A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

rld population passed the five billion mark. The cry of war did not cease. Developments in the natural and social sciences altered the educational system forever Liberal philosophers asserted that the only danger confronting society was narrowness that would hinder progress. Fundamental moral virtues went out of fashion. Allan Bloom in his attack on much of modernity noted that "this liberalism is what prepared us for the culture of relativism and the fact-value distinction which seemed to carry that viewpoint further and give it a greater intellectual weight/6 Relativism, which removes standards of absolutes, left so- ciety without norms to distinguish between right and wrong. People now decide morality on their own terms. Individual- ism dominates North American culture, Alasdair C Maclntyre noted: For liberal individualism a community is simply an arena in which individuals each pursue their own self-chosen conception of the good life and political institutions exist to provide that degree of order which makes such self-de- termined activity possible. Government and law are, or 206 WRESTUNG WITH MODERNITY ought to be, neutral between rival conceptions of the good life for man, and hence, although it is the task of government to promote law-abidingness, it is on the liber- al view no part of the legitimate function of government to inculcate any one moral outlook,7 Richard Reeves, in his book American Journey, quotes Robert Schrank, a labor union official, as saying: The worst thing that's happening in America is that abhor- rent behavior can always be explained now. It's danger- ous to somehow apply Freudian thinking to justify people acting out their hostilities by stealing. But now it's ex- plained, "I am not responsible because my mother and fa- ther didn't like me and I was brought up in a wrong way. . . In a democracy, if the individual isn't responsible then we're finished as a free people.* Allan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the American Mind, describes American education as providing "no des- tined visage to the young person.* He views the democracy of the disciplines at the universities as "an anarchy, because there are no recognized rules for citizenship and no legitimate tides to rule . . . there is no vision, nor is there a set of com- peting visions of what an educated human being is/?9 A cul- ture which removes all moral and ethical standards destroys the structure of society and endangers the most basic social institution, the family. The pursuit of comfort and pleasure is but an expression of individualism a