The New Populism

I don't believe that the Religious Right really is all that popular. I think that whatever popularity it does have is being blown out of proportion by scare-mongers seeking to cash in on the Religious Right's attempts to grab power.

But to the extent that the Religious Right does have any popularity, what is its real source? It is human beings' need of a code of morality. The self-destruction of modern philosophy has rendered it unable and unwilling to fill this need. But if modern philosophers don't want to teach people how to find their own answers to moral questions anymore, by teaching that Reason is impotent to provide those answers - it's not, but modern philosophers are - human beings will turn to whoever offers them "answers", however illusory and inaccurate those answers may be - even if those answers include being told not to ask questions: in other words, to rely on faith.

For the power of morality in human existence is a truly awesome one: it is such that human beings would rather be good than right. The "ideal" will always trump the "practical".

If it sounds like what I'm trying to say is that it is modern philosophy that is leading people to religion, it's because that's exactly what I'm saying.

Fortunately, there is one philosophy that stands a chance of reversing this trend: by upholding Reason, identifying its true nature - including the actual nature of its relation to emotion (without Reason there would be no emotions as human beings experience them) - and its power to fill human beings' need for morality - which includes the power to integrate the ideal and the practical. That philosophy is Objectivism.

And I think the Ayn Rand Institute is doing an excellent job of "popularizing" it.