Report comment

True up to a point, Michael, but with a key difference. The major faiths, in the days when they were influential enough to be termed "systems", articulated the basic moral assumptions of the overwhelming majority of people within their respective cultures. Modern libertarianism, even in the West, probably speaks only for a minority, though a large and vocal one. On issues of morality and ethics, therefore, it manifests a neurotic instability, logical inconsequence and factional rancour which did not generally characterize ages of religious faith - in the West at any rate. This I think explains the seeming paradox that characters in the Canterbury Tales (for example) can utter far more subversive sentiments about Christian marriage than anything our liberal professional organ would tolerate in the case of "gay marriage" - if indeed it any longer allows more than one opinion on the subject.