Dear Editor,
I sure enjoy reading NR. Its like a beacon of light amid the leftist storm of confused thoughts, attitudes and policies.
I wanted to send some of my thoughts on postmodernism for your review. Many are discussing Postmodernism these days, including Christians and conservatives. I was recently given the book "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren to read. There are many others of this type, encouraging us to embrace postmodernism or become irrelevant.
I have a bad feeling about this book. The first tip-off was the author's admitted hippie background. He admits he suffered a crisis of faith (OK, but then don't reach for revolutionary "solutions"). He quotes Peter Senge (radical leftist) as saying "our Industrial Age management ... organization ... way of living will not continue ... is not sustainable ... not ... in ecological terms ... not ... in human terms." McLaren agrees and feels that "industrial age faith" faces the same fate. This sounds like standard Marxist social criticism. Yikes! The guru character later praises postmodernism, citing such "great philosophical lights of postmodernism" as Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, Fish and Baudrillard.
I couldn't sleep after reading part of it. Jotted some notes in middle of night: Postmodernism is a chasm, an abyss, resulting from the collapse of modern liberalism (leftism). Its magnitude shows just how dominant it was ... starting in universities and spreading outward. Now leftists are trying hard to convince us to abandon modernism and end up at their cherished communitarian, marxist, collectivist dream world via yet another route. They prey on weak, dissatisfied, as always. With incredible brazenness, they ask us to ignore all past failures of socialism and its ilk, even suggesting we blame them on "modernism." I wonder if seeing postmodernism as leftist sour grapes is a novel observation?
My take is that postmodern movement has radical leftist and atheist (and homosexual in Focault's case, maybe others too) origins. It started in leftist bastion France and has infected American Universities and seeped outward from there. My basic take is that postmodernism is the result of leftist (often pagan) rage at the enormous success of Western Judeo-Christian values (e.g. liberty and well-being of all types, individualism, capitalism...) and the enormous and catastrophic failure (now undeniable since the fall of USSR) of their cherished collectivist, top-down, state planned approaches worldwide. They've responded with sour grapes by calling into question the very possibility of objective knowledge (a Christian idea, based on God's existence, creation of rational reality and design of our minds to be able to understand it) and reducing all truth claims to mere assertions of power (pagans, denying any objective moral order, admire raw power above all and believe it should be triumphant in all cases...might makes right).
I don't believe this movement has much of value to offer Christianity or conservatism (other than possibly critique of modernism's anti-God and man-as-God pipe-dreams). Like its leftist/collectivist forebears Marxism, progressivism, Nazism, fascism, Maoism before it, postmodernism is a danger to the Judeo-Christian Great Tradition, which has striven for 2 millennia to discern the meaning of Scripture and the will of God (with many trials and errors) to arrive at Western Civilization as we know it today (not perfect, but better than any known non-utopian system). Like these forebears, its primary target will be secular (God-loathing), often self-loathing leftists who are deeply dissatisfied with the current system based on Judeo-Christian values. Many Christians will also be deceived, just as they were during these earlier movements, as Satan laughs just as he did before as hundreds of millions were either murdered or enslaved by forced collectivism.
I'm sure the author means well, but he is deeply misguided (like so many other utopian dreamers before him). I see the leftist urge as one of the greatest dangers facing the West today (second only to outright unbelief). I hope you find this an insightful and helpful way to view postmodernism.
Steve Sawyer