Letters to the Editor

The Sin of Progressivism

Dear Editor: Stephen Lieber accuses me of “Name Calling Harms Dialog” (Readers’ Forum, Aug. 4) for merely associating the word liberal the way most self-identified liberals proudly use it, yet he sees nothing wrong with applying insulting labels of moral limitations on conservatives based on how hate-filled liberals, not conservatives, describe conservatism.

The soft application of liberalism is often naively adopted by those merely wanting to consider themselves socially concerned, but there is no avoiding the historical reality that leftist progressivism is a concept adopted by those ideological forces that sought to rid the world of religion, scornful of its claims of natural law and unchanging truths with the inhibiting restrictions of conventional morality, which they saw as preventing intellectual elites from advancing the liberation of humanity. Progressives have generated endless prattle about “revolutionary consciousness” which inevitably degenerates into ridding the world of inconvenient “inferior” life, utilitarian redefining what constitutes life “worthy of life,”and indoctrinating “the masses” toward accepting the imperious state necessary for this secularization.

Atheists might not believe in sin, but they still commit them. And sins of pride, which everyone commits, will still make the religious, including priests, nuns, and prelates, atheistic in their thought some of the time. Wisdom comes from humble fidelity to God. When theologians defy God, we should ignore them like other secularists.

Authentic social concern requires enough thought over sentiment to soberly consider such data brought forth in Arthur Brooks’ seminal book, “Who Really Cares,” that documents how self-identified conservatives are more generous in time and money toward the poor and vulnerable than self-identified liberals by factors typically of 10 to one. Not surprising, since only sinful pride would describe conservatives as “single issue.”

Honestly ask yourself who is more likely to describe a Down’s syndrome child as “burdensome,” and not to be welcomed in life, a liberal or a conservative? The NY Times rejoices that Western nations are gradually ridding themselves of these precious gifts from God “thanks” to abortion.

However much some Catholics have allied with progressive cultural tyranny, to not seem “unenlightened” for refusing to endorse slaughtering babies among other evils, Christianity remains morally accountable and inherently personal. The definition of compassion is to suffer with someone, which we don’t do when we demand it from government, which cannot be compassionate. The moral virtue of a billion individuals and our turning from sin would fix the world, not governments, as conservatives and Christians constantly remind us.

Because of sin, humanity is permanently fallen, not glamorous, but true. This reality threatens those prone to government-idolatry and amoral cynicism, which is partly why I, a black-American conservative, routinely encounter the hysteria of those progressives labeling me an Uncle Tom without knowing me or knowing that Uncle Tom was saintly.

DWAYNE AYERS

Hollis