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Show Volume XXX Issue XI The Ogden Valley News Page 3 August 15, 2023 Editor’s View Did you know that for most of the world, through eons of time, concepts such as freedom, progression, compassion, and equality, as we understand them today, were, for the most part, unknown to humanity? These concepts are distinctly Christian. However, during our day and age—more than at any other time in the Western world (the U.S. and Western Europe)—people have begun turning away from Christianity in droves. But it may be more difficult than they realize, as Christian beliefs and mores still permeate our culture and political traditions—more commonly referred to as the Western intellectual tradition. However, a systematic effort has been in place for some time to dismantle and override this social system, which values the individual above all others. Are we even aware of what’s at risk? Glen Scrivener, in his book The Air We Breathe, explains it this way. “An older goldfish swished past a couple of small fry. “’How’s the water, boys?’ he enquires.” They respond by asking, “‘Water? What’s Water?’’” The point is, we are so immersed in Christian culture that we don’t see it, don’t know it, nor even recognize it for what it is. Like the goldfish, it’s just what we live in each day. As a result, very few even recognize the source of the incredible freedoms and blessings we enjoy by living in the modern Western world—the influence of Christianity and its positive impact on Western civilization. Most are oblivious to the contrasting living conditions millions have experienced through time immemorial; and the diminished lifestyles of those who are not blessed daily by the Christian-Judeo influence upon the culture they are immersed in, failing to recognize, respect, and protect this legacy that supports the individual and individual rights. Scrivener notes, because of the Christian revolution, “First minds changed, then lives, then communities, then culture, then everything. Eventually this foolish message [Christ’s revolutionary (thus, seemingly foolish) ideas of love, freedom, kindness, progress, and equality] became the most influential in human history.” It has led, in part to the idea of “civil society” as we know it today. The term civil society has evolved over the centuries, whereby, in the democratic Western Intellectual tradition that we are more familiar with, the term is, more or less, defined as “a dense network of groups, communities, and ties that stand between the individual and the modern state.” The term, with an emphasis on “civil,” connotes a well-ordered, functioning social network whereby its members, living under an understood social contract, participate in creating laws and institutions to enforce these contractual agreements in order for society to Forward or Backward? function in an orderly and sustainable manner. A precondition of a successful society—one that is fruitfully growing, developing, creating, prospering, and even thriving—are high levels of stability and certainty that support and sustain the everyday functions of the society and its members. For most of man’s history, a semi-form of stability usually involved a type of authoritarian political head or heads who welded supreme power over their subjects. In these terms, civil society was more relevantly called “political society,” which involved the governed and the governor. The regulation of society was through absolute power. This idea, of a ruler and those to be ruled, was a universal idea and seen as fundamental truth. Man was also inseparable from the state or empire. Kings, Shahs, Kahns, Czars, or rulers by any other name, for the most part of history, were even deified, along with the clergy or pagan Gods that often played an integral role in the solidification of authoritarian rule. German theologian and religious reformer Martin Luther sparked the 16th century Protestant Reformation. He was one of many whose actions furthered the Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th centuries, furthering the idea that the individual could think and act separately from the political and religious head. Other contributors were Galileo, Francis Bacon, and John Locke with Locke’s doctrine of natural rights that encapsulated the idea of political authority being limited by the condition that a ruler fulfilled his obligation to serve the public good and not his own. It was Locke’s ideas that spurred both the French and American revolutions. Those of the Enlightenment were not the first to consider the public good. Aristotle, who lived over three-hundred years before Christ, taught the importance of the polis, or political association, community, or body of citizens (in Greek, koinonia) of the people—or selforganization—in an effort to achieve positive common ends for the betterment of the polis, or political community. In Latin, the term was translated as societas civilis, or civil society. But even for the Greeks, as Scrivener notes, this association did not include all people—it was the paternal heads of each family, who usually looked to their pantheon of gods for direction, calling upon them for their vote in major matters for the good of the community. For instance, turning to the Delphic Oracle. For those Greeks involved in politics, it was a full-time job—spending their days in the Agora and nights in long discussions and debates, as Hugh Nibley notes in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless, this, “while servants and slaves took care of petty and menial matters. Even that, however, was an ideal which neither the Greeks nor anyone else could live up to. After all, the first interest of every citizen is to make money…. And so politics degenerated quickly into subservience to private interests— it yields subservience to wealth. If Greece produced the most enlightened politicians, it also, as Thucydides informs us, produced the most sordid. Politics is often a forlorn and hopeless affair, because it is not really a dialogue unless it is strictly honest, and the ulterior motives of power and gain always vitiate [corrupt] it in the end.” To the Romans, civil society referred to governance by cosmopolitan rule of law in contrast to “uncivilized, barbarian” tribal life. Of importance: a “stable” society based on a strict hierarchy rooted in gender, citizenship (primarily, patricians or plebians), ancestry, and census rank, which indicated where one lived and how much land one owned. The good of the state was of prime concern, with little tolerance, compassion, or basic human rights (think of the status of Jews and Christians within the Roman Empire). While there may have been more rights circulating within the empire, say, than in a serf or peasant community, these rights were limited and much more restricted than what we have experienced in our lifetime under Western liberalism. At that time, too, the common good was for that of the state—not the individual. With the Enlightenment came the idea of natural law and individual rights versus the absolute rights of the state. Unfortunately, for the most part, the state and the individual remained connected. But this idea of the individual, being completely separated from the state, though reconceived within the last centuries, is as old as time; however, with time, the idea became corrupted. Boris DeWiel writes in a journal article titled “A Conceptual History of Civil Society: From Greek Beginnings to the End of Marx,” “The conception of ‘the people’ as an independent entity having an autonomous purpose and identity was already present in the Old Testament. As Laslett observed, the idea was implicit in ‘the Judaic sense of the chosen people, the people led by the hand of God through the wilderness because they had an enduring purpose and being. Whenever Christian political theorists thought of the people as having a voice in the appointment of a king or a regime, or of the king as having a duty to his people, their model was the peculiar people of Israel.’ This conception of the people as a single entity would become central to the modern idea of civil society as a zone of autonomy apart from the state.” As noted, when the ideas of the Enlightenment emerged, the individual was still not the prime concern—rationalistic universalism was. Promotion and protection of the rational, universal good in conjunction with the state was the primary goal—not the welfare of each individual separate and distinct from the state. The state was still primary; the individual, ancillary. Whereas the Western Intellectual tradition honed this idea of individuals being separate from the state with their own distinct ethnographic, sociological, and cultural backgrounds with varied organizing traditions, mores, and ethos, and rights, this idea stood in stark contrast to the standard, centuries-old belief of people being inseparable from the state. Political movements such as Marxism, Communism, and, more recently, American Progressivism, are efforts to once again relink and make the people dependent on the state and, in the process, wrench individual rights away from the individual—private property rights, free speech, gun ownership, limited taxation linked with limited government (and government “benefits”), freedom of religion and associated God-given natural rights, the inherent dignity of the individual, and the freedom to make individual decisions for self and family with limited government interference, etc. As Scrivener concludes, “If you’re a Westerner—whether you’ve stepped foot inside a church or not, whether you’ve clapped eyes on a Bible or not, whether you consider yourself an atheist, pagan, or Jedi Knight—you are a goldfish, and Christianity is the water in which you swim. Or to say the same thing in a slightly different way, Christianity is the air we breathe. It is our atmosphere. It’s our environment, both unseen and all-pervasive.” Do we really want to turn away from the individual rights inherent in this belief system in favor of moving backwards toward the alternative—tied, once again, to the ball and chain of the behemoth, overreaching state? It’s Back to School Night! Weber High: August 21 from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Snowcrest Jr.: August 22 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Valley Elementary: August 21 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. The Community Foundation of Ogden Valley (CFOV) invites you to the ND 2 ANNUAL FARM FESTIVAL FREE On-site Parking FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 4:30 P.M. TO 7:30 P.M. FREE Admission Food available from: Music by “Eden’s Yellow Rose” 2103 N 5500 E Eden - Just west of Eden Park Visit Booths from Local Businesses Danelles’ Artisan Sourdough Imagine Music Iris & Emily Fresh Simple Green Farms Milk Barn Creamery Misfit Mushrooms Mountain Born Creamery Patio Springs Gardens Plant Candy Simply Eden Sunnyfield Farm Store Emie James SUPPORT OUR NONPROFITS MATCH DONOR PERIOD HAS BEGUN www.cfov.net IF MANY GIVE IN SMALL AMOUNTS IT MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE Donate at cfov.net |