“To remove the effects of the revolution against authority, we need a revolution for authority.”

I would like to draw your attention to a particular problem I see today. It seems that a sort of nihilism has taken place in society. In America it has not quite gotten as bad as it has in Western Europe, so I will provide some examples from overseas to show where this nihilism will eventually go if it is left unchecked.

In Western Europe a political movement is afoot to normalize pedophilia. The movement even has its own political party in one country. In many countries marijuana has been legalized, but if some of you think that is fine, let me go further to show that in 2001 in Portugal, cocaine and heroin were also legalized. Needless to say, drug addiction has skyrocketed in many of these countries.

In the Netherlands not only is there no longer a stigma attached to abortion, but now the government is pushing ahead to legalize child euthanasia for children as old as 12.

In Western Europe indecent exposure laws have also been relaxed. It would seem standards of decency have completely evaporated there.

What is the cause of this? It seems that in the last forty years, there has been a shift in how morality is viewed. The traditional mode of looking at values and morals, which can be seen in most cultures throughout history, has always judged people according to a fixed external standard.

In the 1960s that idea was turned upside down. Conventional morality was replaced with an existentialist morality in which moral codes are constructed to fit randomly selected values. It was a revolution not just against specific authorities, but against the idea of authority itself.

Without respect for authority there is no basis for reasoning about what proper standards even are. What is “good” then becomes completely relativized, and all objective standards are discarded. If someone does not view the concept of authority as valid then there can be no ultimate determinant as to what is good. With the very concept of having rules at all being brought into question, you can’t have a discussion as to what the rules ought to be. When someone tries to reason as to what the standards ought to be, they are criticized for “having the audacity to impose their morality on others.”

After looking at both the liberal and conservative responses to this I must say I’m not particularly pleased with either. The liberal response is to simply tolerate the problem and then encourage it by pushing for more standards to be relaxed. If anyone has a problem with this they are then labeled something that is usually followed with the suffixes “ist” or “ophobe.” The conservative response is not much better. The conservative attitude usually resists the changes in which standards are broken, but then merely preserves the status quo once this has happened.

Neither of these approaches has a solution to the problem. However, I thought of a rather simple solution that can be summed up in one word: audacity. It has been said that Nietzsche is the one philosopher who understood what relativism truly meant. Nietzsche also pointed out that values could be created as well as rebelled against. If everything truly is relative, then anything goes and there is therefore nothing wrong with audaciously imposing ones morality on others. Yet in a way, it is also really necessary if people refuse to have any respect for authority.

The solution is simply to have the audacity to impose moral standards. Don’t be ashamed of it. In fact, celebrate it. If people refuse to accept reason as the authority then imposition must be the authority. To remove the effects of the revolution against authority we need a revolution for authority.

I remember a South Park episode awhile back where people from NAMBLA were using sophistic reasoning to explain why they were justified in having sex with children. Stan responded by saying: “Yeah. You know, we believe in equality for everybody, and tolerance, and all that gay stuff, but dude, f--k you.” I think we need more of Stan’s attitude in society today. The idea of “questioning authority” has become old and outdated. I think it’s time to stop questioning authority and instead have the audacity to assert some.

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