Is Secular Liberalism Our Future?

Rod Dreher has an excellent, if thoroughly depressing, essay posted at Real Clear Politics, entitled, "Secular Liberalism as Consensus." An excerpt:

Liberalism depends on the modernist conviction that neither religion nor tradition nor inherited loyalties has any binding authority on us. Anything that denies equal freedom is to be condemned as oppressive and marginalized, even outlawed.

This is what Kalb means by liberalism's "tyranny." Having abandoned the idea that the Good stands outside the individual's judgment, our common life becomes a matter of negotiating preferences and satisfying wants.

In terms of the current cultural war over same sex marriages, the result may well be inevitable, if this analysis holds true.

"If you can redefine [marriage] so that the sex of the parties has nothing to do with it, then you can redefine anything in human life any way you want," Kalb told me in an interview. "Man becomes the artifact of whoever is in power." [snip]

[Traditionalists] are on the losing side of this argument, at least in the short run, given the cultural conditioning of latter-day Americans.

Like I said, not going to make a conservative feel much better, but recommended so that you know what you are up against.