\n\tFor years we\u2019ve been told that Europe is secular—postmodern, godless, and even indifferent to religion. I never bought the narrative. To me the post-World
\n\tWar II rejection of religion was just another variation of the hedonism that followed World War I. In both cases religious identity remained even as
\n\tpersonal faith was jettisoned. The Clinton era Balkan War should have proved that point. Narrow religious identity can be politically and socially
\n\tmurderous.<\/p>\n
\n\tOne of the most inexplicable events of modern times was the recent march of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees into the European Union. Even
\n\ttoday we do not really know who they were. Early on at least 500,000 Christian Syrian refugees sought shelter at one camp in Jordan. They don\u2019t seem to
\n\thave left for Europe. All we know for sure are several rather sobering facts about the people stream. First, in spite of truly touching photos of drowned
\n\tchildren, the group was made up of an inordinate number of military-age young men. Second, ISIS gloated publicly that this was in effect an invasion.
\n\tThird, not unsurprisingly, conflict immediately arose as the groups settled in the European heartland—conflict over Sharia Law.<\/p>\n
\n\tThen the killings began. I barely have space to enumerate horrific butchery in places like Paris, Nice, and Munich. And mirroring the well-planned
\n\toperations is a growing number of \u201crandom\u201d acts in which an ax-wielding crazy suddenly begins chopping up people. They call it terror.<\/p>\n
\n\tI wonder if it is not something worse. I wonder if this is not the erasing of the social contract.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s not something you read of in the newspapers, even though every college student has some exposure to the principle.<\/p>\n
\n\tThomas Hobbes (1588-1679) lived through the English civil war that saw a king who claimed a divine right to rule executed as a criminal and democratic
\n\tprocess subsumed beneath a religious mandate. No wonder this philosopher tended to see the natural state of society as war. It would not be inappropriate
\n\tto say that we are heading toward a \u201cHobbesian\u201d state of affairs in the pejorative sense. For Hobbes the answer to amoral self-interest was a social
\n\tcontract designed to protect all against the other and empower the state to enforce the contract for \u201cthe common good.\u201d The term is not his, but in its
\n\tmodern proposal I think veers toward his logic in favoring the group rather than the individual once the contract is in place.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe term \u201csocial contract\u201d is more closely used with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) an Enlightenment philosopher who also tackled the idea of self-rule
\n\tand the group. As expected for a Frenchman on the eve of the French Revolution, he objected to the tyranny of the state. But government was necessary and
\n\tideally should come from submission of individual will by agreement to the collective or general will. Curiously he saw private property as almost the
\n\toriginal sin, which led to greed and coercion and inequality.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Americans the views of John Locke (1632-1704) are of more than passing interest, as it was largely his ideas that influenced Jefferson and others and
\n\tlay behind the American Republican initiative. Locke saw the natural state of man as free because of the \u201claw of nature\u201d and the Creator behind the
\n\tprinciple. It was from Locke that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution derived their views on natural rights and a fixation on property.
\n\tFor him, the natural rights were given over to the state, which would have no rights otherwise.<\/p>\n
\n\tAll three allow for a social contract, even as various modern systems favor one variant of their logic or the other. Absent the king, with his claims of
\n\tdivine right; and absent the dictator or despotic system that rules by might alone, these variants must be looked at when thinking of society, laws, and
\n\tfreedom—even religious freedom.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe newspaper headlines speak in the tropes of banality and grade school expectations so you may not have noticed what some of the thinkers of the age have
\n\tmurmured about lately. Many of them see in recent geopolitical developments the end of the modern nation state, which was essentially an outgrowth of the
\n\tTreaty of Westphalia.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs the Protestant Reformation gathered steam it created fractures in the political structure. The Holy Roman Empire was a self-conscious empire of greater
\n\tGermany, which owed its legitimacy to Rome. Beyond it lay various princelings and city-states and nationalist groupings, which generally existed under the
\n\tblessing of a Papal mandate. As the Empire split and various regions turned Protestant and often nationalistic, there was an outbreak of wars that became
\n\tknown as the Thirty Years\u2019 War. It was as vicious a period in European history as any recorded.<\/p>\n
\n\tFinally, in 1644, representatives from 194 states met to end the hostilities. Four years later they settled. Protestant nations emerged as recognized
\n\tpowers. And, arguably, the modern state was born. Sovereign rights and protections were codified.<\/p>\n
\n\tFast-forward to 2016, and what do we have? Europe has played a dangerous experiment in subsuming national identities into a European Union. The Middle East
\n\tis in flames and borders are no longer sacrosanct, since the will to abide by them is denied by both populations and the armies of drones or mercenaries
\n\tthat harass them. In the United States the elephantine logic of martial law shadows every further shooting by law enforcement or of law officers. The
\n\tsocial contract is up for revision.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd now the wild card again. Even as the social contract is questioned by restive populations. Even as mobs yell out the truism that all lives matter and
\n\tfear that they don\u2019t. Even as think tank manipulators seek political vehicles to implement their post-Wesphalian vision. Even as social mores are in the
\n\ttoilet literally. Even as these things happen, we are faced with a global agitation by Islamists to insert Sharia into even Western systems. My point is
\n\tthat this is not just a rude call to impose a particular religious legal system, but a direct challenge to Western views of separation of church and state
\n\tand the ideal of a secular state. It is a direct attempt to roll back to before Westphalia and create a multifront war against other religious forces. And
\n\tit all rides on the breakdown of how the social contract is understood and implemented.<\/p>\n
\n\tYou and I can\u2019t afford to be against Islam or any other faith construct, no matter how provocative or confrontational it may be. It is make or break to
\n\tholding back the new dark ages that we continue to allow individual conscience rights.<\/p>\n
\n\tYou and I must work to reestablish the social contracts that in the West have not just contributed to religious freedom, but have made it possible.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn countering Sharia calls in places like London and Detroit, we must be adamant that it is unacceptable not because it is Islamic but because it is
\n\tarbitrary and opposed to our social contract, enshrined in a Constitution and precious to a freedom-loving people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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