but instead of being relegated to secondary positions became textbooks in the post 1960s American education system as large numbers of former "hippies" and radicals became universities professors to advance their goals. The universities had always had a soft spot both for left wing politics, being to a large degree land grant organizations or public institutions and atheism which receive massive amounts of funds from the government which require political advocacy. The influence of atheism among intellectuals in the 19th and 20th centuries was great among science. Left wing scientists and atheists/pantheists/agnostics included eminent figures like Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell (a libertarian socialist who at once time advocated unilateral disarmament while Hitler was militarizing Germany), Linus Pauling (who worked for a French organization run by a French Communist), Stephen J Gould (a Marxist paleontologist members of the group "Science for the people", Noam Chomsky (a linguistic who influenced Hugo Chavez). There are many, many other authors whose names are as common on the bookshelves of atheists as Che Guvera posters on the walls of atheist undergraduates.

Left wing atheism, as an unbroken chain of succession going back to the intellectual currents of Marx and the millions he influenced, influenced the sexual revolution. Marx was joined with Freud in the works of Herbert Marcuse. Sexuality and rejection of Christianity was seen as a force of liberation. Left wing atheism flourished in the fields of humanities, in which today very large numbers of professors are Marxist as well as in both analytic and continental philosophy. Continental Communists like Jean Paul Sarte influenced millions with their understanding of left wing. Derrida and the post-structuralists influenced modern culture substantially and advanced a left wing atheist fusion. Richard Rorty promoted the continental left wing atheist movement in the US.

A new era of post-modernism was said to have come, thanks to the influence of left wing atheism. Postmodernism influenced the arts and culture substantially, as the combination of left wing politics, atheism and critiques of language brought more and more into the fold.

This is not even scratching the surface of the relationship between atheism and left wing politics

What is radical for you?

A radical is someone who steps outside of the presently existing social order and advocates a very fast transition of society. Often radicals are in occupations like writers, university professors, community organizers and positions that do not necessarily require their ideas to be prove to have merit. A radical is someone who will advance a very theoretical idea of what the world is like sometimes with sound evidence that it is valid and sometimes with a very flimsy ideological preference. There is often nothing that prevents radicals from advocating ideas that don't have a chance of working. For an example, consider the anarchist movement, the only anarchist country in history was spain, which was quickly defeated in a military loss.

What is radicalism for you?

My mom was a radical and I grew up as a radical. I associate radicalism with naive thinking, unproven assumptions, dogmatism and a kind of idealism that is in many ways attractive but dangerous.

They seem to be proud of their tolerance of extreme views for an easily discernable and praiseworthy motive, the free access to information, but at the same time tend to completely neglect the damage that radicals can cause.

Can you prove that?

Study the way that the atheistic left treated the Soviet Union, before it collapsed.