choose life blurb...The Problem with Liberalism

from Orthodoxy Today: Exerpted from The Problem with Liberalism. j. Budziszewski.

"The third moral error of political liberalism is solipsism. According to this notion human beings make themselves, belong to themselves, and have value in and of themselves; according to Christianity they are made by God, belong to Him, and have value because they are loved by Him and made in His image. "Your eyes shall be opened," said the serpent, "and ye shall be as gods." Solipsism holds that we already are.

Not everyone can have unconditional value, so beneath the high public language of equal concern and respect some become more equal than others. Because mothers are not to be means to their babies' survival, their babies become means to their mothers' control over their pregnancies. Because speakers are not to be means to their listeners' purity, their listeners become means to the speakers' pleasure in filth. Because patients are not to be means to the quiet of their doctors' consciences, their doctors become means to their patients' desire to die.

As surely as cider makes vinegar, solipsism made this evil. It would have done so even if it were true that being ends in ourselves keeps us from viewing others as means to ourselves. The mere idea of Not Using Others cannot produce a moral code, for only by the light of a moral code can we tell what counts as using others.

Christianity does not suffer from this vicious circle. Our faith takes its code from the one Who alone possesses unconditional value, yet Who sacrificed Himself that we may live, commanding that we love one another, not according to our own ideas, but as He has loved us."