Matters of faith and Classical Liberalism

From Razib Khan on Twitter.  I present in text format as it seems his tweets relentlessly get disappeared.  

The attack (implicit and explicit) against the idea that there is universal human reason that cuts across cultures makes me much more appreciative of religion, because the idea of universality of reality & reason is baked into the memetic-DNA of many of them.  Basically if the enlightenment project totally fails we have to fall back on religion to maintain global cosmopolitanism.

The Founding Fathers were exceptionally clear that the Age of Enlightenment Constitution (encompassing both human universalism and natural rights) which they wrote could not stand on its own, there needed to be an additional foundation in religion.  Any religion.  

Khan is getting at the core issue here.  Religion is ultimately about faith, not provable knowledge.  And even at the heart of Age of Enlightenment thinking, relying as it does on empiricism, logic and reason, there are a few faith based beliefs, among them in natural rights and human universalism.

Surrender those beliefs and the whole structure begins to crumble.  

Hence the concern about Social Justice Theory and Critical Race Theory, both subsets of the larger Postmodernism and Communism faiths.  SJT and CRT both disavow reason, logic and empiricism.  

Once the Classical Liberal ethos of the whole nation, in combination with a healthy base of religious practitioners, was sufficient to stand against the clarion call of authoritarian centralization.  

Declining religious engagement ("I am spiritual, not religious" for example) in combination with declining Classical Liberal world beliefs in key sectors (K-12, Academia, MSM, Deep State, etc.) has left us vulnerable in a way we have not been before.  

Time to get religion and time to reacquire our faith in Classical Liberalism.