It’s Where Madness Tips Its Hat
"What happens to language when words lose all significance, when they have no history or objectivity, when they are deconstructed or denied a reality? This is what has happened in recent years in the departments of literature and philosophy in leading universities. Is it any wonder that there is a crisis in the teaching of moral education, if words, which are the tools to convey truths, have no objective meaning?"
— Russell Kirk, 1989
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
Transhumanist, eugenicist and champion of the worldly philosophical wisdom1 of Secular Humanism , Julian Huxley , once said (one might suppose with a pompous air of superiority):
“Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.”
Obviously, the Righteous and Holy God who has revealed himself in the Bible has been written off more than a few times in history… (always to revive and resurrect, of course),…. but it seems more and more that the Truth and God -deniers are nipping and snapping at Yahweh’s heels more rabidly and self-assuredly these days than ever before.
This current breed of philosophical yappers (led mostly by professors, PhD’s and other professional academicians) comes in all shapes and sizes, ages and stripes. They have been loosed from the confines of their esteemed institutions of higher learning and have descended into the public square in larger and larger, mostly unchallenged, packs. Their bantering snarls come now from all sides, all academic persuasions. Science departments , social science departments, philosophy departments, ….even theology departments and prestigious seminaries have gotten into the now-fashionable “For Sure, Nothing is For Sure”- act. (And they wear their “It’s All Too Vague…Who Knows?” –badge with an all-knowing and disdainful smile.)
They have raised their “For Sure, Nothing Is For Sure!”-banner high and are waving it gleefully now from the culture war Ramparts of Progressivism.
But if you listen closely to the circular logic and rhetoric of these post-modern “deconstructionaries”, you begin to realize that their playfully pretentious arguments (or non-arguments) rest on nothing more really than shifting sand. And, if you listen carefully a little longer, you begin to understand that their high-sounding, scholarly rhetoric begins to dissolve and disappear into a dense fog of vague, speculative incoherence and often self-contradicting meaninglessness.
Nevertheless, these fourth-generation Huxley-ites,… (Foucaultian and Derridamite acolytes)… have evolved and are now emboldened to come down from their ivory towers to prowl about, to preach and… (grinning broadly)… to breed with the children.
But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
It’s Where Madness Tips Its Hat
Here in academic Mecca
Where philosophies of man…
Are proposed with loose abandon,
Even they don’t understand.
It’s a Jabberwock convention!
It’s a Deconstruction-Fest!
What’s discussed, nobody’s sure of…
Hey, it’s anybody’s guess.
It’s post-modern at its finest,
And an ancient Babble-on,
It’s, like, prestidigitation …
And, like, “Poof!” All Truth is gone!
Question Marks are all the fashion…
Exclamation points are out!
Lofty intellects are playing…
As they worship Constant Doubt.
Truth, you see, is always changing,
On this slipp’ry-sloping ride,
It’s The Way to be enlightened,
And it’s mighty, mighty wide2!
It’s where contradiction’s feted,
It’s where fog and darkness play,
It’s where Nothing’s where we came from,
And it’s where we are today.
It’s where “dialogue” is worshipped,
Revelation’s criticized3,
Where the Learned-Lukewarm4 linger
And The Self is idolized.
It’s where “Process” is emergent…
It’s where madness tips its hat,
It’s the limb on which we’re sitting,
With a grinning Cheshire Cat.
It’s a sophomoric muddle,
It’s where Truth is fading fast.
It’s where logic’s been abandoned,
It’s a VERY deep morass
It’s a Wonderland of Chaos,
Where confusion laughs and preens…
It’s where mindless riddles flourish,
It’s where Light goes sight unseen5
It’s where worldly wisdom6 frolics,
Where it gambols, where it plays…
It’s where tempting voices whisper:
(“Psssst…, Did God, ma’am, REALLY say7….?”)
It’s where Hell now has no business,
Where Nirvana Only waits,
It’s a place of high pretensions,
And where smiling Satan baits.
Where in high-rise Iv’ry Towers
Lofty intellects conferred …
It’s where ”feeling” finds expression,
And the Scriptures go unheard.
It's where "Progress" always beckons,
And progressives hear The Call...
It's where Pride finds sweet expression,
Proudly claiming: "There's no Fall!"
"Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that secular people, losing touch with transcendence, would eventually lose a reference point from which to look down and judge themselves. In the end they would lose even the capacity to despise themselves. Thus, because of the 'death of God', they would confuse heaven with happiness, and happiness with health."
— Os Guinness