12 Comments

The enlightenment was a potpourri of silly and vicious ideas, readily disproved by history...Rousseau claimed that man was born free, but chained by society...The reality all around him was that all men were born as members of a tribe, and could not survive outside of that tribe...that fact simply didn't appeal to him, who monstrously placed all of his 6 children in orphanages, where they likely died.....

Expand full comment

"The real objection, to me,....is the notion that all should be watched over and guided by officials or Experts." Perhaps our "scientific" and societal efforts should be expended in seeking to edit out the controlling, busybody gene.

Expand full comment

LOL

Expand full comment

Can we admit it's past time to retire the deceptive "Enlightenment" label. More like "the Blinding".

Expand full comment

Good call! Or maybe the “Benightenment”.

Expand full comment

Yes!

Expand full comment

>assists wounded and broken sperm to make their way to eggs

Immediate flashback to Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

Expand full comment

Thanks very much for this article. It fills in a number of aspects about the history of the enlightenment that I did not know.

Expand full comment

I blame the Protestants

Expand full comment

And yet David Stove called Plato a cult, the only other serious option to fight “Enlightenment.” He’s terrible

Expand full comment

The Freemason boogeyman, the antagonist of all good social media rants, is the Keeper of the Enlightenment Flame. He’s real. But he’s a ghost. He hides under a silly fez these days, and taunts us with those tiny cars he rides in Independence Day parades. But all these contracepting transhuman genocidal ideas percolate from the safety of his lodge meetings with the other optometrists and insurance salesmen. This piece does an admirable job of putting a face to the evil bastard.

Expand full comment

Contraception is sexual, but not SEXY. Briggs, or Stove, seem to make no distinction. They are like 8th grade sex education class.

Expand full comment