New Neo-Con Stupidity

     Thanks to the incomprable Bartholomew's Notes on Religion (here and here), I find a new neo-con anti-European, pro-Religion tome by George Weigel.  Unsurprisingly, the establishment press has run pro-Weigel reviews by George Will in the WaPo, Carney in the Wall St. Journal and Dreher at the Dallas Morning News.

     Getting to a point I noticed this passage in Bartholomew's coverage

What is the deeper source of European antipathy to religion? For Mr. Weigel, the problem goes all the way back to the 14th century, when scholastics like William of Ockham argued for "nominalism." According to their philosophy, universals--concepts such as "justice" or "freedom" and qualities such as "white" or "good"--do not exist in the abstract but are merely words that denote instances of what they describe. A current of thought was set into motion, Mr. Weigel believes, that pulled European man away from transcendent truths. One casualty was a fixed idea of human nature.

"If there is no such thing as human nature," Mr. Weigel argues, "then there are no universal moral principles that can be read from human nature." If there are no universal moral truths, then religion, positing them, is merely a form of oppression or myth, one from which Europe's elites see themselves as liberated.

     You see, William of Ockham had ideas which could not cross the Atlantic in the last 500 years.  The true spirit of American Christianity's shores never allowed William of Ockham tyrannum secularum to land.  God Bless the American Imperium!