By Fr. James Molgano
Over the past 7 months, every man, woman and youth has been exposed to myriad expressions of nefarious vitriol towards our freely-elected 45th President of the United States, perhaps none more so than in the past several weeks. The sick and daunting image of a so-called comedian holding a “bloodied” severed effigy of the President’s likeness, the drawings of President Trump’s face at a New York High School’s Art Exhibit that touted students to draw on the display, producing several profane expressions of hatred and iniquity, the vulgar-laced speech by a sitting New York Senator given during an event at New York University and the mock-assassination of President Trump during a perverse rendition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in New York’s Central Park, are just some examples of the loathsome acts by those who continue to advocate a complete reconstruction of time-tested standards of tolerance, just one ill-fated motive among many. By definition, tolerance recognizes and respects the beliefs and practices of others. But any rationally sound person would also insist that tolerance, while allowing for certain latitude, should never betray its etymological origins, namely endurance and fortitude, two virtues that imbue propriety and belie distortions of truth. Un-vetted tolerance, as I call it, is the condition, I assert, of passively accepting and thus permitting a socio-political nexus of the profane and the amoral to legitimately coexist under the guise of First Amendment protection.
Respectful of our Nation’s doctrines, it’s another thing altogether when someone abuses this “right” to denigrate our Republic and those freely-elected to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution as established from Divine Natural Law, which, simply put, is the person’s participation in the Eternal Law of God through reason and will. Thus, our Founding Fathers clearly and rationally promulgated the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from a priori precepts extrapolated from Reason and the rational faculty of the soul. As Dr. Robert S. Barker asserts, “There can be no doubt that those delegates in Philadelphia who adopted that Declaration believed in, and, based the nation’s independence on, the Natural Law; that is, that God, in creating the universe, implanted in the nature of man a body of Law to which all human beings are subject, which is superior to all manmade law, and which is knowable by human reason.” (cf, The Review of Metaphysics 66, September 2012) Furthermore, Dr. Barker contends, “…it is important to emphasize that the Natural Law as understood by the Founding Fathers of the Constitution was the Natural Law that for two millennia had been a traditional and essential element of Western Civilization…It was the Founders’ traditional understanding of Natural Law, rather than the various ‘Enlightenment’ versions, that was most influential in the thinking that characterizes the United States Constitution. (ibid)
Tolerance for vile, vulgar hate speech and indecent immoral acts speaks of a much deeper and insidious problem endemic to America and most of the so-called free-world. The spiritual battle for souls, the battle between Good and evil, has led to “diabolical disorientation,” a consequence in large part due to a 19th and 20th century existentialism that places existential man as “the measure of all things” and thus the sole subject for self-determination …thanks in large part to the French Enlightenment and the liberal progressive philosophers who propagated its heresy. Today, this is clearly seen in the spurious activity of those who perpetuate a socio-political agenda that is hell-bent on destroying every vestige of decorum and to suppress and supplant Universal Absolute Truth with precepts that disavow God and the immutable moral code imbued within the human soul.
The highly regarded social and political philosopher of the 20th century, Karl Popper once wrote,
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance
even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the
onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
(Karl Popper, “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” 1962)
Isn’t it oxymoronic that those who advocate for tolerance, whether social, political, or religious, are in fact, the antonymous tolerant? The hate rhetoric of all those who viciously and reprehensibly attack a sitting-President of these United States and Congressmen, not to mention the vile and provoking displays of sadistic improvisation, all contribute to the tell-all makeup of the far-left liberal global agenda and that of its anti-American proponents. And by “American” I mean those who have been and remain loyal and faithful to our Judeo-Christian heritage and the principle rule of Divine Natural Law upon which America was founded. Others may opine and share beliefs that are very different from ours and even passionately defend their right to do so… but it seems today that healthy and prudent boundaries no longer exist and that the proverbial “bottom-line” has “caved-in” and has reached nefarious depths of amorality and nihilistic humanism to the negative nth degree.
Our Constitution, Declaration and Bill of Rights were framed by our Founding Fathers for those of us who would come to these shores in the earnest desire to assimilate values and ideals consonant with the Divinely-inspired Law of our great Republic in order to provide a better life for themselves and their families. And each of us who love our Country, Her flag and Her credo of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” must make it our assiduous responsibility that no enemy, “foreign or domestic,” will ever destroy our classical-traditional heritage that is enshrined in blood and “that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor …which inspired courage, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil.” (Edmund Burke, 1793) So help us God!