The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his creation. – C. S. Lewis, 1943
Was C. S. Lewis right to believe that subjective truth is anathema to liberty?
Let’s just take the recent history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI):
- Sent a swat team to the front door of a pro-life family and arrested the father of 8 for a charge so ludicrous it was thrown out of court.
- Issued a memorandum identifying parents who opposed boys using girls’ bathrooms as “domestic terrorists”
- Illegally queried data on 278,000 Americans
- Stonewalled Congress on unclassified documents which allege corruption at the highest levels, including briberies from foreign countries to influence our foreign policies (the stonewalling had to yield once a leading member of Congress actually read from the document, thereby showing it actually existed)
- Knowingly lied in a sworn affidavit to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) in order to spy on an American Citizen
Ad infinitum
The prevarications and misdirections employed to justify the above are breathtaking.
We can safely say this is not the FBI my generation remembers as synonymous with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
But, lest the reader think that I trust Congress, let me say that it was Congress who authorized The Patriot Act (our founding patriots must be spinning in their graves) which further opened the barn door to these unprecedented intrusions into Americans’ lives and it is Congress who kept reauthorizing that infamous act until it finally was allowed to exhale it’s last pollutant in 2020.
What about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? This was authorized by Congress to enable an orderly process for surveilling foreign agents operating within the United States. Is anyone surprised that it now routinely approves surveillance of American citizens? For example, during the Obama administration, the court secretly authorized a warrant which ordered Verizon to provide a daily feed to the National Security Administration (NSA) of comprehensive call detail records, including location data, about all calls in its system, including local telephone calls.
That alone should have ended the funding of this freakish tergiversation of our historic liberties. But Congress goes on funding these courts, year after year.
Examples abound.
For instance, on June 16, 2023, 20 armed IRS agents raided Highwood Creek Outfitters in Great Falls, Montana. The agents confiscated all the 4473 forms. These forms contain ZERO financial information. But they do contain sensitive personal information of all citizens who purchased firearms legally from the store.
Why would an agency whose raison d’être is to collect taxes seek to track individuals who exercise their Second Amendment rights? And the Congress recently funded billions more for that same agency, including the hiring of 87,000 more agents, in addition to funding military grade weapons for the “tax collection” agency.
Many posts could be drafted with similar examples of questionable (putting it charitably) activities by the State — federal, state, and local — including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Administration, ad infinitum.
None of this should surprise anyone with a passing knowledge of totalitarian regimes and their antecedents.
In discussions with friends and family I often hear the riposte, that “this is America” or “Americans wouldn’t do that” or similar sentiments.
(Sentiments, as in subjective truth.)
What makes Americans immune to the enticements of power over others? Are we not all sinners with an inherent bent to usurp authority and to seek power that does not belong to us?
Did not our colonial fathers and mothers leave England precisely to escape the clutches of an increasingly totalitarian regime, which refused to acknowledge it was totalitarian? Did not our Constitutional founders struggle mightily to limit and restrain the reach and power of the central government?
Why would they do that if they believed that “Americans are different”?
They did it because Americans are sinners just like anyone else on any spot of the planet. And as sinners we need to be restrained from evil. Especially men and women who hold reins of power. They, more than most, need to be blocked from usurpations and despotisms.
Well, subjective truth allows (compels!) the bureaucrats who run the myriad federal and state agencies to consider American citizens as “foreigners” or even as “enemies”. Without batting an eye, they will classify anyone who does not toe the line — who does not conform — an enemy.
Based on recent incidents, we can now identify some of those who do not conform:
- Parents who believe their children are either boys or girls, not something in between. In other words, most parents.
- Folks who believe the state — whether federal or local — exists to serve, not lord it over, the citizenry.
- People who love their country but are skeptical of powerful central governments; in other words, people like Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, etc.
- Citizens who don’t look kindly on bureaucrats and judges usurping powers that belong to the legislature.
- Americans who peacefully exercise their Constitutional rights, including the Bill of Rights.
- Families whose first allegiance is to the Triune God, not Caesar.
- In sum, anyone who loves ordered liberty.
Subjective truth is putty in the hands of men and women determined to impose their will on the rest of us. It does not matter what the Constitution, the law, the statute, or the regulation actually says; subjective truth runs roughshod over all written documents because it applies its own meaning to such, thereby deconstructing what has been understood for millennia.
Jack Gleason has given us a partial list of what subjective truth has given us:
- Judges who refuse to judge
- Anti-American American presidents
- Prosecutors who don’t prosecute crime
- Peaceful protests labeled as domestic terrorism and domestic terrorists labelled as peaceful protestors
- Representatives who don’t represent
- News reporters who do not report the news
- Scientists who do not use the scientific method
- Teachers who push pornography on children
- Psychologists who push dysphoria onto children while keeping parents in the dark
- Men playing against women in women’s sports and assaulting women in locker rooms
- Doctors who don’t heal
- Free speech that isn’t free
Ad nauseum
George Orwell in his 1984 had a good grasp of this phenomenon. His dystopian novel tells of newspeak and of memory holes and of erasing history and more, all the while a giant boot grinds the face of humanity.
Subjective truth is a weapon used throughout human history to enable the few to compel the many. It has always been and will always be so. Subjective truth is the artillery for compulsion.
To combat, restrain, and reverse our descent into hell, we must affirm objective truth and teach it to our children and grandchildren.
However this is not an overnight thing.
Nevertheless, we can at least begin that process by examining pivotal events which have been distorted beyond historical recognition and how looking at them rightly can yield a change in paradigms and enable a return to right reason. At least for our children and grandchildren.
In short, although this is a time for concern, it is nevertheless no time for despair.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963). His observations were not directly political yet have great bearing on our political situation today
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (1918-2014), actor who portrayed a straight arrow FBI inspector in the popular television series, The F.B.I.
Patrick Henry (1736-1799), drawn by Lawrence Sully a few years before Henry’s death; watercolor by James Barton Longacre, circa 1835. Henry, like many founders, had a firm grasp of man’s sinfulness. He distrusted the Constitution because he believed it would be abused to concentrate more and more power in the federal government and usurp the liberties of Americans. Others who supported ratification believed that American families would continue to teach their children properly and religiously. This would be sufficient to keep the federal government in check.