"Handmaid's Tale" comparisons are silly. But what is perhaps even more of a problem is the inability of the proverbial fish to notice the water they swim in. T

"Handmaid's Tale" comparisons are silly. But what is perhaps even more of a problem is the inability of the proverbial fish to notice the water they swim in. To summarize: Every state is a confessional state. and Convention is not the same as normality. Here, American society is governed by liberalism. It is, quite literally, the confession of the liberal state. Liberalism is not a "neutral" position (the very idea of neutrality doesn't make sense, except in a relative sense, i.e., as common denominator among disagreeing parties). Liberalism makes positive claims. It makes moral claims. It has its own philosophical anthropology. It is underpinned by definite presuppositions about such things as the nature of knowledge and the nature of freedom, as well as presuppositions of a distinctly theologically Protestant nature that would be rejected today if they were explicitly stated. It even has its own latent hyperindividualistic eschatology, entails by its anthropology. If liberalism tolerates non-liberal views, it does so only to the degree that they conform to liberal expectation (this is visible when reading Rawls critically). And far from merely creating a space for incompatible or diverse worldviews to coexist in peace (including those that are given the name of "religion"), it demands and pressures those worldviews to concede to liberal expectations. People are pressured to accept the innovations of the liberal regime; those who refuse are harassed and chastised. So, it's more than a little embarrassing, especially in this day and age, to continue to maintain the pretense of the "enlightenment" and "neutrality" of the liberal order as if it weren't itself a confession. It is a confession like any other, and because every state must have a shared confession to even function, it receives a privileged status in the liberal state, just as any confessional state grants privileged status, by definition, to the confession of the state, however tolerant that confession may be of other confessions. Whether liberalism is the true confession, that is a separate question (I claim that it is not), but what is irritating is the hypocritical pretense of it not being a confession, as if it does not need to be defended, because it is just obviously true. It isn't obviously true, and worse, it contains well-documented contradictions and errors [0]. It is to be expected that someone who grew up in such a regime, who has no real and deep exposure to anything else, who hasn't examined his own culture's presuppositions, will naturally be predisposed and habituated to find the liberal order the natural one, the correct one, the normal one, and so on. That doesn't ipso facto mean that that liberalism or any confession is wrong, only that sensibilities can be trained and molded to normalize what is, in fact, not normative at all. [0] A nice, short, but lucid explanation of some of liberalism's most essential features and problems can be found in Feser's "Locke": https://a.co/d/ayXWIgD https://a.co/d/ayXWIgD.