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I have been experiencing a change in my thinking lately that I have taken to calling the "Moral Revolution." I am always changing my thoughts in the light of new ideas, but these changes are often marginal. They never strike to the root or core of my beliefs. This would be growth. Instead, I am experiencing what the Greeks call "metanoia" or the changed mind. This is not growth but conversion.

I am not an atheist anymore. I have been one for over a decade, but the nihilistic acid burning in my soul is turning me into a monster. Atheism is nihilism. Atheists will endeavor to dispute this, but it is simple logic. Nietzsche saw it. Sartre saw it. Camus saw it. The New Atheists refuse to see it. But in a world without God, all things are permissible. This is an awesome world for a libertine until the other libertines sodomize the living shit out of you. Then, it isn't so awesome.

I think moral law or natural law is normative. It exists, and this moral law is not the product of blind evolution but a guiding hand of divinity. Others can debate the fossil record and Anselm and Pascal and Hume. I think those are a pointless waste of time. The issue is much simpler and basic. It is about good and evil. They exist, and people prefer the good to the evil. Unfortunately, they have a high propensity to do the evil which is mindboggling. This is the Catholic idea of concupiscence.

This moral sense is my proof for God. It is the only one that matters to me. Believing in it is less about evidence than necessity. You have to believe in the good because the alternative is madness, chaos, evil, and Hell. Even atheists sneak God in the backdoor in order to live and function. No moral judgment can ever be made without an appeal to this divinity and normative standard. The best an atheist can do is describe a cause and an effect of a choice, but that atheist can never say that anything is good or evil. Those judgments are rendered as nothing more than personal opinions. Since atheists are fond of making moral distinctions, the result of atheism is an intellectual schizophrenia.

Christians are not the first people to make this point. Pagans and philosophers also smack into it repeatedly. The Deists of the Enlightenment were on stronger ground than today's atheists in this regard. Human life and civilization is not possible without the moral law. What makes humans human and better than mere chimpanzees is this moral law. What makes life worth living is this law.

My new guides in this world are writers like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Chesterton writes, "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." This describes the atheists completely. They deny God in order to have their slice of evil. But they want God back the moment someone else wants their slice of evil. The atheist will retort that morality is merely the product of game theory and evolution. All this does is make morality selective with a take it or leave it proposition. Selective morality is no morality at all. Altruism is no different than survival of the fittest.

People have always made the comment over the years that for an atheist I seemed awfully decent and moral. I confess that whatever morality I have retained is the product of my Calvinist twenties and my Baptist teen years. All my atheism ever did for me was give me a license to fornicate without guilt and a fierce anger over the idea that the pieces of shit I encounter in the world would in most likelihood get away with it. Anger is merely the unfulfilled desire for justice.

I have already heard the criticism that my turn from atheism is the product of marrying a Catholic. This is partly true. My wife is a saint, but my change of mind is not to appease her. She has simply been a match to my box of tinder. Protestants have tried for years to reach me, but they are simply not equipped for the job. They can't agree among themselves much less get me to agree with them. But I have already learned of three atheists now turned Catholic in just the last few years. Catholicism kills atheism.

The moral revolution extends to my politics which is why I am dealing with Edmund Burke. Burke has been burning in my brain for two decades. But I see the problems in our society less as political problems than moral problems. It is fashionable among libertarians to blame all social ills on the evils of big government, but this isn't true. Big government is the product of social ills and moral relativism. This is why France got Napoleon after the French Revolution. Moral people get freedom. Mobs get tyranny.

It is hip being a libertarian, but I find myself becoming more like my old man who watches Fox News all day. I think today's conservatives are a shame in contrast to Burke. But I retain my fondness for Thatcher and Reagan. I think libertarians are actually libertines, and libertines don't have the morality or virtue to actually be free. This is because liberty requires altruism to advance. But the libertarian message is fundamentally not altruistic. For instance, why should I expend time, money, and energy to legalize pot when I don't smoke it? Why should I fight for the freedom of other people when it may cost me my own? What would Ayn Rand do?

I have always believed in the free market, and I think I always will. But the variable for me has been the extent of social freedom. The free market rewards moral behavior, so it is a good thing. People don't want to buy from crooks. But the social freedom side is troubling. Libertarians argue that people should be free to live as they please. But what happens if those people are Marxist Occupy Wall Street types? This is essentially what happened in France during the French Revolution. I think it would be great if everyone in society lived by the non-aggression principle. Unfortunately, aggressors use their freedom to aggress. This is why we take away their freedom. Underlying all libertarian hopes is a belief that everyone in a society will be libertarian and agree not to do bad shit. But this isn't reality. The reason we got the US Constitution was because something worse would have taken its place. This is the usual timeline of a revolution as the previous tyranny is replaced with a fresh tyranny. The Constitution merely installed a republic to forestall a dictatorship or reconquest from Britain. It was also a compromise.

I think the fundamental difference between a libertarian and a conservative is the fundamental difference between hope and reality. As the Federalist Papers put it, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." If all freedom needs to flourish is freedom, then why was the French Revolution such a calamity? The reason is because the entire nation of France at that time was a cesspool of shit.

The problem comes back to morality. Immoral people can't be free. Government is necessary to keep those immoral impulses in check. Unfortunately, socialism and the welfare state merely serve to feed those immoral impulses. Corporatism does the same with crony capitalists. And as other writers and thinkers have pointed out, a good monarchy beats a bad democracy. Everything hinges on personal moral conduct.

My wife points out to me repeatedly the failures of businesses and free market economics. It isn't that making money is a bad thing, but how that money is made. What gives capitalism a bad name are actually capitalists. I have pointed out the same thing with my essays discussing that a parasite class exists in corporations just as much as it exists in Washington, DC. The fact that Walmart told its workers to get on government welfare is a case in point. Today's Walmart is not the same as Sam Walton's Walmart. Never has a company been so successful while at the same time been so hated even by its own customers.

It is fun to abstract these things and discuss policy as if people were merely pieces on a chessboard. But people are moral actors, and their decisions are what ultimately effect how things are done. We now have companies that actively mistreat customers, and this is considered good business. This isn't the product of government regulation but the corporate culture created by business school grads. This is why you get frustrated navigating a phone tree trying to get a human being on the line that speaks the English language, and this madness is called "customer service." This is why Walmart will make sure you get organic Asian pita bread, but they only have two registers open to check out a hundred customers. Modern capitalism is less about customer satisfaction than a game to see just how much bullshit you will tolerate before you flip the fuck out.

All of these things are fundamentally about a decline in morality, decency, and values. Public service is now public predation. Management is now about fucking over your loyal and gullible workforce. Taxes are about how much wealth can be extracted from hard working people. Meanwhile, the rich are oblivious because they bought their tax breaks and loopholes. Nevermind that the working man has even less cash to buy goods and services. Money is now made from cheap Fed money lent to those without cash. This state of affairs can't last, and it isn't a public policy problem. It is a moral problem. It is theft. We are a nation of con artists and thieves.

I will stop here. Big day ahead for me. The moral revolution continues.

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