That is the truth about current American politics that the Catholic writer and professor Thaddeus Kozinski draws out in his short '"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident": A Dialogue'. He writes in one section:
'Peter: You may think that you are at the opposite extremes, with yourself a Right-wing conservative, and Libby a left-wing liberal, but you are both essentially the same. Your positions are but two different species of the same error, Liberalism or, more accurately, Modernism. As Alasdair MacIntyre said, all, or almost all, of political discussion today is confined within the bounds of liberal ideology; there may be radical liberals and conservative liberals–but there is nothing but liberals.
'Norm: So, you are saying that I am actually Hillary Clinton in disguise?
'Libby: I, a right-wing, fascist, homophobic, women-hating racist?
'Peter: Well, if it means that you are both true children of the Enlightenment, yes. “Conservatives,” like you Norm, merely desire to conserve the classical liberal tradition of the Enlightenment, while the Libbys of the world aim to preserve the more revolutionary elements. The Glorious Revolutionaries and the French Revolutionaries were both revolutionaries–and both wrong–and the so-called liberal and conservative of today are revolutionaries also.'
Other interesting critiques follow.
So, then, for the Southerner and for any well-meaning traditionalist, a rejection of Enlightenment politics - and its replacement by a truly Christian, Trinitarian politics - must go hand-in-hand with any attempt at reform.
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