{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The Madness of Crowds","description":"G.K. Chesterton once observed that the \u201cspecial mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it.\u201d His point was that moderns have forgotten that they are assuming what they believe to be a given. \u201cIn short,\u201d he concludes, \u201cthey always have an unconscious dogma; and an unconscious dogma is the definition of a prejudice.\u201d  That\u2019s why I love Chesterton. If you didn\u2019t know he wrote that a century ago, you\u2019d think he was talking about today. Plus, he was always grumpy so he\u2019s a lot of fun to read.  Fast forward from 1919 to 2019, and little has changed about assumed dogmatism. As journalist Douglas Murray writes in a terrific new book, \u201cThe Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity,\u201d \u201cwe are living through a postmodern age in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed.\u201d However, since we can\u2019t live without a grand narrative, we have created new grand narratives, new religions, new dogmas. Sounds a lot like Chesterton\u2026 A chief contender for dominant narrative today is identity politics. The two things that characterize identity politics are, according to Murray, its \u201ccrusading desire to right perceived wrongs\u201d and its \u201cweaponization of identity,\u201d both of which gives \u201cmad crowds\u201d the power to ruin reputations and cower opposition into silence. For example, anyone who dares question the dogmas of the new sexual orthodoxy is labeled a bigot and cast into societal outer darkness.   The fundamental problem with identity politics is its understanding of identity, one which \u201catomizes society into different interest groups according to sex (or gender), race, sexual preference and more.\u201d Such characteristics are suddenly elevated to be \u201cthe main or only relevant attributes of their holders.\u201d But what\u2019s so absurd is how artificial these \u201cidentities\u201d so often are. In a chapter simply titled \u201cGay,\u201d Murray, who is a gay man himself, points out that the acronym \u201cLGBT\u201d combines four groups of people who not only have little in common but are often suspicious of one another. As a gay man, he writes, he has \u201calmost nothing in common\u201d with lesbians (and vice versa).  However, one of the few things they do share is \u201ca suspicion towards people who claim to be \u2018bisexual,\u2019\u201d (i.e., the \u201cBs\u201d in \u201cLGBT.\u201d)  And, as for the \u201cT,\u201d Murray states something we\u2019ve observed many times, that \u201cthere is a tremendous dispute over whether the T\u2019s are the same thing as everyone else or an insult to them.\u201d Apparently, some in the so-called \u201cLGBT community\u201d think transgenderism is a psychiatric disorder assuming the mantle of the gay-rights movement.  Of course, by publicly airing all of this ideological \u201cdirty laundry,\u201d Murray has made himself somewhat of a persona non grata to his alleged \u201ccommunity.\u201d As he jokes, his \u201cgay card\u201d has been revoked.   For a self-described atheist, Murray\u2019s antidote to weaponized identity sounds, well, almost Christian. \u201cIn some manner,\u201d he laments, \u201c\u2026we have created a world in which forgiveness has become almost impossible.\u201d   All that\u2019s left in a world of identity politics is to excuse those we like and condemn those we don\u2019t, and mask it as some sort of progressive arch toward justice and tolerance. As Chesterton once pointed out, post-Christian societies do not actually replace Christian categories and ways of thinking with new ones. Rather, they \u201crepurpose\u201d Christian categories, such as the struggle for justice and fight against evil, but without any defining essentials, such as grace and love.   Societies lose the ability to forgive whenever they forget we are all sinners in need of forgiveness, and that our true identities can only be found in God\u2014as bearers of His image. Once those things are forgotten, so is the grand narrative of God\u2019s creation, man\u2019s fall, Christ\u2019s act of redemption, and the future restoration of all things \u2013 which is, unlike any of its counterfeits, the only true narrative to ground who we really are. ","author_name":"Breakpoint","author_url":"https:\/\/breakpoint.org","html":"