Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Imperium Of Rights: Consequences Of Our Cultural Revolution, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

The 'empowerment of rights', whether domestically or globally, presents itself in at least a double aspect: both as a cultural revolution and as a political strategy. The strategy pursued by cultural revolutionaries who equate liberalism with secularism is to turn the basic values of the West into weapons against it so that its inherent defense mechanisms will be rendered ineffective. This strategy is most apt to succeed by provoking crises of conscience through redefinitions of human rights that, in the end, lead to individual and institutional conversion. But, as Marcello Pera notes, political liberalism itself suffers from an 'ethical deficit'. …