The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

Today's art portrayed one of the intellectual titans of the 18th century. It's hard to find a better example of the explosion of intellectualism in Europe than Antoine Lavoisier. He was a polymath, but he is best known for his tremendous advances in chemistry, including the revolutionary concept that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Remember those stoichiometry problems in Chem 1? Yeah...you can thank Lavoisier for those!

But he was what was essentially a tax collector for the French government, and that attracted the attention of the Committee of Public Safety, that wonderful terror organ of the revolution in France. Never mind that he was an unabashedly great man, who along the way, as director of the "French Gunpowder Administration," had made the country self-sufficient in its production of that vital war materiel.

Despite Lavoisier being a loyal Frenchman, a towering figure in science, and a potentially useful ally of the revolution, they chopped off his head.

But don't worry...they forgave him 18 months later, so all is well!

That, in microcosm, is progressivism. How the rabble that was running France FELT about Lavoisier was sufficient justification for his execution. And since feelings change, it was also reasonable in their twisted and illogical world-view that Lavoisier be rehabilitated.

It is those feelings...the base, often evil, completely illogical impulses of Man that progressivism allows free reign. We see it in America today. A budding psychiatric case FEELS that he is really a woman, and off we send him to the butchers masquerading as physicians. Our elites-in-training FEEL like Gaza is being abused by those mean Israeli Jews, absent any data to show it, yet off they run to riot and burn and destroy...all in the name of their irrational and fact-free feelings.

Chesterton's Fence addresses this rather neatly. That fence may look like it serves no purpose, but a sober analysis... boring stuff that is no fun at all... might show that it serves an important purpose indeed!

posted by CBD at 11:00 AM

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