After ideology

by David Walsh

The crises of the twentieth century: wars, genocide, the proliferation of atomic weapons, the rise and fall of communism, the breakup of the family, have shaken our faith in modernity and in the fundamental conceit upon which it is grounded: that human beings are capable of providing their own moral and political order. Ideologies based on this conceit had at their heart the revolt against God that has so characterized modern history, and these ideologies have failed us. As the author writes: "We are now at the stage where all the ideological systems have been tried and found wanting, and there are no more new ones to be tried." He contends that the solution is to recover the spiritual foundations of freedom and order.