article by the atheist Slavoj Zizek<\/strong><\/a> that appeared last November on the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In the piece, titled \u201cLiberalism as Politics For a Race of Devils,\u201d Zizek highlights a basic paradox of the liberal order: the more it takes hold of a given society, the more illiberal it becomes. In the \u201cmarketplace of ideas\u201d that Kyle rhapsodizes below, voices that call for the imposition of any notion of the Good on society as a whole must eventually be proscribed. Noam Chomsky described it this way: \u201cThe smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum \u2013 even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there\u2019s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.\u201d<\/p>\nAnyway, as always Zizek has written a great piece, and he can\u2019t be accused of being an intolerant Catholic.<\/p>\n
NOTE<\/strong>: This is my last piece here at Vox Nova, for reasons having more to do with some disagreements in the \u201cbackr0om\u201d than anything happening up front here. I\u2019ve enjoyed it, and I expect to encounter most of the contributors and commenters here somewhere down the line. May the Lord bless each one of you. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apropos of Kyle\u2019s excellent earlier post, \u201cChurch and State: Still Learning This Whole Democracy Thing,\u201d I direct your attention to an article by the atheist Slavoj Zizek that appeared last November on the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In the piece, titled \u201cLiberalism as Politics For a Race of Devils,\u201d Zizek highlights a basic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[249,650],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberalism","category-mark-gordon"],"yoast_head":"\n
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