By now it’s a cliché that liberalism in the Anglosphere has become a religion, whether or not its adherents know it. But less often remarked is a fact somewhat in tension with this claim: namely, that its worshippers get to be minor gods too, making up the moral rules themselves. The past few weeks have offered up two new case studies for us to contemplate. The first involves a married couple from the US, Malcolm and Simone Collins, described as the “poster children of the pronatalist movement”, now thrust into an even wider media spotlight courtesy of a viral Guardian interview about their lifestyle. The second is a book by political philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre, Liberalism as a Way of Life, published on Tuesday.
Since the article about the Collins family first emerged a fortnight ago, most scandalised public reactions have been about the fact that father-of-four Malcolm was observed slapping his toddler’s cheek in a restaurant — albeit that the reporter noted it was “not a heavy blow”. Collins said the practice was agreed with his wife beforehand and modelled on their having watched “tigers in the wild” disciplining their offspring with the swipe of a paw. (Let us hope they didn’t also see the part where an adult tiger sometimes kills a cub for food.) This week, he wrote a further defence, blaming “much of the media” for being “hell-bent on presenting pronatalists as evil and backward”. To my mind, though, Malcolm and Simone could do with being a bit more backward; for even leaving their disciplinary habits aside, they seem to constitute the reductio ad absurdum of attempts to freestyle the moral universe.
In the Collins’s world, every stage of the childrearing process is approached as if to be redesigned from scratch. For instance: the couple have given their two little girls “gender-neutral names” — Titan Invictus and Industry Americus — apparently on the grounds that this will make the girls “more likely to have higher paying careers and get Stem degrees”. The fact that future employers are bound to presume such names could only have come from a terrifyingly crazy bloodline seems to have been discounted. A further justification offered by Malcolm is that such “strong names” will predispose their owners to “a strong internal locus of control”: that is, to that inner feeling, identified by psychologists, of being fully in command of whatever happens to you in life, as opposed to a helpless passive drifter. Clearly, he hasn’t imagined having to spell “Titan Invictus” out over the phone.
But doing things differently is apparently the Collins’s way. They selected their IVF embryos for predicted intelligence as well as health before implantation. They chose the location of their Pennsylvania family home partly on the basis of the number of Nobel laureates produced in the region. They get up between “two and five” each morning to work before the children wake. Their two boys — Octavian George and Torsten Savage, aged four and two respectively — walk around the house with iPads strapped around their necks. And in case you worried that spirituality was missing from this touching scenario, the family follows an “intentionally constructed religion, technically atheist” religion, in which Christmas is replaced with “Future Day” for the kids. On the night before Future Day, “the Future Police come and take their toys, and then they have to write a contract about how they’re going to make the world a better place, and they get their toys back with some gifts and stuff”.
Putting this material all together, there could be few better adverts for the wisdom of crowds. As perhaps their “one weird trick” approach to parenting already suggests, Malcolm and Simone are effective altruists — part of a movement attempting to hack ethics, and maximise benefit-cost ratios in utilitarian decision-making. Saving the future of humanity is high on the bucket list of the founders of effective altruism, and they tend to talk as if hypothetical future humans were just as interesting as actual ones. Or as Malcolm puts it: “The kids who I haven’t had yet… are just as precious to me as the kids I already have” — a sentiment that is either good news for his future kids or bad news for his present ones, depending on how you take the remark.
The existence of the Collinses — and indeed of effective altruism in general — casts an interesting light on the central thesis of Liberalism As A Way of Life. Author Lefebvre argues that since liberalism is the “the water we swim in”, we might as well propel ourselves along with the current, and self-consciously turn its elements into a religion fit for modern times. That is: rather than continuing to pretend that the battered but still-dominant political ideology in Europe and the Anglosphere is neutral between competing conceptions of the good life, we should just admit that — at least for those atheists already steeped in it — liberalism and its contents is the good life. Once this is acknowledged, we can start positively aiming at liberal values in a more enthusiastic way, as spiritually rewarding objectives in their own right.
At the moment, argues Lefebvre, we are stuck in “liberaldom”: the sinful version, an uneasy admixture of liberal principles and other competing ideologies such as capitalism, nationalism, racism and patriarchy. Confined in this purgatorial space, what we tend to find admirable, desirable, erotic, funny, outrageous or offensive is shaped by everyday acquaintance with historically influential liberal ideas and their offshoots. In trying to establish this otherwise extremely plausible point, Lefebvre ventures one of the least persuasive, most naïve, and funniest explanations ever offered for the massive interest in incest porn on the internet — according to which “the taboo being busted … is not the prohibition on incest. It is merit: the [liberal] idea that reward should track talent, achievement and effort.”
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeFascinating article. No matter how much modernists find it icky, much of classical liberalism was foundationally based on Christian teachings. I don’t think one needs to be Christian to see either a) the benefits of liberalism, and b) how much Christian belief once formed the basis of how those benefits arose. As Professor Stock deftly points out, removing the foundation makes the structure become wildly unstable, leaving it hollow and, for lack of a better term ‘spiritually’ empty. Not to mention vulnerable to subversion by outside forces, particularly the post-liberal ideologies that like to claim the mantle of being liberalism’s natural and superior successor (i.e. Communism and Facism). Obviously I’m not saying we should suddenly all become Christian fundamentalist or something. Honestly I don’t know how to square this circle satisfactorily. All I know is that turning liberalism into a religion certainly ISN’T the answer.
Of course it isn’t – so let’s not do it. Just because some (or even many) are seeking to invoke a form of religiosity from a liberalist standpoint doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to do so.
No doubt we’ll have comments along the lines of “Voila! We need to fill the religious void!” or even worse, quoting Chesterton (again…) but neither need apply.
KS is superb at elucidating the flaws in the standpoint taken by those she cites in this article, but it simply doesn’t follow that we need to return to old systems of belief (i don’t think she’s arguing that).
We can avoid and put off “filling the religious void” until it is suddenly filled through whatever mass movement comes along. I think secular-liberalism is becoming a little bit exhausted or “outdated”, if you like, and there’s appetite in certain circles to replace it.
I read “Submission” by Houellebecq recently and it’s a great read. Maybe Islam will make us happier.
You were doing all right until your last sentence, which I can only hope was ironic.
I know that some men will love being able to have multiple wives, abuse, and dominate them. There will be a comforting moral certainty under Islam.
It would be strange if I wasn’t being ironic, I’m Christian and nearly pathologically Islamophobic, by the way, but I know that Islam has a respect and clout that eclipses that of anything else. Our society does not tolerate blasphemy against Islam, and has Islamic messages in public transport. The future of the UK is Islam, unless something very drastic happens.
Our society’s “tolerance” toward Islam has a strong connection to its followers’ willingness to use violence at every perceived slight. If the UK’s future truly is Islam, then the UK has no future.
Exactly.
Who then is our Charles Martel? Because underneath it all is the willingness to commit violence and/or perish for one’s belief/way of life.
I’m a bit concerned about the demand and supply problem. Where are all these wives to come from? And I think that traditionally they each have their own house, with hubby doing the rounds. Not going to help the housing situation is it.
I believe that only the top men get multiple wives. The lowest peasants get no wife. This causes some friction, I imagine.
“This causes some friction, I imagine.”
Yes, the top men will be full of justifiable envy vis-a-vis the lowest peasants.
Hence the hidden factor of homosexual behaviour between said wifeless men – there’s a good reason so many French authors and artists travelled to these countries.
Officially of course, none of this goes on.
Muslim women who are lesbian fair better, one presumes.
There is no such thing as a Muslim spinster. Any unmarried Muslim woman,unless she is a widow,is a w***e,but not by her choice,by social exclusion,may e not here but certainly in the desert. I rather like that the Muslim women have two advantages in my opinion. Because all of them are forced into a marriage whether they like it or not,to a man they may or may not like and because they have to wear their robes so they dont have to spend their teens and 20s putting the meat on display.
Big Love. Maybe putting all the incels in barracks will ease the housing shortage for the patriarchs?
Transwomen of course !
Sadly I agree with you Schmitt, the future of the UK is Islam (very soon too) unless we wake up and take positive action to stop it. That isn’t going to be easy in the face of the Grauniad reading Awfully Nice Brigade who will politely shout racist and/or Islamophobic while shuddering at the thought of monsters like Tommy Robinson FGS!
White van man,with St Georges flag on his house STANDS WITH THE JEWS. Because they’re not Muslim,and because The Yahoo is bombing them to smithereens. He used to be a proud ,if ignorant Atheist,” don’t b’lieve in nuffink me,s’all made up innit” But he’s got the wit to realise that adhering to a faith,even if only outwardly.gives you an escape route,a mental and spiritual one,at least. His great granddad enjoyed the.comic adventures of Ally Sloper + his pal Ikey Mo.
What a very depressing thought. But non-native plants do tend to take over and strangle their host.
Indeed, one hopes it was irony.
Why turn to any religion? It’s the religious mindset that’s the problem, not the solution.
Yes, we humans are deeply spiritual creatures but can do far better than outsourcing to a non-existent deity. There is another way, which is to divest ourselves of all religions and ideologies. In fact, it’s the only way forward but i fully agree it’ll take some doing, since it involves being far more honest with ourselves than hitherto.
You might want to re-read this article, I think Stock elucidated quite well why an “atheist religion”, a desire of rationalists since the French Revolution, never works.
In sum, without a leap of faith, you’re just making stuff up. Why believe it? Anyways, the religious mindset is not the problem, it’s an inevitable feature which you will never be rid of.
I am rid of it. As for “making stuff up” that’s what religions have been doing since it was realised the human spiritual impulse could be manipulated to control people. You’re still falling for it.
You’re not rid of it lad, even if you think you are. Go into a church and say a prayer and see what happens
What would happen?
SFA
But if God is a creation of the human imagination that is because God IS the human imagination
What is the definition of god?
Scratch an atheist and find a strutting popinjay.
As Huxley said of Comte’s Religion of Humanity: Catholicism, minus Christianity.
And the Elite want everyone to be atheist then they control everyone
Don’t be silly.
How can there be spirituality without spirits? If there are spirits, why not one in charge?
I think you might mean spiritualism.
No, I understand spiritualism to be the interraction of the living with departed souls and I definitely do not believe that.
I don’t think you understand what human spirituality involves, or how it originates within our biology-based consciousness.
You are right; I believe it originates with God.
And what is god?
As an atheist worshiping at the altar of reductive materialism, you understand what others cannot know.
Why just one? Mencken: “It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.”
If there is more than one god, they cannot be eternal but must have been created.
I think I will go with Pascal!
With so much riding on the question, only a strutting popinjay would not.
?? why would it seem less likely that many g-ds would be eternal, than that one g-d would? I don’t know that Pascal would be of much help here: his argument is not one in the first place about the character of the g-ds, as about prudence and bet-hedging in case there is a g-d or are g-ds — prudence would seem to apply no matter how many there are.
Good one!
I’m trying to picture you, Clare. I’ve gotten as far as the uncombed hair.
Mencken was a wiseacre for the ages. He was an elitest and admirer of Nietzsche and shared his contempt for the common man.
You say this as if those are bad things.
Well said, Lancashire Lad! It’s the mindset and that’s not going away. There will always be those who need to be told what to think.
And they put on the masks with alacrity,queued six apart.joyfully.and will do it all over again when the next pandemic is unleashed in July.2025.
If you didn’t wear a mask more fool you.
If this is all there is then whoever controls this,controls you. Don’t kowtow to their agenda
What makes you think there is anyone in control?
The problem there is your final word. The ‘pursuit of happiness ‘ didn’t and doesn’t actually need a coherent definition of the implied goal, let alone one that’s shared. Such dynamism as has been associated with liberalism depends on a nominalist rather then essentialist approach to the challenge. Even the Utilitarian calculus of greater good proved much too constricting.
The corollary of course is that any kind of happiness is not the normal product of its pursuit.
They probably put that in because they couldnt think of anything better and they had to fill up the space.
I doubt very much that Islam will make women happier, except perhaps those keen on masochism. Nor can I see it making men happy after the fantasy of orgasmic euphoria of having four wives. The long hours of empoyment needed to keep them and their babies housed and well fed may take the thrill out of all that sex.
But it hasn’t gone away, has it, and it’s not about happiness it’s about power and control.
My erstwhile friend in SE London lived opposite a Muslim Turk with 4 wives..He had two houses knocked together and his kids played in the yard. When he went up the road,if walking,all his wives had to walk behind him with lowered heads.
In London that would be their choice. They didn’t have to do it.
Who provided the houses?
But it will be the infidels who work and are taxed to keep the muslims living in indolence.
As to orgasmic fantasies, I have to say the thought of four wives fills me with terror!
Look, I think you’re a super smart guy and I’m glad you’re on Team Freedom…but you are really committed to the idea that being a Christian is some kind of compensatory coping strategy.
The Bible is fundamentally correct about human nature. That’s all the direct evidence that I need. I’m not triggered by the “Gulo Gene” because I understand that. Show me where the Bible is wrong about Human Nature and I’ll consider dropping the “crutch.”
There’s a reason that virtually all stabilizing utilitarian liberal ethics can be traced to Christianity. I say virtually because Christianity had no problem embracing the preexisting wisdom of Aristotle for instance…but it also had no problems discerning the preexisting wisdom from the nonsense. Christ is the Logos.
What do you think about the Jefferson Bible, where Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted (in four languages) the parts of the New Testament that laid out the Christian ethic but omitted the miracles and the resurrection? Do you think that kind of Christianity works?
I’m with Thomas Jefferson myself. I’ve always been fascinated by the wisdom of the New Testament, and I love to read the King James Version for its poetic translation. My interest even prompted me to learn Koine Greek on my own, when I was bored in law school. But the religion never appealed to me.
(By sheer coincidence (I think) some graffiti appeared spraypainted on a brick wall at my law school one morning, and I was shocked to see instead of profanity the following in Greek: Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. What wise words for a vandal to choose.)
You mentioned that Christianity embraced the wisdom of Aristotle. Too bad the Catholic church took Aristotle’s science of form and substance to heart in its incomprehensible doctrine of transubstantiation. And that Christian churches later adopted the equally incomprehensible doctrine of the trinity.
The New Testament is good with human nature, as you say, but some doctrines drawn from it are not so impressive.
I think Jefferson like Paine gained alot of wisdom from scripture that tempered them. Whether skeptics or Atheist/Agnostics “appropriating” scripture for secular purposes is a pro or a con depends on whether they’re being honest about what they’re doing.
I’ve noticed alot of skeptics citing scripture lately in productive ways. Most believers see the process of understanding Christ as a “journey” which is a concept the Liberation Theologians and their woke parishioners have steathily appropriated in an unproductive way.
Jordan Peterson is a good example of a skeptic going all in on trying to understand biblical wisdom. In doing so, he’s learned that alot of what appear to be contradictions aren’t actually contradictions at all. Now he’s spreading the gospel to people across the world that might have closed their minds.
The Bible is as complex as you want to make it. Most intellects require certainty. It’s how they’re trained to learn. But the Bible doesn’t give you certainty because knowledge of all life’s mysteries will always be unattainable. It asks you to get as far as you can and then take a leap of faith. Faith implies doubt. That’s too much for some people and I understand that.
If you know something is a fact you don’t need to believe.
The gospel of John, as graffiti? How likely?
Good reply, but it just seems obvious to me that our religious past has been but a stepping stone, to guide us through a youthful phase but which no longer serves the purpose it was intended for.
Of course there will be those who advocate for the ‘safety’ of faith, except it’s no longer safe, is it? Rather, it turns us against each other through the insistence that our ‘god’ is better than someone elses. These beliefs are then used to control people. If Islam (for instance) isn’t brainwashing i don’t know what is.
Christian values are simply human values; no need for any underpinning by a deity that, when found to be false, actually undermines those values.
I’d like to agree with you, but I’m afraid that Christian values only appear to you as “simply human values” because you happen to live in a Christian, or immediately post Christian, society. In a different time and place you would feel the same about other values.
What is the utility of protecting the weak? Does turning the other cheek and loving your enemies lead to a safer society? I don’t think so. These Christian values will be jettisoned in short order once the last few of us stop believing that people are made in God’s image and will be replaced by the values of strength. The future is likely to be fascist, in my opinion.
Well,it helps to identify the CORRECT enemy. When bad actors are telling you the enemy is OVER THERE but the real vicious enemy is the OTHER direction,it helps to have discernment. If I have to choose an Enemy it’s not going to be the man who is protecting his land mass from the Kleptocracy,it’s going to be growly voiced used car salesman who likes bombing babies. And should be IN JAIL.
Christian Values instruct people not to play God. You may not recall but you and I briefly discussed Surrogacy not long ago. I didn’t say Surrogacy was inherently immoral but I thought some aspects of it raised questions. You didn’t feel there was any possible moral objection.
When we’re talking about first principles, there’s nothing more fundamental to human existence than procreation and the family structure. But I think we have profound substantive differences on these questions.
My point is that if Christian values are Human Values than why can’t we agree on maybe the most fundamental principles? You can correct me if I’m wrong but I think your concept of Human Values would be something like “The principles of maximum utility for the promotion of human flourishing” right?
The contraceptive pill was invented for CONTROL but not the sort of control they promoted it as. All these researches into sexuality and procreation are,just like the atomic bomb Jew research.
What?!! What the hell are you talking about, Jane?
Isn’t it interesting how for so many the default assumption is: ideological division is bad? If there are such things as truths, why must it be that “wide is the gate, and broad is the way” that leads to them? If ever the world will live as one, why assume that consensus will necessarily embody truth rather than error?
Again, well said. One only has to look at all the religious cults to see how easily people can be manipulated and controlled through religion. In fact all the major religions are cults at their core. Catholicism gets children very young and indoctrinates them through fear. That’s why it’s so hard for even the most intelligent people to ever leave the Catholic church.
The Elite intend to use Atheism to control populations,they have already started. This is why wise people people like Aayan Hirsi Ali are choosing to ally themselves with Faith.
You really are beginning to sound paranoid.
There are lots of texts that have valid things to say about human nature. I think Lancs Lad was referring more to the supernatural stuff – you know Lazarus, the Virgin birth etc
I understand that and I understand why people can’t accept the truthfulness of stories that seemingly violate the laws of nature. I also realize that the Bible contains both stories meant to be metaphors and stories meant to be literal accounts.
So the question becomes whether the writers of the New Testament were intentionally promoting a “useful fiction” or did they actually believe what they were saying. I’m fairly convinced of the latter. So if you acknowledge that they were sincere, you have to ask if they were also aware of basic laws of nature. I think you’ll find that they were.
And maybe it could be said that they went through some kind of mass hallucination to explain the supernatural but IMO, the accounts aren’t consistent with that. So for me, when I view something as perfect logic from sincere people, I have to open my mind to the possibility that the laws of nature can be suspended by a force (God) that’s incomprehensible to me.
Indeed. As a very imperfect Christian, I have no great difficulty believing in the New Testament miracles as literally true. The universe is infinitely complex, and human understanding of it is, I suspect, feeble.
For me, however, the symbolic and didactic value of the miracles is the critical point. The central theme of the Wedding at Cana, for instance, isn’t wine tasting.
There are those of us who have never read the bible who manage to lead moral and loving lives.
Good for you. You’re fortunate to have such strong character. Unfortunately there are many, many others who genuinely struggle with this task. Something with such a rich tradition that has produced such positive developments throughout a long and storied history could do wonders to help these sorts ground themselves and orient themselves upwards in a way that is good for everyone.
Why deny them such a thing simply because you, personally, don’t need it?
That seems a really strange argument to me. Many books provide insights into human nature.
Personally I don’t think turning the other cheek is good advice, either when dealing with bullies or aggression by a foreign power: precisely because the idea is naive about human nature.
As for loving your enemy, would that be before they rope your wife and kill your children,or after?
The Bible assumes that you will deal with earthly power structures (military, bureacracy, tyrants) that have the ability to overwhelm you. Turning the other cheek is a principle of defiance.
The Old Testament is pretty clear about the self-defense in Exodus 22. Jesus also instructed his disciples to buy swords so the idea that the New Testament is calling for absolute pacifism isn’t accurate. The New Testament doesn’t encourage people to pointlessly allow themselves to be assaulted. It encourages people to use discernment.
Any sentence which begins “the Bible assumes” is going to prove either false, or incoherent. Scriptural traditions are notoriously rich, sic et non; why from TaNaK for example Netanyahu can cite the Amalekites while his opponents cite the prophets. Jesus: “He that is not with me is against me,” and “he that is not against us is for us.” Or all the insoluble discussions even of a text that purports to have one author rather than an editorial committee: does Koran embody a religion of peace or one of war? (Sic et non.)
This just in: Mark Lilla has an interesting turn of phrase in the current NYRB: “radical Islamists who speak of peace in English but of war in Arabic . . . “
As a teenager I held the rather pompous view that I had found a simple explanation of the Virgin Birth, namely that the translation could just be young woman. I overcame this act of conceit when I actually began to read and understand the vast sweep of prophesy in the Bible. I studied Paul’s letter to the Romans and read deeply reference books on systematic theology. My point is that thousands of the finest minds who ever lived have immersed themselves in what the Bible means, and found it the most coherent and sublime philosophy in existence. You have to actually read it as a student, not a critic.
Should we, then, have to relitigate, continuously, the entire history of Biblical criticism? (This is the same question that arises concerning evolution. Your response reminds me of Eagleton’s criticism of Dawkins: if you don’t know the minutiae of Moltmann and Duns Scotus, and if you don’t read through the eyes of faith, you have nothing to say.) On the whole it is a curious Christian theology which treats TaNak and the New Testament, together, as if (like the Koran) the product of a single authorial point of view rather than a collection of edited documents.
Or not read it at all.
I’m not a Christian. But I’ve spent most of a lifetime reading about history. Western mostly, which included North Africa, the Levant, the steppes: and a lot of necessarily more speculative stuff about pre-history.
Christianity is by far the best thing that happened for the pre-modern West. Since about 1800 it’s become more difficult to judge; too many moral trade-offs. But it’s easy to see that the Age of Rationality and Logic has not made us either rational or logical
I just don’t think that now isn’t a good time to throw Christ and his teachings overboard.
I think Lancashire Lad finds all religion problematic, as do I. Being liberal is not an ideology, it’s the lack of one, which is the whole point.
I’m not necessarily arguing a return to older systems either. At least not en masses. I have found in recent years that I am much happier and able to cope better with the realities of life by choosing to learn about and adopt more and more aspects of the faith my family had practiced but, for entirely understandable reasons, had lapsed a generation or so before I was born, but that is entirely on a personal level. It works for me, and I would only ever consider attempting to persuade someone through example, never shame or intimidation.
All that I AM saying is that it is imperative we remember where these ideas that unquestionably work *came* from. In other words, to know our own history, and not disparage it needlessly. Ultimately we cannot possibly know where we are going if we cannot even remember where we’ve been.
Your last sentence is philosophical, not religious.
And?
People aren’t up for the implications of Chesterton. He wrote some stinkers of books.
Then there’s ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’ which isn’t a stinker, but since it was written before he filled up his space with bombast and polemics, it does tell you exactly the kind of absurd synarchy he knows is really there.
With people like this I’m always curious to know the religious background of the people involved. Once some religion or other has gnawed a void in their soul I dare say they will always feel a need to fill it with something.
So, “realism” then? Are Mr. and Ms. Collins ever going to go for such a thing?
They are the ones having children. The ones not having children will be the “spiritually empty” in 20 years.
What is the probability that each of their 4 children (thus far) will grow up to be exactly like them? Having children is always a crap-shoot; sometimes the desire to have them for spiritual fulfillment turns out to be a path toward somewhere else. Sometimes children want to be exactly unlike their parents . . .
The girls will decide their names should be Olivia and Sophia.
And end up being just like them!
To those down voting, enjoy being inconsequential in your dotage.
There is no way to square the circle satisfactorily. There is no perfect system. Utopia, nor any reasonable facsimile, is achievable given humanity as it actually exists. To me, this is inherent in Christian teachings and the words of Jesus himself. A significant part of the New Testament is Jesus telling off the self-righteous crusaders and do gooders of his era and explaining exactly why they are in the wrong. They were his critics, his detractors, the people who criticized him for preaching to the non-Jews, the prostitutes, the diseased, the foreigners, the poorest and most desperate who couldn’t afford the trappings of righteous living. The overall point is that we aren’t gods, and we aren’t really righteous, and none of us should claim such or claim superiority based on moral correctness.
To me, this is the true wisdom of Christianity and the reason I consider myself a Christian. The message is one of accepting imperfection and forgiveness of fault. We are all imperfect, we all have faults, we will all be in need of forgiveness, therefore we should forgive others their faults, their imperfections, and their sins against us, if you will. The lord’s prayer is, to me, perhaps the most succinct and concise philosophical expressions of tolerance that has ever been uttered. We should each endeavor, in our own way, to be better, but we’re all going to fail now and again.
I sympathize with atheists who are suspicious of religion. A lot of people, particularly the loudest voices, do religion very wrong and for the wrong reasons. They use it as a cudgel to wield power and influence. They build social cliques that are exclusive and judgemental. They use religion to elevate themselves and denigrate others. This is not a very Christian thing to do, but they don’t see it that way. They judge the righteousness and worth as a human of everybody they meet. It tends to leave a bad impression, but too many of them don’t really care. They want to use Jesus’ teachings for their own purposes, not follow his example. This sort of religiosity was the rule rather than the exception where I live, and I didn’t care much for it growing up. Neither did Jesus actually, and He tells us so, repeatedly. If the real Jesus showed up, I doubt most bible-thumping Christians would recognize or accept him. He’d probably have much better luck with the atheists and the cult of liberalism, whose use of liberal ideals as a suspiciously similar substitute is, as Kathleen mentions, so obvious as to be cliched. Really, though, his true message will be heard more easily by everyone else, the regular people who aren’t living for a cause, just living and trying to be decent to one another. I like to think most of us are willing to admit our own faults and are willing to forgive others for theirs. I think the sort of people who forgive more and judge less, who listen more and talk less find it easier to hear the true message of Jesus. Whoever has ears, let him hear.
In their crusading need to make the world better, the Collinses and the cult of liberalism are, like the Christian fundamentalists of America who tried to build ‘ideal’ spiritual communities in the wilderness, wasting real time, real money, real effort, and real resources chasing pink unicorns and faerie magic. I can only wish Jesus was around to tell them so. Then again, it’s all written quite plainly for anyone who can be bothered to read it.
It’s unfortunate I can only upvote this comment once.
When men stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing, they believe in anything – GK Chesterton. I wonder what he’d say if he was still around and read this article.
It’s been obvious for years now that liberal-left politics is itself a quasi religion, at least in the obvious ambitions of its proponents to achieve political hegemony via moral authority. All they achieve when they talk however, is to demonstrate how unfit they are to wield the power that would result from the inevitable fusion of moral and political authority.
What Chesterton neglected to say is that also when men believe in G-d they often believe in anything.
Liberalism always felt to me to be the expunging of the Christian tradition from the West via the Protestant ethic and accompanying merchantilism. If anything the foundations of liberal democratic societies were relaid pragmatically and positivistically by Dutch, Scandinavian and Scottish immigration to North American with their emphasis on trade and a Calvinist caste ethic. Christian Evangelism then served as a reaction to the American class society emerging where socialism was never able to take root.
For instance: the couple have given their two little girls “gender-neutral names” — Titan Invictus and Industry Americus — apparently on the grounds that this will make the girls “more likely to have higher paying careers and get Stem degrees”.
The irony of poor Titan Invictus’s name betrays a rather arrogant ignorance of Classical mythology, since the Titans were, in fact, defeated.
Additionally, at least Industry’s name can be shortened to the snappier “Dusty”; Titan’s lends itself to the unfortunate truncation of “t*t”.
They’ll tell all their friends at school to call them Olivia + Sophia.
It has become such a cliche but Chesterton’s comment springs to mind – once man does not believe in God, he does not believe nothing, he will believe anything, and so he will quite probably create another god that suits his opinions better. It seems that the Collinses, like the early eugenicists, have made a religion not so much out of liberalism but out of something more scientific and rational which is of course more chilling since in this world view I’m not sure that the weak or imperfect have much of a place.
Have you watched their podcast? Draw your own opinion.
As a cliche becomes a cliche by being repeated very often, it is logical that many are true! Hence the repetition!
As the late Freddy Mercury sang,or chanted,in his song that a significant number of people genuinely think should be our National Anthem (we do need a better one than a Hanoverian drinking song),..” NO TIME FOR LOSERS”….thats an inclusive and compassionate statement isn’t it.
Actually it just proves what I’ve always known,most people dont examine or know the lyrics of pop songs,many of which lyrics are highly dodgy. Altogether now….well pissed mind…..WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS,WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
I feel a bit sorry for people like this. They clearly have a religious impulse and would have made a probably very officious but highly respectable pair of Episcopalians a few decades ago. They are part of the flotsam generated by the collapse of organized religion in society.
I predict that these perfected gene-edited children, of which these are the first, will be victims of murder and burned at stakes in a few decades.
I don’t think anyone will get along with a cultivar of people bred to rule them.
U attract those who bring out sth in you and the influencer couple is probably happy being weird together. Putting aside mind-boggling thoughts of what God means and the ‘moral’ life, their children would be so confused discussing their celebrations of Future Day with their schoolmates. Just have a question-did their children agree to being brought up in that way? Plus their one-of-a-kind lifestyle- is it being splashed all over social media? At least the parents look happy in the picture. Their children’s expressions seem interesting. Fascinating article. Thanks. X
No kids anywhere have ever consented to how they are brought up. Legally even teens cannot give informed consent to a contract until they are 16-18 depending on the jurisdiction.
Interesting. The Collinses spoke at the Natal Conference last December in Austin, Texas, and spoke of the need to protect the right to be “weird”. (Those two do indeed exercise that right.) Some other speakers included Kevin Dolan, Charles Haywood, and Peachy Keenan, all of whom are devoutly religious and conservative. The bulk of the 100 attendees seemed to be of that slant.
Mary Harrington of UnHerd was at one time slated to speak, but didn’t. Elon Musk shares many of the beliefs of the people at the Natal Conference (he has fathered 12 children himself) but did not attend.
Most of the speeches at the conference can be viewed free of charge. There is a second conference this December. Should be interesting.
OK, so why shouldn’t Peachy Keenan be free to birth as many babies as she likes, without blatant scorn from the lady in Trader Joe’s with the With Her pins still on her NPR tote bag? But why does she link her choice, ideologically, to Catholicism (having just as many babies as G-d intended her to have) — a mandate presumably incumbent upon all others as well? The Collinses make it just their lifestyle choice (and revise religion too as just a lifestyle choice). And why suppose there is going to be a post-liberal upswell as women vote for the mommy track over the girl-boss route? No idea what Mr Peachy does in LA but either he has made his pile already, is still making his pile, or is furiously treading water to underwrite victory in the natal Culture War; but what of the single moms, the wives of poor schmucks in cubicle-land, the impoverished in the Great Flyover Zone? Apparently, G-d intended my great-grandmothers to have 12, 8, 5 and 5 children. This is, again, to become a general rule?
The idea behind natalism is to help people have children, not to force them to. Talk to young adults who do not have children (as I have, particularly my children) and it’s sobering to hear why they don’t.
Humans having children is the natural way. We humans are biologically bult to live in families, and to fill traditional family roles. A male father and a female mother. Biologically, not socially.
At least that’s my understanding. I don’t like to see people like Kathleen Stock mocking the Collinses like she does. Sure, they’re odd, but so what? I’d be interested to hear what Mary Harrington thinks about this.
Point taken. My point is that it would be one thing for Peachy et al to say: I want freedom to elect natalism, and quite another to say: natalism is incumbent on all (whether because childbearing is human nature, or divine purpose). (Also, aren’t the Collinses mockable in a way that Peachy is not?)
There is such a thing as overpopulation. Imagine how it would be if every woman in the world, of childbearing age, were to have as many children as she was capable of bearing.
Yes, my point (above) about my great-grandmothers. Not a happy world, theirs.
Well, that’s four potential totatiltarians in the making.
I strongly suspect, the kids outlooks will resemble nothing so much as British upper-middle-class children from circa 1810 packed off to a brutal but character-forming Boarding School. Sink or swim, see. I’m sure they will make excellent governors of the Indian masses, or drive through a successful campaign in Crimea with bold and unusual tactics.
I wasn’t aware that the 19th-century Brits had been successful in Crimea.
Depends on what you define as success. Wouldn’t you say the British Cavalry was immortalised after the Charge of the Light Brigade?
I was thinking something like that too.
The question in my mind is whether the treatment of the children amounts to abuse or not. Liberalism/atheism/Christianity alignment is merely a post hoc justification and not a prime motivation I’d guess. There are many religious parents who put their child’s success or salvation above all else.
But is it abuse? Let’s ask Tity, Indi, Octy and Torsty once they have been deprogrammed.
I suspect Titan and Industry will be suffering some serious neuroses by their late teens.
No,they’ll decide they’re Olivia + Sophia.
It’s abuse. The boys names are OK.
Hmm
They remind me of “The Modern Parents” in Viz.
Calling your daughter Titan … Wonder what her nickname at school would be? I seriously hope she doesn’t overeat…
Titan. Yes, I had the same thought, and then a worse one: clearly her parents don’t know about the series “Attack on Titan”. All the way through school that poor kid’s going to be tormented with it.
They’re going to school?
There was a character in Swallows and Amazons called Titty, and it went straight over my head until I was about 15.
Try the famous five. My kids nearly wet themselves over lines like Julian and d**k went into town to look for Fanny.
With names like d**k, Fanny and Titty there are bound to be high jinks.
They really should just convert to Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, or high church Anglicanism rather than trying to make some strange hybrid of new atheism with traditionalist elements.
I mean seriously, just go to church. It’s clearly what they actually want to do.
Any ism can become a de facto religion, quite a bad one when magnified and examined in a harsh light. Does traditionalism escape substitute or quasi religious pitfalls?
I find it nauseating when pillars of ”Liberal” values drill down on others’ lifestyle or parenting technique. It used to be about live and let live. Malcolm and Simone are eclectic personalities who are most famous for being pro-natalist — i.e., reacting to the demographic decline in the West. I subscribe and enjoy their podcast because they bring interesting and intelligent conversation to contemporary social issues. It’s not about agreeing with all their opinions and certainly not their lifestyle or choice of child names. Malcolm and Simone are putting their money and time where their mouths are — contributing four children and counting to a sustainable future for Western civilization. For that reason, they probably trigger the DINKs. Debate the merits of their arguments, not their choice of child names.
“It’s not about agreeing with all their opinions…”
Surely there’s a crucial dimension involved, namely whether or not their opinions amount to insights that are true?
Doesn’t this matter?
As poor as my Latin is (the provincial or the camp Latin the Romans would call it), the -us suffix clearly indicates the masculine. The girls’ names are not gender neutral. Gender neutral would be Invicto or Americo, which would further confuse everyone.
Clearly too ill-educated to realise that their girls’ middle names, so far from being “gender-neutral”, are specifically masculine.
Indeed, that’s the couple in a nutshell: They think they’re clever, but actually they’re stupid, in a way which is obvious to everyone except them.
Brilliant, Julie. And thanks for the laugh. Your excoriation of ridiculous fads is delivered with so much needed wit and sarcasm that it helps diffuse the sting of reprehensible behavior you rightly criticize.
Those poor children — raised by total crazies who fancy themselves as saviors. Imbeciles.
Julie?
Thanks for the chuckle, David, I was just about to write that myself.
I had to look up “pronatalist”. I thought I was more in tune with modern culture. OK, so mock me ! As to a light tap on the cheek for discipline, I wouldn’t criticize it but it would need to be taken in the whole of disciplinary philosophy. Children can understand language, even if they can’t control behaviour. It’s best to keep language simple and clear. A tap pop on the bottom can get their attention so that the language actually seeps in. As I used to say to my defiant 3 year old, “if your ears don’t listen to my words, my hand will talk to your bottom.” I can’t say that it was always effective, but it sent the older 2 children into honking giggles. Those were the good old days !
‘To put morality in the realm of discursive rationality, as liberalism effectively tells us to, automatically means the most you ever will get are thousands of clashing sects.’
17th century England was also an anarchy of clashing sects despite everyone being for the most part extremely religious, largely because people could read the bible in their own language for the first time.
Which, I’ve often thought, was a very bad idea – especially letting the masses loose on the Old Testament.
I’m amazed it wasn’t kept from black slaves. Did nobody think: they are going to identify with the enslaved Israelites in Egypt, or those in exile?
Actually, it was; there was at least one edition published in America, aimed at an audience of Black churchgoers, with the bits about when Israel was in Egypt’s land left out. (This is mentioned somewhere in Johnson & Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias.)
Exactly!
Is religion a feature or a bug of the human brain? That’s the real question here.
As I get older I’m tending to the former and see myself as an outlier (how otherwise very successful and intelligent people in a congregation can seriously believe the fun but nonsense writings of bronze age men, re edited over centuries glued to another set of re-edited stories from Roman times is beyond me). That same : feature’ seems present in people like the subject of this article, although they can’t seem to see it
I’m glad people like that couple exist because they help me to realise that I’m reasonably sane.
Any ism can become ade factoreligion, quite a bad one when magnified and examined in a certain light. Does traditionalism or nationalism escape these downfalls?Don’t you know you can edit?
I don’t usually suggest such things, but they really should have burned every copy of everything that Ayn Rand ever wrote.
First, why? What was so offensive about her ideas? Second, book burnings. How enlightened of you.
Thanks for emphasising in a single sentence, exactly why her ideas are so important.
Strange.
Surely everyone has at some point noticed that Liberalism is largely the invention of childless men?
From Francis Bacon, through John Locke and Thomas Hobbes to James Maddison, Thomas Paine, Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, T.H. Green and John Maynard Keynes.
Not a single child had any of them.
Actually, not a single child that you know of.
Exactly!!
Since when did liberalism equate to bat sh*t crazy?
Since the American Left which stole the word (which originally had to do with liberty, as in freedom, like free speech, freedom of religion, free markets…) went bat sh*t crazy.
Between weird people like the Collinses and the endless parade of TikTok videos in which 30-something women reassure us how happy they are through their tears, one might think this was a bad movie instead of real life. Why the Guardian thought this family is “news” speaks volumes about a once-vital interest that has lost the plot. Yes, odd or new things might be interesting, but good grief, this story has the same tenor of another tedious piece on some polygamists in desert Utah.
I’m not sure “present-day liberalism” even exists. Its alleged proponents often engage in illiberal behavior, such as attacking or trying to silence ideas and people they don’t like, inserting gender theory into kindergartens, and attacking normalcy at every turn. Are the comfort and privilege of a first-world life really that hard to handle?
There are crazies everywhere, and the internet has given them a voice. But how common are they really? And can we draw general conclusions about society from them?
I don’t think you’ve entirely plumbed the depths of weirdness here. This couple actually praises what religion does in creating a sense of unity and purpose, and in giving order and shape to time, but lamenting that it has anything to do with God, and that religions are going to be exclusive due to the truth claims. You can find one of their podcasts where they are praising a group of orthodox Jews who keep the rituals going but are all otherwise self-professed atheists.
They remind me of all other well-meaning Day-Zeroists who think that somehow all of human civilization needs to be reconstructed along enlightened new lines (in their case, Rationalism), with anything unnecessary or not fitting simply discarded along the way. Those people, the moment they’re put in charge of anything big enough, always turn into monsters.
Well, if they don’t like a personal deity (or deities), they could still embrace religion: They could try Buddhism — the existence or non-existence of a deity or deities is regarded as uninteresting and irrelevant by Buddhists — or Taoism in which the absolute, the Tao, is not personal.
This would make for a nice HBO drama, like Big Love.
Or rather picking them up at the supermarket of half baked ideas and cod psychology, according to our tastes, and mixing them together in a way that suits ourselves, regardless of real evidence or even consistency.
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn’t call his Father and Mother “Father” and “Mother,” but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on beds and the windows were always open.
Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I’ve got a brilliant rebuttal but I have to dash – it’s date night with my step-mom.
The subject matter in this article made me ill, and given that I am currently going through chemotherapy and feel like crap and can’t taste anything, that is saying something.
They sound disgusting
And also utterly insignificant. Why should we care about these twerps?
Though I’d be interested to hear from either of the parents after their inevitable separation, or from any of the kids after they’re old enough to see through the parents.
My God, Kathleen Stock is simply the most marvelous writer of our age. I love that I laugh and gasp at every piece she writes. Her writing alone is worth the subscription price.
Dear god.
Good god.
Which god?
I find it slightly annoying and amusing that, as an atheist, when I’m shocked I, nevertheless, find myself exclaiming “Oh my god” or “Jesus Christ”. Not to the exclusion of all the lovely English swear words, of course. Apparently, I picked it up early and it’s so ingrained by now there’s nothing I can do about it. But better said in horror than really believing in one.
Looking at the Collins and reading about their ideas tells me that neither obviously played team games, had proper dogs for pets, or read anything critical of a liberal atheist mindset. One can only feel so very sorry for their children.
And the moral sea we swim in is still the Christian one despite the irrational and suicidal fantasies and fictions dreamed up by liberal hybris.
Why don’t those parents re-introduce the French Revolutionary calendar and decimalized time to their children?
Obviously not really serious about the whole thing
In terms of “official markers of intelligence” I suppose I’m ok (PhD in a science subject, book author) but I lose all track of meaning when I read articles such as this. What on earth does “to put morality in the realm of discursive rationality” actually mean?
It means anything’s moral if you can justify it with enough academic jargon.
In context, perhaps it is only intended to mean: to discuss morality in utilitarian terms. (But surely the deontic alternative is already also within discursive rationality? Surely it didn’t just start with Bentham and Mill? Surely Kant does not suggest that morality is somehow beyond discussion.)
Excellent
It reads like word salad from the plate of Kamala Harris.
At some point the children of this strange couple will realize their evil. Kids raised in cults quite often turn against their parents when exposed to the outside world. Very often they come to hate mom and dad.
It’s astonishing how thick educated people can be. Doesn’t seem much about love there.
These people are clearly what REV 18.2 is referring to. when the bible speaks about America’s condemnation as evil and to be destroyed. Revelation 18.2 “she has become a haunt of devils, a prison for every unclean spirit, and a cage for every foul and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk the wine of her …”
These people are the descendants of the puritans. New England remained puritan even as they removed God from their puritan religion. They have created a church of godless puritanism. This is the new liberal religion a church filled with unclean spirits.
Brilliant!!
‘competing ideologies such as capitalism, nationalism, racism and patriarchy’- two are ideologies certainly, the others are unacceptable behaviour and something invented up by those with a power-over obsessional predisposition.
I think of the Collinses as harmless kooks — and nothing like Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins. Oh no! I worry that many Guardian readers may need mental-health counseling after reading about the Collinses.
But I find the notion of liberalism as a religion rather menacing. Hey, liberals have been force-feeding us their religion for 200 years, and very likely more.
I think the cliche is the wokeness (or progressivism) is functionally a religion. Liberalism is not, historically at least, coextensive with either, and really barely overlaps with them, except through the corruption of the word by the American Left which stole it, or maybe picked it up, since American conservatives (of the Goldwater/Kirk/Buckley school) who have as good a claim to the name “liberal” as anyone, since the American Founding we want to conserve is the quintessentially liberal event in the history of the world, weren’t using it. The original meaning is retained in Australia, where the centre-right party, which supports free markets, freedom of religion and free speech (albeit with less zeal than the original liberals or than us Yanks would want) is the Liberal Party. It might be remembered that The Economist was founded as a liberal journal of news and opinion, and still regards itself as such because its editors remember the original meaning.
Cracking stuff. Good grief, the contemporary age’s capacity for inventing ever-new manifestations of narcissism never fails to fascinate and delight. These witless muppets belong in CelebrityLand, native habitat of the colossally self-important and the glint-eyed grifter.
How amused God must be. Omnipresent Supreme Being grants a species free will of a bored afternoon, just for the a*se-about of it, and there’s no end to the diverting f*ckwittery it’ll eventually get up to…
Funny stuff there, Jack. Thanks for the laff.
“In trying to establish this otherwise extremely plausible point, Lefebvre ventures one of the least persuasive, most naïve, and funniest explanations ever offered for the massive interest in incest porn on the internet — according to which “the taboo being busted … is not the prohibition on incest. It is merit: the [liberal] idea that reward should track talent, achievement and effort.””
Am I the only one to be completely stumped in trying to work out the basis for this claim? I’m sure that basis is of course demented, but I can’t work out even what the attempted defence for the idea is.
As to the rest, much of what I’m reading (not on the part of Prof Stock, but of what she’s offering a critique) looks like a tedious rehash of the false ideas liberal-progressives have about the way the real world works. For instance, the implied belief that market economies ignore reciprocity, cooperation and a duty of care to the future, when in fact market economies are the most successful attempt yet devised to operate on those principles.
No planned economy system has ever managed to produce anything remotely as vast, intricate and interdependent as the system of prices, production and communication that comprises the modern market economy. It performs the feat of getting complete strangers, who will never meet and never even know each other’s names, to cooperate with each other, billions of times every day, by simply responding to their own incentives. This is a concept that is seemingly impossible either to understand or accept for a great many people.
The parents sounds insufferable and smug, they come of a shallow, narcissistic, and materialistic. They are an unintentionally parody of the professional managerial class. The kids are going to turn out be basket cases when they get older and be worse then them.
“For spiritual engagement, at some point you have to feel like you are following somebody else’s rules.” Brilliant, as is this article comprehensively.
Titan Invictus… what… Caesar Magnificus already taken? What an insufferable pair of “parental units.”
More specifically, liberalism is a post-Christian religion in which everyone is meant to be a Creator, the maker and ruler of a new realities. Whenever this power fails to manifest and actual realities intrude, the tiny Gods of liberalism feel oppressed and victimized. They project these feelings onto others whenever they look beyond themselves. New victim groups – lately the trans – are sought as affirmations of the righteous faith in the goodness of the oppressed in an evil old world.
Two thousand years of imago Dei and the gradual triumph of Pelagius over Augustine, and here we are. Its endemic to the West and won’t soon fade.
“Liberalism” or wokism, is where every man gets to be his own god. The man who is a religious Christian, at least, knows that there is a God, and that it isn’t him.
Sorry, which of those do you contend is better?
Hilarious couple, and ignorant. A first-year Latin student would immediately spot their ‘gender-neutral’ ‘Invictus’ and ‘Americus’ as second declension masculine adjectives.
A person of my acquaintance, after stating that she didn’t like biblical names, named her son “Levi”, presumably after the jeans manufacturer.
If there is a spectre even more ominous than ‘liberals’ projecting personal dispositions as universal values, it’s the illiberals telling us we ‘need religion.’ Both could do with re-reading Kant.
They seem Randian/objectivist this family, which is the true spirit of bourgeois North American.
The machinations of the liberal Left today are largely down to the post-colonial agenda of the university caste, with the CCP providing the wider Marxist context. Which is not to overlook the Californian transhumanis and their alliance with Big Tech, a sort of corporatism of the Left.
Two names with Latin masculine endings. Hardly gender-neutral.
A excellent article on a creepy dystopian fantasy like EA. The most insidious notion is that since secular politics insists there is no god, man himself may happily and constructively assume fill that role.